"Conscription" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... propped on his knees, he first looked round as though he were hardly awake yet, and then gave the order to send up his servant. The hotel waiter made a bow and disappeared. The traveller was no other than Lezhnyov. He had come from the country to C—— about some conscription business. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... little to lessen. Few of the people could read, and fewer still could write. They knew nothing but what their priests and politicians told them to believe. They went to their beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they went to mass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to the conscription as their lambs to the slaughter. They understood that there was a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best market for their fruit, their fowls, their lace, their skins. Their brains were as dim as ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... country in which a large standing army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by the conscription or are enlisted. They are thus exposed to early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. On the other hand the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... in the normal, greedy, human way we all have. Bonar Law, departing for once rather unhappily from his 'the Government have given me no information' attitude, announced that the miners were striking against conscription and the war with Russia. Some Labour papers said they were striking against the Government's shifty methods and broken pledges. I am sure both parties credited them with too much idealism and too little ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the Government was denounced for allowing Canada to be drawn into the vortex of militarism and imperialism and for sacrificing the interests of Roman Catholic schools in the West. On every hand the naval policy was attacked as inevitably bringing in its train conscription to fight European wars a contention hotly denied by the Liberals. The Conservative campaign managers made a working arrangement with the Nationalists as to candidates and helped liberally in circulating Bourassa's newspaper, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... Napoleon created companies of voltigeurs armed like dragoons, it was to substitute them for those companies of chasseurs. He composed them of men under five feet in height, in order to bring into use that class of the conscription which measured from four feet ten inches to five feet; and having been until that time exempt, made the burden of conscription fall more heavily on the other classes. This arrangement served to reward a great number of old soldiers, who, being under five feet in height, could not enter ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... a souvenir of the conscription, many of them, as well as the poet, having been forced into the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the question of compulsory service in England. It is not difficult to see that part of England's army must of necessity be a professional army, which can be sent here and there and everywhere, and that conscription would not answer the purpose, for compulsory conscription could hardly demand of its recruits that they should serve in India, in Canada, or in Bermuda or Egypt, for the length of time necessary to make their service of value. Conscription, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Vote on Account of the Army for a trifle of seventy-four millions the WAR MINISTER proudly announced that Britain and Germany were the only countries in the world that had abolished conscription—and Germany's action was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... compulsion, coercion, coaction^, constraint, duress, enforcement, press, conscription. force; brute force, main force, physical force; the sword, ultima ratio [Lat.]; club law, lynch law, mob law, arguementum baculinum^, le droit du plus fort [Fr.], martial law. restraint &c 751; necessity &c 601; force majeure [Fr.]; Hobson's choice. V. compel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he began to talk, and, as he talked, he slowed down. This by no means suited my book, and I seriously wondered whether I should pitch him out and take charge of the thing. He was obviously a weakling, left behind in the conscription, and I could have done it with one hand. But by a fortunate chance I left ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... that called Sally to her conscription? What press-gang of circumstances waylaid her, in what peaceful wandering of life, and bore her off to ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... are reported as raging in all the ports of Japan. Rye was the principal mover in the famous conscription riots of New-York. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... Celine Macqueron and Flore Lengaigne against one another under the pretext of reconciling them. Though she was not devout, she made ardent intercessions to Heaven to reserve for her son a lucky number in the drawing for the conscription, but, after the event, turned her anger against the Deity because her prayers had not been answered. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... months had elapsed that other nations, or even France herself, became aware of the magnitude of the catastrophe which had overtaken Napoleon's host. That he was able to rally himself after it, to carry the French people with him, to enforce a new conscription, and to assume the aggressive in the campaign of 1813, must ever remain a supreme proof ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... cessation of formal hostilities, to express their disapproval of a war waged in their interests by indulging in demonstrations—if so harsh a term may be permitted—directed against the regime which has secured them immunity from invasion, devastation and conscription, and at the same time afforded them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... friendly towards us, and probably prove of benefit both commercially and socially; but only so long as the insular power of England is maintained. Although our army and navy are hardly as strong as they should be, we want no conscription here. What we do want is to preserve the peace and honour of our homes, our children in the colonies, and to increase rather than decrease the power of England for the good of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... 'listed," said John, "an' a good thing too if he has. It makes a man of a young fellow. I'm for conscription myself—always have been." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... it must be remembered that if the ancient father was by virtue of his military training and activities separated from the domestic interests which he so often and with full social permission sacrificed to war and preparation for war, he was at the same time under perpetual conscription by the community of which he was a part to serve as protector of his own family and the families of those of the same social group. The social pressure upon the father-head of the family was therefore severe and unremitting, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... in the clamor which raged up and down the table till Mrs. Westangle ended it by saying, "There's no obligation on any one to take part in the hostilities. There won't be any conscription; it's a free fight that will be open to everybody." She folded the paper she had been reading from and put it in her lap, in default of a pocket. She ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "humble," as his name denotes, and may well have formed the bulk of the subject-population. He was a free man, not a beggar. He was not without considerable means, as we see from the sections referring to theft from him. He had slaves,(62) and seems to have been liable to conscription. His fees to a doctor or surgeon were less than those paid by an amelu. He paid less to his wife for a divorce,(63) and could assault another poor man more cheaply than could an amelu. There can be no doubt that the amelu was the "gentleman" or "nobleman," ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... to bed, smoked his cigar and read his paper. He was absorbed in an article on conscription, when all of a sudden Helena's door was flung open, and footsteps and screams from the drawing-room fell on his ears. He jumped up and rushed out of his room, believing that the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... strutted towards the door. Mr. Callice paused to shake hands with Malcolm Sage, and then followed the general, who, with a final glare at William Johnson, as he held open the swing-door, passed out into the street, convinced that now the country was no longer subject to conscription it would go rapidly ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... reduction of light dues was to be made to the firms who undertook to train boys for the merchant service and the Royal Naval Reserve. Needless to say, the very nature of the conditions caused it to fail. In the first place the parents of the boys looked upon the proposal as a form of conscription; and in the second, owners would have no truck with a partial abatement of the light dues. They very properly claimed that the charge should be abolished altogether. All other countries, except America and Turkey, have made the lighting ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... books should be unknown, because, apart from their intrinsic merits, both books treat not so much of the theory as of the practical application of the theory to life, of the attitude of Christianity to military service, which is especially important and interesting now in these clays of universal conscription. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... to defend our homes and our native land. And therefore we are in favour of maintaining national defensive forces in the highest possible state of efficiency. But that does not mean that we are in favour of the present system of organizing those forces. We do not believe in conscription, and we do not believe that the nation should continue to maintain a professional standing army to be used at home for the purpose of butchering men and women of the working classes in the interests of a handful of capitalists, as has been done at Featherstone ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... this morning, "your Commune is constituted." Then follows decree upon decree. White posters are being stuck up everywhere. Why are they at the Hotel de Ville, if not to publish decrees? The conscription is abolished. We shall see no more poor young fellows marching through the town with their numbers in their caps, and fired with that noble patriotism which is imbibed in the cabarets at so much a glass. We shall have no more soldiers, but to make up for that we shall all ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... case, they were well aware of the phenomenal rise in power of the British forces. Five million men had volunteered to fight for king and country; and now, on the top of that, there was news that Great Britain had adopted conscription; every man up to the age of forty-one was to become a soldier, was to fight for that ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Orange Free State and the transfer of allegiance was enthusiastically approved by a public meeting held at Colesberg on November 14. This action not only brought the inhabitants under the commando law of the adjacent Republic by which a form of conscription was enforced, but also overcame the scruples of the Free Staters who could still maintain that they were only engaged in defending their own territory. Simultaneously Du Plooy with a commando which had crossed at Bethulie annexed the Burghersdorp district; while Olivier with a force mainly composed ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... population of America, not thinned by any conscription, multiplies with prodigious rapidity, and the day may before [long be] seen, when they will number sixty or eighty millions of souls. This parvenu [one recently risen to notice] is aware of his ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... chronicle. It is unlikely that, in years hence, when the full history of the war is written, the German offensive of 1918 will not be taken as the turning point in the great conflict. For the second time since the invasion of Belgium and for the first since conscription, readers of the Times saw a black line sagging across the map towards the English Channel. In France at the end of March conditions meriting the popular description of 'wind up' were recognisable. Bases were crowded to overflowing. Train services were seriously deranged by the German ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Proposed visit to Germany Return to France English adulation of Louis Napoleon Mismanagement of Crimean War Continental disparagement of England Necessity for a conscription in England Disastrous effects of the war ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... hard to keep up courage in the dull hopelessness of these grey autumn days of suspense and boding news. But we are beginning to 'get in a low,' as old Highland Sandy says, over the approaching election. Conscription is the real issue at stake and it will be the most exciting election we ever had. All the women 'who have got de age'—to quote Jo Poirier, and who have husbands, sons, and brothers at the front, can vote. Oh, if I were only twenty-one! Gertrude and Susan are both furious ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... has been defined as "a policy which maintains huge standing armies for purposes of aggression." It should be noticed that the mere fact that a nation, through universal conscription, maintains a large standing army in times of peace does not convict it of militarism. Every one of the great European powers except England maintained such an army, and yet Germany was the only one that we can say ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... Tax.—Payable by Moslems who are drawn by conscription, but wish to escape service, at ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... marry their sons early to escape the conscription. In addition to all this, she was obstinately determined not to marry a soldier: she did not intend to take a man and then give him up to the Emperor; she wanted him for herself alone. With these views, she found it therefore impossible, from ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Shamanism, &c.; but although some 130 sects exist, the bulk of the Russians proper belong to the Greek Church. Education is backward, more than 85 per cent. of the people being illiterate; there are eight universities. Conscription is enforced; the army is the largest in the world. Government is an absolute monarchy, save in FINLAND (q. v.); the ultimate legislative and executive power is in the hands of the czar, but there is a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to answer: "Why, no one, Captain." My father shared the same sentiments. Taken by the English while serving under Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, he passed several years on the pontoons. His great delight was to go each year, when the conscription was drawn, and humiliate the recruits by relating his experiences as a volunteer. Regarding with contempt those who were drawing lots, he would add: "We used not to act in this way," and he would shrug his shoulders over the degeneracy ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... military affairs and he thought that this lonesome old weaver was in his dotage. But surely this new road could be for but one purpose, and that was the quick transfer of troops from the Alsatian front to the Swiss border. And the sudden conscription of women and girls for the making of the road seemed plausible enough. Could it be that this furnished a clew to the whereabouts of Florette Leteur? And if it did, what hope was there of reaching her, ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... time for recreation, and those who do understand little of its possibilities. Religion is largely a matter of inherited superstition, and as a superior force in life is quite lacking. To people of this sort comes the vision of a land where government is democratic, military conscription is unknown, wages are high, and there is unlimited opportunity to get ahead. Encouraged by agents of interested parties, many a man accumulates or borrows enough money to pay his passage and to get by the immigration officer on the American side, and faces westward with high hope of bettering ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... was recently made by the representatives of the miners that industrial action would be taken unless the Government at once withdrew all troops from Russia and abandoned conscription. There has been, it appears, an unfortunate misunderstanding as to the exact meaning of the term "industrial action." On Sunday a meeting of protest against the miners' proposal was held under the auspices of The United Brotherhood of Worshipful Lead-Swingers and Affiliated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... reasons that made me wish to be a priest. I showed my mother that her best means of protection would be to marry my sister, as soon as she was old enough, to some man of strong character, and to look for help to this new family. Under pretence of avoiding the conscription without costing my father a penny to buy me off, I entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at the age of nineteen. Within those celebrated old buildings I found a peace and happiness that were troubled only by the thought of my mother and my sister's sufferings. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... pot. To seek in this age and country a companion for these old fellows would be to insult our Western civilization. Let us invent a purely fantastic character; one who could not sleep at night for fear of Prussians and Social Democrats, who clamoured daily for a dozen Dreadnoughts, conscription, and the head of Mr. Keir Hardie on a charger, and yet spent his leisure warning readers of the daily papers against the danger of admitting to any share of power a sex notorious for its panic-fearfulness, intolerance, and lack of humour; such ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... substance on the ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had gone off to the army hatless and wearing straw shoes came home hatted and sometimes booted. Military service deprived farmers of labour, and their boys while away asked their parents for money. Conscription pressed more heavily on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued their education to the middle school, and attendance at a middle school entitled a young man to reduction of military service ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... see, is lifting up his sweet voice in praise of Conscription. It is only at long intervals that one reads this kind of thing in our reviews or newspapers, and I am happy in believing that most English people are affected by it even as I am, with the sickness of dread and of disgust. That the thing is impossible in England, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... to give the poor man a bed in the hospital. Baturi had no bones broken, and in a few days was quite well, so I sent him on to Brunswick with a passport from General Salomon. The loss of his teeth secured him from the conscription; this, at any rate, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is the white family so wonderfully described in Mrs. Stowe's 'Dred'—whose only slave brings up the orphaned children of his masters with such exquisitely grotesque and pathetic tenderness. From such the conscription which has fed the Southern army in the deplorable civil conflict now raging in America has drawn its rank and file. Better 'food for powder' the world could scarcely supply. Fierce and idle, with hardly one of the necessities or amenities that belong ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Gen. McClellan, instead of "taking Richmond," had closed his campaign on the Peninsula most ingloriously. The President was compelled to make another call for troops—60,000. Conscription was unavoidable in many places, and prejudice against the military employment of Negroes began to decrease in proportion to the increase of the chances of white men to be drafted. On the 16th of July, 1862, Gen. Henry Wilson, United States Senator from Massachusetts, and Chairman of the Committee ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... to enrich the literary language and to form his new Latin resembled, to use his own striking simile, the exhausted and unwilling population from which the legions could only now be recruited by the most drastic conscription. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of troops drafted from the conquered populations. Certain of the soldiers were selected to serve as the body-guard of the King; they had a commander of their own and doubtless possessed special privileges. The army was recruited by conscription, the obligation to serve in it being part of the burdens which had to be borne by the peasantry. They could be relieved of it by the special favor of the government just as they could be relieved of the necessity of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... regard to England. The hon. and learned Gentleman, of all men, ought not to entertain this fear of United States aggression, for he is always boasting of his readiness to come into the field himself. I grant that it would be a great necessity indeed which would justify a conscription in calling out the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I say he ought to consider well before he spreads these alarms among the people. For the sake of this miserable jealousy, and that he may help to break up a friendly nation, he would depart from the usages of nations, and create ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... his family for the purpose of buying out co-heirs under the Odels ret, adding thereby, as we have already shown, to the indebtedness with which the land is burdened. Others, also, maintain that many young men emigrate from Norway in order to avoid military conscription, which, although milder there in its demands than in most other European countries where that system exists, undoubtedly diminishes the quantity and deteriorates the quality of agricultural labour. The strongest ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to believe, that this movement among the Druzes grew mainly out of their recent subjugation by the Egyptians, and their apprehension of a military conscription. They had always professed Mohammedanism hypocritically, to escape the oppressions which Christians suffered under Moslem rule; but now the Christians fared better than the Moslems, in that they were not liable to be ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... the soil of another nation. Naturally, in many cases, he was slow to a realization that this also was his own national defense. But by the volunteer system alone, England enlisted over two million men before conscription ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... great good fortune this was the evening of General Slaughter's weekly inspection, and all the redoubts were manned by their respective garrisons, consisting half of soldiers and half of armed citizens who had been exempted from the conscription either by their age or nationality, or had purchased substitutes. One of the forts was defended by a burly British guard, commanded ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... of Tartars, upon whose superstition she practises successfully, and so conducts herself in general that Peter falls in love with her, and they are betrothed, though she is not aware of the real person who is her suitor. Meanwhile the conscription takes place, and to save her newly wedded brother she volunteers for fifteen days in his place, disguising herself as a soldier. In the next act we find Catharine going her rounds as a sentinel in the Russian ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... and he is engaged in clearing it out. But if you are to take any interest in the man, I must tell you his history. His name is Gondrin. He was only eighteen years old when he was drawn in the great conscription of 1792, and drafted into a corps of gunners. He served as a private soldier in Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, followed him to Egypt, and came back from the East after the Peace of Amiens. In the time of the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... population and the disappearance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen "chained like wild beasts—free Osmanlees driven along the road like slaves to a market"—free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled because ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... conscription, and the straightest and strongest of the young men will leave their ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... out the last issue of the Worker, which quoted speeches made in Congress, calling for conscription, declaring that such a measure was an essential war-step. "Don't you see what they're up to? An' if we're goin' to stop them, we gotta act now, before it's too late. Hadn't I just as good go to jail here in Leesville as be shipped over to Europe to be shot—or maybe drowned by a ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the mountain peaks and through the pale darkness dim shadows were silently moving. These shadows are the brave mountaineers, who have come to defend France at the summons of Simon, who, in spite of his wooden leg, displayed immense activity. Among these there were no youths. The conscription had long since swallowed them up. They were elderly men and boys. Two of them were but fourteen, but ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... December 1917, passed quietly, making no change in the political situation, although there was a strong feeling in Quebec against conscription, which was the dominant issue in that province. On that question the Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King supported Sir Wilfrid Laurier in his opposition to compulsory service, being one of the few English Canadian Liberals ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... them are quick-witted and ready in reply, they are not boorish or sullen, they have more readiness—at least in manner—than the germanic races, and are, as a rule, full of gaiety and humour. These people do not want war, they hate the conscription which takes away the flower of the flock; they regard with anything but pleasure the rather dictatorial 'Moniteur' that comes to them by post sometimes, whether they ask for it or not, and would much rather ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... two modes of raising armies within the Confederate States, viz., voluntary enlistment and draft, or conscription. I perceive, in the delegation of power to raise armies, no restriction as to the mode of procuring troops. I see nothing which confines Congress to one class of men, nor any greater power to receive volunteers than conscripts into its service. I see no limitation by which enlistments ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... this decision was announced to the Zulus, Sir Bartle Frere called upon Cetewayo to disband his army, to abandon the custom of universal conscription, and of the refusal of marriage to the young men until they had proved their prowess in battle. To this demand Cetewayo returned an evasive answer, and an ultimatum was then sent ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... control of a code prepared and promulgated through the public press. They who have made these abortive attempts have been little aware of the power with which they have to contend. Napoleon himself, who could cause the conscription to enter every man's dwelling, could not bring the coteries of the Faubourg under his influence. In this respect, society will make its own laws, appeal to its own opinions, and submit only to its own edicts. ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... outlaws of the Middle Age, getting no justice from man, broke loose from society, and while they plundered their oppressors, kept up some sort of rude justice and humanity among themselves. Many, too, fled, and became robbers, to escape the merciless conscription which carried off from every province the flower of the young men, to shed their blood on foreign battle-fields. In time, too, many of these conscripts became monks, and the great monasteries of Scetis and Nitria ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... I read, opened his campaign by stowing away in one of her boats what time H.M.S. Archimandrite lay off Funchal. "M. de C." was, always on behalf of his country, a Madeira Portuguese fleeing from the conscription. They discovered him eighty miles at sea and bade him assist the cook. So far this seemed fairly reasonable. Next day, thanks to his histrionic powers and his ingratiating address, he was promoted to ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... arms in the Great War to good purpose, sending 40,000 men to the Front, though its good work has been obscured by the political propaganda made out of the Anti-Conscription campaign. Sober politicians—by no means on the side of the French-Canadians—told me that there was rather more smoke in that matter than circumstances created, and in Britain particularly the business was over-exaggerated. There was a good deal of politics mixed up in the attitude ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... and their leaders dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggled through generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily accorded them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear is justified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription. This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... Mr. John D. Rockefeller's social life and connections it would be easy to name a dozen men and women who by a conspiracy of conscription could profoundly affect the plans and profits of the Standard Oil Company. I have been asked: "If John D. Rockefeller were introduced to you by a friend, would you refuse to take his hand?" I certainly should—and if ever thereafter I ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... don't fancy he heard a gun fired, unless it went off by accident in some training-camp for recruits. He got himself exempt from service in the field by working in the government saltworks. A heap of the boys escaped conscription that way." ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Government would gain nothing in the process of capital conscription and the country would be thrown into chaos for the time being. The man who has saved would be penalized; he who has wasted would be favoured. Thrift and constructive effort, resulting in the needful and fructifying accumulation of capital, would ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... as we all knew, were conscripting every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five; and now they had passed a law for the further conscription of boys from fourteen to eighteen, calling them the junior reserves, and men from forty-five to sixty to be called the senior reserves. The latter were to hold the necessary points not in immediate danger, and especially ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... expediency of deserting, to rid themselves of "their carnal employment." Nay, to such a height did this spirit prevail, that it never stopped till it taught the Roman youth in Italy the expedient of cutting off the thumbs of their right hands in order to avoid the conscription, and that they might be allowed to count their beads at ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... new Military Service Bill brought a storm of accusations against the Government for having broken its election-pledges. Had not the PRIME MINISTER and his colleagues gone to the country on a cry of "No Conscription"? The Member for Derby was particularly emphatic in his denunciation; but Mr. CHURCHILL effectively countered him by quoting Mr. THOMAS'S own translation of the pledges in question ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... that this publication will encourage all young men to "take their places in the ranks" and bear arms for the King and Empire, regardless of whether our military system be volunteering, conscription or ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... sometimes ill-adapted to the country and were often hated vehemently by the persons whom they shook out of their age-long comatose condition. Napoleon would have modified the methods of recruiting had he known how much resentment his conscription was arousing. Venice had obtained most faithful soldiers; this was one of the few trades that she permitted, but she had never said they were obliged to serve. Napoleon's system caused great numbers of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... A universal conscription was at once ordered, new taxes were imposed, and the salaries of the magistrates and civil functionaries suspended. All business came to a standstill, and property fell to a fourth of its former value. The imposts were ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... you are altogether wrong, my dear Torcuata, for such a thing as conscription was not known among the Moors, nor is this a discharge. This ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... The necessity of conscription is obvious beyond argument to a continental people still cherishing old traditions of nationality, and the military training which is compulsory for all young men of average health, not only shapes the bodies of their lads, but also ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... feeling toward the Negro would be used as officers, but in the pressure of military routine this distinction was not always observed. Opinion for the race gained force after the Draft Riot in New York (July, 1863), when Negroes in the city were persecuted by the opponents of conscription. Soon a distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. The Confederates were ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... displaying all the bumps of obstinacy; for his nose was so small as to be lost between his red cheeks, while a stiff beard hid his powerful jaws. He came from Saint Firmin, a village about six miles from Plassans, where he had been a cow-boy, until he drew for the conscription; and his misfortunes dated from the enthusiasm that a gentleman of the neighbourhood had shown for the walking-stick handles which he carved out of roots with his knife. From that moment, having become a rustic ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... continue: we loved, and were happy in each other's love. The birds in their little nest could not be happier than Alphonse and his Annette. Then came the blow — sapristi! — when I think of it. Messieurs will forgive me if I wipe away a tear. Mine was an evil number; I was drawn for the conscription. Fortune would be avenged on me for having won ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard |
