Conscription and the Ambition of War
A daily paper, in endeavoring to prove that the world is growing better, says: “Cæsar, Alexander, Napoleon, and others like them, had great ambition. To gratify their ambition they forced hundreds of thousands, millions, of men to march and fight and die for them. . . . The Napoleon of to-day must get a Congress to give him his soldiers.” But when this is done, as witness the millions of Europe, and all the people become partakers of the unholy ambition of wars of conquest and glory, any one can see that the number of criminals becomes greatly increased. And now in the freest governments of earth, conscription in military service has been freely advised. Sometimes men are “only strong for lack of test.” There is about where the world stands.