the State for the preservation of the State, and may be called upon to surrender life absolutely in that service. While the manhood of a race does this on the whole with cheerfulness, there must be something of high character in the manhood of that nation. A certain gravity attaches to national decisions which are made, as it were, upon the slopes of death, because none are exempt from service, and there is no delirious mob ready to yell for a war in which it does not run the risk of having its own dirty skin perforated by bullets. In Ireland we have never had military conscription, for reasons which are well known to all, and upon which I need not enter. I am well satisfied it should be so, for it leaves open to us the possibility of a much nobler service, one which has never yet been attempted by any modern nation, and that is civil conscription. I throw out this suggestion, which may hold the imagination of those who have noble conceptions of what national life should be and what a nation should work for, in the hope that some time it may fructify. There is a prohibition laid on the people in this island against conscription for military purposes. Is there any reason why we should not have conscription for civil purposes? Why should not every young man in Ireland give up two years of his life in a comradeship of labor with other young men, and be employed under skilled direction in great works of public utility, in the erection of public buildings, the beautifying of our cities, reclamation of waste lands, afforestation, and other desirable objects? The principle of service for the State for military purposes is admitted in every country, even at last by the English-speaking peoples. It is easy to be seen how this principle of conscription could be applied to infinitely nobler ends--to the building up of a beautiful civilization--and might make the country adopting it in less than half a century as beautiful as ancient Attica or majestic as ancient Egypt. While other nations take part of the life of young men for instruction in war, why should not the State in Ireland, more nobly inspired, ask of its young men that they should give equally of their lives to the State, not for the destruction of life, but for the conservation of life? This service might be asked from all--high and low, well and humbly born--except from those who can plead the reasons which exempt people abroad from military service. As things stand today, if the State undertakes any public work, it does it more expensively by far than it would be if undertaken by private enterprise. Every person puts up prices for the State or for municipalities. Labor, land, and materials are all charged at the highest possible rates, whereas if there was any really high conception of citizenship and of the functions of the State, the citizens would agree so that works of public utility, or those which conspired to add to national dignity, should be done at least cost to the community.