The Strenuous Life

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 30.

The Strenuous Life.

The acme of the strenuous life is the army, the worst school that earth knows. The jingoist editor, M. Drumont, of the Libre Parole, Paris, said recently in a public address, as quoted by the Springfield Republican of June 21: “Some of the very worst evils of which we complain in these days are directly traceable to the barracks. Compulsory military service, far from being a school of morals, is a school of drunkenness, of idleness, and debauchery. It is depopulating our fields, and it is overcrowding the cities. It has gone a long way toward ruining our peasantry, and to a large extent it has already debased them. No young man, however clean he may be upon entering the barracks, can leave them without being more or less tainted. I deem the universal military service one of the greatest, as it is sometimes one of the saddest, sacrifices that our country calls upon us to bear.” Yet in the face of this experience both England and the United States are talking conscription, or enforced military service. It is one of the necessities of commercialistic imperialism.