While congratulating Lord Derby we must also, as he would
be the first to demand, congratulate the nation. Compulsionista as we am in ordinary times on the ground of national defence and national moral, we cannot refrain from expressing our intense pride at the respbnse of the nation and the way in which the people have willingly offered themselves. Even if compulsion now comes for the small minority of unmarried shirkers, the vast majority of our forces for the war will have been raised under a voluntary system. Lord Derby's scheme has settled that. A philosopher might try to check our admiration of the way in which the whole nation has sprung to arms without compulsion by pointing out that the system has in many ways worked partially and unfairly and unquestionably undemocratically. The rich, young, unmarried man of military age has had opportunities for shirking which are not given to the poor man. Still, in spite of such drawbacks, the nation has proved that man, or at any rate English-speaking man, is a noble anima Rut we are not surprised. We never doubted that the call of duty would be answered here. What we hoped and desired was that it would be answered by trained and not untrained men. There is in a nutshell our difference with the voluntaryist&
