The Press Monday, June 4, 1917. Conscription in America.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 15918, 4 June 1917, Page 6

The Press Monday, June 4, 1917. Conscription in America.

There is no feause for either surprise or alarm in the outbreak of anti-con-scriptionist agitation in America, which is confined only to a minority composed of pro-Germans and the cranky anarchists of various kinds who are always ready to join in any unlawful movement. Tho Government has tho will and tho power, material and moral, to deal with the disturbers of ' the peace. Thero is no doubt whatever tliat American opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of conscription, buch is tho measure of the change in American opinion that has taken place since a year or eighteen months ago, when it was widely believed that if America entered the war in any shape Mr Wilson would have a civil conflict on his hands. America has not only entorcd tho war, but has entered it with a determination to use effectively tho lessons taught by tho past two and three quarter years. When the breaking off of relations with Germany became inevitable, there commenced almost at once a discussion in the newspapers as to whether America should rely upon voluntaryism in "tho event of war or follow tho example of Britain and make service compulsory. Never before was thero such a searching of tho records of the Civil War for evidence that Lincoln's Draft Law worked badly. The voluntaryists conducted a campaign against conscription with great vigour and not « little skill. But tho President had made up his luind that tho "selective draft" should be adopted, and it quickly appeared that the actual hostility to conscription was chiefly confincd to a'minority of theorists with their heads in the clouds. The controversy was in some respects very like the corresponding controvarsw "Britain. Of course.

there is no real validity in anr contrast between Britain's long deferring of compulsion and America's adoption of it as a necessary first step. For the settling of the question in Britain was a settling of it for America too. Compulsion was attacked as unnecessary, undemocratic, conducive to militarism, and all the rest of it, and there joined in the chorus some newspapers which had throughout stood firmly bv Ir Wilson and havo consistently maintained tha"t his was the wisest head in America. At first there wore some indications that tho proposed "selective '■ draft" would be vigorously opposed in Congress, but gradually the opposition weakened, and the final majorities empowering tho President to resort to the "selective draft" ■were overwhelming. In Great Britain the issue turned upon the bare question of necessity: men were wanted in greater numbers than were offered, and therefore the required numbers must be called up ivilly-nilly. In America, however, nothing bulked larger in the controversy, New Zealanders will be interested to know, than the argument for conscription on democratic grounds. Legislature after legislature, publicist after publicist, demanded that volunteering should not bo relied upon. "Undemo- " cratic'' and "unjust'' were the terms which most frequently occurred in tho criticisms of voluntaryism. This view of the democratic necessity for the draft was held even by newspapers which felt that voluntaryism would yield hundreds of thousands of men. The "Literary "Digest" mentions that the newspapers which vigorously demanded conscription ran into hundreds, and included an overwhelming majority of tho leading journals of the Republic. Mr Wilson had no stouter supporter than the two Republican ex-Presidents. Mr Roosevelt's views are well known, but Mr Taft's weighty statement is

wortn quoting "Analysis of the real working of our volunteer system in the war of 1812, in the Civil War, and in the Spanish War, must reveal to every careful student the enormous waste of a volunteer system and its inherent injustice in tho necessary sacritbe of the most patriotic by hurrying them in unprepared masses to wage the country's wars and subjecting them to unnecessary slaughter. "A perusal of Major-General Upton's history of the military policy of the United States will satisfy any reasonable reader that the volunteer 6ystem is the least effective, the most unjust, and the most expensive system that can be adopted. The victories that have attended us in our wars havo not been due to that system, but havo been in spite of it. Nevertheless, it has seemed to me in. tho past that so great wns the popular feeling against conscription and in favour of the volunteer system that conscription was impossible. "It gives me profound satisfaction to believe, however, from a recent discussion of it before audiences in many parts of the country, that the lessons of the European War, the experienco of Great Britain, and the emergency in which this country now finds herself, have aroused tno_ practical common sense of the American people ana have led them to approve tho Compulsory Service Bill as best adapted to our immediate* needs and to the requirements of a wise, permanent military policy." Those people in tho British Empire who still oppose conscription can hardly fail —those of them who are at all open to reason—to be impressed by the adoption of compulsion, on the grounds of democratic necessity, by the greatest democracy in the world. For tho rest of us there is much to move and touch the emotions in the fact that the duty to -bear arms has been embodied in the law by the great nation which, after all, has had no material reasons for entering the war, however strong and mandatory may have been the moral considerations.