MATTHEW ARNOLD AND CONSCRIPTION.
]TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."1
Sin,—The following passage from Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, written in 1869, ia, I think, interesting, not only as showing the feeling in this country about conscription at the time of the Crimean War, but from another point of view :- "I think I have somewhere related how Monsieur Miehelet said to me of the people of France that it was a nation of barbarians civilized by the conscription.' He meant that through their mili- tary service the idea of public duty and of discipline was brought to the mind of these masses, in other respects so raw and uncul- tivated. Our masses are quite as raw and uncultivated as the French ; and, so far from their having the idea of public duty and of discipline, superior to the individual's self-will, brought to their mind by a universal obligation of military service, such as that of the conscription,—so far from their having this, the very idea of a conscription is so at variance with our English notion of the prime right and blessedness of doing as one likes, that I remember the manager of the Clay Cross Works in Derbyshire told me during the Crimean War, when our want of soldiers was much felt and some people were talking of a conscription, that sooner than submit to a conscription the population of that dis- trict would flee to the mines and lead a sort of Robin Hood life underground."
—I am, Sir, &c., E. A. HELPS.
Coleshill Cottage, near Amersham.
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