ure, that quiet devotion of self in
the face of instant death, which are to be found, now and again, in the
course of every war. Even peace, they say, may be bought too dear, and
what shall it profit a people if it gain a swill-tub of comforts and
lose its own soul?

The same argument is chosen by those who would persuade the whole
population to submit to military training, whether it is needful for the
country's defence or not. Under such training, they suppose, the
virtues that peace imperils would be maintained; a sense of equality and
comradeship would pervade all classes, and for two or three years of
life the wealthy would enjoy the realities of labour and discomfort. It
is a tempting vision, and if this were the only means of escape from
such a danger as is represented, the wealthy would surely be the first
to embrace it for their own salvation. But is there no other means?
asked Professor William James, and his answer to the question was that
distinguished psychologist's last service. What we are looking for, he
rightly said, is a moral equivalent for war, and he suddenly found it in
a conscription, not for fighting, but for work. After showing that the
life of many is nothing else but toil and pain, while others "get no
taste of this campaigning life at all," he continued:

"If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military
conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population
to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted
against _nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and
numerous other benefits to the commonwealth would follow.
The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought
into the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain
blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's real
relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently solid
and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines,
to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing,
clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and
tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames
of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according
to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and
to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer
ideas."

Here, indeed, is a vision more tempting than ever conscription was. To
be sure, it is not new, for Ru