Even now I am astonished at
a system which makes young merchants abandon their businesses
at a moment's notice to serve in the ranks, and great employers of
labour go marching with their own labourers, giving only a backward
glance at the ruin of their property and their trade. There is something
magnificent in this, but all one's admiration of a universal military
service which abolishes all distinctions of class and wealth--after all
there were not many embusques, or privileged exemptes--need not
blind one to abuses and unnecessary hardships inflicted upon large
numbers of men.
Abuses there have been in France, as was inevitable in a system like
this, and this general call to the colours inflicted an enormous amount
of suffering upon men who would have suffered more willingly if it had
been to serve France usefully. But in thousands and hundreds of
thousands of cases there was no useful purpose served. General
Joffre had as many men as he could manage along the fighting lines.
More would have choked up his lines of communication and the
whole machinery of the war. But behind the front there were millions
of men in reserve, and behind them vast bodies of men idling in
depots, crowded into barracks, and eating their hearts out for lack of
work.
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