in examinations stimulates them to make the best
use of their schooldays. These pleas are urged in
rebuttal of the charge that military service is, from
the industrial point of view, pure waste. Where a
voluntary standing army is relied on, and, instead of
the bulk of the population passing through the mili-
tary machine for a year or so, a relatively small
number of men are held to it for the main part of
their lives, they are, plainly, of little force. More-
over, even under the short service system an impor-
tant distinction must be drawn. It may reasonably
be held that army training from, say, 19 to 21 years
of age makes men more fitted for industry than they
were at 19. But this is a very different thing from
holding that it makes them more fitted for industry
than they would have been at 21 had the two preced-
ing years been devoted to employment in industry.
Two years of military service may make a man a
better carpenter than he was before the two years
started, but hardly than he would have been after
two years of carpentering. Thus, whatever benefit
to future efficiency may result from military training
is probably more than outweighed by the loss of the
corresponding benefit that would otherwise have
resulted from industrial experience. It cannot,
therefore, properly be set against the direct loss of
product that the withdrawal of people from two
years of industrial work involves.

3. When service in the army, navy and munition
works is voluntary, so that the pay for sailors and
soldiers must correspond roughly to that accorded
to men of similar capacity in civil life, the proportion

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