of modern warfare. Evidence is accumulating in support of the following letter from an officer at the front:

For this kind of fighting not only is pluck required, but also intelligent individual initiative, which no amount of drill can give. Our barrack-square training, improved though it has been, is not sufficiently up to date. Cadet and Boys' Brigade training is a good step forwards towards understanding discipline and punctuality; but I should like my men recruited from Boy Scouts.'

In this officer's company all the ex-Boy Scouts are non-commissioned officers; and one of them, a lad of twenty, with no previous military training, is Sergeant of the Battalion Scouts.

If the nation decides, after the war, that boys are to have some form of military training, then a powerful plea could be put in for the retention of the Scouts as an alternative form of training. Provision is already made in its schemes for musketry, by the award of a Marksman's Badge. This could be compulsory on all. A minimum of drill might be added. The Scout learns, in the ordinary course of things, to signal, to find his way by map, stars, sun and moon, to make rough sketch-maps, to write official reports, to cook his food, to build bridges and to bind up wounds. He learns all that a soldier needs, and yet is not a soldier or specially trained to become one. Under a national system of service the Scout troops would have to be inspected as to efficiency; and the duties of inspecting might fall either on the Education Department or the War Office. The absence of the military spirit would make the movement a desirable alternative for conscientious objectors; its cheapness would be an attraction to the taxpayer: and its moral value would become so evident as to win the unqualified approval of all those who have the national welfare at heart.

But, as a matter of fact, there is very little probability that there will be any general military training for boys of school age, except such as schools care to institute for themselves. Cadet training will, as now, be carried out in Secondary Schools among the older boys, where the masters show a desire for it. But the inspectorate and the official educational world generally are satisfied

that military drill has a narrowing effect upon the mind of the boy; and the military world thinks it of no very great importance. If, however, there should be national training for boys over school age, it would still be possible to retain the Scouts as an alternative or to institute Senior Scout Cadet Corps, attached to Scout organisations, but inspected by the War Office. These corps could specialise in signalling, first aid, engineering and so on, and be of greater value than those units whose training consisted of nothing but drill. They would preserve the Scout spirit of helpfulness and self-discipline and come under that moral influence that is absent from the mechanical evolutions of the barrack square. The officers could rank with those of the Territorial Forces; and a choice could be given to all those who were already Scouts as to whether they would serve in a Scout Cadet Corps or an ordinary regiment.

At the present moment a certain amount of pressure is being put on many Secondary Schools, either by the public, the boys, or the Governors, to start Cadet Corps. They would be better serving their country by establishing Scout troops. These offer, at one and the same time, a new form of education for boys of all ages, a course of continuation work suitable for boys leaving the Elementary Schools at too early an age, a basis for the professional training of future soldiers, and an opportunity for social service as Scoutmasters, to those who, having leisure, wealth, or intellect, desire to spend some portion of their treasure in brightening the lives of others whose lot has been cast in less pleasant spots than their own.

ERNEST YOUNG.

Art. 8.-COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE IN

ENGLAND.

THE Right Hon. Sir J. A. Simon, on the occasion of his belated retirement from the Cabinet whose 'Military Service' policy he had all too long obstructed, made a remarkable statement in the House of Commons.* He spoke of the principle of voluntary enlistment as 'a real heritage of the English people.' One asks in amazement by what process of political jugglery a trained lawyer, who knows the meaning of the term 'heritage' and has the Statute Books at hand, can lend the weight of his authority to so gross a perversion of the truth. With even greater astonishment does one marvel that a scholar who has had the advantage of a good education can so completely have forgotten the elements of that Constitutional History which he must at one time have learned. It would perhaps be unjust to suppose that Sir John Simon has ever studied British Military History; but if he had at any time read such a book as the Hon. J. W. Fortescue's County Lieutenancies and the Army 1803-1814,' prepared under the auspices of his former colleague, Lord Haldane, his misstatement would be still more inexplicable and inexcusable.

.

The truth is that actual impressment for the regular army was in full operation till 1781; that the compulsory ballot for the militia was actively enforced till 1811; and that the press-gang was employed to keep the Navy manned right down to the close of our last great maritime war in 1815. Further, and still more to the point, in no one of the three cases did compulsory enlistment cease because it was abolished, but merely because, for the moment, the need to resort to it passed away. It was not abolished; it is not abolished yet. The laws which authorise and regulate army impressment, militia ballot, and naval press-gang are still on the Statute Books, and are as valid now as they were in the good old days of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is true that they are in part suspended; but all that is needed to bring them into full and active operation on Jan. 1 next is that Parliament should, during the course of its present

* House of Commons Debates, Jan. 5, 1916.

*

session, omit to pass the annual Expiring Laws Continuance Act. Far from voluntarism being the immemorial tradition of the English race, it is a mushroom innovation established (and that only tentatively and provisionally) under the eyes of our grandfathers.' Our earlier ancestors for at least twelve centuries were reared and ruled under the rigid régime of shrieval summonses, commissions of array, mustering statutes, militia ordinances, ballots, and impressments. They did not feel it inconsistent with freedom to be required and trained to protect themselves, their families, their possessions and their country from domestic and foreign foes. It is only their degenerate descendants of the Victorian era who, deluded by the pacificist prophecies of the Manchester School of politicians, forgot their martial traditions, shed their soldierly qualities, and relegated defence to voluntarists. Voluntarism, in short, is not a heritage' to be proud of and to cling to; it is a recent humiliation and disgrace, utterly unworthy of a race which aspires to be imperial, or lays any claim to leadership among mankind.†

Even if it could be shown, as it cannot, that voluntarism has an ancient and creditable tradition behind it, there would still be no possibility of laying a valid claim to it as a heritage.' For the right to call upon subjects to aid in the defence of the realm is inherent in the very conception of sovereignty. Nullum tempus occurrit regi'; and no length of prescription could divest the State of its power of summoning all its subjects in case of need to render it military service. Hallam, that devoted champion of individual liberty, recognises this

For a couple of generations-not from all eternity as most Britons seem to think-our army has been a purely voluntary affair.'-G. G. Coulton, A Strong Army in a Free State,' p. 5.

Let us purge our souls of cant,' wrote the late Prof. J. E. Cairnes. 'What does this system of voluntary recruiting, which we are asked to believe is the only system suited to our highly-developed political and moral feelings, mean? Simply this: that people who have sufficient means, instead of being required to pay their just debt to their country in their own persons, are allowed to hire others who have little choice but to accept their offer, to expose their persons on their behalf. No less lofty principle than this, it seems, can satisfy the highly developed conscience of the English people. The moral fastidiousness displayed is only surpassed in China, where, it is said, men may procure substitutes for the gallows. . . . In the name of common decency let us cease to put it forward as a national distinction to be proud of.'-' Political Essays,' pp. 232-3.

*

explicitly. He admits that universal service for home defence in this country is based not only on 'the AngloSaxon law,' but also on the 'primary and indispensable conditions of political society." Similarly J. S. Mill insists in general terms, in the midst of his pleas for personal freedom, that each and every member of Society must bear his share of the labours and sacrifices incurred in defending the society or its members from injury and molestation'; and he adds that 'Society is justified in enforcing these conditions at all costs on those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment.'† It is Hobbes, however, to whom we must turn if we wish to see the case stated in its most abstract and universal form. 'When,' he argues, 'the defence of the Commonwealth requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear arms, every one is obliged; because otherwise the institution of the Commonwealth, which they have not the purpose or courage to preserve, was in vain.'‡ Against arguments such as these all pleas respecting a 'real heritage' would have to be declared invalid, even if they had the powerful support of long and unbroken precedent. I do not, however, press them at the present moment. For it is to the bar not of political theory but of history that Sir John Simon has appealed. To the bar of history shall he go.

The first glimpse of our ancestors after their settlement in this country shows us a nation in arms:

'The military system of the Anglo-Saxons,' says Gneist, 'is based upon universal service, under which is to be understood the duty of every freeman to respond in person to the summons to arms, to equip himself at his own expense, and to support himself at his own charge during the campaign.'§ When details of this universal obligation come to light we find that the burden of participation in national defence is incumbent upon all able-bodied males between the ages of sixteen and sixty, and that it is enforced by

* Hallam, 'Constitutional History' (New Ed. 1891), vol. ii, p. 132.
+ Mill, Liberty,' ch. iv.
Hobbes, 'Leviathan,' ch. xxi.

§ Englische Verfassungsgeschichte,' p. 4. Cf. also F. Grose: 'Military Antiquities,' vol. i, p. 1. E. A. Freeman, Norman Conquest,' vol. iv, p. 681, and W. Stubbs, 'Constitutional History,' vol. i, pp. 208, 212.