Page:Facts about conscription.djvu/2

 '''2. That conscription is democratic.''' The argument is plausible. "All men with certain exceptions, such as those physically unfit, must undergo military training, and in the event of war risk life and limb. What can be fairer?" Why have three recent British Trades Union Congresses, representing millions of individuals, declared strongly against it? Surely some, at least, of their number have had opportunities of studying the working of this democratic system on the other side of the North Sea and the English Channel. That is just the difficulty, from the point of view of the National Service League and other British exponents of conscription; they have! And they have not found the facts square with the "democratic" theory.

'''Friedrich Glaser, Doctor of Political Economy, Munich University, writing of universal service in Prussia, says that when it was introduced these same ideas were expressed in the same phrases. "There was much talk of the 'Volk in Waffen'—the 'people in arms,' the right and duty of each citizen to defend his country. But how did this idea work out in practice? If we look at the German army of to-day we find a tremendous machine which is neither animated by democratic principles nor tends to propagate them—an organisation thoroughly feudal in its character and aims. So far from making for equality, it tends rather to fortify and increase existing inequalities. It not only strengthens the already existing class divisions, but it creates numerous small coteries distinguished from each other by characteristics which are superficial indeed, but for that very reason unworthy to exert so very powerful and unwholesome an influence as they do upon the social life of the people," and this in spite of the fact that "at the time of the re-organisation of the Prussian army, which is, of course, the model upon which the present German army is organised, there was a sincere attempt to do away with the caste feeling which pervaded the Frederician army''', and to establish to a certain degree, at least, a real people's army—a true 'Volk in Waffen.'"

The evils of Prussian militarism are being shouted from the house tops; and yet, on the authority of a German professor of political economy, the system developed from a genuine attempt to create a democratic defence force.

"But," objects the exponent of conscription, "the effects in England could not be the same as in Germany." The saying that history repeats itself is only partly true, but broadly speaking, like causes tend to produce like effects. Let us take an opinion from a source absolutely untainted by even the slightest bias against conscription. In an earlier edition of "Britain's First Duty: the Case for Conscription (the sub-title was altered in the 1907 edition to "The Case for Universal Training") by Mr. Shee, the following paragraph occurs on page 239:—"If we are to judge what the effects of universal military service would be in England, we must look at the results, not among the French, who have hardly a trait of character in common with us except personal courage, but among the Teutonic nation, closely allied to us by common ties, descent, language, literature, and history and possessing the same grundideen" (lit. ground-ideas), "which are the roots of national character among all Germanic races." The work in question became practically the text book of the National Service League, of