From ‘Compulsory Service’, The Spectator, 16 January 1915:
COMPULSORY service has not come yet, but it is drawing very near, and will certainly come unless some miracle should intervene—as, for example, the conquest of this country or the sudden collapse of our enemies. Those who dispute our statement that compulsion is coming must be very poor readers of the signs of the times, or else have paid no attention to Lord Haldane’s speech in the House of Lords on Friday week. In that speech Lord Haldane, with great emphasis and with perfect clearness, laid down the principle which we have preached in these columns for the last seven or eight years when supporting the policy of Universal National Service. Our line has been that the State, under the law and custom of the Constitution, has already the right and the power to call the whole of the adult male population of the country to arms in order to resist invasion and to repel the King’s enemies. Therefore, as we have always put it, the principle of Universal Service is fully established in this country. What we have neglected to establish is any system of training which will enable the manhood of the nation to carry out the tremendous duty which the law imposes on them. It makes them guilty of felony if they do not fight, but does not teach them bow to fight…
And here, lest there should be any mistake, we may say that we want the Government to make it clear that those volunteers who join before compulsion is adopted will have the best terms of all, but that after its adoption both the compelled and the volunteers will have lees good terms, though while compulsion and volunteering are going on simultaneously the volunteers’ terms, as in America, will always be preferential.
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