BRITAIN'S ARMY.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13364, 4 March 1909, Page 7

BRITAIN'S ARMY.

PATRIOTIC MOVE OF AN INSURANCE COMPANY. COMPULSORY SERVICE OF EMPLOYEES. MR. HALDANE'S APPROVAL. United Prc-.» As«oci«t:oti—By Electric Telegraph- Copyright. (Received March 3rd, 9.50 p.m.) LONDON, March 3. The Alliance Assurance Company has announced that new clerks will be obliged to join tho Territorials as a condition of engagement by the company.

In renly to Radical questions in the House of Commons, Mr. Haldnne said he heartily approved of this step.

Mr. Jowett, on behalf of the Labour Party. gave notice of motion condemning Mr. Haldane on the ground that the Alliance Company's action was a specious form of conscription. Mr. Haldane, speaking at Newcastle, foreshadowed tho creation of an army comparable in size to those of the great military Powers. His reforms would merely give effect to the resolutions of the Imperial Conference, and give proper organisation to existing citizen corps.

" AYe do not think ive are misrepresenting Mr. Haldane when we say that the tone ot his speeches inclines one. to the belief that he is not very far from the ideal of universal training," says a ■• Spectator " of a recent dute. "To insist that it is the essential duty of our citizens themselves to provide for home defence &o as to free the professional Army, and also, to a great extent, the professional Navy, is, in effect, to accept the principle of the National Service League. When one says a thing must be done or the nation will be in dire peril, surely tho next step is to say: ' Jwery one must do his share of the work, and if ho will not, or through somo special circumstance cannot, do it voluntarily, he must he compelled.' To say to a group of people: ' You must do a particular thing,' and then to add, ' but if you don't want to you need not,' is surely a lion sequitur against which the philosophic mind of Mr. Haldnne must protest. We do not believe that he can really be in favour of that form of the liberty of tho subject which wa« so ably caricatured by the seventeenth-century nn.val pamphleteer. Captain St. Loe—' the liberty of tho subject not to fight for his country.' "