It would create a real brotherhood in work, just as the army
creates in its own way a brotherhood between men in the same regiments.
The nation adopting civil conscription could clean itself up in a couple
of generations, so that in respect of public services it would be
incomparable. The alternative to this is to starve all public services,
to make the State simply the tax-collector, to pay the interest on a
huge debt, and so get it hated because it can do nothing except collect
money to pay the interest on a colossal national debt. Obviously the
State as an agency to bring about civilization cannot perform both
services--pay interest on huge public loans, and continue an expensive
service. It must find out some way in which public services can be
continued, and if possible improved, and the open way to that is civil
conscription and the assertion of a claim to two or three years of the
work of every citizen for civil purposes, just as it now asserts a claim
on the services of citizens for the defense of the State. As national
debts are more and more piled up, it has seemed to many that here must
be an end to what was called social reform, that we were entering on a
black era, and no dawn would show over Europe for another century.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187