Conscription

Conscription

Abstract

In this study we try to explore the concept of conscription in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on the modern day conception and notions about conscription and its relation with various other issues. The research also analyzes many aspects of conscription and tries to gauge its effect on purpose to imply and use conscription. Finally the research describes various factors which are responsible for change in the concepts and beliefs about conscription.

The 21st Approach of Conscription

Introduction

Conscience and the freedom to exercise conscience have long been cherished civil liberties in western democracies. However, during World War I, traditional concepts of conscience and conscientious objection to military service were challenged by the demands of conscription and militarism in the United States and Britain. The phenomenon of the conscription that was prevalent in the old days is different from today's world conception and beliefs about the conscription. In today's era most of the people, researchers, scholars and military heads believe that conscription is no longer effective as it used to be in the older days. The aim and objective of this paper is to talk about the concept of conscription according to the 21st century approach.

About Conscription

In both the United States and Britain prior to the twentieth century, compulsory military service, i.e. conscription, was limited. Conscripting men for military service outside of their local counties for duty in a national army was unknown in the United States until the Civil War or in Britain until World War I. Although both countries had existing traditions of compulsory service for local militia drafts, volunteerism was the preferred method of recruitment. Generous legal provisions exempted or excused most religious conscientious objectors from militia service in both nations. Conscription in the United States during World War I was greatly influenced by America's experience with the Civil War draft. World War I military planners relied heavily on the experiences and mistakes of their Civil War predecessors (Kitfield, 2005). Negative public perceptions of the Civil War draft lingered in 1917, and necessitated the creation of a more equitable, administratively-refined “selective service” for meeting military manpower needs. The total warfare conditions of World War I elevated conscription to a new level of administrative urgency and social acceptability in both countries at the cost of individual freedom. By 1917, the pressing needs of both industrial and military manpower requirements, bolstered by hyper-patriotic government propaganda promoting the war, gave legitimacy to enhanced, state-imposed authority, vis-à-vis the draft, over the individual and his freedom of conscience. The war and conscription eroded traditional, democratic notions of liberty of conscience and the rights of individuals to freely exercise their consciences without penalty. The United States entered the war in April 1917, and Congress passed the second wartime military draft law in American history, the Selective Service Act, one month later in May 1917. The Selective Service System, created to implement the draft law, also provided the administrative framework for the expression of conscience by COs during the ...