"During the march past I was in a pavilion reserved chiefly for British and foreign naval officers. The German and American officers were much struck with the physique and soldierly qualities of the Australian troops, but they spoke with unreserved admiration when they saw these cadets."
The cadet system was elaborated, between the years 1909 and 1911, into a system of compulsory military training based on a scheme drawn up by Lord Kitchener himself, followed by a report on Australian defences made by Sir Ian Hamilton, the General who is now in supreme charge of the Australasian forces at the Dardanelles. When the new scheme came into force, the numbers of the land forces of the Commonwealth were nearly 110,000 men and boys; the figures comprising 2,000 permanent troops, nearly 22,000 militia, over 55,000 members of rifle clubs, and 28,000 cadets.
At the time the new compulsory system came into force, the number of males in Australia was—
| Between 12 and 18 (of cadet age) | 260,000 |
| Between 18 and 26 (of citizen soldier age) | 366,000 |
| Between 26 and 35 | 330,000 |
| Between 35 and 60 | 614,000 |
For compulsory training it was enacted that the citizens of cadet and military age should be divided into four classes as under:—
Junior Cadets, from 12 to 14.
Senior Cadets, from 14 to 18.
Citizen soldiers, from 18 to 25.
" " 25 to 26.
The prescribed training was: (a) For junior cadets, 120 hours yearly. (b) For senior cadets, 4 whole-day drills, 12 half-day drills, and 24 night drills yearly. (c) For citizen soldiers, 16 whole-day drills, or their equivalent, of which not less than eight should be in camps of continuous training.
The scheme came into operation at the beginning of 1911, when the new cadets, to the number of over 120,000, were enrolled. At the same time 200 non-commissioned officers, as a training force for the new army, went into camp for a six months course of instruction. From July 1 the new system of cadet training began, 20,000 of the boys, of the age of eighteen, going into training as the first year's crop of recruits. Every year afterwards this number, approximately, of trained senior cadets was added to the citizen army in training, while the number of cadets remained about 120,000; some 20,000 junior cadets at the age of twelve reinforcing the cadets as each draft of eighteen-year-old cadets became citizen soldiers.
It will be seen that the outbreak of the war in 1914 found the Australian scheme still incomplete, since the number of citizen soldiers in training was approximately only 80,000, even including the 20,000 cadets of that year, who had just been drafted into the citizen army.
Australia had also arranged for the training of its own young officers, who in time should develop into Area Officers under the compulsory services scheme, which provides for the division of the Commonwealth into over 200 military Areas, with an officer in charge of each. The establishment of a military college at Duntroon, near the new Australian Federal capital city of Canberra, had made excellent progress when war came.