at once the moral grandeur of my attitude. I am a convinced
believer in the Voluntary System, always have been--on principle. But I
am willing to sacrifice even that for victory. If it can be shown that
by compulsion _one single man_ can be added to our forces who would not
have volunteered (even if he had been scientifically bullied), I will be
willing to adopt conscription. But, Sir, it cannot be shown.

The crux of the situation admittedly lies with the figures of the Single
Men. (In case of misapprehension I should make it clear that when I
spoke above of "one single man" I did not mean one unmarried man, but
one sole man). We have to begin our attack upon this figure of 651,160
unstarred single men unaccounted for. It seems a good many. But wait a
bit. We shall now proceed to concentrate a powerful succession of
deductions. It only needs a fearless and patriotic ingenuity.

Let us not disregard obvious facts. From this number
we must subtract--

(1) Ministers of religion 5 per cent.
(2) Mercantile Marine 5 "
(3) Medically unfit 40 "
(4) Criminals 1-3/4 "
(5) Badged 10 "
(6) Indispensables 10 "

Total 71-3/4 per cent. You see we are already getting on. But before
going any further we had better consolidate the ground already won by
making certain additions, in case any one man has been counted twice.
These are--

(1) Ministers of religion who are also medically unfit.
(2) Criminals in the mercantile marine.
(3) Ministers of religion in the mercantile marine.
(4) Criminals who are medically unfit.
(5) Indispensable criminals.
(6) Badged criminal ministers of religion.

These categories taken together may be put at 7-1/4 per cent. of our
71-3/4 per cent., and must be deducted from the deductions. There are
also the blind, halt and maimed, deaf, dumb and inebriate, but I am
willing to throw all of them in so as to be on the safe side.

So far we have to deduct, then, some 66-1/2 per cent. from our total. We
must do better than that if we are to get on the right side of
negligibility. So now we come to examine the canvass. A good many men
were not canvassed, or at least misunderstood the canvasser. I know of
one man in my constituency (unstarred, unbadged, fit, single and of army
age) who thought the fellow had come to collect for Foreign Missions, to
which he has a conscientious objection.

Along with these I propose to deduct the great class of what I s