TOPICS OF THE DAY.
COMPULSORY SERVICE.
COMPULSORY service has not come yet, but it is drawing -very near, and will certainly come unless some miracle should intervene—as, for example, the conquest of this country or the sudden collapse of our enemies. Those who dispute our statement that compulsion is coming must be very poor readers of the signs of the times, or else have paid no attention to Lord Haldane's speech in the House of Lords on Friday week. In that speech Lord Haldane, with great emphasis and with perfect clear- ness, laid down the principle which we have preached in these columns for the last seven or eight years when sup- porting the policy of Universal National Service. Our line has been that the State, under the law and custom of the Constitution, has already the right and the power to call the whole of the adult male population of the country to arms in order to resist invasion and to repel the King's enemies. Therefore, as we have always put it, the principle of Universal Service is fully established in this country. What we have neglected to establish is any system of training which will enable the man- hood of the nation to carry out the tremendous duty which the law imposes on them. It makes them guilty of felony if they do not fight, but does not teach them bow to fight.
Lord Haldane, then, speaking as the Lord Chancellor —as the chief exponent of the law and Constitution in this country—made it absolutely clear that the State without fresh legislation has the right to call on the whole male population of this country physically capable of bearing arms to go to its defence. No doubt Lord Haldane declared at the same time that there was no immediate intention on the part of the Govern- ment to have recourse to compulsion. He went further, indeed, and professed to believe that the voluntary system would give us all we required in the way of men. The importance of such professions cannot, however, be placed very high. Responsible statesmen like Lord Haldane do not speak as he spoke without weighing their words. We feel confident, therefore, that the Government have decided that they will be obliged to have recourse to compulsion unless they are able to obtain all the recruits they want, and as quickly as they want them, under the voluntary system. If their intentions were otherwise, their spokesman in the House of Lords would either have refrained from drawing attention in so marked a manner to the Constitutional right of the Government to compel military service, or else would have pooh-poohed the suggestion that com- pulsion was inherent in the Constitution, and would have condemned any such talk as an assertion of obsolete and archaic rights which no Government would now ever dream of enforcing. Lord Haldane volunteered the information as to the Constitution in the way be did because the Government wish to prepare the country for the adoption of compulsion should it become necessary.
The situation at the present time can be expressed shortly as follows. For the moment the resources of the War Office in the matter of equipment of all kinds are not sufficient to enable them to clothe, arm, house, and train a greater number of recruits per week than they are already obtaining—a number which, we may remark in passing, though it may not be stated, is, considering all things, a very large one. Therefore there is no immediate hurry in the matter of compulsion. At the moment the voluntary system is giving us all the men we can deal with. The Government, however, are bound to look ahead, and they know that two tendencies are at work. In the first place, to the immense credit of the War Office, as we unreservedly admit, the production of equip- ment ie being speeded up eo rapidly that before very long our capacity for equipping and training troops will have enormously increased. At the same time, there are reasons for believing that, though recruiting is still going very well, the springs which feed it under the voluntary system will before long show signs of exhaustion. This double process of expansion on the one hand and shrink- ing on the other will soon create a situation in which we shall not have more men than we know how to deal
with, but very much fewer. Then will come the need which was recognized in the course of the American Civil.
War—the need for compulsion. Abraham Lincoln went through all the stages we are going through in the matter of raising troops, except that, though the need of the North was even greater than ours, the voluntary system in America gave results which, numerically and in proportion to the population, were below those which the voluntary system has given us in the first five months of the war. It is a complete error to suppose that volunteering here has not been as good as it was in the North before the Draft was put in force. It has been very much better.
On the assumption, which we are sure will be found correct, that we shall have recourse to compulsion as soon as the voluntary system proves not to be giving us as many men as we want and can deal with, and assuming also— which, of course, we admit is the case—that the Govern- ment would like to defer the adoption of compulsion as long as they can, what steps ought they to take in order to make the voluntary system last out as long as possible ? In the first place, they should make it. clear that the very excellent pay and allowances now given to our soldiers, whether Regulars or Territorials, cannot be extended to men taken into the ranks by compulsion. We do not mean by this that men compelled to enter the Army will be unfairly treated or badly fed, or in any way have any marks of in- feriority placed upon them. That, of course, will not be the case. If, however, recourse is had to compulsion, the service rendered will not be voluntary service, but will be in the nature of a tax which men are compelled to pay in the in- terests of the State—something quite different from volun- tary subscriptions. In other words, the Government ought to make it clear that the men who volunteer will do better for themselves than the men who wait, as many men who are perfectly patriotic in feeling are now inclined to do, till, as they would put it, everybody is placed on an equality, and each one has to do his fair share of the work. Though those who are compelled to serve the State must be fairly treated, the volunteer must be given preferential treatment both in the matter of allowances and pensions, and also in the matter of discharge when the war ie over. The volunteer, as he came first to the colours, will go back first.
Besides making it clear to the nation that the man who does not wait to be compelled, but comes forward voluntarily, will get the better terms, we hold that the Government should—here again following Abraham Lincoln, Pitt, and Queen Elizabeth at the time of the Armada—draw up a muster of the nation as a preliminary. They should ascertain exactly the number of men of military age within the nation, and have them classified in every recruiting area in the country, or such other area as may be determined. Probably the beet area would be the Parliamentary area, as already a good deal of preliminary work has been done therein by the Parliamentary Com- mittee. Having ascertained the number of men of military age in the country not employed (1) by the State ; (2) in carrying out Government contracts ' • (9) in trans. portation, the Government should calculate how many more men in their opinion will be required. Let us, for the pur- pose of argument, say two million more. Then they should calculate what will be the quota required to be taken from every Parliamentary area—i.e., constituency—or such other area as may be determined upon. The next step will be to make an appeal in that area for men to supply its particular quota. If the quota is obtained voluntarily, well and good. If it is not there must be a ballot amongst the men on the muster-roll—the men of military age—in order that the call of the Government for so many men from ouch-and-such a place may be answered. In these circumstances we should no doubt see a repetition of what happened in America. In many cases the voluntary system gave so many recruits that a very small margin was left over. Then, in order, as the phrase went, to keep the Draft out of a particular district, or even city or State—i.e., with us city or county—the principal inhabitants would make a great effort to induce more volunteers to come forward and keep the district on the voluntary basis. For this purpose considerable local funds were often raised in America and premiums paid. In our case, however, it would be necessary to prevent the payment of bounties, which of course are in effect anti-volunteering. But short of paying bounties, in many cases a special effort inn district might easily be made- to obtain two or three hundred men in order to complete the quota, especially when, as we have said before, the terms for the volunteer would always remain ahead of the compulsory terms. And here, lest there should be any mistake, we may say that we want the Government to make it clear that those volunteers who join before compulsion is adopted will have the best terms of all, but that after its adoption both the compelled and the volunteers will have lees good terms, though while compulsion and volunteering are going on simultaneously the volunteers' terms, as in America, will always be preferential.
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