Dominion generals truly believed that they might need a corps-sized army formation, or something close to it, in the not-too-distant future. They had just assembled big armies to fight a big war, so the possibility of having to do it again sometime soon was not so remote to them as it appears to us 100 years later. Their first instincts were to preserve as much army as possible. Senior officers in Canada proposed a permanent force of 20 000–30 000 and a compulsory service militia of 300 000 soldiers. Australia’s generals wanted a permanent force of 3500 professionals to train a militia of 130 000 troops, which could expand to 182 000 in wartime. And they suggested that the Commonwealth Government implement ‘measures for the utilization for a definite period of the trained personnel of the A.I.F’ to put things on the right path.