Some people foolishly confound National Service with conscription. They are not the same at all. Where a country has conscription a portion of the population is liable to be drafted compulsorily into the army. When men are needed each parish or community is called upon to provide so many men, whether they know anything of military duties or not. The mayor or head of the community puts all the names of the eligibles into a hat. The required number are drawn by ballot and are supposed to go to war,—but seldom do. One of the beauties of conscription is that if you have the money you can buy a substitute. Conscription is the product of a very old form of civilization, for if in China, for instance, you are conscripted to be hung or be beheaded, you are at liberty to hire a substitute. Conscription thus bears very heavily on the poor, while the idle rich can always escape service.
With national service, rich and poor, prince, priest and pauper have to serve alike without exemption. When the nation is at war, every man, woman and child in it is at war. The males are divided into categories, and those who have youth and no responsibility have to serve in the first line. The only son of a widow, and the father of a numerous small family does not have to leave them to the mercy of public charity and "Patriotic Funds" and go into the front line to fight. There is a place for everybody.
The nation is mobilized and everybody knows that if a man is left behind at the counter, in the mill, or on the farm that it is so ordered, and that that is his place in the service of the State. The people who have experienced this form of service despise the volunteering system, first, because it bears unjustly on the brave and patriotic, and, secondly, because a paid soldier they say is a man hired to kill.
I asked the mother of a handsome lad of seventeen at one of our billets near Cassel when she asked me if the war was likely to continue another year, if she regretted if her boy might have to serve.
"Oh, no, sir," she said. "I fully realized from the first day that I rocked him in his cradle that he would have to fight for France. I am resigned and proud to give two sons for France."
That is the spirit of the French people, calm indomitable and persevering. The spirit that endures to the end and will prevail.