The Barre Daily Times

Shallow thinking lies behind the plea being put forward just now as a remarkable new discovery that volunteer military service is "undemocratic." It is no more undemocratic than a volunteer fire department, and compulsory military service has no more to do with democracy than compulsory police duty, which exists only when law has failed and vigilance committees are in order. The truth is that democracy and military organization are antipathetic, and must be to the end of time: it is one of the fundamental antagonisms which forbid hope of a simple and easy solution of the problems of human society. No matter what the form of government may be, there are times of national peril when every able-bodied man has to be drafted for service, just as when a ship leaks everybody has to take a hand at the pumps. But that is not democracy, it is merely a struggle for life. In a desperate war, a democracy becomes hardly distinguishable from an autocracy, but unless the spirit of liberty dies in the struggle it will return, as the United States did after the Civil war drafts, to the voluntary division of labor which is fundamental in a free country whose existence is not menaced by foreign foes.—Springfield Republican.