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Pease, Edward R., 1857-1955

"The History of the Fabian Society"

10 and 8).
The present army should be replaced "by giving to the whole male
population an effective training in the use of arms without removing
them from civil life. This can be done without conscription or barrack
life" by extending the half-time system to the age of 21 and training
the young men in the other half. From the millions of men thus trained
"we could obtain by voluntary enlistment a picked professional force of
engineers, artillery, and cavalry, and as large a garrison for outlying
provinces as we chose to pay for, if we made it attractive by the
following reforms": full civil rights, a living wage, adequate
superannuation after long service, and salaries for officers on the
civil scale. The other reforms advocated included a minimum wage for
labour, grants in aid for housing, freedom for municipal trading,
municipal public-houses, and reorganisation of the machinery of
education, as explained later. "The moral of it all is that what the
British Empire wants most urgently in its government is not
Conservatism, not Liberalism, not Imperialism, but brains and political
science" (p. 93).
[Illustration: GRAHAM WALLAS, IN 1891]
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Shaw has "vehemently protested" against this phrase, saying that he
"put in six years of hard committee work to the astonishment of the
vestrymen who had not expected (him) to be a man of business and a
sticker at it.


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