ASPECTS OF CONSCRIPTION
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Mr. C. Brian Phillips, of Bootham School, fears that military training may have a brutalising effect on the minds of those trained and may make them more ready to accept war. If his fears were correct, then the French and Swiss peoples would be. more brutal and keener to go to war than we are. We know that is not so.
In my experience, a highly skilled, trained and disciplined man at arms is, as a rule, the reverse of brutal, far less so than those who find themselves unexpectedly called on to face personal danger.
It is a curious paradox, but the better the soldier, as a rule, the more he is a gentleman in the best sense of that word.
Years ago a company of my regiment was retiring during a fight on the North-West Frontier. A man, already himself wounded in the foot, went to the assistance of another wounded man attacked by three Pathans. The rescuer shot the first, bayonetted the second and clubbed the third, then brought in his pal. He was an unassuming, quiet man who had done much the same in another fight some weeks earlier. The majority of brave men are like that.
Most soldiers regard war as the negation of civilisation and htunanity, but they regard it as more brutal to sit with folded hands while defenceless peoples are subjected to physical and spiritual destruction by the ruthless use of force, than to oppose that force.
If those who are about to undergo compulsory training place their task on such a plane, they will enjoy that training, and their self-sacrifice will increase rather than diminish their instincts of humanity. They will become skilled and tough without becoming brutal.
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