We do not think we are misrepresenting Mr. Haldane when
we say that the tone of his speeches inclines one to the belief that he is not very far from the ideal of universal training. To insist that it is the essential duty of our citizens themselves to provide for home defence so as to free the professional Army, and also, to a great extent, the professional Navy, is, in effect, to accept the principle of the National Service League. When one says a thing must be done or the nation will be in dire peril, surely the next step is to say : "Every one must do his share of the work, and if he will not, or through some special circumstance cannot, do it voluntarily, he must be compelled." To say to a group of people : "You must do a particular thing," and then to add, " but if you don't want to you need not," is surely a non sequitur against which the philosophic mind of Mr. Haldane must protest. We do not believe that he can really be in favour of that form of the liberty of the subject which was so ably caricatured by the seventeenth-century naval pamphleteer, Captain St. Lee,—" the liberty of the subject not to fight for his country."
Previous page
