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1. WHAT WAS TNE ORIGIN OF MOD MILITARY CONSCRIPTION AND W WERE SOME OF THE EFFECTS? The first military conseription law in the me sense was passed in France in 1708. It prescribe liability of young men to serve if required from twenticth to twenty-fifth year of age. Col. Frederick Natusch, C.B., wrote in the ele edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (1910): There is perhaps no law on the statute-books of ar nation which hay exercised a more far-reaching influcn on the future of humanity than this Hite-hnown Freac act of 1798, introduced by General Jourdan to the Counc of the 500, for it was the power thus conferred upen th French government which alone rendered the Napoleon policy of conquest possible, “T can afford to expend thirty thousand m month!” this boast of Napoleon’s, made to Metterni Schonbraun in 1805, has determined the trend of ¢ from that day forward, not only on the battlefield also in the workshops, and forms even at the presen the chief guaranice for peace, stability and econ development upon the continent of Europe. (Italics Plied.) What had become of this guarantee of peac 1914? by 1939? To continue from the Encyclopedia Brittanica: ‘The essential importance of the event lies in thi that at a critical moment this law, passed by an obscm body of men—absolutely in defiance of ths opinion of th greatest reformer that France at that moment had di: covered, Carust, and of the feclings of a very large pr portion of the whole community—becuie permanent the action of causes ect in ination by Napoleon, whic ultimately compelled ail Furope to adopt simitar legi ation, Prussia pursued this Napoleonic idea of conseri to its logiral conclusion, and in 1906 “definitely afl the principle of universal service without distinctic Glass or right of exemption by purchase.” Can an doubt the disastrous resilis for the world of 323: 13}