ndividual subject this distinction has no meaning at all. For the laws
passed by a Democratic Parliament are coercive and compulsory in
precisely the same manner and degree as are the laws of a despotic
monarchy or a close oligarchy. There is, indeed, a "tyranny of the
majority" which can be quite as oppressive to the individual as the
tyranny of the one or the few, and much less easy to evade. From the
point of view of the enfranchised community, however, the term "free"
has a meaning, and its use can be defended. For if the electorate be
regarded as a unit, akin to an organism, government becomes
self-government, and any obligations which the community places upon
itself by means of laws can be looked upon as self-limitations, imposed
by free-will and capable of removal at any moment by the unfettered
exercise of the power which imposed them. From this communal point of
view, however, it is evident that national service involves no
diminution of liberty. The community becomes not one whit less free
because it decides to train itself in the use of arms and to mobilize
all its resources for military purposes. It retains its capacity to
demobilize any time it likes, to lay aside its arms, to pension off its
drill sergeants, and to return to the paths of pacificism whenever it
seems safe to do so.

FOOTNOTE:

[30] Seeley: _op. cit._, p. 114.

V. LIBERTY AS ABSENCE OF RESTRAINT

It cannot be denied, however, that compulsory military service does
interfere with the power of the _individual_ to do as he likes. He is
forced, whether he wants to or not, to undergo certain discipline in
time of peace, and to face uncertain danger in time of war. National
service, then, is a restriction of his liberty, if by liberty is meant
the absence of all restraint. Now this is precisely the sense in which
the term is most frequently used. "Quid est libertas?" (What is
liberty?), asked Cicero, and he replied: "Potestas vivendi ut velis"
(The power of living as you like).[31] "Freedom," said Sir Robert
Filmer, "is the liberty for everyone to do what he lists, to live as he
pleases, and not to be tied by any laws."[32] Even Locke, Filmer's great
opponent, admitted that "the natural liberty of man is to be free from
any superior power on earth." But who is the man who possesses this
unlimited natural liberty to live as he likes, and to act as he pleases,
subject to no superior power on earth? He is either a Robinson Crusoe,
existi