748 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



will never work. Where is this national scheme ? At present it looks as if 

 the idea was to train officers in the secondary school, and the rank and file 

 in the elementary school. If we are to have a conscript army, serving under 

 compulsion, at least let it be on a democratic basis, with free upward mobility 

 and no caste about it. 



II. This war is the result of ideas firmly held, resolutely and unscrupu- 

 lously carried out into action. The seed-time of ideas is boyhood and early 

 manhood. Instil the idea of war, and war will be the crop we shall reap. 

 Already our school history is instilling far too much the idea of war. Every 

 page of it teaches implicitly that, when nations disagree, the way they settle 

 their difference is by means of war. And war appeals far more to the imagina- 

 tion of youth than arbitration. A boy is far more stirred by the Balaclava 

 charge than by the Alabama arbitration. The teaching of history needs 

 reforming. 



But what he does influences your boy much more than what he hears. And 

 now you propose to train every boy in the practice of arms. War is to be his 

 chief game. I do not know whether scouting is still to have any existence, 

 but, if so, it is to be merely as a preparatory branch for the great universal 

 English game of war. And directly a boy turns sixteen he is to be turned 

 out of the scouts and don the khaki. That means that scouting will be shorn 

 of one of its most valuable training qualities : the training of the senior boy 

 in responsibility. Have the originators of this proposal thought out the in- 

 evitable psychological result of their proposal ? Steadily, day by day, they 

 are going to drill into our boys, at the most suggestible period of life, the idea 

 that the service which their country requires of them is fighting. 



III. One would have thought that this war had been sufficient object 

 lesson to us never again to turn a nation into a barracks. Why did the European 

 peoples go to war ? Because for generations they had been living for war and 

 preparing for it. If our present experience teaches us anything, it is the 

 impotence of conscription to save us from war. Europe is suffering from the 

 fever of war. What produced it ? Conscription and military preparation. 

 What remedy is proposed to cure the patient ? The authors of this pixjposal 

 have only one prescription, ' Repeat the conscription dose — the mixture as 

 before, only make it stronger and increase the amount.' 



IV. What is the principle we are fighting for ? Is it government by consent, 

 or government by coercion ? Is it a nation drilled and regimented and 

 dragooned by the War Office, or a nation free and spontaneous in its service, 

 mutually co-operative in its organisation ? 



Let us get down to the root difference between the two parties to this debate. 

 Neither of us holds with Treitschke that the war is good or desirable in itself. 

 Both of us agree that the present state of things is of the devil. But my 

 opponents accept it as a thing that must be. ' We have to live in the world as 

 it is.' Our position is the exact opposite. ' We have to make the world as it 

 should be; and it is in our power to do it.' We fail in our highest duty if we 

 do not make some advance towards this. 



There remains the question : on what other lines can national security be 

 assured ? First, smash Germany. Then summon the Hague Conference. 

 Utilise to the full the reaction against war which is sure to set in. Throw all 

 the highest statesmanship, moral wisdom, and strongest will-power of the 

 nations into the ending of war. If we do not end war, war will end us. 



5. Military Training in Schools. By A. A. Somerville. 



The best introduction to military training is probably to be found in either 

 the Swiss system, which includes not only exercise and drill but also games, 

 or in the Boy Scout movement ; the results obtained by the latter are great and 

 encouraging, and even extreme pacifists will not object to its spread all over the 

 Empire. In the secondary schools, however, definite military training should be 

 commenced ; when the leaving age is eighteen or nineteen there is full oppor- 

 tunity for this, but where the leaving age is sixteen the difficulties are much 

 greater. 



