Current experience is proving that war is a grim condition of life, and
that none can escape its effects. No religious or philosophic precept
is potent enough in practical application to prevent its outbreak or to
stay its course. The strong man of military age, who claims the right
to pursue normal peaceful avocations when his country is at war, pleads
guilty, however involuntarily, to aberrations of both mind and heart.
There are few who do not conscientiously cherish repugnance for war,
but practically none of those to whom so natural a sentiment makes most
forcible appeal deem it a man’s part to refuse a manifest personal call
of natural duty. The conscientious objector to combatant service may in
certain rare cases deserve considerate treatment, but very short shrift
should await the able-bodied men who, from love of ease or fear of
danger, simulate conscientious objection in order to evade a righteous
obligation.
Lack of imagination may be at times as responsible for the sin of the
shirker as lack of courage. Patriotism is an instinct which works
as sluggishly among the unimaginative as among the cowardly and the
selfish. The only cure for the sluggish working of the patriotic
instinct among the cowardly and the selfish is the sharp stimulus
of condign punishment. But among the unimaginative it may be worth
experimenting by way of preliminary with earnest and urgent appeals to
example such as is offered not only by current experience, but also
by literature and history. No shirkers would be left if every subject
of the Crown were taught to apprehend the significance of Henley’s
interrogation:
What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?