But there is also another answer. If you take a youth at the plastic age when he has reached manhood, feed him on wholesome food, subject him to vigorous and varied exercise, mainly in the open air, discipline him, train him to co-operation with his fellows, make him smart and swift in falling-to at whatever work comes under his hand, you are thereby giving him precisely what, for his own sake and that of the country, is most needed at the present time. You are giving him the chance of developing his bodily strength under healthy conditions, and you are giving him a general education and moral training which, in the great majority of cases, will be of great value to him in all his after life. It is the regret of every one, who has studied our industrial system from within, that men wear out too {386} soon. By the time a man reaches his fortieth year--often earlier--he is too apt, in many vocations, to be an old man; and for that reason he is in danger of being shoved out of his place by a younger generation. This premature and, for the most part, unnecessary ageing is the real economic loss. If by taking two years out of a man's life as he enters manhood, if by improving his physique and helping him to form healthy habits, you can thereby add on ten or fifteen years to his industrial efficiency, you are not only contributing to his own happiness, but are also adding enormously to the wealth and prosperity of the country. Any one indeed, who chooses to work out sums upon this hypothesis, will hardly regard the national debt as a large enough unit for comparison. The kernel of this matter is, that men wear out in the working classes earlier than in others, mainly because they have no break, no rest, no change, from the day they leave school to take up a trade, till the day when they have to hand in their checks for good and all. It is not effort, but drudgery, which most quickly ages a man. It is the rut--straight, dark, narrow, with no horizons, and no general view of the outside world--which is the greatest of social dangers. More than anything else it tends to narrowness of sympathy and bitterness of heart. [Sidenote: UNDER-RATING OF CONSCRIPT ARMIES] It would be cant to claim that universal military training will get rid of this secular evil; but to say that it will help to diminish it is merely the truth. The real 'cant' is to talk about the economic loss under conscription; for there would undoubtedly be an immense economic gain. But indeed the advocacy of the voluntary system {387} is stuffed full of cant.... We are all proud of our army; and rightly so. But the opponents of universal military service go much further in this direction than the soldiers themselves. They contrast our army, to its enormous advantage, with the conscript armies of the continent, which they regard as consisting of vastly inferior fighting men--of men, in a sense despicable, inasmuch as their meek spirits have submitted tamely to conscription.