working his farm." [Encycl. Brit.] In 1910 there were altogether _five
hundred_ agricultural co-operative societies in Servia.




IX


CONSCRIPTION

_December_, 1914.

While protesting, as I have already done, against forced military
service, it must still be admitted that the argument in favour of it
retains a certain validity: to the extent, namely, that every one owes a
duty of some kind to his own people, that it is mean to accept all the
advantages of citizenship--security, protection, settled conditions of
life, and so forth--and still to refuse to make sacrifice for one's
country in a time of distress or danger. It is difficult of course for
any one to trace all the threads and fibres which have worked themselves
into his life from his own homeland--as it is difficult for a child to
trace all the qualities of blood that it owes to its mother; but there
they are, and though some of these native inheritances and conditions
may not really be to a man's liking, yet he can hardly refuse to
acknowledge them, or to confess the debt of gratitude that he owes to
the land of his birth.

Granting all this, however, most fully, there still remains a long
stretch from this admission to that of forced military service. The