Between the devil and the deep blue sea - University of Canterbury

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Interestingly enough, in an attempt to obtain the best possible soldiers, a tightening
of fitness criteria occurred in 1912 so that fewer men passed the medical examination?7
Effectively, it cancelled the supposedly random nature of conscription and made the lottery
less significant. For example, in Dordrecht in 1914, 477 young men were eligible for
conscription. Of these, 132 were freed through brother service, previous military
employment, kostwinnaarschap, religious association and criminal behaviour. Another 150
were rejected due to medical unfitness. In all, 195 were made available for the lottery of
which 187 were conscripted. Therefore, only eight were released by lottery, very few
compared to the huge number declared unsuitable on medical grounds.28 During the war,
the medical criteria were readjusted so that as many men as possible could be conscripted;
the lottery was also abandoned?9 Quantity rather than quality became paramount, as
elsewhere in Europe.
Despite population rises since 1861 (from three and a half million to five million),
it took forty years for the yearly conscription figure to rise from 11,000 set in that year to
17,500 in 1901. 30 The imbalance improved further in 1912 to 23,000 per year. 31 Yet, as the
Dordrecht example above illustrates, up to 50 per cent of twenty-year olds were never
conscripted and, therefore, never served. In 1914, Munnekrede estimated that as many as
600,000 men of military age (between 17 and 40) were not involved in the armed forces. 32
Another problem was the quality of training conscripts received. From 1901 onwards, 70
per cent of the yearly intake was fully trained (eight and a half months for unmounted and
18 months for mounted troops), while the rest trained for only four months. 33 Compared to
the two years training undertaken on average in the conscript annies of Germany and
France, it would prove to be far from sufficient once hostilities commenced. 34
Successive Ministers of War faced severe problems in trying to increase the
military budget, as parliament typically loathed spending money on defence. One Minister,
27 Klinkert, Het Vaderland Verdedigd p. 383.
28 Verslag van den Toestand der Gemeente Dordrecht over het jaar 1914. [Report of the situation in the municipality
ofDordrecht in the year 1914] Dordrecht: De Dordrechtsche Drukkerij- en Uitgevers- Maatschappij, 1915, p. 154.
29 Staatsblad. no. 349, 3 August 1914; W. E. van Dam van Isselt, Snelle Uitvoering vall de Landstormwet. [Speedy
execution of the landstorm law] Amsterdam: Propaganda-Comite der Vereeniging 'Volksweerbaarheid', 1915, p. 7.
30 Hoppenbrouwer, "De Nederlandse mobilisatie van 1870" p. 10. See: Appendix 2, p. 452.
31 Staatsblad. no. 21, 2 February 1912, Article 4.
32 P. J. van Munnekrede, "De mobilisatie van de landmacht" [The mobilisation of the Army] in Brugman (ed.),
Nederland in den oorlogstijd p. 29.
33 Uijterschout, Beknopt Overzicht p. 432.
34 Klinkeli, "De Nederlandse mobilisatie van 1914" p. 27.