It would be like a boxer
filling his arms with empty boxing-gloves and then rushing--his face
protruding over the armful--into the fray.
Let me make my attack on this prevalent and increasing superstition of
the British need for conscription in two lines, one following the other.
For, firstly, it is true that Britain at the present time is no more
capable of creating such a conscript army as France or Germany possesses
in the next ten years than she is of covering her soil with a tropical
forest, and, secondly, it is equally true that if she had such an army
it would not be of the slightest use to her. For the conscript armies in
which Europe still so largely believes are only of use against conscript
armies and adversaries who will consent to play the rules of the German
war game; they are, if we chose to determine they shall be, if we chose
to deal with them as they should be dealt with, as out of date as a
Roman legion or a Zulu impi.
Now, first, as to the impossibility of getting our great army into
existence. All those people who write and talk so glibly in favour of
conscription seem to forget that to take a common man, and more
particularly a townsman, clap him into a uniform and put a rifle in his
hand does not make a soldier.
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