For every boy in Europe knows, as soon as he knows anything, that he owes one certain fixed debt, and that is service to his country, to that larger whole that has given him the best part of his own being. If need be, he owes it his life itself. It is an obligation he must fulfill before all other obligations, at no matter what inconvenience or sacrifice to himself, unquestioningly, immediately.
What takes the place for the American youth of this primary obligation? Himself! He is expensively nurtured, schooled, put forward into life--for what? To help himself as best he can at the general table of society. He can never forget himself, subordinate his personal ambition to any transcendent loyalty. He becomes from his cradle the egotist.
To-day under the shadow of world war we are taking thought of national protection, projecting schemes of defense including the enrollment of citizens who may be called upon to fight for their country. It is less important to teach our youth the military lessons of self-protection than it is to teach them the greater lesson of self-forgetfulness, of devotion to a national ideal--so that they may be ready to give their lives for that national ideal as the youth of Europe have given their lives to settle this world cause. Not a few hundreds of thousands of national guards, then, in order to secure ourselves from invasion are what we need, but that every man or woman born into the nation or adopting it as home should be made to feel the obligation of national service. It matters less what form that service should take, whether purely military or partly military and partly social. It is the service, the sense of obligation that counts for the individual and for the nation. The responsibility of service teaches the importance of ideas, the necessity of sacrifice. And he who is ready to sacrifice himself, to forget himself and become absorbed in the life that surrounds him, of which he is but an infinitesimal unit, to which he owes the best in him, has already achieved a larger peace than the pacifist dreams of.
Consider what happened to the youth of France a little more than a year ago. Suddenly with no preparation or warning they were called to defend their country from invasion. It was no longer possible to argue the rights of that diplomatic tangle into which European statesmen had muddled. Whatever the ultimate truth, the ultimate right of the controversy, the state--that larger self which was their home, their mesh of loves and interests and beliefs--demanded their service. The youth of France had been brought up with the knowledge that any day such a sacrifice might be required, with the consciousness deeply rooted in their beings that one of the necessary conditions of their living was to give their all at the call of the state. They conceived of no honorable alternative: it was as inevitable to pay this obligation as it is for decently minded citizens to pay their legal debts. They hurried to their mobilization posts, donned uniforms and equipment, and were shipped away in regiments to the front. Most of them did not worry about the possibility of death, but acted like all healthy human beings, ignoring what they could not affect, caught up in the novelty and the requirements of the new life. Yet deep in the consciousness of the most careless must have lain some thought that he might never return, that the cross-marked grave on the hillside, the pit, or the hospital might be waiting for him.