CHAPTER X
THE DISCIPLINE OF PEACE
All this leads up to the question of the moral factor in general military preparation—whether peace-time conscription or universal military training. Is it useful only as a means of national defence, or has it a real value for the general purposes of society? The militarists say that it has. Too begin with, if inculcates obedience, and the instinct of discipline. It spreads the habits of civilization among the masses. It takes boys with round shoulders, shuffling gait, uncleanly ways, lawless manners, and makes them straight, upstanding, clean, orderly, obedient men. During the war, they showed us photographs of these awful examples, before and after taking.
Now it is true that tens of thousands of our young men, perhaps hundreds of thousands, were so transformed by army training. But we must consider averages, not exceptions. Millions of others—certainly the great majority—came from a good, sound American environment. All of them in their childhood, most of them in their youth, had practised athletic sport in some form. They presented
119
