COMPULSION VERSUS VOLUNTARY SERVICE. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR."'
Sre,—In the debating of this subject there is a point which seems to me to be curiously overlooked. If you agree, perhaps you will make room for it in your admirably patriotic journal. The country, in this deadly crisis, makes two demands upon tier sons, and both of these are imperative : we shall perish if they are not conceded. She needs their money, and she needs the hazard of their lives. And each of these is service. Enforeed
compliance with one or other is compulsory service. Moreover, money is-the easier to give, the one which average men may be expected to surrender under less pressure. Why, then, does no champion of the "voluntary principle" cry out that the surrender of this at least should be a free-will offering ? It is the easier to make, and there is exactly the same principle in resisting the taxman and the recruiting officer. Why does not Sir John Simon propose to finance the war by a War Saturday, with girls crying out (like Wisdom) at the corners of the streets ?
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