Military conscription

“ Let us examine the nature & extent of the power, which is assumed by the various military measures before us. In the present want of men & money, the Secretary of War has proposed to Congress a Military Conscription. For the conquest of Canada, the people will not enlist; & if they would, the Treasury is exhausted, & they could not be paid. Conscription is chosen as the most promising instrument, both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, & of subduing the difficulties of the Exchequer. ”

“ The experience of other countries proves, therefore, that England will sooner or later adopt the principle of conscription or cease to waste blood and money in Continental quarrels. The conscription will be for her the only possible way of obtaining an army at all, or one at all commensurate with those of her possible European rivals. ”

“ If Great Britain, if the United States, if Canada, could consider the question of conscription exclusively from their own stand-point, they would most surely decide at once, and with great enthusiasm, to abolish the obligatory military service they have adopted only as a last resort under the stress of imperious necessity. ”

“ In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of war may be shared in just proportion by all the nation, and that the calamitous experiences of the past under the voluntary system may be avoided, it is our judgment that in the raising of the necessary military forces the principle of universal obligation to service be applied by a process of selective conscription. ”

“ Every man in Great Britain and Ireland ought to have been in training for it.”
“Conscription again, Colonel!” said Mrs Dare. “And you still think England would stand it?”
“Not conscription, my dear madam,—Universal Service,—a very different thing and not liable to the defects of conscription. France broke down through her faulty conscription in 1870. Germany won on her universal service. And, da-ash it! we ought to have had it here ever since. But you others thought we were all screaming Jingoes and mad on military matters because that was our profession. Now, maybe, it’s too late.” ”

“ The last wars of Europe have been wars of the people, and have been fought by nationalities. After peace armies remain national, for their elements are taken from the people by legal liberations. The institution of conscription is evidently the most important of modern times. Among other advantages, it has bridged the otherwise impassable gulf between the citizen and soldier, who, children of the same family, are now united in defense of their country. ”

“ The republican institutions and territorial integrity of our country cannot be maintained without the further raising and supporting of armies. There can be no army without men. Men can be had only voluntarily or involuntarily. We have ceased to obtain them voluntarily, and to obtain them involuntarily is the draft—is conscription. If you dispute the fact, and declare that men can still be had voluntarily in sufficient numbers, prove the assertion by yourselves volunteering in such numbers and I shall gladly give up the draft. ”

“ That conscription is democratic. The argument is plausible. "All men with certain exceptions, such as those physically unfit, must undergo military training, and in the event of war risk life and limb. What can be fairer?" Why have three recent British Trades Union Congresses, representing millions of individuals, declared strongly against it? ”

“ If you scatter them abroad, like the fabled serpents' teeth, they will spring up into armed men. A military force cannot be raised, in this manner, but by the means of a military force. If the administration has found that it cannot form an army without conscription, it will find, if it ventures on these experiments, that it can not enforce conscription without an army. The Government was not constituted for such purposes. ”

“ The first call of the president for 75,000 men was mainly filled from this source. Afterward volunteers were relied upon in the main, and when the supply from this source proved insufficient, conscription was ordered. As the laws now are, the great majority of all the persons liable to perform military duty in the United States are unlikely to be summoned for discipline, or even to organize for the purpose, unless the military needs shall require a heavy force in the field, in which case, if summoned at all, it will be by conscription. ”

“ Beyond this, however, we may perhaps hope, without being oversanguine, that as the influence of the masses increases, and those masses are educated, they will throw their weight more and more into the scale of peace. Universal conscription has at least had this advantage, that it forces every household in a nation to realise the inconveniences of military service, and to dread the horrors of war. ”

“ For a discussion of the military features of conscription and of other forms of recruiting see Army, §§ 40 ff. The present article deals with the economic and social aspects of compulsory military service, for which, generally and non-technically, the word “conscription” is used more commonly than any other. The word occurs for the first time in France in the law of the 19th Fructidor (1798) , which prescribes the liability of les défenseurs conscrits to serve if required from their twentieth to twenty-fifth year of age. ”

“ Enough has, perhaps, been said of the unpopularity of military service, and of the obvious causes thereof, to make it credible that, had the system of conscription never been resorted to in Europe, and the principle of voluntary enlistment remained intact and universal, the difficulty of procuring the human fighting material in sufficient quantities would in course of time have rendered warfare impossible. ”

“ Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. ”

“ The full history of the conscription movement in the British Empire has not been written, perhaps never will be. But enough is known to put lovers of democracy on their guard. The democratic element in Great Britain has, in the main, opposed conscription, while some of its chief supporters are members of the aristocracy and military officers. ”

“ His first object was to improve the finances; his second, to tranquillize La Vendée; his third, to detach Russia from the allies; his fourth, Immense Military Preparations. to raise armies equal to the crisis; and all these measures he rapidly accomplished. One hundred and twenty thousand men were raised by conscription, without any exemption from either rank or fortune, and two hundred and fifty thousand men were ready to commence hostilities. The first consul suppressed the liberty of the press, fixed his residence in the Tuileries, and established the usages and ceremonial of a court. ”

“ With selective conscription in force, it means that men between the proscribed ages in paper mills and other non-essential lines, will be the first chosen for military and naval duty, or they may be transferred to essential industries. ”

“ President Wilson thus made clear his intention to sever diplomatic relations if Germany's pledge should be withdrawn or violated.
Conscription in Great Britain.—The British government had kept up its army by volunteering. The need of an army of five million could not depend on this plan. A conscription bill therefore was passed making all males between certain ages liable for military service. ”

“ CONSCRIPTION ACT PASSED BY CONFEDERATE CONGRESS—GENERAL BRAGGS'S OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND EAST TENNESSEE—BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE—GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE CONFEDERATE CHARGE—BATTLE OF IUKA—BATTLE OF STONE RIVER, OR MURFREESBORO'—ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN GRANT AND ROSECRANS—BATTLE OF CORINTH—CONFEDERATE RETREAT—HEAVY LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES.
The Confederate Congress in 1862 passed a sweeping conscription act, forcing into the ranks every man of military age. ”

“ Military service bodies at all levels and grassroots people's armed forces bodies shall handle military service work in accordance with the law, attain their task of conscription in accordance with the orders of the State Council and the Central Military Commission, and ensure the qualifications of the enlisted. Relevant State bodies, people's groups, enterprises, public institutions, social organizations, and other organizations shall complete their militia and reserve work in accordance with the law, and assist in completing the task of conscription. ”

“ The conscription, by reducing the idea of a country to that merely of a military despotism, has naturally caused the differences between nations to sink into a secondary place, and to be superseded by those differences of class, opinions, and interests which are altogether independent of nationality, and regardless of the barriers of language or geography. ”

“ Much of the business and feeling of the country centered in the War Department, and there was a want of some controlling mind in regulating its civil and judicial business. The conscription brought all persons of military age under its jurisdiction; impressments affected property, military domination very often infracted personal liberty and private right. ”

“ The army was to be raised partly by conscription and partly by voluntary enlistment. The annual contingent by conscription was fixed at 11,000 men. Every man became liable to conscription at the age of nineteen, but as the right of purchasing exemption continued in force until the Act of 1898 referred to, all well-to-do persons so minded escaped from the obligation of military service. ”

“ It is often stated, as if it were incontrovertible, that conscription and large standing armies are a menace to peace, and yet, although throughout the civilized world, except in the British Empire and the United States, conscription is the system employed for the recruiting of the national forces of both defence and offence, few of these countries show any particular disposition to make war. ”

“ It is clear from our decisions that conscription is constitutionally permissible when there has been a declaration of war. But we have never decided whether there may be conscription in absence of a declaration of war. ”

“ The answer which the facts supply does not seem to be in any doubt. We need conscription to bring this war to a victorious conclusion. We need conscription no less in order that we may impose terms of lasting peace. ”

“ Each State may and does call upon every man now to serve in the militia and when occasionally the national government chooses, it calls upon every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to go into service under a conscription. ”

“ With the beginning of the third year of the war, more energetic measures to fill the armies were seen to be necessary; and after very hot and acrimonious debate for about a month, Congress, on March 3, 1863, passed a national conscription law, under which all male citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five were enrolled to constitute the national forces, and the President was authorized to call them into service by draft as occasion might require. ”

“ Regarded as a compromise between universal and voluntary service, conscription still maintains a precarious existence in Europe. As the cardinal principle of recruiting armies, it is completely obsolete. ”

“ Conscription is essential to the proper organisation not only of our manhood, but also of our national resources. [9] Judging by the increasing size, frequency, and shrillness of recent recruiting advertisements, conscription would seem to be equally essential in order to secure the number of recruits necessary for making good the wastage of war, even in the present preliminary stage of the war. And morally, conscription is essential in order that the whole nation may realise, before it is too late, the life-or-death nature of the present struggle ”

“ Let me emphasize that it is conscription for war under the conditions of the second half of the twentieth century that we are talking about. The question as to whether sometime and under some circumstances we might accept conscription for some conceivable purpose not related to war, is not here at stake. ”

“ No one, I suppose, would hesitate to admit that, if we were engaged in a great war, it might become necessary, or that if necessary it would be right, to have a conscription both for the land and for the sea service. ”

“ When the Regency decreed its mobilization, all that could be done was that the local authorities should tell off such eligible young men as had not been embodied in the regular army, for militia recruits. But as there were neither officers to drill them, nor muskets to arm them, the conscription was but a farce. ”

“ Not only does conscription not prevent war but it actually fosters the war system, for, if men were not forced to become part of the enormous fighting machines of to-day, armies would tend to decrease naturally as international relations improved. Conscription operates to prevent this, and the existence of huge armies and navies engenders suspicion and fear, with the consequently greater possibilities of armed conflict. ”

“ It was even more impressive to us when we heard that in this country you had adopted conscription, and that your millions of people, distributed over so vast an extent of continent, were so moved by one public spirit and one patriotism and one desire to help the Allies in the war that they were rationing themselves voluntarily with food and fuel. ”