Empire. Along the line of political theory
they contend that the demand for national service is contrary to the
spirit of liberty, that freedom is an essential characteristic of the
English genius, that Britons may be persuaded but not coerced, and so
on.

In the preceding study I have shown the utter baselessness of the
historical argument, pointed out that compulsory service was the very
foundation of the Anglo-Saxon system of defence, and concluded that
whereas "the Territorial Army dates from 1908, the Volunteers from 1859,
the Regular Army itself only from 1645, for a millennium before the
oldest of them the ancient defence of England was the Nation in Arms." I
now turn to the theoretical argument, and propose to consider what is
meant by the term "liberty," and ask whether the compulsion involved in
national service is incompatible with liberty properly understood.

II. THE TERM "LIBERTY"

There can be no doubt that in this country, as in America, the term
"liberty" enjoys much popularity. Sir John Seeley has remarked that just
as "its unlimited generality" makes it "delightful to poets," so its
harmonious sound is so grateful to the ears of the public at large that
"if a political speech did not frequently mention liberty," no one would
"know what to make of it or where to applaud."[25] Matthew Arnold goes
so far as to speak of "our worship of freedom," and to depict liberty
as the object of a fanatical semi-religious adoration.[26] But as a rule
where an Englishman adores he does not define, and if one asks the
common devotee of liberty what he understands by the abstraction before
which he prostrates himself, one generally requires but a small portion
of the dialectic subtlety of Socrates to involve him in a hopeless
tangle of contradictions. He can no more define liberty than he can
locate his soul. Mr. D. G. Ritchie truly says: "Many crimes have been
done, and a still greater amount of nonsense talked in the name of
liberty."[27] Seeley, with as much justice as pungency, asserts that
some writers "teach us to call by the name of liberty whatever in
politics we want," and so lead us to disguise our selfishness and
cowardice in the stolen garb of moral principle.[28] At any rate, there
is urgent need that before we either support or oppose any practical
political measure in the name of liberty, we should clear our minds of
confusion, and should reach an understanding of what precisely we mean
by thi