Quae Sunt Caesaris, Caesaris

We cannot Afford to observe with indifference the growing tendency for responsible persons and bodies to presume without argument that the state has some moral right to conscript its citizens and to direct them into various occupations whenever it seems that the efficient functioning of certain social institutions and services would benefit thereby. With-in recent weeks there have been two such suggestions, one with regard to the direction of eighteen-years-old girl to some form of nursing service and the other, perhaps more significant as corning from a Royal Commission, concerning the possibility of directing labour to the Railway.

In neither of those cases has there been any attempt at justification of the principle of conscription; it had been tacitly assumed that the public mind will assent to it provided that some worthy or useful social institution is to be provided with labour by this means. This is surely a sinister attitude to be taken by persons of any eminence in a democracy, and indicates that there are in their minds assumptions which, if clarified and uttered publicly would undoubtedly be forced to conflict with those general ideas now usually designated by the word democracy. We are not concerned here to defend the thing called democracy, but to assert some of the values which the term may be presumed to subsume against certain attitudes which, as yet may properly be considered opposed to the word and the reality equally.

Perhaps one justification for the principle of conscription may vulgarly be presumed to be an analogy between universal military training, which has been approved by referendum and general direction to other forms of labour: if this is a common assumption it is a false one.

Military training in the present situation, is a privileged case from which no parallels can validly be drawn; it is justified on two principles, one following from the other. The first is that a standing army seems in the present international situation essential to the safety of the state. In the case of war inadequate defence would mean defeat and the consequent destruction of the State (and all the values which it is supposed to safeguard).

The second is that an army adequate to the needs of defence can only be developed through universal military training (this is of -course a question of fact as well as discipline)—thus, the argument goes, it is better to forgo one of these values—freedom from interference in the private life of the individual—for a stated period and thereby build up an army, than to run the risk of someday through Inadequate defence being deprived of all such values by a conquering power. Now this argument may perhaps be sound (and the decision of the, people of New Zealand in the referendum seems to support it)—this is not the place to discuss it or to consider the opinions those who dissent; it is "sufficient here to state the nature of the case which is held to justify universal military training: there, what appears as a pressing necessity in a matter concerning the whole state, and there seems one and one only means adequate to meet this necessity.

Now, in neither of the cases that have recently been put forward has there been any question at all of the state (and of all the values it exists to safeguard) being in danger; both the necessities are perhaps pressing, but they are by no means of a universal kind, they affect only part not all of the activity of the social organism.

In the second place, it is doubtful in at least one case—that of conscription of girls for nursing—whether other ways have been sufficiently explored. Here it seems to have been the motive of economy, the totally false analogy from the conscription of eighteen-year-old youths which we have just criticised, and irrelevant (and erroneous) arguments that "it would do these girls good" that have largely determined this fantastic solution.

With regard to the nursing profession at least, surely the more normal device of improving wages could be tried. If we cannot at present afford to pay more—which I take leave to doubt—perhaps an extra hospital tax might be put on all bets in horse races in New Zealand. Even if it became necessary to increase direct taxation it is surely better to pay out in money rather than compromise a principle of liberty.

Universal military training is an exception which must be kept from arrogating the status of a rule.

If the idea that conscription is no more than a useful, if admittedly drastic, means to a number of yet unspecified ends, is already prevalent, then the substance of it and not the word for liberty has changed, it this change has occurred the matter ought to be faced and the principals involved, however distasteful, be enunciated. If however, as one believes—and hopes—the universal attttude on this question is not one already of uncritical acceptance of the principle that the state has a right of conscription subject only to consideration of utility, it is the duty of the more perceptive to object when just such a principle is being foisted off on to the public. Once the idea that the state can justly conscript for anything less than the defence of the sum total of the values of the society which it orders becomes accepted, any real but limited emergency will bring forth just such devastatingly simple "solutions" as hospital boards and Royal Commissions are at present suggesting—but this is a constant practice and a general rule! When the principle of conscription is admitted we will have it in heaven-knows-what vain and fatuous pretexts, merely because it will become an accepted and simple way out of any difficulties to which the inevitable mismanagement of corporate affairs may give rise. It is a matter which goes to the very bone of the concept of liberty. We must not be mislead by any please of urgency to compromise a principle; once the principle has gone any sort of practice can follow.