Mandatory Service Quotes

Conscription would amount to the sacrifice of nine-tenths of our moral case in this war. It would not only amount to an admission—wholly unjustified—that the heart of the country is not in the war…. It will change the basis of our participation. It will no longer be the war of the British people; it will be the war of the British governing classes.

This system of military conscription … is not only inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of the Constitution, but also with all the principles of civil liberty.

In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.

All able bodied male citizens … are hereby declared to be the National Forces.

A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.

In my day, when I was a young kid, army duty was compulsory in South Africa or you go to jail. I had the choice, so I spent a year in the entertainment unit, and outside of doing shows - and I used to write for, arrange for the big band - outside of doing that, I actually had a rock band in the army.

The only way to have a volunteer army is to draft them.

It is not believed that a force of more than 400,000 can be secured or maintained by voluntary enlistments. An increase beyond that number would necessitate the simultaneous enactment of a selective service act.

The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds. A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why, The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.

So the whole of war, when you look at it is probably run by professional soldiers, and the rest of them are just recruits, or people who are just forced to join the army.

I've never been a soldier. In Denmark, at 18, as a male, you go in a draw, and if they pick you, you go and serve for a year. I didn't.

New Yorkers should know that no one in the Administration, at the Department of Defense, or at the Selective Service System is advocating the reinstatement of the mandatory draft in any form.

The average bright young man who is drafted hates the whole business because an army always tries to eliminate the individual differences in men.

To me, political office should be like jury duty. You should just get a notice in the mail one day and say, 'Aw, sh - , I'm secretary of state next month.

Conscription is the cemetery where every vestige of your liberty is to be buried.

Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damned near killed the country.

We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education.

I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.

Nobody wants to go to war, but the burden of service cannot fall only on volunteers who, are attracted to the military for financial reasons.

But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.

Since January 2003, at the height of the debate on the possible unilateral strike against Iraq, I have advocated for a reinstatement of the military draft to ensure a more equitable representation of people making sacrifices in wars in which the United States is engaged.

I think a draft produces a better Army than the one we would have with all volunteers, because I think you get average Americans if you have a draft. And if it's an all-volunteer Army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don't have anything else to do, they don't have a job, or they can't find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn't produce the best Army.

I never had the chance to decide; I was drafted to serve my nation. While I received a deferment to attend school, I ultimately served in the United States Army in the years following the Korean conflict.

The draft is the largest educational institutional in the world.

I heard there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft.