T H E K IN G ’S B U S IN E S S □ j------------------------ 1 Voi. 8 rii----------------- OCTOBER, 1917 L J] E D I T O R I A L ------------------------ IHJ There has been more or less clamor throughout the The Draft. country against the military draft. If there has to be war, the only wise and just way to obtain men for the army is by a selective draft. The system of voluntary enlistment is unjust and unwise. It secures for our armies an altogether undue proportion of our best young men, the men who are brave and self-sacrificing and well equipped intel lectually and morally, the men who are needed in all departments of life, and a very small proportion from the selfish, and. the useless, and the unemployed. It has been agreed among the wisest persons who have carefully studied the war, that England made a great mistake in not adopting conscription sooner, and the result has been that an appalling proportion of university men and noble spirited men from the better homes (better mentally and morally, not merely socially) have gone to the front and been slaughtered. The draft falls equally upon all classes of society. Of course there must necessarily be a diversity of opinion in the details in regard to the carrying out of the draft, but on the whole the princi ples adopted in our draft are as good as could be expected. It might have been well if the unmarried men, and the men who have been married for several years but remained childless, and the unemployed, who are a burden on society and are unemployed because of their own shiftlessness, up to the ages of 45 or 50 had been summoned to the war or at least liable to draft. But absolutely ideal legislation is of course never practicable, and the law as it is is as nearly ideal as it is reasonable to expect. The principle upon which the actual draw ing of names was carried out, was of such a character apparently as to elimi nate all possibility of fraud. The exemption rules seem to be of a most wise and just character; and there is every reason to suppose that in most instances they will be applied with rigid impartiality. That there would be some excep tions to this would be expected. With men as they are and governments as they are it is practically impossible to safe-guard against all favoritism.
There seems to be great confusion as to why America is in the war. Our President, and many members of his Cabinet, seem to be putting forth frantic efforts of every conceivable kind to convince the people that we
What Are We Fighting For?
are in the war to save Democracy. Now this may sound well for a Fourth of July celebration and as an appeal to thoughtless people, but it simply is not true and it is well that it is not true. We are in the war because Germany violated and re-violated our rights .and things came to such a pass that we were left without any choice as to whether we would go into the war or not. The Government of the United States simply recognized a war that already existed,
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