NATIONAL SERVICE BY CONSENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your repeated collection of opinion on this great question is most valuable. The evidence you give this week marks what may be called another milestone on the long road to a national decision. The letter from a Territorial officer reporting the meeting, at a Liberal club in Liverpool, after which all the Liberals present joined the National Service League, is as notable as it is hopeful, and confirms the wisdom of the suggestion made by you and others that this matter, kept clear of party divisions with their heat and misrepre- sentations, ought to be made the subject (perhaps not yet, though time presses) of disinterested conference between political leaders. After Lord Roberts's declaration that what be asks is "that all able-bodied young men should pass through the Territorial force for a continuous period of military training," it can be no longer possible to represent him as wishing to injure or destroy the force he would improve. And on the other side Colonel Seely now avows that "universal service" is needed, though he still hopes it will be wholly voluntary.
Another valuable letter points out how, even if our supplies were cut off by naval defeat, an adequate home army would at least save the country from the horrors of invasion. Remarkable also is the letter from Mr. Snowden, M.P., to the Daily Mail, which you summarize in your "News of the Week." The arguments, or rather prejudices, which he says influence " Labour members " and their constituents against compulsory service are, as you say, " of a contemptible intellectual character "—you might add, and moral—and if they exist widely (which, with you, I doubt) must prove many possessors of a vote unfit for it. It does not appear whether Mr. Snowden himself shares these prejudices, but as he has shown himself one of the most thoughtful of his party, capable, at least once, of expressing disgust at Mr. Lloyd George's vulgar slanders and adulation, it seems hardly likely that he fails to recognize that reason, not blind prejudice, must rule in this debate. Is it not then his duty to persuade his followers to hear reason on both sides ? To give up that duty as hopeless is an undeserved insult to the understanding and the conscience of the average wage-earner. He has sacrificed much of his individual liberty to his trade-union, believing, of course, that it is for his own interest ; but further thought will show him (here no less than in Australia and New Zealand) that the far smaller and briefer sacrifice now proposed is to win things of more vital importance to him than any trade-union can secure. Perhaps we shall find that in this matter democratic feeling will come to the aid of the workman and of his country. Be it borne in mind that the men who ought to be, but are not, in the ranks of the Territorial Force are by no means all shirkers, but many, probably by far the most of them, are kept from joining by the exactions of their employment. The members of that Force now form among their fellows a kind of aristocracy, privileged to bear arms and to earn and receive public honour. A patriotic aristocracy is a good thing, but a patriotic democracy is a better.—I am, Sir, &c., E. M.
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