TOPICS OF THE DAY.
"THE LIBERTY NOT TO FIGHT FOR ONE'S COUNTRY."
'EVEN at the risk of wearying our readers, we feel that we must return to the subject of universal training. It is natural, no doubt, for perplexed controversialists who cannot find, serious arguments with which to meet their opponents to put up a man of straw of their own devising and then to throw him down with a blare of trumpets. But though this procedure occasions us no surprise in the case of many of the opponents of universal training, we must say that it does surprise us when so able and so fair-minded a newspaper as the Westminster Gazette resorts to the man of straw in his crudest form. That journal constantly refers to the advocates of "conscription," and uses language which seems to indicate that its writers have never taken the trouble to read what is and what is not proposed by the supporters of universal training and by their official organisation, the National Service League.
The Westminster Gazette and those who agree with it tell us in effect that the British people will never accept "conscription," partly because compulsory as contrasted with voluntary service is antagonistic to the nature of our people, and partly because we have no need for the huge army that would be created by it. That this is perfectly true we have no wish to deny,—presuming that con- scription means, as it apparently does when used by the opponents of the National Service League, a military system like that of Germany or France. This admission, however, makes no difficulties for us or for the National Service League, for neither they nor we have ever advocated the adoption of any military system analogous to that of France or Germany. What we do advocate is something in no way antagonistic to the spirit of the British people, to their history, or to their requirements. It is the training to arms of the adult male population of this country very much on the model adopted in Switzerland and Norway, in order that the nation may be provided with a force of home guards which shall be able to take the place and do the work of the present Territorial Army, and. which shall also endow the whole of our population with a training which would, if this country were threatened with invasion, enable us to put under arms a force so great that no foreign Power would dare to run the risk of disembarking its men on our shores. A further advantage of universal training would be that at a time of great emergency, like that which arose during the Boer War, the thousands of citizens who would voluntarily come forward and offer to serve oversea would be able to offer the service of men well grounded in the use of arms, and not merely offer willing hearts but absolutely untrained hands.
The most curious point in the antagonism which is shown to the proposal for universal training is that in the abstract every Briton, whatever his politics or class or trade, admits the whole case of the National Service League. All that, in truth, the opponents of the policy of the National Service League do is to refuse to admit the necessity of making that policy effective. We can best illustrate what we mean by a story of a Wiltshire labourer who was listening to a patriotic lecture. In the course of his remarks the lecturer put to his audience the question : "What would you do if the enemy had landed and were entering your village?"—" What would I do, Zur? Why, go for un with a pitchfark ! " was the instant reply of an old labourer at the end of the hall. Practically this is the reply that every Englishman, Welshman, Scotsman, and Irishman would make. What the National Service League propose is to make the policy of the pitchfork effective. All they want to do is to teach men to handle the pitchfork, or, rather, to substitute a better weapon for it, and to teach men how to use it, not individually and in isolation, but in co-operation with their fellows. The policy of the pitchfork and its intelligent application is the League's first and last word. Indeed, we cannot imagine a better poster for the League than an agricultural labourer attempting to drive the enemy from his cottage-door with a pitchfork, and underneath it the words, "We want to teach him as a lad how to.do it properly,"—or perhaps they might use a slight variation of the Red Comyn's words-and merely put below the picture, " We mak' siccar ! "
A practical objection which is sometimes made to the policy of the National Service League deserveaconsidera- tion. We are told that the cost of universal military training and of the maintenance of the Army which the system would automatically give us is too great, and that we could not endure that burden as well as the expenditure on a sufficiently strong Navy. This is an argument which finds special favour with the Westminster Gazette. We should be the last not to give due attention to a question of national finance, but it is a complete delusion to suppose that the burden of universal training would be financially unendurable. Mr. Shoe, the able secretary of the National Service League, sends Us. an interesting calculation of the cost which the policy of the League would place upon the country. The League, it will be remembered, propose that our young men when they reach a certain age—i.e., between seventeen and eighteen— shall receive three or four months' recruit training, -and after that shall have a fortnight's training each year for the next three years. They calculate that a hundred and forty-three thousand lads would become every year liable to training. Assuming that each lad while under roans would cost as much as a Regular soldier—an unneces- sarily large assumption, we think—and also assuming that the recruit training should be four months— which we again think is a fortnight more than is abso- lutely necessary—the cost works out at slightly over five millions a year. But it must be remembered that under a system of universal training we should require no Territorial Army, or, rather, that this "new (Swiss) model" would become the .Territorial Army. Therefore the whole of the money now spent on the Territorial Army would be saved. But the Territorial Army, it is evident, will very soon, if not at once, cost us five millions a year. Therefore it cannot be said that the adoption of the policy of the National Service League would seriously add to the cost of national defence.
That indirectly we as a nation should gain in health, strength, and efficiency we cannot doubt for a moment, for the effect of a three or four months' training on our urban population would be extraordinarily beneficial. To take young men of between seventeen and eighteen out of our towns and give them threo and a half months' good. physical training in the open air, and also, what is quite as important, three and a half months' good feeding, would be to endow them with a fund of health and strength which, properly maintained, might last through life. The present writer will never forget the effects which he witnessed of the first three months' training upon the young men of the Spectator Experimental Company. Though they were not drawn in any way from the slum population, but from what one might call the average working-class home, and though Many of them came from country districts, the improvement, physical, moral, and intellectual, produced by their three months' training was little short of marvellous. No one who saw and studied their development with an open mind could resist. the feeling that it was a positive crime to withhold such benefits from the whole of the population.
We have one more argument to meet, which is what we may terra " the last ditch "of the opponents of universal training,—that we should be interfering with the liberty of the subject by compelling men to learn how to carry out that duty of defending their country, should need arise, which we all admit in theory to be the most sacred of duties. Curiously enough, this very point was met some two hundred years ago by a certain Captain George St. Loe, a naval officer and pamphleteer of great humour and ability who wrote on naval and military affairs during and after "the glorious revolution" of 1688. One of his pamphlets is entitled "A Discourse about Raising Men." The pamphlet advocates universal service, and asserts that therein "all objections are answered, and particularly that popular one, namely, that this way of Raising Men is a Violation of Liberty and Property"
This," he declares, "is the Objection which has prevailed most against this Way of Raising Men, and which the Gentlemen that Oppose it insist upon more than any other; not, I suppose, because
it's any better than the rest, for that it is not, but because to seem to assert, and talk for Liberty and Property, is always Popular, makes a great Shew, and gives a Mau an Air, tho' it be nothing to the purpose." Later on the gallant Captain deals in a passage of ironic humour with what he calls the "Liberty not to Fight for one's Country" :— "All Englishmen then have, as you say, Gentlemen, a Liberty not to Fight for their Country, and no Body can make 'em do it, unless they, Kind Hearts, should happen to be in a good humour, and offer their Service themselves ; tho' the English Fleet should be sunk, and the Army destroy'd, yet Englishmen may stand still with their Hands in their Pockets and look on, and no Body can make 'em strike a Stroke. This is their Liberty, and no Body has a Word to say to it; nay, tho' the Kingdom itself were sure to be lost, our Laws, Liberties, Religion, Government and all with it, yet neither the King nor the Parliament, nor both of them together with all their Laws and all their Authority, can make a Man of 'ern Fight to prevent it."
Incidentally he draws from his own times an example which is not a little amusing of how our commanders sometimes forgot the sacred liberty of the subject. He begins by describing how "the late King James went away and left his army on Salisbury Plain ; lie knew Englishmen could not be made to fight against Foreigners without violating their Liberties, and therefore, rather than make 'em do that, he chose, out of a tender regard to the Liberties of England, to go his Way and lose his Kingdom And so, it seems, our Admiral did, that we had in the beginning of this War [no doubt referring to Lord Torrington's withdrawal from the action off Beachy Head] When the French came tip to him, near the Isle of Wight, he bore away from 'em as fast as the Wind and Tide would carry him, bravely maintaining the Liberties of England, quite from Spithea,d to the River's mouth " " But his successor, Gentlemen, one may say it among Friends, has not behav'd himself so well in this Point as he did, for happening to meet with the French fleet some Years after, much about the same Place, what does he do but fall on them without any Regard to our Liberties, and there was he at it for above an Hour, Fist to Fist with Admiral Tourville, and all the while the poor Seamen's Brains and their Liberties flew about together in the saddest manner. I protest to you, Gentlemen, 'twas a shame to see it. Between you and me, Gentlemen, he may be an honest Man, but really he does not understand the Business of Liberty. I believe he means well, but he has not seen so far into that Matter as you have done: Pray, Gentlemen, take a little Pains with him, and set him right, and give him a Copy of the English Liberties to put in his Pocket when he goes to sea again."
One word more, and it concerns those—and they are by far the majority of our opponents—who will not say they object to universal training themselves, but who weakly and vaguely argue that "the country would never stand it." To such persons we would say : How do you know the country will never stand it ? For ourselves, we may say at once that we have met plenty of people who believed that it was no good to talk about universal training because Englishmen were so strongly opposed to it, but, strangely enough, we cannot recall ever having met in the flesh any one who was opposed per se and on its merits to teaching men how to use arms for the defence of their homes. Of course, thousands of men can be found who will say, and say rightly, that no man must ever be com- pelled to leave these islands. That, however, is a perfectly different matter, and one which leaves the policy of the National Service League untouched. The League realise that oversea service must always in the future, as in the past, be left to purely voluntary service. What we contend is that there is no serious opposition to teaching men how to defend these islands. And here we may note the excellent appeal made by Mr. Lloyd George to his fellow-Welshmen to join the Territorial Army,—an appeal which breathes the true spirit of patriotism. But how is it possible to read it without feeling that it would be far wiser for the State to give all her sons, through a system of universal training, the power to discharge the duty which the Chancellor of the Exchequer describes so movingly? A duty which belongs to all should be performed by all, and the State should see to it that the citizen is trained in his youth to do that duty efficiently.
Previous page
