6 DECEMBER 1913, Page 32

THE TERRITORIAL FORCE. [To THE EDITOR OF Dos " SPECTATOit."1

Sin.,—Referring to the deputation by the County Associations of the Territorial Force to Mr. Asquith the other day demand- ing more money, and the present general feeling in favour of some form of compulsory service, the following quotation from Gibbon's Decline and Fall does not seem inapt :—

" In the various states of society armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war ; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty ; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy are animated by a sense of honour; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment."

Croydon.