COMPULSORY SERVICE.
[To THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Every decent-minded man and woman in the country is getting sick of the eternal cry in every paper for con- scription, while the gods that are veiled behind the clouds of mystery and are suppposed to be governing the country make no sign of what their intention is or will be as regards this vital question. Sir, the time for argument has passed, the time for action has arrived. Those who can stop to argue this much-vexed question now are as bad as the Pacificists who say "Must the flames be put out " while the house is burning above our heads. Let those who hesitate read the burning (in the sense in which they appeal to us) words of the Canadian in the Saturday issue of the Morning Post, who describes the look of men hanging like "clothes on a low clothes-line" on the barbed wire entanglements that the artillery was supposed to have mown down before the infantry attack bean. "It was a very short bombardment," he says; and, later : "Do you think the Canadians struck before those entanglements P" Yet, Sir, how much more reason they would have had to do so than the shirkers at home (whether amongst the miners, employers, or in the Government) who rendered that shortage of shell possible, and placed a double mortality on those brave children from afar who answered their Mother's 'call whi:e those nearer home have not yet answered at all. Sir, I am only a woman, but my cheeks glow with shame when I think how comparatively little we, as the Mother-country, with our vast untapped resources of men and material, have done in comparison with those scattered sons of the Empire who have given up the bard-won fruits of their ceaseless toil to keep more firmly on her throne among the nations that Mother who, until she has armed every son, has little claim to exact that for which she gives so little in return. I ask you, Sir, can nothing be done to remove this blot on our escutcheons among the allied nations, each of which is giving, in one way or another, their all to the common cause P Cannot you, with your vast influence, organize something that will 'make our Ministers see that conscription must and shall be required P Mass meetings, processions, even the throwing of stones! Can no one be stirred up to • do something and not Only tO talk ? I would gladly sacrifice my life—and I know Other women feel like me—if by so doing national service could be declared, the brave Russians thereby encouraged, and part of the debt we failed to pay to Belgium cancelled in the eyes of
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