matter ought to carry weight: "After long experience in studying
Russian, German, Bavarian, Saxon, French, Spanish, and American fighting
units, my verdict is unhesitatingly in favour of the British.... What
has occurred lately has been a splendid triumph of citizenship, because
people were allowed their proper liberty and the consciousness of
freely, sharing in a great Empire."

Besides it must always be remembered that conscription gives a
Government power to initiate an iniquitous war, whereas voluntaryism
keeps the national life clean and healthy. A free people will not fight
for the trumped-up schemes and selfish machinations of a class--not,
indeed, unless they are grossly deceived by, Press and Class plots.
Anyhow, to force men to fight in causes which they do not approve, to
compel them to adopt a military career when their temperaments are
utterly unsuited to such a thing, or when their consciences or their
religion forbid them--these things are both foolish and wicked.

If the nation wants soldiers it must pay for them. England, for example,
is rolling in wealth; and it is simply a scandal that the wealthy
classes should sit at home in comfort and security and pay to the man in
the trenches--who is risking his life at every moment, and often living
in such exhaustion and misery as actually to wish for the bullet which
will _end_ his life--no more than the minimum wage of an ordinary
day-labourer; and that they should begrudge every penny paid to his
dependents--whether he be living or dead--or to himself when he returns,
a lifelong cripple, to his home. To starve and stint your own soldiers,
to discourage recruiting, and then to make the consequent failure of men
to come forward into an excuse for conscription is the meanest of
policies. As a matter of fact, the circumstances of the present war show
that with anything like decent reward for their services there is an