TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CIVIL FORTITUDE.
WE do not wonder at the reception which Lord Roberts had at Glasgow. His speech was very simple, very characteristic, and extraordinarily moving. No one who heard it and who did not go with the intention of misunderstanding it could have failed to realize its meaning. It showed what are the aims of the National Service League, and of those who, like ourselves, are work- ing with Lord Roberts, and showed also what are not our aims and demands.
We are not asking for conscription, but for universal training and universal service.
We are not asking for a system like that on. which the great Continental armies are trained and maintained, a system of three years in barracks and with the colours.
We are not asking to uncitizenize young men and turn them against their will into professional soldiers--men who, whatever may be the virtues of that profession, and they are many, stand apart from the ordinary life of their country.
We are not asking for anything which would place the soldier above the civilian.
We are not asking the working classes to undergo a discipline and a training which we are not insisting that the rich and the leisured classes should bear side by side with them.
We are not asking that the rich men should be officers and have all the honours and emoluments of military rank, and the poor should be privates, and have all the labour and discomforts. What we are asking for is a system of universal military training and service on the Swiss model, that is, on an absolutely democratic, national, and universal basis. We are only proposing to compel men to do what is done cheerfully by the young Switzer. We are merely in- sisting that every man in this country who is not debarred from that right—for it is as much a right as it is a duty—by iM health should learn how to defend his country effectively, and, in addition, should undertake a short period of service at home which would make the country abso- lutely secure from invasion, and further would enable a young man, if he offered himself willingly and without compulsion for oversea service at a great national crisis, to make his tender of service to the Motherland worth having and not a pathetically empty gift. During the crisis of the South African War there were literally hundreds of thousands of young men who were willing and eager to go to the aid of the Motherland, and to serve her oversea, if need be, with their life's blood. But they had the shame and humiliation of feeling that the offer they made was really worthless. She wanted men who could shoot and who knew the duties of a soldier, and so could be used on the instant—who would at once fit into the organization of war. But this, the only thing she then wanted, they could not offer her, for the State by neglecting to give them a training in arms had failed to make them full citizens. It was as if in its urgent need the nation had called for so many thousand men who could read and write and cipher, and the people in reply had sadly to confess that they could not meet the call because the Government had never taken the trouble to educate them. We propose to take this shame away, so that if the need come the nation could call upon a million men in arms to defend these shores, and further could know that if men were wanted to defend the Empire and its interests oversea, the young men who offered themselves would be able to make a gift worth accepting. Let us remember in this context that in a very true and exact sense we already have National Service as part of the law of the land. Though the fact is generally denied by those strange descendants of our fighting Puritans— the men who claim the liberty of the subject not to defend his country from foreign invasion—the law of the land, the common law of England, gives to the Sovereign, i.e., the Government, the most absolute and complete power to call upon every male citizen to join in resisting the King's enemies who have landed on these shores. Every one of us—there is no limit of age—may be called upon to expel the invader, and may be compelled to carry out this work under the conditions which the Government impose. We are not merely liable to serve at our own homes and in our own counties, but anywhere within the United Kingdom. If we refuse to obey this summons we are guilty of felony and must endure the punishment of felons. The duty of military service within the country, though not of course oversea, is absolute and unavoidable for all Englishmen under the common law, and unless we are mistaken, under the prerogative of the Crown, the Government in Scotland and Ireland have similar rights to those conferred by the common law of England. And here we may note that it was under these common-law powers, and not under any special statute or express words in the Federal Constitution, that Abraham Lincoln imposed compulsory service during the civil war upon the Northern States, and that the Southern States imposed it upon their population. The common law of England, as Chief Justice Marshall laid down, is part of the law of the United States, and the common law con- ferred the " war powers " on the President which he used so extensively. Congress no doubt regulated the applica- tion of the compulsory powers, but unless we are greatly mistaken the basis of " the draft " was the common law. But though the common law places on every Englishman the obligation, on pain of felony, of obeying the summons of the sovereign to resist the King's enemies, it unfor- tunately has forgotten to supply our youths with any train- ing for carrying out their common-law obligations. It is easy to see how this has happened. In old days little more was wanted to make a soldier than strong arms and legs. The State had only to put a spear and a shield into a man's hands and he was a warrior. Now, however, to make his strong arms and legs of any use he must be trained, and next, as war now falls like a thunderbolt, he must be trained in peace time and when no war is in con- templation if he is to be of any use when war comes. Therefore, as we have said above, what the National Service League is asking is that men should receive at the hands of the State the training which will enable them to carry out their common-law duties to the State. Translated. into specific language, this means that the National Service League asks that every man should be required. to join the present and existing Territorial force when he is between the ages of seventeen and eighteen and that he should remain a Territorial for four years and afterwards in the Reserve, and finally that, in order to make his service effective, he should receive a thorough grounding in the military art by a four months' recruit training, during which training he should, when necessary, be maintained at the cost of the State. This is the full tale of this supposed tremendous and tyrannical revolution which the National Service League is alleged to be fomenting ! We wish we had space to deal by quotation with Lord Roberts's admirable speech. We must, however, be con- tent to leave that to our readers, confident that if they read it they will realize how gross and unjust have been the parodies of his proposals put forth by his opponents. We wish, too, that we had space to point out how greatly facilitated the work of national defence will be when we make national training and service compulsory, and to show, as can be shown conclusively, that the so-called compulsion would not mean dragging unwilling youths to perform a service which they detest, or which is detestable in itself, but rather would set our youths free to do what the vast majority of them would greatly like to do, and would benefit beyond all belief by the doing. At present they are too often caught in a tangle of prohibitions, negations, and dubitations set going by parents and employers, which would be cut through by the clean blade of compulsion. Discussion of these matters, however, must be left for another occasion ; but before we leave the subject we must point out that the demand of the National Service League for universal training and universal home service in the Territorial Army has never been met fairly and openly, but only by sophistry and subterfuge, by falie analogies, by misleading rhetoric about militarism and the rights of the subject, and by undemocratic twaddle about so-called democratic principles. To the persons who use these arguments we would put one question : "If you really believe that the majority of the people of this country are skulkers and want to evade the duties of full citizenship in the way of national defence, and if you really hold that they will never do themselves
what they can hire somebody else to do for them, and finally, if you believe that the _people of this country will never stand compulsory training and compulsory home service, why do you not have the courage of your opinion and propose that any Bill for universal training and service which may be passed by Parliament shall, before it is put into operation, be submitted to the people with the simple question : Will you have this law put into operation or will you not ?' "
Such a test would settle once and for all the question whether the people of this country do or do not regard with horror and detestation the idea of universal training in arms to complete the education of the citizen. Such a demand for a direct appeal to the people could not and would not be refused by those who, like ourselves, demand universal training. It would allow the voters to say for themselves whether they will make the defence of these islands absolute and complete, or whether they will refuse the full training in citizenship which should belong to free men. For ourselves we are certain what would be the answer of the country if an Act for universal training and universal service were submitted to a poll. We are also certain that those who talk so loudly about the policy of Lord Roberts and the National Service League being undemocratic will never dare to ask that it shall be submitted to the popular vote. In truth the resistance offered to the policy of the National Service League is the resistance of a minority and not of a majority of the people. The ordinary Englishman, in Shakespeare's words, does not " bear a base mind." He knows that " no man is too good to serve his prince," i.e., his country, and that if need be " we owe God a death."
The men who think that national defence ought to be hired and that what the young Switzer does for his country is not a noble thing but something to be scorned and rejected, are a minority, but still a minority powerful and dexterous—men who know how to use all the forms of representative government and all the arts of the politician, the wirepuller, and the political " boss " to prevent a true, plain, and direct decision being given by the nation at large. They want to defeat national service by a side wind, and that is why they will not dare to ask for the decision of the people on a Bill to carry out the system of universal training and universal service which is proposed by the National Service League.
Previous page
