Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/425

Rh kept in mind. The more's the pity, for in our time it is one incumbent upon the thoughtful peace-loving man to remember. The professional career is an affair of hire and salary. No duty calls any man to adopt the naval or military profession and engage to go forth to kill other men when and where ordered, without reference to the right or wrong of the quarrel. It is a serious engagement involving as we lookers-on see it, a complete surrender of the power most precious to man—the right of private judgment and appeal to conscience. Jay, the father of the first treaty between Britain and America, has not failed to point out that "our country, right or wrong, is rebellion against God and treason to the cause of civil and religious liberty, of justice and humanity."

Just in proportion as man becomes truly intelligent, we must expect him to realize more and more that he himself alone is responsible for his selection of an occupation, and that neither pope, priest nor king can relieve him from this responsibility.

It was all very well for the untaught, illiterate hind, pressed into King Henry's service, to argue, "Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." The schoolmaster has been abroad since then. The divine right of kings has gone. The mass of English-speaking men now make and unmake their kings, scout infallibility of power of pope or priest, and in extreme cases sometimes venture to argue a point even with their own minister. The 'Judge within' begins to rule. Whether a young man decides to devote his powers to making of himself an efficient instrument for injuring or destroying, or for saving and serving his fellows, rests with himself to decide after serious consideration.

To meet the scarcity of officers, the government stated that it was considering the policy of looking to the universities for the needed supply, and that steps might be taken to encourage the study of war with a view to enlistment; but if university students are so far advanced ethically as to decline pledging themselves to preach 'creeds outworn'—rightfully most careful to heed the 'Judge within,' their own conscience—universities will probably be found poor recruiting ground for men required to pledge themselves to go forth and slay their fellow men at another's bidding. The day of humiliation will have come upon universities when their graduates, upon whom have been spent years of careful education in all that is highest and best, find themselves at the end good for nothing better than 'food for powder.' I think I hear the response of the son of St. Andrews to the recruiting officer, 'Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?'

From one point of view, the scarcity of officers and recruits in Britain and America, where men are free to choose, and the refusal of