Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"

proportion of the able-bodied manhood of a country, is now rarely practised. The obvious unfairness of selection by lot has always had the result of admitting substitutes procured by those on whom the lot has fallen; hence the poorer classes are unduly burdened with the defence of the country, while the rich escape with a money payment. In practice, conscription invariably produces a professional long-service army in which each soldier is paid to discharge the obligations of several successive conscripts. Such an army is therefore a voluntary long-service army in the main, _plus_ a proportion of the unwilling men found in every forced levy. The gravest disadvantage is, however, the fact that the bulk of the nation has not been through the regular army at all; it is almost impossible to maintain a large and costly standing army and at the same time to give a full training to auxiliary forces. The difference between a "national guard" such as that of the siege of Paris in 1870-71 and a _Landwehr_ produced under the German system, was very wide. Regarded as a compromise between universal and voluntary service, conscription still maintains a precarious existence in Europe. As the cardinal principle of recruiting armies, it is completely obsolete.