It becomes increasingly difficult to speak one's mind in England to-day, even though one has no peace scheme to propound and no efficient public servant to criticise.

Liberty has vacated her throne, or as much of it as Privilege would ever allow her to occupy, and the Defence of the Realm Act has taken her place.

Consequently it is very hard to express opinions unless they are sufficiently platitudinous to gain universal and immediate acceptance. Roughly speaking we are all of one mind about the conduct of this war; the minority in opposition is so small that it can be disregarded, but we are all at variance as to method, and on the Ship of State that steers such an erratic course through the hurricane of strife there is hardly a passenger who is not convinced that he could reach the goal much more rapidly than the man at the wheel is likely to.

Those who criticise the steering are suspect, for the national temper is a little upset, our situation is without precedent, and an Englishman dislikes novelty. I cannot help my belief that it is the novelty rather than the tragedy of the hour that troubles him most. He is giving, to the best of his capacity, blood, labour, treasure, but he is not thinking as deeply as he should, perhaps because he understands that when you begin to think and believe you see a great truth clearly, you are morally bound to communicate that truth to others. Then the Defence of the Realm comes in and you are likely to be hailed a traitor to all good causes by the first person who—with or without understanding your views—disagrees with them!

Yet for all the prejudices with which the expression of opinion is beset, it is hard to keep silent when something presents itself to the mind in the guise of a vital truth, and now, after more than two years of war have forced reflection and taught us to see the world tragedy as a whole, there are things that must needs be said, protests that must needs be made.

Of all the iniquities that are associated with war, war as distinct from murder I would add, there is nothing quite so horrible as the sacrifice of young life. It is common to all the nations at war. We read of boys of fifteen fighting in the ranks of our enemies, and, at home, of boys who have added a year or two to their proper age to deceive a not too inquisitive recruiting sergeant. To raw lads in their utter ignorance, war is a great joy and adventure; they are proud to help their country and to be redeemed from the charge of being "slackers." So when the cup of life is hardly at their lips they go, some to die, some to be maimed, some to return prematurely old and broken down.

While the plots and counter plots that made for war were being hatched, these young warriors were in the nursery, or at school. Even now they have reached no perception of the real forces for which men strive; until war broke out their lives were still supposed to be under the protection of their parents.

But as soon as the State is beset it calls for aid, not alone upon matured men, who understand and have a sense of responsibility, but upon the lads whom it ought to be protecting as the one irreplaceable asset of the next generation.

Wise old gentlemen with a very tolerable imitation of the spirit of prophecy in their hearts, pens in their hands, and bees in their bonnets, wrote indignant articles in the best read organs of the press that our downfall, if we did not introduce conscription, is merely a matter of months. Sometimes it was weeks. The time given to us varied according to the measure of the writers' chronic dyspepsia.

Yet if these people would only think, they would have little difficulty in admitting that the lads who have been well educated, well trained and prepared with infinite labour for life are just those who should not be surrendered to death under any normal conditions until they have fulfilled their primary function toward the State.

I will go farther and suggest that their elders have no right to rob them of the few years in which they taste the joys of life. I was told recently by a man who knew what he was talking about that under the Mosaic Code the Jews did not allow their married men to go to war until they had spent one year with their wives. A man who was betrothed was instructed to marry, and even if a man married a second time he had to remain for one year at home. In this way the continuity of the race was assured and the Jews, eminently a fighting nation, preserved their virility.

There was no question of sentiment involved—it was hard, common sense applied to war. And, horrible irony, the British Government recognises the simple truth, but has only learned down to the present to apply it to farm stock. I saw last year a printed notice in the country post-offices issued to farmers by the Board of Agriculture, telling them not to kill lamb and veal because whatever the price offered the removal of immature stock is dangerous wastefulness which the country cannot afford.

Here is a copy of the notice:

It seems almost too ridiculous to be true that the Government has more concern for lambs or calves than for boys on the threshold of manhood, but the facts convict them.

For myself I would rather see a thousand of the bloodthirsty old gentlemen who preached conscription sent to the front from their club smoke-rooms and editorial chairs, than five hundred lads from whom their country has something to expect!

I do not think I am a sentimentalist, certainly I do not plead for the exemption of mere boys from the battlefield in order that they may have what is called a good time, though I hold that they should not be deprived deliberately of the few halcyon years that are in one fashion or another the reward of one and all. I would work them to the last ounce of their capacity in seasons like these. They should have long hours, Spartan fare, and spells of physical drill, they should put in eight hours of labour for the Government in the factory, in the munition works, wherever their services could be best employed.

They might be under military rule, amenable to the same discipline as the soldier, but they should not go into the firing line, because they belong to the next generation.

They are to sire it; no nation can afford to leave that responsibility to the physically unfit, and to those who have passed fighting age.

This duty done, they would be free to join the fighting forces for which their drill, their labour and their self-denial would have prepared them. My soldier relatives and friends tell me that the lad in his teens is of little value in a prolonged campaign. He may have all the necessary courage, but he lacks the essential stamina. He is fitter to march and endure when he is twenty-five than when he is nineteen, fitter still at thirty.

But, asks my critic, where will you recruit your fighting men? I look round at my men friends, and I find them, up to the age of fifty, taking their chance in the forefront of things. The outcry against the married man as combatant is valid only in so far as his family depends upon him for support. My friends chance for the greater part to belong to the comfortable classes. They have enjoyed the best that England has to offer; they are prepared to pay the price, with their lives if need be. Above all they are articulate, they have the franchise, they can speak their mind. Collectively they support in one form and another the conditions that make war possible. They are conscious of a certain responsibility.

Where, for example, on the other hand, is the responsibility of the midshipman on the torpedoed battleship? I take his bravery for granted. I am quite convinced that could he read my plea he would disavow any shadow of sympathy with it, but I am concerned for the country and not for him. He has a duty toward civilisation, he is well-bred, highly trained, efficient. I say that the State owes him at least a few years of manhood and should see that he is allowed to reach maturity, although he is neither veal nor lamb!

It is false economy that raises the outcry against married men as soldiers. They alone in the community can be spared, they have fulfilled, or partly fulfilled, the function upon which civilisation depends. Potentially, if not always actually, they are fathers. Economists insist that pensions and allowances are an extravagance that the nation cannot afford. I reply that war is a still greater extravagance, the wickedest form of indulgence known to mankind, and that worse than war is the destruction of the fairest hopes of the future, the race to come. Again, if those who light the fire were compelled to feed the flames I believe there would be fewer conflagrations.

I feel that I do but set down facts that are known to thinkers, who, as a rule, prefer to keep silence at times like these lest their patriotism be suspect. After the war they will deplore the ruin; trustees for the generation to come, they will see that they have failed in their trust. They will shift the responsibility on to the nature of things, they will declare that war was inevitable and that destruction of all we hold most dear must follow in its wake.

Here I join issue with them. The world is for all practical purposes ruled by mankind. Nothing but the catastrophes like the tidal wave and the earthquake escape man's control. Famine, disease, and mortality he can arrest; he can increase his stature morally, mentally, physically. If he elect to play the prodigal he does so at his own risk, but he has no right to tamper with the vital resources of the generations that must follow. War is delirium, or he would bear this fundamental truth in mind. I think it has escaped him. He is immersed in the pursuit of the end, and no means are spared. Thus we hear the outcries because the fat money bags are growing thin, but nothing is said of the great asset that no trading, however successful, can restore.

We can find in some barbarous land wealth only comparable to that which Sindbad discovered in the Valley of Diamonds, but what will that profit a race that must depend upon old and exhausted stock to renew its vitality? The desire for wealth is at least one of the contributory causes of war, the thought of wealth wasted makes men forget they are wasting what no wealth can replace.

I am sure that women feel this eternal truth in their hearts, but all too many fear to be thought afraid. They fear their own mankind, those for whom they would gladly sacrifice all that life holds for them of good. They fear to be thought jealous for their own boys, while if the truth be told their fear is all for the young sons of all women quite irrespective of nationality. At least this is how the situation appeals to me, and I dare not keep silent if there be any medium of appeal to those who think with me that will set my thoughts down. There is a slumbering conscience of humanity only waiting the call that will break through its dreams. I am not so bold as to believe that I can utter it, but I may perchance stimulate some more gifted pen.

In any case, I cannot hide my thoughts merely because they may meet no response, for after all there is not in all the world a single great belief that was not once the unregarded possession of a single mind.