Universal Military Training in Modern History

Abstract

T HE liability to military duty by every able-bodied male citizen has long been an accepted principle wherever communities have banded together for their mutual benefit and protection. Membership in a community from which one receives benefits carries along with it certain corresponding duties. In the words of George Washington: It may be laid down as a primary position . . . that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government, owes not only a portion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it. What the first President laid down as a first postulate of his defense plan was nothing new to the thirteen Colonies of his day, which had carried across the Atlantic