A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AN interesting, though obviously not an original, question is raised by an American reader of this column. Just as captive Greece took her fierce captor captive by imparting to Rome Greek culture, is there not, he asks, a real danger that Germany, by driving Great Britain to conscription, authoritarianism and other typical character- istics of German militarism, may be gradually robbing Englishmen of the freedom which Germans have long since had to surrender? Few of us can have failed to ask that ourselves. The reality of the danger is incontestable. But so far, I think, the answer to the question is reassur- ing. There has been very little encroachment on individual freedom—too little, perhaps, for full efficiency. Conscrip- tion has been accepted by the country, and by the men it immediately concerns, not as an invasion of liberty, but as an organisation of the service which a citizen is ready ungrudgingly to render. All the concern is that rich and poor shall stand on the same footing, a principle that will inevitably be prejudiced in some degree if sanction is given to the proposal—otherwise entirely sound—that university men alone shall have the right to postpone their training till the age of 22 or 23. In one sense our liberties are in our own hands. A self-disciplined democracy does not sacrifice its liberty when it decides to do voluntarily what ft might otherwise be compelled to do.
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