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going to stare at him and follow him around and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on the hypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation. They will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come. And when he does come the effect will of course be-awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I take it-solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one brief escape, this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long. He is where he is and forever. The more rigid moralists among you may say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he has been very hardly used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch Soames's vanity was, I admit, above the average, and called for special treatment. But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say he contracted to pay the price he is paying. Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by

fraud. Well informed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day at the Vingtième. Only once, however, have I seen him at close quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking one afternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from the opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. But-well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil, that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost haughtiness.

To be cut, deliberately cut, by him! I was, I still am, furious at having had that happen to me.

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COMPULSORY military training, in its essence, is merely an extension of compulsory education by which the citizen is equipped not only to achieve his very American privilege of fighting for an individual place in the sun to earn a decent living and to strengthen his mental and moral fiber, but also to achieve his equally American duty of fighting to maintain the collective rights of all American citizens.

Education develops individuality; military education develops nationality. In this country to-day it is a menacing fact that the average citizen, while jealous of his prerogatives, has only a vague conception of his duties to his country.-THE EDITOR.

S a matter of policy, preparedness has

of sincere debate. Regardless of extremists, who balance absurdities of pacifism against absurdities of militarism, the people of the United States are resolved upon some sound plan of national defense that will not only assure the safety of democratic institutions, but also enable America to give force and effect to the spirit of those institutions. The one question at issue, when evasion is put aside, is whether dependence shall continue to be placed upon the volunteer system or whether the protection of the republic shall constitute a natural and inescapable obligation of citizenship.

Is patriotism a duty that must be discharged by all or a favor to be bestowed at will? In the United States, where cities, commonwealths, and nation equally compel obedience to a multitude of laws concerned with the general good, is it to be the case that defense shall remain on no firmer base than the differing impulses of individual men?

These are not by any means questions of abstract interest. Mr. Chamberlain,

chairman of the senate committee on military affairs, has introduced a bill that provides for universal training, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States stands pledged to this idea, and all over the country there is evidence that the lessons taught by Switzerland and Australia are filling the thought of the great mass of people. The preparedness that is intended for all time, and not merely for the political campaign of 1916, must take account of this new policy that has risen to dispute the superiority of the old. There are investigations to be made, comparisons to be instituted, and they cannot be evaded in the interests of ancient prejudices and inherited traditions.

The volunteer system is now an obvious and admitted failure, and it is in the light of this breakdown that its hopes and assurances for the future must be viewed. It is on trial in the court of public opinion, and it must make the attempt to justify itself. The organized militia of the United States is naturally the first witness to be called, since it has ever been the choice medium for uncompelled patriotism. Although there are over twenty million

Four

men available for enlistment, the aggregate strength of the organized militia in the United States to-day is 129,398. Of this number, thirty-six per cent. did not attend twenty-four drills during the last year, and in many States the attendance was as low as sixteen per cent. States-New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Pennsylvania-contribute one third of the total strength, the beggarly hundreds of other commonwealths tapering down until Nevada is reached, where no militia of any kind exists in organized form.

In the interstate competitions arranged by the war department only fourteen States took part; only 1400 enlisted men took advantage of camps of instruction; and in 1915 only one State, Washington, was equipped as prescribed by the war depart ment. Target practice was satisfactory in eight States only, and General Mills, head of the division of militia affairs, reports that six months of active preparation would be required to put the slipshod body in shape for real service.

It is claimed, of course, that lack of money has been the fault, just as promises. of efficiency are based upon larger appropriations. Figures of record dispute both excuse and appeal. From 1903 to 1915, inclusive, the Federal Government spent $66,540,412 upon these state troops, a vast sum that does not include the expenses of regular army officers assigned to militia duty, or the cost of sending officers and enlisted men of the organized militia to service schools.

The state appropriations for 1915 alone were $7.725,127, and it must be remembered that this expenditure has been a steady annual drain on every State since the Revolutionary War. It is safe to say that the organized militia has cost the, taxpayers of the United States a round billion, yet not all this money has been able to win enlistments, increase competency, or arouse interest.

Not one of the present arguments in favor of a militia pay-bill are new, for all were heard in 1903, when the Dick Bill was under discussion. It was pleaded then

that should the Government irrigate the organized militia with golden streams. from the treasury, strength and efficiency would follow instantly and steadily. The requested millions were appropriated, yet though the population of the United States increased twenty millions between 1903 and 1914, the national guard increase was only 12,456. For twelve years the Government has offered pay, transportation, and subsistence to all members of the organized militia yielding themselves to the intensive training of regular army manoeuvers and state encampments, yet fewer than one per cent. of the militiamen have responded.

The real meaning of the federalization now urged is pay for the futile weekly. armory drills that have been carried on for a hundred years without the slightest return in fitness.

It is in a large measure true that the organized militia has labored under the disadvantage of the police duties that are imposed upon it by the States. Men of the laboring class have refused, and will refuse, to enlist, and it is equally the case that many others in nowise party to the industrial dispute do not care to join a body that may be called upon at any moment to shoot down fellow-citizens. The proposed federalization, however, does not affect this disability in any particular, for the Constitution specifically reserves the control of the organized militia to the various States, limiting the command of the President to time of actual war.

To base any plan for national defense upon the organized militia through any law in the power of Congress to enact is to spend additional millions upon a body. that has steadfastly resisted every activity toward betterment, and which in its very essence defies unity and proper federal control.

Consideration of the regular army only adds another count to the indictment against the volunteer system. The law of the land allows a total enlisted strength of 100,000; yet not all the alluring posters and recruiting officers have been able to secure this number. Even were Congress

to decide to disrupt industry, burden the taxpayer, and menace free institutions by the creating of a large standing army, where would the men come from? The American private is better paid, better fed, and better housed than the private soldier of any other nation, yet the regular service makes no greater appeal than does enlistment in the organized militia.

Surely, after one hundred and thirtyeight years of earnest effort and enormous expenditure, it will not be urged that 129,000 half-drilled, half-fit mcn is a result that merits continued reliance upon the volunteer system as a sound basis for national safety, or the showing of a rakedand-scraped regular army of fewer than 90,000 that costs over one hundred millions a year to maintain?

The truth must be faced that the volunteer system has been attended at every step by waste and failure, draining the national treasury while contributing little or nothing to the adequate preparedness that is now seen as a national need. It is the lesson of history that every great country in every great war has had to resort to conscription because of the cowardice or indifference that hides at home while bravery and patriotism make their sacrifices of blood upon the battle-field. The question for the United States to decide is whether this step shall be taken at the twelfth hour, when precious time must be lost in winnowing and drilling, or now, when years of peace permit a slow, scientific process that contains no menace to democratic ideals or the impairment of the civic virtues.

Major-General Leonard Wood is one soldier who has not permitted the prejudices of his calling to limit his social vision or blind him to the larger aspects of life. Because of these things he enjoys a public confidence that gives weight to his opinions. Asked for them, he spoke in this unhesitating fashion :

Any plan which fails to recognize the basic principle of universal military training is a makeshift and an expedient. The volunteer system as a system has been a dismal

failure in every war that we have engaged in, and always will be. The good men will go first; then volunteering will stop, as it did in the Revolution, in 1812, and in the Civil War, forcing resort to the draft. It makes for inequality of service. The rich, when drafted, have been able to buy the poor to take their places. The result has been a debauchery of public morals.

The difficulties in the way of universal military training are not so great as people think. Let assent be given to the principle itself, and details can be worked out with small trouble. Congressional districts can be used as a basis of division for purposes of registration and training, and the allimportant question of instruction can be met primarily by regular army officers, nationalguard officers, and graduates of military institutions until the force is supplemented by courses of specific preparation.

Universal training means more than national defense and national safety. It means national health, national virility, national progress; for there is not a weakness in American life that it would not strengthen. Stronger bodies, clearer minds, higher civic ideals, a keener sense of the man's obligation to his fellows, his community, and his country, a solution of the immigrant problem, by giving aliens a sense of belongingall these are only a few of the benefits that might be expected to flow.

The Australian system includes calisthenic training from twelve to fourteen. The procedure is simple, as is the apparatus required. From fourteen to eighteen the boys receive training in the elements of drill, camp-work, map-reading and map-making, target practice, plus the general type of instruction given to the older boy scouts. Take a youngster with this preparation, give him a brief period of intensive training under efficient officers, and you have a fit defender well on his way to join an adequate reserve.

Instruction in sanitation and personal hygiene does not stop with the individual person, for he carries it home with him to the improvement of local conditions. I can conceive of no more direct attack upon the preventable diseases that ravage America as a result of ignorance and indifference.

Character will be built as well as mind and body. Australia reports that her system of universal training has greatly reduced juvenile delinquency. In Switzerland, where every fit male is trained for defense, the murder-rate is twelve per million, as against one hundred and twenty-four per million in the United States.

I advocate universal training not as an approach to militarism, but as an escape from it. It is democracy in its essence, for it is without inequalities and discriminations. Make our millions fit for every exigency of defense, and they will be fit for the peace that such preparation will insure. America can be prepared without being unjust. She can be strong without being aggressive.

Compulsory military training is not compulsory military service, but the very reverse, carrying with it none of the sinister implications that attend the Continental idea. Merely accepting compulsion in military instruction even as compulsion in education is now accepted, the system operates during the growing period of individual life so that maturity may be devoted to normal civil pursuits without in terference or interruption. Whole years are not lifted out of an adult's career, nor is the mind of the citizen exposed to prolonged contact with things martial and thoughts of war. The process is natural, reasonable, and orderly, strengthening manhood even as it bulwarks the nation.

A principal objection to such a plan is based upon the assumption that it is inseparably a part of the educational system of the country, thus raising points of constitutional law as well as academic problems. As a matter of fact, it is distinctly a live question whether the educational processes of the nation would not be quickened immeasurably by federalization. According to census reports, 7.7 per cent. of the population over ten is illiterate, which means that in a democracy, where every voice may come to share in important national decisions, 5,516,163 persons are utterly lacking in any education whatsoever. Of this number, over three million are

white, and a million and a half are nativeborn whites.

Mississippi and Georgia have no compulsory education laws, and the illiteracy percentages are 22.4 and 20.7 respectively. The worthless laws of the following States are equally reflected in the census returns: Louisiana 29, South Carolina 25.7, North Carolina 18.5, Alabama 22.9, and Virginia 15.2 per cent.

Education is no less vital a concern than national defense itself, for illiteracy. may breed dangers within as menacing as any peril from without. In this important regard, no less than in the matter of the organized militia, state control has broken down, permitting stagnancy in the very well-springs of American life. In view of this breakdown, such federalization of the system as may be necessary to install compulsory military training is seen as a rational undertaking demanded by the needs. of education itself.

Under federal control, with povertyblocked or indifferent States either aided or spurred, one wise compulsory education. law may obtain from coast to coast, ministering to adults as well as to children, putting emphasis upon preparedness for the business of life as well as for the cultural values, taking every school-house from the backwaters, and planting it in the living stream.

It is not by any means a novel principle. The war department administers public education in the Philippines, the interior department acts similarly in Alaska, the labor department looks after the educational problems of adults, and there are fully fifty universities and agricultural colleges that receive funds from the Government in return for maintaining military tactics in their curricula.

The words of Dr. John H. Finley, President of the University of the State of New York, may be considered an authoritative expression of the educational sentiment of the United States. These are his views:

I am not so unpractical as not to know that for a weary time, at least, we must

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