TOPICS OF THE DAY.
"THE LIBERTY NOT TO FIGHT FOR ONE'S COUNTRY."
'UNQUESTIONABLY we are a strange people. At the present moment the country, or at any rate a large part of it, is in a state of wild excitement over a play which sets forth the physical horrors of invasion, and the moral horror that comes to those who are crushed by a great disaster which a little care and forethought might have prevented. What all the sombre speeches and grave warnings of soldiers and non-party students of war and politics have been unable to produce has been brought about by a melodrama at a London theatre. The effect of An Englishman's Home has been of a kind quite outside all former experience. Not only is the rush for seats beyond all precedents, but the Press has been filled with articles discussing its political and social significance. When grave newspapers like the Westminster Gazette devote leaders to the subject of a melodrama, and the halfpenny papers think nothing of giving daily two or three columns about the play, there is no further need to insist upon the fact that public attention has been thoroughly roused to the question of invasion and home defence. The wider public has after its long sleep at last awakened to three plain facts : (1) That in spite of the Navy, the danger of invasion is a real one ; ,(2) that if invasion took place, it would mean something terrible aud tragic beyond words ; and (3) that we are not making proper preparation to prevent invasion, or to deal with it adequately if it took place. An Englishman's Home is showing the British people that they are living in a fool's paradise, and making them cry oat: "Men and masters, what shall we do to be saved from the miseries that we now realise must fall upon us if an enemy lauded upon our shores ?
Many people are regretting keenly that this awakening of the British public should have taken place in a manner so sensational, and that the instrument of conversion should have been, not serious thought or serious exhorta- tion, but a message half of farce and half of crude sensa- tionalism from across the footlights. For ourselves, though we distrust and detest sensationalism, we cannot in the present case pretend that we feel anything but satisfaction at what is happening. Anything is better than that the British public should continue to move about in what Carlyle called "pot-bellied equanimity." All we ask is that a proper use shall be made of the awakening, and that before "the eternal trifler breaks the spell" good resolves for the future shall not only be made but acted on. If the play has proved the thing to touch the con- science of the nation, so be it. And let our gratitude be expressed to Major Du Maurier, of whose earnestness and sound intention there can be no doubt, even if his dramatic methods are, as the critics allege, a little obvious and commonplace. A cutious aspect of the controversy over the play is to be found in the fact that everybody seems to be asking what is the true moral, and what is the best way to make sure, as far as human foresight can ever make anything sure, that such things as happen nightly at Wyndham's Theatre shall never happen in reality. We should have thought that the answer was too obvious to require discussion. It is contained in two words,—Adequate .Preparation. But what is adequate preparation ? Mr. Haldane, and those who declare that his policy is the only sound one, would answer this question by saying : "Make the Territorial Army a reality. We agree. But another question has to be asked : How is the Territorial Army to be made a reality ? We believe that there is only one way, and that is the way suggested in the manifesto which was issued on Tuesday by the president and vice-presidents of the National Service League. The object of the League is to add the principle of compulsion to the Territorial Army scheme. As a basis of organisation for home defence they accept that scheme, as we do, as excellent ; and they express gratitude—in which we again concur—to Mr. Haldane for the ability shown in its conception, and for the untiring energy with which be has laboured to give it being. But they point out that it has some fatal defects :—" (1) It does not provide sufficient men. (2) The peace training of those it does provide is hopelessly inadequate. (3) The burden is unfair in its incidence." We do not believe that any person whose eyes are not blinded by prejudice, a chief part of which prejudice is a fanatical terror of the word "compulsion," can doubt that these three objections are sound. Mr. Haldane, and those who up till now have been wont to declare that compulsion is not only unnecessary to fill the Territorial Army, but actually an evil, have in reality abandoned that position. And for this reason.
Mr. Haldane tells us again and again that we cannot be safe without a second-line citizen army, and that it is the duty of the citizens to provide that army. Now if this is true, it is the duty, not of a part of the citizens, but of all the citizens. But once acknowledge that a certain duty is incumbent upon all teen—as, for example, the payment of taxes and jury service—then it surely follows that those who attempt to evade their duty must be made to carry it out. You cannot, either in logic or in justice, declare that a duty is necessary and obligatory, and in the next breath say that no one need take it up who does not want to do so. What is for the benefit of all must be borne by all. Remember, too, that the State, though it seems to say so, does not really, in fact or in law, admit that any one who likes can shake off the burden. Under the common law the State has a right in the case of invasion to call upon all its citizens to help to repel the invader or to put down rebellion and disorder. It was under this principle of the common law that Abraham Lincoln, towards the end of the Civil War, enforced the draft upon the citizens of the United States, and compelled them to serve within the limits of the United States to put down the Secession. It really comes to" this, then, that the State at the present moment is saying : "Though we retain the right to call upon the citizens to repel invasion, we will not compel thorn to undergo the training which would render them of real use to us in case we make the call." An old naval and Whig pamphleteer of the Revolution of 1688, Captain St. Loe, tried to laugh the Tories of his day, who were then the great enemies of national service, out -of their objections by declaring that they relied upon "the liberty of the subject not to fight for his country." At present the British State declares in effect that there is no such "liberty not to fight for one's country" inherent in the subject, but only a liberty not to be trained or to prepare to fight for his country. The practical effects of this are depicted in the case of poor Mr. Brown in the play. When the call comes upon him to fight for his country he has to prove how tragic are the consequences of the liberty not to be prepared. He falls a victim to a piece of Constitutional sophistry, and dies the martyr of a paradox.
Let us suppose that the country has advanced, as we believe it has, to the point of admitting, not only that there is no liberty of the subject not to fight for his country, but also no liberty of the subject not to learn how to fight for one's country. We then have to ask the question : What is the appropriate kind of preparation? We believe that the scheme proposed by the National Service League is on the whole a sound one. It is as follows :— "(1) Subject to certain exemptions, a training in the ranks of the Territorial Army up to a fixed standard, based on the general principle of one continuous training of four months in camp for the infantry (with longer periods, not exceeding two additional months for the other arms), shall be compulsory on all able-bodied youths in this country between the ages of eighteen and twenty- one, without distinction of class or wealth. Such training to be followed annually by a musketry course and a fortnight's training in camp for the next three years.
(2) The men thus trained shall be liable to be called out for service in the Territorial Army, for home defence only, in a time of grave emergency, so declared by Parliament, up to the age of thirty.
Combined with the above system we desire to see as much physical drill and military instruction as possible given to all boys previous to their reaching the military age."
In regard to the question of the cost of clothing Mr. Haldane's Territorial Army skeleton with flesh and blood, the National Service League, after careful con- sideration, believes that the cost would not be anything like the additional twenty millions which has been officially estimated. They hold that the cost, in addition to what we now spend on the Territorial Force, will not exceed four millions. In view of what is spent in Switzerland and in Norway, and in view, also, of the fact that there is no reason why our system should be more extravagantly conducted than theirs, we .see no reason to doubt the soundness of this estimate, and we are convinced that the sum is well worth spending, considering the advan- tages it would produce. Those advantages may easily be set forth.
(1) If the whole youth of the nation were trained to arms, we should possess a military force in these islands which not only would make it easy to resist invasion, but would prevent any Power, however strong, from even contem- plating invasion, provided, of course, that the efficiency and strength of the Navy were maintained. Nobody would try a big raid or a small raid here if the Territorial Army and its Reserve could at a time of need turn out a million organised men. Surely this security is worth paying for, for it abolishes the risk of panic. What would be the effects of a panic here if invasion were really threatened, in our present want of preparation, may he partially gauged by what has taken place during the last ten days. The perturbation caused in public opinion by a realistic play has been well marked. What would it be if it were known that a hundred thousand men were mobilised at Emden or some other point on the Continent ready to take any advantage which fog or storm or naval disaster might give them to raid these islands ? If the shadow can stir us thus, what would be the effect of the reality ?
(2) The next advantage is the improvement which would be produced in the physical well-being of . our population. Our experience of the Spectator Company convinces us that four months' training under good sanitary conditions, given at the critical age of seventeen, would work wonders on the whole population. It would help also to solve the problem of boy labour, for it would mean a definite break in a lad's working life. After the training the boy Would cease to be a boy, and the moral, physical, and intellectual bracing which is the result of four months' sound military training would greatly improve his chances in the battle of life.
(3) A third advantage is to he found in the fact that universal training would make it far easier than now not Only to raise troops for oversee service under voluntary con- ditions - the conditions under which they must always be raised—but would give us a reservoir upon which to draw— again by purely voluntary methods—in cases of an emer- gency like the Boer War. In such cases of emergency, plenty of people are willing to fight for their country oversee. The difficulty at present is that they are absolutely without training. Under a sysfem of universal training there would be no such offers of willing hearts but useless hands. And here we may note an extraordinary delusion Which seems to possess the Westminster Gazette and other Opponents of universal training. They apparently think that universal training would make it impossible for us to fill the Regular Army. On the contrary, we believe that it would make recruiting for the Regulars infinitely easier, for it would popularise military service, and teach .a great many men that military duties were to their liking. This *was certainly the case with the Spectator Experimental Company, and we see no reason to think that that tiny experiment had anything exceptional about it or was aught but a fair sample. When the Company assembled there were only some three lads who desired to join the Regulars,—i.e., three per cent. At the end of the train- ing some thirty-two or thirty-three per cent, wished to enter the Regular Forces of the Crown. Instead of being "fed up " with soldiering by six months' very hard work, the thirty-three lads in question realised that they had found their vocation.
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