A navy, however large, could not, by any possible stretch of the imagination, be termed a menace to our liberties, and, as ex-Secretary Meyer has said, we are rich enough to match dollars for national defense with any other nation in the world. It is common belief that military training and service in preparation for national defense menace democratic institutions. In the days of her greatest virility and military prowess, Rome was a republic. But we must not conclude, because a country is governed by a congress and a president elected by the people, that all its institutions are more free or less autocratic than the institutions of a limited monarchy, or even an absolute monarchy. We, in the United States, often pass laws that are so arbitrary, unprecedented, unwarranted, and confiscatory, as to make absolutism wince. The cities of Germany are governed so wisely and so well that could we have that system transplanted here, it would be almost worth our while to invite German conquest of the country. No man's patriotism rises higher than his realization of the need that his country has for him. None of us likes our taxes any too well. Nevertheless, they bring home to us a better realization of the interdependence of the government and the individual. We love those for whom we make sacrifices, and those to whom we give favors. Benjamin Franklin desiring the favorable regard of a prominent person, made it opportune for that eminent person to do Franklin a favor. Conscription, like that enforced in Germany, makes good citizens. It implants in them a sense of duty and obligation to the government, and creates a greater respect for ruling power and for law and order. In this country, the ideas of the average individual concerning his obligations to the government and the government's obligations to him are vague and crude to the last degree. Conscription would largely remedy this by teaching duty to the government. The government has exactly the same right to levy on the individual for military service as it has to tax him for anything else. Just as the government has the right to tax the individual for financial support of the government, so it has the right to tax the individual for military support of the government. Conscription makes the government and the individual partners for the common welfare. Few persons in this country consider themselves partners of the government. In ancient Sparta, all individuals were the property of the government; all children were owned by the state. Consequently, the people owned the state, and the state owned the people. It is proper that the state and the individual should own each other, insomuch as their interests are mutual, just the same as husband and wife own each other.