"The one virtue of voluntary enlistment is that it should be voluntary--a free choice between a soldier's life and a civilian's life. To use moral pressure, with the outcries of public indignation, in order to drive civilians from their work into the army--what is this but a most undignified compulsion? And it is also a compulsion that presses unequally upon the people, for its methods are without system. Many families send their all into the fighting line; many decline to be patriotic. A woman said to me yesterday: 'My husband has gone, and I am left with his business. Why should he go? Other women in my neighbourhood have their husbands still, and it's rubbish to say that the country is in danger when the Government allows and encourages this injustice in recruiting. If the country is in danger all the men should fight--if their trade work is unnecessary to the armies." "This point of view is right; the wrong one is advocated by you and by other Radicals who dislike the justice of democratic equality.--Yours truly, WALTER SHAW SPARROW." [6] There have been bitter complaints of this artful way of getting recruits, as a boy 'sniggles' trout. The following letter to the Times (April 21, 1915) voices a very widely spread sense of injustice: "SIR--Will you give me the opportunity to ask a question, which I think you will agree is important? When the Circular to Householders was issued, many heads of families gave in their names on the assumption that they would be called up on the last resort, and under circumstances in which no patriotic man could refuse his help. Married men with large families are now being called up apparently without the slightest regard to their home circumstances. Many of the best of them are surprised and uneasy at leaving their families, but feel bound in honour to keep their word, some even thinking they have no choice. The separation allowances for these families will be an immense burden on the State, and, if the breadwinner falls, a permanent burden. Is the need for men still so serious and urgent as to justify this? If it is, then I for one, who have up to now hoped that the war might be put through without compulsion, feel that the time has come to 'fetch' the unmarried shirkers, and I believe there is a wide-spread and growing feeling to that effect.--I am, Sir, etc., CHARLES G. E. WELBY." [7] An example of the apparent inability of the Government to do anything thoroughly or courageously is found in a circular letter to shopkeepers and wholesale firms, which was lately sent out by the Home Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade. The object of this enquiry--undertaken at leisure, nine months after the outbreak of war--is to obtain information as to the number of men of military age, who are still employed in these particular trades, and as to the willingness of their employers to spare them if required, and to reinstate them at the end of the war, etc., etc.