A LEAGUE OF PEACE 421 



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 ad- 

 vanced 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 



