"Conscript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascertained now, I believe, to have been a mediaeval bakehouse), not of the tower of the glaciere and the horrors perpetrated here in the Revolution, but of the military burden of young France. One wonders how young France en- dures it, and one is forced to believe that the French conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humor, greater toughness than is commonly supposed by those who consider only the more relaxing influences of French civilization. I hope he finds occasional com- pensation for such moments as I saw those damp young peasants passing ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Christopher, Life of. By Washington Irving. Companions of Jehu. By Alexandre Dumas. Complete Angler. By Walton And Cotton. Conduct of Life. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Confessions of an Opium Eater. By Thomas de Quincey. Conquest of Granada. By Washington Irving. Conscript. By Erckmann-Chatrian. Conspiracy of Pontiac. By Francis Parkman, Jr. Conspirators. By Alexandre Dumas. Consuelo. By George Sand. Cook's Voyages. By Captain James Cook. Corinne. By Madame de Stael. Countess ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... and each furnished with a Cabinet selected by the monarch—Governments which can make war without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies, through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... English Antiquary John Leland, speaking much in the praise of Sir Thomas Wiat the Elder, as well for his Learning, as other excellent Qualities, meet for a man of his Calling; calls this Earl the conscript enrolled Heir of the said Sir Thomas Wiat: writing to him ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... words that have been naturalized: scribe, prescribe, ascribe, proscribe, transcribe, circumscribe, subscriber, indescribable, scribble, script, scripture, postscript, conscript, rescript, manuscript, nondescript, inscription, superscription, description. It is clear that these words are each other's kith and kin in blood, and that the strain or stock common to all is scribe or (as sometimes modified) script. What does this strain signify? The idea of writing. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thing of no moment, O Conscript Fathers, you are now called upon to decide: whether to one man by the counsel and advice of Curators it is to be permitted that he should take away from you the power of placing in the Proscholium the instruments of celerity, the assistances of (your) feet, the machines appointed by a certain ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... rest than most Dutch towns, and well merited the name of New Amsterdam, given it by its founders. The ground it covers was at one time divided into hill and dale; but with eyes wide open to business, and close sealed against taste, the conscript fathers of our infant Rome shaved smooth every ant-hill that rose in their path, and to their inheritors have bequeathed a love of their trim lines of beauty, for they are proceeding on the levelling system with a worthy pains-taking that will in due time ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... born in Paris but spent most of his youth in Havre, where he met a painter of harbours and shipping scenes called Boudin. Through his influence Monet studied out-of-door effects, and was beginning to do fairly good work, when he was drawn as a conscript and sent to Algeria. It is written that Monet discovered that "green, seen under strong sunshine is not green, but yellow; that the shadows cast by sunlight upon snow or upon brightly lighted surfaces are not black, but blue; and that a white dress, seen under the shade ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... for weeks in private about the lethargy of the people—the slowness of men to enlist. But they seemed to me to complain with insufficient reason. For now they come by thousands. They do need more men in the field, and they may conscript them, but I doubt the necessity. But I run across such incidents as these: I met the Dowager Countess of D—— yesterday—a woman of 65, as tall as I and as erect herself as a soldier, who might be taken for a woman of 40, prematurely gray. "I had five sons in the Boer War. I have three ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... self-importance, overlook. These oppressors have no power over other lives except what God allows, and bewildered humanity concedes. Not only is the great plan whole in the mind of God, but every single minutest life is considered as well. In the very case you spoke of, the little conscript, torn from his home to fight a tyrant's battles, hectored and ill-treated, and then shot down upon some crowded battle-field, that is precisely the discipline which at that point of time his soul ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... often appeared to be regarded with a mixture of alarm and indulgence, as if they would be disappointing if they weren't rather odd and yet might be dangerous if not carefully watched. Our young man had come to entertain a kindness for these conscript fathers of invisible families, who had something of the toga in the voluminous folds of their conversation, but were otherwise rather bare and bald, with stony wrinkles in their faces, like busts and statues of ancient law-givers. There seemed to him something chill and exposed in their ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... accepted as law whatever his friend said or did. And although their friendship, such as it was, lasted only two years, Keith did not take up smoking until he was in camp as a conscript at the age ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... of the Indian Office keep faith with the refugees. Quite strenuously, too, he advocated further enlistments from among the Indians, especially from among those yet in Indian Territory. If the United States did not take care, the Confederates would successfully conscript where the Federals might easily recruit. In this matter as in many another, he had Blunt's unwavering support; for Blunt wanted the officers of the embryo fourth and fifth regiments to secure their commands. Blunt's military district ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... death, and the other full of the pleasures of peace. As the tide of war surged nearer and nearer, and the demand for recruits became clamorous, the people of the valley bethought them of the gaunt but sturdy men who lived on the mountain. A conscript officer, representing the necessities of a new government, made a journey thither—a little excursion full of authority and consequence. As he failed to return, another officer, similarly equipped and ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Conscription Law operated mainly as a stimulus to voluntary enlistment. The volunteer received, as the conscript did not, a bounty from the Government; States, counties, and smaller localities, when once a quota was assigned to them, vied with one another in filling their quota with volunteers, and for that purpose added to the Government bounty. It goes without saying that in a new country, with ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... marching forward to the firing-line. For as long as history lasts the imagination of our people will strive to conjure up the vision of those boys who, in the year of 1915, went out to Flanders, not as conscript soldiers, but as volunteers, for the old country's sake, to take their risks and "do their bit" in the world's bloodiest war. I saw those fellows day by day, touched hands with them, went into the trenches with ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... would only therefore be touched by a general levy en masse—not even perhaps by that, so far off were they, and so near the frontier, where a reluctant man-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape, as the unwilling conscript sometimes does now. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... you, Conscript Fathers, expect that I shall make any harsh proclamation or perform any cruel act merely because I have conquered and am able to say whatever I may please without being called to account, and to do with ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... coats—but the croakers distilled their poison, working busily in the darkness. It was the croakers who bought up the supplies, and hoarded them in garrets, and retailed them in driblets, thereby causing the enormous prices which, according to them, foretold the coming downfall. They evaded the conscript officers; grew fat on their extortions; and one day you would miss them from their accustomed haunts—they had flitted across the Potomac, and were drinking their wine in ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... plunder. For months past—yes, for years—the two great armies have scouted these hills, have battled for them, and every forward or backward movement of the contesting lines has left its worthless horde of stragglers behind, until with guerilla and bushwhacker, fleeing conscript and deserter, it has become such a meeting-place of rascality and crime as to be a ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... to the last, that Cupid, as a step-husband, had no legitimate connection with any of the glistening, thick-lipped, chubby set. But, even closer family ties than those which bound my slaves to me, are broken by the pressure of human institutions. The conscript fathers of New York had long before determined that domestic slavery should not continue within their borders; and, one by one, these younger dependants dropped off, to seek their fortunes in town, or in other portions of the State; until few were left beside Neb, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... that rang with the echoes of his own footsteps, and was obliged to ask the way to the mayor's house of a weaver who was working late. The magistrate was not far to seek, and in a few minutes the conscript was sitting on a stone bench in the mayor's porch waiting for his billet. He was sent for, however, and confronted with that functionary, who scrutinized him closely. The foot soldier was a good-looking ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... courage of her Martin's return. And Angelot, for his part, though he would not for worlds have said so, saw no hope of it at all. The last letter from Martin had come many months ago. The poor conscript, the young Angevin peasant, tall like his father, with his mother's quiet, dark face, was probably lying heaped and hidden among other dead conscripts at the foot of some ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... short, to possess one small fragment of the world's surface; to have a hut, a cabin, or a cottage that was verily my own, to eat the fruits of my own labour on the soil—this seemed to me the crown and goal of all human felicity. Conscript of the city as I was, drilled and driven daily in the grim barrack-yard of despotic civilisation, yet I was a deserter at heart; an earth-hunger as rapacious and intense as that of any French or Irish peasant burned in my bones, and, like the peasant conscript that I truly ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Herald of the Latines Hath hied him back in state; The Fathers of the City 115 Are met in high debate. Then spake the elder Consul, An ancient man and wise: "Now hearken, Conscript Fathers,[25] To that which I advise. 120 In seasons of great peril Tis good that one bear sway; Then choose we a Dictator, Whom all men shall obey. Camerium[26] knows how deeply 125 The sword of Aulus bites, And all our city calls him The man of seventy fights. ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... of his French Play of Salome, accepted by SARAH B., having been refused by the Saxon Licenser of Plays, The O'SCAR, dreams of becoming a French Citizen, but doesn't quite "see himself," at the beginning of his career, as a conscript in the French Army, and so, to adapt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, 'I am ready!' Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and announces 'The Young Conscript!' Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... success of his first essay, Scheffer continued to paint a series of small pictures, representing simple and affecting scenes from common life, some of which are familiar to all. "The Soldier's Widow," "The Conscript's Return," "The Orphans at their Mother's Tomb," "The Sister of Charity," "The Fishermen before a Storm," "The Burning of the Farm," and "The Scene of the Invasion in 1814," are titles which give an idea of the range of his subjects and the tenor of his thoughts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... not been for this same hound, Pharaoh. About six o'clock in the evening Oliver came off duty after an eight-hour shift in the tunnel, leaving Higgs in command for a little while until it was time for Quick to take charge. I had been at work outside all day in connection with the new conscript army, a regiment of which was in revolt, because the men, most of whom were what we should call small-holders, declared that they wanted to go home to weed their crops. Indeed, it had proved necessary for the Child of Kings herself to be summoned to plead with them and condemn some ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... for his father sprang from the halo of military service encircling Moses ever since it leaked out through the lips of the Bube, that he had been a conscript in Russia and been brutally treated by the sergeant. But Moses could not be got to speak of his exploits. Solomon pressed him to do so, especially when his father gave symptoms of inviting him to the study of Rashi's Commentary. To-night Moses brought out a Hebrew tome, and said, "Come, Solomon. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 'But, you know, O conscript father,' said Carlo, willing to fall a little into his mood, 'you know that nothing will be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... desperate were the shifts to which the South was put for soldiers. At first every young man was eager to rush to the front. But as time passed, and the great armies of the North were formed, it became necessary to force men into the ranks, to "conscript" them; and in 1862 an act of the Confederate Congress made all males from eighteen to thirty-five subject to military duty. In September, 1862, all men from eighteen to forty-five, and later from sixteen to sixty, were subject to conscription. The slaves, of course, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... value of our colonies yet—as a training ground for our soldiers. The British army is the smallest in Europe, but it remains to be seen what account it will give of itself if it is ever brought into contact with these huge, peace-trained conscript monsters.' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... purposes. The diaries are distributed by the associations and "afterwards examined and rewarded"—a plan which would hardly work in the West. There are Y.M.A.s which make a point of seeing off conscripts with flags and music. Others have fallen on the more economical plan of "writing to the conscript as often as possible and helping with labour the family which is suffering from the loss of his services." By some Y.M.A.s "old people are respected and comforted." More than one association has a practice ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... be incurred and finally to express a desire to in passing the Oder, see peace concluded. Napoleon received this communication with a very bad grace. He thought the Senators very bold to meddle with his affairs, treated the conscript fathers of France as if they had been inconsiderate youths, protested, according to custom, his sincere love of peace, and told the deputation that it was Prussia, backed by Russia, and not he, who ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... enemy is death before a firing squad. The cases must have been so numerous and the ordeal withstood at the front so terrible that punishment became impracticable. In extenuation it may be pointed out that the French army, like any conscript army, contains every able-bodied man of the nation, a certain proportion of whom are inevitably mentally below par and have been sent to war against their will or inclination. The British are the only ones who have fought night and day from the beginning ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... and said: "Conscript Fathers, I beg to withdraw my plea to be excused as inadequate," and the House approved the modesty of the remark and the reason. However, I was drawn to act as I did not only by the applause of the Senate, though that had great weight with me, but by ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... which you tried to bribe the most miserable little loafer in Hammersmith as if he were a cynical condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city. It is not the fact, my dear sir. You have been misinformed. The British Army is not at this moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army. It is a volunteer army in the strict sense of the word; nor do I object to your calling it an amateur army. There is no compulsion, and there is next to no pay. It is at this moment drawn from every class ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... the succeeding years, have nevertheless been the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers should pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his corps was composed of those same Germans whom Ewell had used so hardly at Cross Keys. Many of them were old soldiers, who had borne arms in Europe; but the stern discipline and trained officers of conscript armies were lacking in America, and the Confederate volunteers had little respect for these foreign levies. Nor were Sigel's dispositions a brilliant example of offensive tactics. His three divisions, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of course, and does he love it. That'll keep him out of mischief. Dolf Kellton's secretary; he has an office force at the Academy and can conscript students to help. He's organizing a research team from his seniors and post-grad students to work in the Planetary Library at Storisende. There are a lot of old Third Force records there; he may find something useful. Of course, Lester ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... hospital service. Comparatively few fell before the bullets or machetes of the insurgents—for, as we shall see, the revolutionists adopted the tactics of Fabius—but by thousands they succumbed to fevers of every kind. Death without glory was the hapless lot of the Spanish conscript. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... brought in by a sweet girl, who blushed and smiled most charmingly as she fell over the corner of a chair. Her father afterwards related her simple history in brief. She was the belle in Vienne, and was courted by two or three of her own condition, but was inflexibly attached to a young conscript. "You will doubtless hear him before you depart," continued the landlord, "for he is almost always behind that garden hedge, playing on his flageolet."—The lover it seems was the young fifer. Mademoiselle St. Sillery now became very restless. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... liberty of the press. They claim the right to seal every man's lips, and stop every man's mouth, on questions of great national interest. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who may utter and maintain the Declaration of Independence, or the opinions of the conscript fathers of the Republic. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who dares proclaim the precepts of our holy religion. They claim to take with them the right to strip naked and cut into gashes the back of the man who utters opinions that do not exactly "square and corner" ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... "'First, the toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man's.—Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred.' Heavens! how the words swing! But it is great nonsense, you know, for you and me—Venturists—to be maundering like this. Charity—benevolence—that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... overcome far greater obstacles than stood in his way on this issue. We had seen him lead a country which had voted to stay out of the European war into battle almost immediately after they had so voted. We had seen him conscript the men of the same stubborn South, which had been conspicuously opposed to conscription. We had seen him win mothers to his war point of view after they had fought passionately for him and his peace program at election time. He had taken ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... that I listened throughout with breathless attention. I began to feel too, for the first time, what a powerful arm in war the Emperor had created by fostering the spirit of individual enterprise. The field thus opened to fame and distinction left no bounds to the ambition of any. The humble conscript, as he tore himself from the embraces of his mother, wiped his tearful eyes to see before him in the distance the baton of a marshal. The bold soldier who stormed a battery felt his heart beat more proudly and more securely beneath the cordon of the Legion than behind a cuirass of steel; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... playing at Chinese billiards for painted mugs or huge cakes of gilt gingerbread; some listening to the stump orations of an extempore fortuneteller, who promised the baton of the field-marshal to any conscript who would give him a penny; and some buying by yards the patriotic, soul-stirring songs of Beranger, and reciting them in every tone, in every key and to every tune. One of these songsters was a young soldier, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... justice and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in war, and then coldly ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... like all of the same kind that have preceded and followed it—a glorious spectacle, when the faces of most of the men were observed, and nothing of the despairing dullness of the conscript's eye seen there, but the vigorous pride and determination of men who were going forth at the call of their country to battle for that country to the death. And yet a sad spectacle, as all the others have been, when waste of life ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... for Nero could be nominated at the coming comitia, and sorrowfully recalled the names of Marcellus, Gracchus, and other plebeian generals who were no more—one taciturn and moody old man sat in sullen apathy among the conscript fathers. This was Marcus Livius, who had been consul in the gear before the beginning of this war, and had then gained a victory over the Illyrians. After his consulship he had been impeached before the people on a charge ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... area, laved by two oceans, as also by the lakes and the gulf, with a more genial sun, and a soil far more fertile and productive than that of England, and nearly thirty times greater in extent. She saw us raise within the loyal States a volunteer army of three fourths of a million, without a conscript, the largest, and far the most intelligent and effective force in the world, and millions more ready, whenever called, to rush to the defense of the Union, whilst a great and gallant navy rose, as if by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... honours was suddenly flung open, and all might share the spoil. This was the true secret of the astonishing power of the Revolution. The man who was nothing to-day, might be everything to-morrow. The conscript might be a captain, a colonel, a general, before the Austrian or Prussian soldier could be a corporal. Who can wonder at the march of France, or the flight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... mere conscript soldiers was not quite so simple, although Maga managed it. They had less regard for their own skins than handicapped their officer, and yet more than his contempt for the female of any ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the example of the recorder, each guest capped his neighbor's joke with another: Du Bousquier was a father, but not a confessor; he was father less; he was father LY; he was not a reverend father; nor yet a conscript-father— ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... sniffin' round. An' twice more 'Mong Jew!'—which is pure French. Then he slings 'is 'ammick, nips in, an' coils down. 'Not bad for a Portugee conscript,' I says to myself, casts off the tow, abandons him, and ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the greatest lady in Rome; had still vast possessions—palaces and villas and vineyards and broad farms. Notwithstanding all that had occurred, she still looked upon the kings and emperors of the world as the mere servants of the pope, and on the old Roman nobility as still the conscript fathers of the world. Her other characteristic was superstition. So she was most distinguished by an irrepressible haughtiness and an illimitable credulity. The only softening circumstance was that, being in ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... cold, grim, cruel, practical detail about it. It was like the fierce blinding flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, followed, when senses coldly recover, by the knowledge of the abiding blindness. It was like the raw conscript's first sight of the comrade shot down by his side. Helena was a brave girl, but she would have fallen in a faint were it not that a burst of stormy tears came ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... State Troops Turned Over. Appointment of Generals. Longings for Home. Exemptions and "Details". The Substitute Law. Mr. Davis' Wisdom Vindicated. Governor Joe Brown kicks. State Traits of the Conscripts. Kentucky's Attitude. Tennessee's "Buffaloes". The "Union Feeling" Fallacy. Conscript Camps. Morals of the "New Ish". Food and Money Scarcer. Constancy of the Soldiers. The Extension Law. Repeal of the Substitute Act. Home-Guards. "The Cradle ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Caesar thought that a special law exempted him from this requirement, it were well he were disabused of the notion. The Senate had been convened because the presiding consul felt that the continuance of Caesar in his governorship was a menace to the safety of the Republic. Let the Conscript Fathers express themselves boldly, and he, Lentulus, would not desert them; let them waver and try to court the favour of Caesar as in former times, and the consul would have to look to his own safety—and he could make his own ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... have business rules. If we wish to understand him, we must compare him not with the French shopkeeper when he plays dominoes, but with the same French shopkeeper when he works the guns or mans the trenches as a conscript soldier. Everybody used to the punctilious Prussian standard of uniform and parade has noticed the roughness and apparent laxity of the French soldier, the looseness of his clothes, the unsightliness ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... depend on the organised workers, and they know it. The lives of our men are at stake. . . . Their brothers, mark you, Vane. What do they care? Not a dam, sir, not a dam. More money, money—that's all they want. They know the State won't dare a lock-out—and they trade on it. . . . Why don't they conscript 'em, sir?—why don't they put the whole cursed crowd into khaki? Then if they strike send 'em over into the trenches as I said, and let 'em rot there. That would soon bring 'em to their senses. . . ." Sir ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... this creature's work in preparing the soil, but little of the earth's surface would be fit for cultivation. To its voluntary efforts we owe our supplies of vegetable food, but not satisfied with this, we conscript him that he may ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... have been an easy matter, as he was an only son, to release him from military service, but he was obliged to go because two fathers of soldiers could not be found in the village to give the testimony necessary for his liberation. He became a conscript in 1865, and, a year after, the double war between Prussia and Italy broke out. The young fellow's regiment was stationed in the Venetian provinces. One night he was assigned to outpost duty in the field; the enemy was ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... The conscript law, and that clause especially which provides for the granting of a limited number of furloughs, gives great satisfaction to the men. They not only feel that they will soon have help, but that if their conduct be good, there will be a fair chance for them to see home ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Lieutenant T.J. Lipscomb, of Company B, Third South Carolina Regiment, was given a commission as Captain, and he, with others, raised a company of cavalry and was given a thirty days' furlough. A great many companies volunteered in a body, not knowing at the time that the Conscript Act soon to be enacted would retain in service all between certain ages in the army, even after their time ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... marksmen, who had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of the stir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at least, has told his story of his awakening, and how curious he thought the rifle there beside him in his pit, how he took it on his knees to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew clearer, he dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... that in a congeries of—how many?—six hundred and seventy men, chosen by the British public, there will be a very high average of mental capacity. If any one were so sanguine, a glance at the faces of our Conscript Fathers along the benches would soon bleed him. (I have no doubt that the custom of wearing hats in the House originated in the members' unwillingness to let strangers spy down on the shapes of their heads.) But it is not unreasonable to expect that the more active of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Vendee, was attempting on the morning when this history begins, to make a forced march on Mayenne, where he was resolved to execute the law according to his own good pleasure, and fill the half-empty companies of his own brigade with his Breton conscripts. The word "conscript" which later became so celebrated, had just now for the first time taken the place in the government decrees of the word requisitionnaire hitherto applied to all ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... is in God taken in a metaphorical sense, according to a comparison with human affairs. For it is usual among men that they who are chosen for any office should be inscribed in a book; as, for instance, soldiers, or counsellors, who formerly were called "conscript" fathers. Now it is clear from the preceding (Q. 23, A. 4) that all the predestined are chosen by God to possess eternal life. This conscription, therefore, of the predestined is called the book of life. A thing is said ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... have either established themselves or cleared out of the profession altogether. I want to do what's right, but I can't reconcile my two duties, Quinny. I've a duty to England, of course, but I think I have a bigger duty to Rachel and Eleanor. If they'd only conscript us all, this problem wouldn't arise ... not so acutely anyhow. I suppose the Government is having a pretty hard time, but they do seem to act the goat rather! There's a great deal of talk about a man's duty to England, but very little talk about England's ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... specific acts of spoliation; but no government can conscript cooperation. We have improved some matters by way of remedial legislation. But where in some particulars that legislation has failed we cannot be sure whether it fails because some of its details are unwise or because it is being sabotaged. At any rate, we hold our objectives and our principles ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... old-fashioned Russian—the Slavophilist of the lower classes—and hence extreme to the point of absurdity. His revolt against authority has more resemblance to that of La Vendee than to that of the Jacobins. Like a conscript obstinately refusing to join his regiment, he holds back from all part and lot in the changes of modern Russia; and in this light the schism is the feature which above all others assimilates ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... conducting war 96 Abdication by the soldier of private judgment and free will 98 Distinctions and compromises 99 Cases in which the military oath may be broken.—Illegal orders 100 Violation of religious obligations.—The Sepoy mutiny 101 The Italian conscript.—Fenians in the British ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of recruits, though varying from year to year, could be settled by the war department, the question of the claim of a single conscript for exemption, on grounds not recognized by precedent, could only be settled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... on this prevalent and increasing superstition of the British need for conscription in two lines, one following the other. For, firstly, it is true that Britain at the present time is no more capable of creating such a conscript army as France or Germany possesses in the next ten years than she is of covering her soil with a tropical forest, and, secondly, it is equally true that if she had such an army it would not be of the slightest ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... military power; and the extension to Ireland handed that country over to Sinn Fein and necessitated the diversion thither of large British forces, which might otherwise have been sent to the front, without producing a single Irish conscript. The proposal was, indeed, so foolish that its authors made no attempt to carry it out. Wiser was the speedy dispatch to France of 300,000 superfluous troops who had been kept in England by nothing better than an ignorant fear of invasion. But it was the amazing rapidity with which ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... six—before he can take up the position of a master. He may work for a short period in his native town as a journeyman, but forth he must; nor is he in any way loth. One only contingency there is, which may serve to arrest him in his course,—he may be drawn as a conscript—and, possibly, forget in the next two or three years, as a soldier, all he has previously learned in four as a mechanic. But we suppose Hans to have escaped this peril, and to be on the eve of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... that transfer of power was imaginary rather than real, the new military organization which succeeded the Shogun's government being the vital portion of the Restoration. In other words, it was the leaders of Japan's conscript armies who inherited the real power, a fact made amply evident by the crushing of the Satsuma Rebellion by these new corps whose organization allowed them to overthrow the proudest and most valourous of the Samurai and incidentally to proclaim ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... venerable assembly began. Perhaps when we remember that for many glorious centuries the Senate had been the real ruler of the Roman State, we may assert that the attitude and the language of the successors of Augustus towards the Conscript Fathers were similar to those used by a modern House of Commons towards the Crown, only that in the one case the individual supplanted the assembly, in the other the assembly supplanted the individual. But whatever the exact relations between King and Senate may have been, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... must consider how to minimize its evils. If conscription were adopted future wars would produce less injury to the race, because the casualty lists would more nearly represent a chance selection of the population; though whether a conscript army would ever fight as well as our men were doing in France was very doubtful. The injurious effects of the war on all useful sections of the community should be mitigated. Military training was eugenic if the men were kept with the colours only for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... the conscript who has a brother in the active army, the only son of a widow, the eldest of three orphans, the son of a father seventy-one years old dependent on his labour, all of whom are family supports. He joins with these all young men who enlist ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... that is said to be costing us about L7,000,000 a week. When a young man throws all his soul into his training and ardently wants to become a soldier, his progress will be at least three times as quick as that of the dull, driven conscript; and that is why Lord Kitchener has told us that the new million-man'd army which popularly bears his name, though it might just as well be called after the King—has already been making a wonderful ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... of the consuls and the magistrates. As soon as their resolution was decided, they convoked in the temple of Castor the whole body of the senate, according to an ancient form of secrecy, [22] calculated to awaken their attention, and to conceal their decrees. "Conscript fathers," said the consul Syllanus, "the two Gordians, both of consular dignity, the one your proconsul, the other your lieutenant, have been declared emperors by the general consent of Africa. Let us return thanks," he boldly continued, "to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... wore out in the earlier part of this century. It was supposed that the place must be destroyed and dismantled. It was too vast for a citizen, and the locality was no longer sufficiently refined for a conscript father. In this dilemma, Neuchatel stepped in and purchased the whole affair—palace, and park, and deer, and pictures, and halls, and galleries of statue and bust, and furniture, and even wines, and all the farms that remained, and all the seigneurial ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... further and conscript not only incomes but capital, I would ask to answer the riddle not only in what equitable and practicable manner they would do it,[1] but what the ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... up the Department in Washington and given them a piece of my mind—told 'em they'd have to conscript labour. Damn these unions, making all this trouble, and especially today, when you're going off. I haven't had a chance to talk to you. Well, you know that I'm proud of you, my boy. Your grandfather went off to the Civil War when he was just about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... This enticed slaves to run away and enlist as free blacks, a practice the assembly tried to halt by requiring all black enlistees to have certificates of freedom. Then an odd reversal occurred after 1779 when the state began to conscript white males into the militia. Taking advantage of the provision in the draft law allowing draftees to send substitutes, some slave owners offered their slaves as substitutes. This was as far as the enlistment of slaves went. James Madison proposed in ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... negation of those patriotic, military virtues of ancient Rome, and because practically the papacy had prevented the union of Italy. Naturally Machiavelli cherished the army as the prime interest of the state. In advocating a national militia with universal training of citizens he anticipated the conscript armies ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... portrait of the precocious talent of his young friend, that he succeeds in wringing from the government an order of special exemption. It was not easy, Gentlemen, to obtain such success. At the same time, a conscript, a member of our Academy, succeeded in obtaining a revocation of his order for departure only by declaring that he would follow on foot, in the costume of the Institute, the contingent of the arrondissement of Paris in which ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... loss to human nature, and which has silently and insensibly led me never since to send any copy of a book to Edinburgh.... The plebs of literature might be divided in their verdicts about me; though by count of heads I always suspect the guilty clear had it; but the conscript fathers ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... about, whose sole mission in life seems to be to make such discoveries, and the number of these pleasure-hunters was considerably increased on the occasion of the assembling of the Diet at Pressburg, when many of our younger conscript fathers spread the report of newly found female virtue as far as possible. Who did not know of the Meyer girls in those days?—and those who did, could not help knowing likewise that there was a fifth sister. Now, where was this ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... then Regulus, standing up, said, as one repeating a task, "Conscript fathers, being a slave to the Carthaginians, I come on the part of my masters to treat with you concerning peace, and an exchange of prisoners." He then turned to go away with the ambassadors, as a stranger ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rivalling, if not exceeding, that of the Swiss. The Breton not only loves the village where he was born, but he loves the field of his fathers, the hearth and the clock of his home, even the bed on which he was born, and on which he hopes to close his eyes. The conscript and sailor are often known to die of grief when away from their native land. Brittany possesses for its children an inconceivable attraction, and there is no country in the world where man is more attached ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... cartridges from the caissons under the hill at the time, but did not throw down his load until he brought it to the gun, loudly proclaiming, that he hoped these shells would pay them back for his wound. But that was the end of his service in our army. He was over conscript age, but came as a substitute for some one who could pay for a man to take ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... personally, proved to be a rhetoric as unsuccessful as military words. The maid was platonic, and something more than platonic; and the hero got so much the worst of it, that he gave up the battle, and changed the subject to a conscript in his charge, who had locked himself in his bed-room and would not answer. How was he to know whether he had the conscript safe? All this lasted some time; and when they were gone, one of the pensionnaires ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... twenty francs each were instantly sold. Paganini duly appeared, and played on his old violin as he alone ever did. Then, taking up the wooden shoe, he commenced a descriptive fantasia. There it was,—the departure of the conscript, the cries of his betrothed at the parting, the camp life, the battle and victory, the return-rejoicings, and ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... is like The Blind Girl, a touching story of disappointment in love. Martha was an orphan living at Laffitte, on the banks of the Lot. She was betrothed to a young fellow, but the conscription forbade their union. The conscript was sent to the wars of the first Napoleon, which were then raging. The orphan sold her little cottage in the hope of buying him off, or providing him with a substitute. But it was all in vain. He was compelled to follow ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... but recently returned to so-called civilisation after the horrors of two years of war ["Conscript!" said John], may I venture to give you my opinion of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... the controversies over conscription, had harassed him. He was not a keen believer in the conscript principle; he was more than justified in his preference for a voluntary army by the response he had received on his appeal to the manhood of England. There was a wonderful completion of the task he had undertaken in those last few days. He had raised his millions, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious grounds condemned wars between nations were ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... struggle with the Reichstag, raised the peace establishment to 479,000 men. Count Caprivi at the same time reduced the period of compulsory service from three years to two; but while this reform lightened the burden on the individual conscript, it meant a great increase in the number of those who passed through military training, and an enormous increase of the war strength. The Franco-Russian entente of 1896 was a sign that France began to feel herself beaten in the race for supremacy and reduced to the defensive. In 1899 the German ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... for exercise or play. I speak of it primarily in this light, because, through all past history, manly war has been more an exercise than anything else, among the classes who cause, and proclaim it. It is not a game to the conscript, or the pressed sailor; but neither of these are the causers of it. To the governor who determines that war shall be, and to the youths who voluntarily adopt it as their profession, it has always been a grand pastime; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to friends that if the North could only exchange officers with the Confederates, the war would be over in a few weeks. In the midst of the depression the Secretary of the Treasury issued another $100,000,000 of greenbacks to meet pressing needs; and to fill up the ranks of the armies a Federal conscript law was enacted in March, 1863, only a little less drastic than the Confederate measure which was said to "rob both the cradle ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... her lean from the window. A cavalryman of the little garrison in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The moonlight glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his hand lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook's cap cast deep shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round her waist, and there followed the sound of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling |
