UNIVERSAL MILITARY SERVICE 15 



The expense of a year of universal service must 

 not be compared with that of a year of voluntary 

 service, at a time when there are no alarms of 

 war : that would be quite misleading. To make 

 a comparison that is fair, to the latter expense 

 must be added a share of the cost of the panics 

 it causes from time to time, a share of the cost 

 of building a number of ships of war, and of 

 suddenly calling to arms and training, when the 

 cost of such sudden and wholesale training is 

 enormous, a host of men who have never served 

 a day in earnest. It must be remembered that, 

 where service is voluntary, men must be in- 

 duced to serve, and, if they are to enter the 

 regular army, must be propitiated by high pay 

 and expensive keep. Where all serve no such 

 inducements are offered ; the whole army is 

 national and regular, and a comparatively small 

 total of foreign service pay replaces a great total 

 of propitiatory pay. 



Finally, universal service has an important 

 effect on unemployment ; and it is reasonable to 

 ask which is preferable — to pay large sums that 

 a number of men who cannot find work may 

 not altogether starve, or to expend those sums 

 in training youths for the great service of their 

 country, and at the same time fitting them in 

 the best way for the subsequent work of their 

 lives : that is, to give the youth of the nation 

 what is, at their time of life, the employment 

 they most want, and to divert from aimless wan- 

 dering the unemployed who would replace, as 

 far as needed, the youths called up for service. 



