The democratic paradox: compulsory service and the conflict between liberty and survival

“ Democracy requires of each citizen that he be a self-respecting, self-thinking, responsible individual, capable of making decisions and acting on them in his civil capacity. These qualities of citizenship are demanded for participation in community affairs and are publicly appealed to for political purposes. They are of the atmosphere in which each man lives as a member of the community. It is only reasonable that the self-same individuals who operate under the principles of democracy in all their general affairs should do better work under democratic rather than autocratic control. ”

“ It is not revolutionary on our part to ask a share in our Government. We are demanding it because it is in accord with American ideals and absolutely essential to the establishment of true democracy. A democratic form of government is right or it is not right—it is either right that the people should be self-governed or that they should not. If it is not right, then we ought to know it; the whole people ought to know it. If it is right, then the whole people ought to have equal opportunities in self-government. ”

“ When I speak of necessity, I mean that overruling compulsion which cannot be disobeyed. In the present case it is compounded of moral duty and the instinct of self-preservation. The moral duty to perform these promises is plain as the Decalogue. The instinct of self-preservation, impelling us to save the Republic, is in harmony with the requirement of moral duty. In denying justice now, you are not only guilty of grievous wrong, but you expose your country to incalculable calamity. ”

“ For mankind, we may be sure, is not going to put up with any kind of government merely because it is ideally beautiful. No system will be tolerated {182} indefinitely which does not enable the people who live under it to protect themselves from their enemies. The instinct of self-preservation will drive them to seek for some other political arrangement which is competent, in the present imperfect condition of the world, to provide the first essential of a state, which is Security. ”

“ Compulsory voting rests upon the argument that, in a democracy, the right to vote imposes a duty to vote. The citizen must serve on a jury in time of peace and in the army during war whether he likes these forms of public service or not. Why, then, should he be allowed to shirk his duty to vote, a duty which must be performed if democratic government is to survive? If one voter has the right to stay away from the polls, every other voter has the same right. ”

“ The proposition that freedom in this sense of national independence is consistent with compulsory military service needs no demonstration at all. So far from there being any incompatibility between the two, it is probable that only by means of a manhood universally trained to the use of arms can the freedom of Britain and the integrity of the Empire be ultimately maintained. We shall almost certainly have to choose, not between national service and liberty, but between national service and destruction. ”

“ Events justify Jaures and go far to establish national service as the sound and necessary military system for a democracy at war. The feeling that the army necessarily constitutes a separate class is dying. So is the idea that only those who choose to bear arms are responsible for the national safety. Passing, too, is the notion which divides armies into free men and “conscripts” and regards compulsory [13] national service as destructive of individual freedom and personal independence. ”

“ France herself was never led to defeat by a Republican Government; Waterloo and Sedan were lost by her Emperors. Swiss history is one long tale of democratic success in defence; two Dutch provinces defied the arms of Philip II., and thirteen American colonies the might of the British Empire. Democracy is more prone to suicide than liable to conquest.”
XI.
It is idle to suggest that compulsion should have been applied in Great Britain when the war began. ”

“ By what right does the state tax the man of wealth to put miscellaneous books into the hands of the man who pays no tax?
So far as primary education is concerned, the basis seems clear. The free state which depends for its very existence upon the intelligence of the masses of its citizens must, as a measure of self-defense, provide the facilities by which all may become intelligent. Self-preservation is the supremest natural law. Whatever has a right to exist has a right to do that which is necessary to preserve its existence. ”

“ It is, therefore, the tendency of all governments to encroach on the rights of the people; and they certainly will do so, if they can. The same instinct of self-preservation, the same love of accumulation, which tempts individuals to over-reach their neighbors, inclines government to preserve, increase, and consolidate its powers. Therefore, as individual selfishness requires to be held in check by government, so government must be restrained by something.
This something is the constitution, written or unwritten. ”

“ When a Russian ship demanded that our guys lay down their weapons, they answered him... As firmly as one cannot say in the parliament. And we felt the power. Great power of our people who will persecute the invader to the end.
On the third day, Russian troops openly fired at people and apartment buildings without hiding. Used artillery, air bombs. And it finally showed us, showed the world who is who. Who are great people and who are just savages. ”

“ Today, it is as a result of Russia's actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed.
Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes.
They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities. ”

“ It was essential that transportation should be efficient and the armies well fed and well equipped if battles were to be won against the long preparation, the scientific machinery and the accumulated war stores of Germany. Hence selection became necessary in order that the industrial forces should be competent and adequate and organized to secure the maximum of production. Unexpected revelations of German brutality and ruthlessness affected the thinking of multitudes of the British people. ”

“ Who suggests that in time of peace we can sing God save the King, boast of our British citizenship and send our trade on the seas under protection of the British navy, and do nothing in time of war? There could, however, be no greater mistake than to think that we are in the war at the command of Great Britain or purely to sustain British interests. We are in the war primarily to defend and maintain freedom and self-government in Canada. ”

“ The war is for safety as well as for freedom, and upon its result the free institutions of Canada depend. If it was the [18] unanimous judgment of Parliament that Canada should enter the war, and if among the people there was universal approval of the action of Parliament, how can we withdraw until victory is achieved? How can we continue in the war unless we can maintain and reinforce the regiments in the field? How can we get men except by command of the State when the persuasion of the State has ceased to be effective? There are those who talk wildly about “driving men to slaughter.” ”

“ In Canada as in Great Britain we enrolled a great army under the voluntary system. If it had been said a few years ago that the Dominion could secure 400,000 men for a war in Europe the statement would have been treated with derision. But the fact that voluntary enlistment has been so satisfactory is an argument for, not against, a compulsory draft. The need for selection is more imperative. Such great sacrifices demand our last effort to ensure that they shall not be in vain. The magnitude of the enlistment emphasizes the danger and the vital interest of Canada in the issue. ”

“ Under National Service Republican France has had freedom from internal convulsions and Chauvinistic military adventures. In defence the French people have made sacrifices of blood and treasure beyond computation. But for nearly half a century, notwithstanding the brutal arrogance and avarice of Prussia in 1870, they kept the peace themselves and were among the active forces for peace in the councils of Europe. In Germany national service is not the “Will of the people,” but the instrument of rulers lusting for dominion and intolerant of the privileges and ideals of democracy. ”

“ A democracy chooses its rulers; an autocracy commands its subjects. In France and Germany we have the conflicting ideals of an autocracy organized for attack and a democracy organized for defence. A looser military organization in France would have ensured the success of the attack. Failure to arm the nation would have been equivalent to self-destruction. Where the power to command, without assent of the people, exists, democracy has not come to birth. Where democracy rejects the supreme obligation of citizenship it is not full born. ”

“ In Part IV.—Democracy and National Service—an attempt has been made to deal with a problem which faces us at the moment. Democracy is not unlike other human institutions: it will not stand merely by its own virtue. If it lacks the loyalty, courage, and strength to defend itself when attacked, it must perish as certainly as if it possessed no virtue whatsoever. Manhood suffrage implies manhood service. Without the acceptance of this principle Democracy is merely an imposture. ”

“ Whereas danger is a great, perhaps an indispensable condition of autocracy, [9] security was seen to be a necessity if democracy was to work. There must be as little disturbance as possible of the premise of a self-contained community. Insecurity involves surprises. It means that there are people acting upon your life, over whom you have no control, with whom you cannot consult. It means that forces are at large which disturb the familiar routine, and present novel problems about which quick and unusual decisions are required. ”

“ For if the electorate be regarded as a unit, akin to an organism, government becomes self-government, and any obligations which the community places upon itself by means of laws can be looked upon as self-limitations, imposed by free-will and capable of removal at any moment by the unfettered exercise of the power which imposed them. ”

“ From this communal point of view, however, it is evident that national service involves no diminution of liberty. The community becomes not one whit less free because it decides to train itself in the use of arms and to mobilize all its resources for military purposes. It retains its capacity to demobilize any time it likes, to lay aside its arms, to pension off its drill sergeants, and to return to the paths of pacificism whenever it seems safe to do so. ”

“ In a country like ours with a popular government and settled methods of enacting and repealing laws, the answer of common sense is simple and sufficient. He should do all he can by legal methods to get the command cancelled, but till it is cancelled, he should conform to it. The common good must suffer more from resistance to a law or to the ordinance of a legal authority than from the individual's conformity to the particular law or ordinance that is bad, until its repeal can be obtained. ”

“ It cannot be denied, however, that compulsory military service does interfere with the power of the individual to do as he likes. He is forced, whether he wants to or not, to undergo certain discipline in time of peace, and to face uncertain danger in time of war. National service, then, is a restriction of his liberty, if by liberty is meant the absence of all restraint. ”

“ Under national service the State calls all its manhood to arms but relieves from odium and suspicion all those who can better serve its interests on the farms, in the factories, or in other necessary civil activities. The Military Service Act of Canada, as has been said, was passed by Parliament in obedience to a general public demand and in assertion of the Government’s deliberate conviction that only by selective draft could the necessary reinforcements for the army in France be obtained and the orderly continuance of production and industry assured. ”

“ There is, however, no provision that any occupation or industry shall be absolutely exempted. Each individual claim for exemption must be considered on its merits, but the general dispositions of the law are such as to ensure that civil occupation will compete successfully with military service in any case in which it is established that the withdrawal of the man from his civil occupation would materially diminish the output or production, or seriously impair the service necessary for the maintenance or [22] efficiency of the expeditionary force, or for the support of the people at home. ”

“ As Lincoln said, failure to volunteer does not necessarily imply want of patriotism. Who has the right to judge his neighbor? Who fully understands his neighbor’s position? If we [20] think of our school days we will recall the boys who had a natural instinct for fighting. We will think, too, of those who shrank from rough physical encounters, and were almost suspected of actual cowardice. But how often in emergencies those under suspicion of cowardice revealed courage and daring at least equal to their more pugnacious comrades. ”

“ The individual must be brought to recognize that politically he has no separate existence, and must learn to limit his operations to his proper share in the [Pg 96] constitution and determination of the general will; party must be remorselessly reduced to its legitimate subordination to the interests of the community as a whole; syndicates and trade unions must be prevented from cutting themselves loose from the body of the nation, must be compelled to recognize the supremacy of the law of the land, and must be deprived of any inequitable privileges which they may have secured ”

“ In the complete democracy a man must in some way be made to serve the nation in the very act of contributing to his own individual fulfillment. Not until his personal action is dictated by disinterested motives can there be any such harmony between private and public interests. To ask an individual citizen continually to sacrifice his recognized private interest to the welfare of his countrymen is to make an impossible demand, and yet just such a continual sacrifice is apparently required of an individual in a democratic state. ”

“ I once more deny, as I have found it repeatedly necessary to do in other cases, that this Nation's ability to preserve itself depends upon suppression of the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. [15] But I do believe that the noble-sounding slogan of 'self-preservation' [16] rests upon a premise that can itself destroy any democratic nation by a slow process of eating away at the liberties that are indispensable to its healthy growth. ”

“ For all I know, democracy may be a self-limiting disease, as civilization itself seems to be. There are obvious paradoxes in its philosophy, and some of them have a suicidal smack. It offers John Doe a means to rise above his place beside Richard Roe, and then, by making Roe his equal, it takes away the chief usufructs of the rising. I here attempt no pretty logical gymnastics: the history of democratic states is a history of disingenuous efforts to get rid of the second half of that dilemma. There is not only the natural yearning of Doe to use and enjoy the superiority that he has won ”

“ Without us, this country would not exist, could not exist. And for that, we must be strong, unified, and together. One voice, crying out against the enemy. One team, fighting to keep our countrymen's dreams untroubled. And if one person is disenting against that, it undermines the entire system. ”

“ First, in a democracy constitutional means are provided for the alteration of law and even for the remodelling of the form of government. Secondly, if a democratic government is undermined by disobedience, discredited by successful defiance, destroyed by treasonable betrayal on the part of its own professed supporters, there is nothing to take its place; the community is bound either to drift into anarchy, or to revert to some sort of tyranny. Let us consider these two points in turn. (1) The essence of democracy is government according to the will of the majority. ”

“ Rarely, however, has there been a sovereign less adequately equipped than democracy for its gigantic responsibilities. One of its most enthusiastic modern supporters, Professor John MacCunn, gravely admits that "Democracy, still raw to its work, whether in politics or industry, may blunder—may blunder fatally." [53] Long ago it was pointed out by Plato that democracy is the cult of incompetence. In more recent times Mill has emphasized the possibility that democracy may govern badly and oppressively ”

“ But it is only under democracy that it is liberated; it is only under democracy that it becomes the philosophy of the state. What the human race owes to the old autocracies, and how little, in these democratic days, it is disposed to remember the debt! Their service, perhaps, was a by-product of a purpose far afield, but it was a service none the less: they held the green fury of the mob in check, and so set free the spirit of superior man. ”

“ But is democracy worth preserving? How fares that intangible something which was the inspiration of this man's living? Democracy, the right of people to govern themselves, as opposed to their control by a self-appointed few—is it a failure or a success? Has it proved itself worth the dedication of this soldier spirit? ”