Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1917 — Universal Military Service in Line With All the Nation’s Traditions [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Universal Military Service in Line With All the Nation’s Traditions

By CHARLES J. BONAPARTE,

, Farmer Attorney General of United State*

It is often, asserted, and yet more frequently assumed, in the discussion of current events, that compulsory military service is something new and unheard of in the United States; something more or less at variance with the traditions of our early national life and with the practice and counsel of our country’s fathers. This is not merely untrue; it is precisely the reverse of the truth. . ' Those who now advocate the enrollment as soldiers and sailors of all our citizens fit to bear arms are urging a return to. principles universally accepted

and applied during th& first fifty years of our national history, as well as in our entire colonial period, and fully sanctioned by laws in force today and which have been in force, in substantially their present form, from the very foundation of our government. An American mother who:says she didn’t raise her little boy to be a soldier in the day of the nation’s need, if she knows her country’s past history and her country’s present laws, must-know also that she says, in effect, she didn’t raise him to be an American citizen, in the full and honorable sense'of the word; that she has taught him to shirk a part of the duties of a citizen, and precisely that part of those duties which all mankind have ever deemed-it most disastrous to the state and most shameful and dishonorable to the man himself that he should shirk.