in a country of which the government is democratic, a duty cannot be imposed by law upon all citizens except with the concurrence of the majority.  But a duty recognised by the majority and prescribed by law will commend itself as necessary and right to all but a very few.  If a popular vote were to be taken on the question whether or not it is every citizen’s duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of a national war, it is hardly conceivable that the principle would fail to be affirmed by an overwhelming majority.

The points as to which opinions are divided are the time and method of training and the nature of the liability to serve in war.

There are, roughly speaking, three schemes of training to be considered—­first, the old volunteer plan of weekly evening drills, with an annual camp training; secondly, the militia plan of three months’ recruit training followed by a month’s camp training in several subsequent years; and, lastly, the continental plan of a continuous training for one or more years followed by one or more periods of annual manoeuvres.  The choice between these three methods is the crucial point of the whole discussion.  It must be determined by the standard of excellence rendered necessary by the needs of the State.  The evidence given to the Norfolk Commission convinced that body that neither the first nor the second plan will produce troops fit to meet on equal terms those of a good modern army.  Professional officers are practically unanimous in preferring the third method.

The liability of the trained citizen to serve in war during his year in the ranks and his years as a first-class reservist must be determined by the military needs of the country.  I have given the reasons why I believe the need to be for an army that can strike a blow in a continental war.

I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a citizen’s duty to train himself to bear arms in his country’s cause.  I have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system, because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the educating power of its officers.  But experience and observation have convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for, cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor even by their devoted co-operation with one another.  The spirit which animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to be produced.  For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers, continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the country.  The Norfolk Commission’s Report made it quite clear that the conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that another nation can produce.