"Conscript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of mine, from my town," said our statesman. Being a French private meant being any kind of a Frenchman. All inequalities are levelled in the ranks of a great conscript army. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 endures it, and one is forced to believe that the French conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humour, greater toughness than is commonly supposed by those who consider only the more relaxing influences of French civilisation. I hope he finds occasional compensation for such moments as I saw those damp ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... lay down in my bed I lay down in no dread Conscript come and took me And dragged me from ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... apple brandy, fat beef, milk and honey abounded, we returned to Randolph and the adjoining counties of Davidson, Moore, Montgomery and Chatham, where there was much work to do. Here we began pressing property, especially horses and feed, from the disloyal to force them to bring in their conscript sons, and soon a number of our company was mounted, only intending to use the horses while operating in that vicinity; but Governor Vance, being advised of it, complained to the Confederate War Department ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... 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
... me, as soon as I hear that the last farthing is paid to the last creditor, I will appear on my knees at the bar of the Pennsylvanian Senate in the plumeopicean robe of American controversy. Each Conscript Jonathan shall trickle over me a few drops of tar, and help to decorate me with those penal plumes in which the vanquished reasoner of the transatlantic world does homage to the physical superiority of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... first, of war 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; and chiefly pursued because they had nothing else to do. And ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... premature; to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for judgment—men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death, but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the city, to slay the Senate, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... a royal forest. The family that had raised it 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 rights in the royal forest. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the crisis which led to war, justify us in the hope that his entire influence will be employed in the right direction when the decisive moment arrives, and that he will insist upon such crucial questions as the reduction of armaments, the substitution of "citizen" for "conscript" armies, the control of armament firms and their occult influence, the effective extension of arbitration and the elimination of impossible time-limits, being discussed in all seriousness, and not merely dismissed with a few ironic platitudes and expressions ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... endeavoured to inflame the people against him as their enemy.] But this may be said with truth that of the many days of surpassing fame and happiness which Publius Scipio saw in his lifetime, the most glorious was the day before his death when on the adjournment of the Senate he was escorted home by the Conscript Fathers, the Roman people, the men of Latium and the allies, [Footnote): Scipio had at that session of the senate proposed a measure in the utmost degree offensive to Caius Gracchus and his party. The law ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... 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 is all Carlyle is leading up to. He merely ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 authority whatever I may choose. It is true that Marius and Cinna and Sulla ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... 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 ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... production 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
... for it is the face of a Man living 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.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the hearts of many who care little for ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... in that line, where, every night, however slack the fighting, a minimum of so many casualties per mile, so many hideous or fatal injuries by bomb or shell fire, is practically invariable. Not the conscript soldiers of a military nation, to whom the thought of fighting has been perforce familiar from childhood! Men, rather, who had never envisaged fighting, to whom it is all new, who at bottom, however firm ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But, Conscript Fathers, Senators, there is but one course to be pursued. Abandon all thought of peace! Reject the overtures of Carthage! Reject them wholly and unconditionally! What? What? Give back to her a thousand able-bodied men, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... capitalist in search of the picturesque. In 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
... 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, where those great temples stand alone. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... year. And I have also introduced the charming custom of kissing when either of us goes out, this parting kiss being accompanied with the words, 'My sweet angel, I am going out.' Finally, I have taken measures for the future to make my wife as truly a prisoner in the house as the conscript in his sentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible enthusiasm for ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... that they are going down to a grim sector?—but with faces of granite. There was a time when we talked of stiffening the French army. I am prepared to believe that our first expeditionary force was capable of stiffening any conscript army, for I do not think that a finer force ever went down to battle. But to talk about stiffening these people now would be ludicrous. You might as well stiffen the old Guard. There may be weak regiments somewhere, but I ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in that one first word of their common nationality, she spoke alike to the Marshal of the Empire and to the conscript of the ranks. "Francais!" that one title made them all equal in her sight; whoever claimed it was honoured in her eyes, and was precious to her heart, and when she answered them that it was nothing, this thing which they glorified in her, she answered but what seemed the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... The conscript who is for the first time under fire feels a sense of fear. Nevertheless, if he has the pride of his sex, and the dignity of one who appreciates his duty, he stands firm, though it be against big will. So it was with me when I began my part. When I perceived ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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 enchantment, from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... horsemen grew scarce on the wide prairies of Opelousas. Far away in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, on bloody fields, many an Acadian volunteer and many a poor conscript fought and fell for a cause that was really none of theirs, simple, non-slaveholding peasants; and many died in camp and hospital—often of wounds, often of fevers, often of mere longing for home. Bonaventure and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... thousand characters.' As a preparation, 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
... upon him the greatest odium, and was thought an unpardonable insult, was his receiving the whole body of the conscript fathers sitting, before the temple of Venus Genitrix, when they waited upon him with a number of decrees, conferring on him the highest dignities. Some say that, on his attempting to rise, he was held down by Cornelius Balbus; others, that he did ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... them are untrue, and always are in a war. War is a grim, ghastly business at best or at worst, ["Hear, hear!"] and I am not going to say that all that has been said in the way of outrages must necessarily be true. I will go beyond that, and I will say that if you turn two millions of men—forced, conscript, compelled, driven—into the field, you will always get among them a certain number who will do things that the nation to which they belong would be ashamed of. I am not depending on these tales. It ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... 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
... mercenary, soldier of fortune; hired gun, gunfighter, gunslinger; bushwhacker, free lance, companion; Hessian. hit man[criminals specializing in violence: see bad man], torpedo, soldier. levy, draught; Landwehr[Ger], Landsturm[Ger]; conscript, recruit, cadet, raw levies. infantry, infantryman, private, private soldier, foot soldier; Tommy Atkins[obs3], rank and file, peon, trooper, sepoy[obs3], legionnaire, legionary, cannon fodder, food for ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the national religion, 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 ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... raffling for nuts and biscuits at smartly-decked fair-booths, or 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... interrupted Fenellan. 'As much of the former as you like. He 's right about our "individualismus" being another name for selfishness, and showing the usual deficiency in external features; it's an individualism of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each fellow his own way. Well, then, conscript them, and they'll be all of a better pattern. The only thing to do, and the cheapest. By heaven! it's the only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pleasant to mark the early steps of nascent ambition. In the time of the great Napoleon every conscript carried the baton of a marshal in his knapsack; and in our happy land every rogue may be said to have an appointment to office in his pocket. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... 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 might not be present at the deliberations of the Senate. His old friends ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would go 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 Nation would ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... Venetian senate took the same title as the Roman, of "conscript fathers." [It was not, however, the Senate, the Pregadi, but the Consiglio dei Dieci, supplemented by the Zonta of Twenty, which tried and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... conservatives, and his mind was steeled against the inanities she uttered—the rights and wrongs of women, the equality of the sexes, the hysterics of conventions, the further stultification of the suffrage, the prospect of conscript mothers in the national Senate. It made no difference; she didn't mean it, she didn't know what she meant, she had been stuffed with this trash by her father, and she was neither more nor less willing to say it ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... so, either soldier, corporal or sergeant. Even under the most liberal system, that in which the highest grades are accessible to all, for every five or six men who take the lead or command others, one hundred thousand must follow or be commanded. This makes it vain to tell every conscript that he carriers a marshal's baton in his sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, he discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that the baton is not there.—It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick against social barriers within which, willing or not, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... very moment, and who had just dictated his testament in their favor.-Take the still rude brain of a contemporary peasant and deprive it of the ideas which, for eighty years past, have entered it by so many channels, through the primary school of each village, through the return home of the conscript after seven years' service, through the prodigious multiplication of books, newspapers, roads, railroads, foreign travel and every other species of communication.[5301] Try to imagine the peasant of the eighteenth century, penned ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... you," said Gorman, "I'd conscript every able-bodied man in the country directly I got there and put the entire lot into a front line trench. There won't be anyone left to ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... Convent door no one could ever trace the sham coachman and footman in order to question them. In that direction, therefore, there was nothing to fear. The authority of an Italian officer over his orderly is great, and his power of making the conscript's life singularly easy or perfectly unbearable is greater. Even Sister Giovanna knew that, and she felt no anxiety about ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... applied 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 came in. With him I had ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... of the natives are, however, but a feeble instrument of reform. The chassepot may succeed after having finished the rest of its task, and dispose of the baboons after the settlement of the men. The former, though not incomparably smaller than the French conscript after a protracted war, will never be made to bear arms. He is therefore useless to modern statesmen, and needs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... 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 New York, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... half realise the 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
... 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 of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 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 James attacked ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... their last hour the worship of their Captain, which it was his highest gift to be able to inspire. 'I have that feeling for him still, that if he were to rise from the dead I should go to him, if I could, wherever he was,' said the old conscript Emmanuele Gaminara of Genoa, who died at nearly a hundred in a Norfolk village in 1892: the last, perhaps, of the Italian veterans, and the type of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 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 commissioned, rode forth and disappeared, and then another and another; and it was not until ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... with 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... they swept away a prodigious quantity of the cobwebs which grow over the heads of nations who will not use the broom for themselves. Feudalities and follies a thousand years old were trampled down by the foot of the conscript; and the only glimpses of common-sense which have visited three-fourths of Europe in our day, were let in through chinks made by the French bayonet. The French were the grand improvers of every thing, though only for their own objects. They made high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Oh, 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 Labor: and thy body, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... reasonable. They forgot that a power that could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against conscript troops and modern methods of fighting. They forgot that if so much trouble had been taken to put them where they were, it was not that—assuming that they behaved themselves—it was not that they might be easily rooted out. Instead of having confidence ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... been conscripted into the army were trying to escape from service, and might use the cars for that purpose. He was ordered, therefore, to arrest any such runaways that he might find. When he looked at George it is probable that he thought: "This boy is too young to be a conscript," and he evidently gave unconscious voice to what was passing through his mind. Fortunately enough, he saw nothing suspicious ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... kingdom, but communicating with the ocean by a ship canal. The railways, canals, and river navigation are very highly developed. The government is a limited monarchy; the king, senate, and house of representatives form the constitution. There is a conscript army of 50,000 men, but no navy. Transferred from Spain to Austria in 1713. Belgium was under French sway from 1794 till 1814, when it was united with Holland, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Madame Therese" with stories celebrating the victories of Napoleon and thus appealing to their compatriots' love of glory and military illusions, MM. Erckmann-Chatrian take up next the tragic and far more significant story of 1812-13. With "The Conscript" begins their long, sustained, and eloquent sermon against war and war-wagers—the exordium, so to say, of their arraignment of Napoleon for wanton and insatiate love of conquest. "The Conscript" ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... says 'e, 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
... monotony The innocents are falling, Like dead leaves in a forest dree; And still the conscript armies come. No banners theirs, no beat of drum, No merry bugles calling! Mad ally in the Slayers' train, Man slaps and sorrows for ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... forced to leave in other hands since 1603, 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
... Fathers conscript, may what I am to utter Turn good and happy for the commonwealth! And thou, Apollo, in whose holy house We here have met, inspire us all with truth, And liberty of censure to our thought! The majesty of great Tiberius Caesar Propounds to this grave senate, the bestowing Upon the man he loves, honour'd ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... other disgustedly. 'Not much. They've been digging trenches all day about four miles back. It's too sickening. Pity we don't do like the Boches—conscript all the able-bodied civilians and make 'em do all this trench-digging in rear. Then we might be ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the President 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 ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... French soldiery made a terrible spectacle. At suburban stations, generally in the middle of the night, long lines of third-class railway carriages, as well as rectangular, box-shaped cattle wagons, such as in conscript countries are used for purposes of mobilization, would draw ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... death-warrant. And that there was ground for this belief is proved by the fact that not more than one in six of the Indians condemned to the mines survived the treatment there inflicted. Each mitayo, or conscript, received nominally two shillings a day. But he never actually received it. On his fate being fixed by lot, the poor fellow carried his wife and children to the mines with him, and made arrangements for never again returning home. His food and lodging, being supplied by his ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Destroying "Capitalism" Lenine Seeks "Foreign Capital," 174; Bolshevism Has Sacrificed "the Health of Future Generations," 175; Trotzky Offers "Foreign Capitalists" a "Share of the Profits" from Russian Conscript Labor, 175. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... year, 1776, Piccinni was called to Paris as an unwilling conscript in the musical revolution, which was raging no less fiercely than the American Revolution of the same time. It was a bitter December day when Piccinni arrived in Paris with his wife, and his eldest daughter, aged eighteen. "Devoted to ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... "I marvel, conscript fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods. Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Leven, his whilom lieutenant, with whom he had dreamed of Maccabean deeds. The new conscript, in the uniform of an artilleryman, was carefully taking sight with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... number in the hawker's collection called "Conscrits Francais," which may rank among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record. It would not be possible to fight at all in such a spirit. The bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 his regiment. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... New Model would, indeed, be initiated, as far superior to the conscript armies as Cromwell's Ironsides were to the mercenaries of their time. The whole nation from prince to beggar would by this means be transformed, labour would cease to be despised or riches to be worshipped, the reproach of effeminacy would be removed, the horrors ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... War the cave was continuously resorted to by deserters, refugees, moonshiners, fugitives, and "food for powder, dodging the conscript." All these sought shelter in this chamber and behind it, in order that their fires might not be visible from the river. The piles of ashes in the crevices and corners were thrown there by these hiders-out, to get them out ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... hoped, to debate the mode of assessing themselves for that purpose. On the contrary, they met with a determined purpose of resisting the exaction, and were only undecided as to the mode of grounding their opposition, when the cooper, a very important person on a fishing-station, and one of the conscript fathers of the village, observed, "That their hens had caickled mony a day for the Lords of Ravenswood, and it was time they suld caickle for those that gave them roosts and barley." An unanimous grin intimated the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... president, 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, ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... number 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
... imperfect in themselves, and but partially carried out in 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 ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... years went by, a few recruits; but faces were missing: the two Tabors had gone, and Uncle Joe Davey could no longer lay claim to the patriarchship; he had laid it down with a half-sigh and gone his way. Eskew himself was now the oldest of the conscript fathers, the Colonel and Squire Buckalew pressing him closely, with Peter Bradbury no great ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... after a stiff 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 ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... scarlet-fever is dreaded like the Plague; analogous facts have been observed in Chili and Mexico.[674] Even in the different departments of France it is found that the various infirmities which render the conscript unfit for serving in the army, prevail with remarkable inequality, revealing, as Boudin observes, that many of them are endemic, which otherwise would never have been suspected.[675] Any one who will study the distribution of disease will be struck with surprise at what ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... Japanese customs in favour of foreign. The province of Satsuma thus became a seed-plot of conservative influences, where "Saigo and his constantly augmenting band of samurai found a congenial environment." On the one hand, the Central Government steadily proceeded with the organization of a conscript army, teaching it foreign tactics and equipping it with foreign arms. On the other, the southern clan cherished its band of samurai, arming them with the rifle and drilling them in the manner of Europe, but leaving them always in possession of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... first; 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 might not be present ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... fellows, each with a large pendulous ear to the earth, listening for the approach of some Pegasus to carry him to Congress—teaching the aesthetics of civilization to the divine philosophers of Greece and the god-like senators of Rome! Think of Perry J. Lewis pulling the Conscript Fathers over the coals—of Senator Bowser pointing out civic duties to Socrates; of Attorney-General Crane giving Julius Caesar a piece of his mind; of Charley Culberson turning up his little two-for-a-nickel nose at the Olympian games! But perhaps that is not the game "our heroic ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Sigel, who had been an officer in the Baden army, had succeeded Fremont, and 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
... themselves what fit colleague 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 of peculation and unfair division of the spoils among his ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... individual." This is Schopenhauer's thesis and (unnecessarily enough) he apologises for it, as if it belittled love to say that it affects man in his essentia aeterna. The genius of the race takes the lover conscript and makes him ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... here, I found my predecessor (General Hovey) had issued an order permitting the departure south of all persons subject to the conscript law of the Southern Confederacy. Many applications have been made to me to modify this order, but I regarded it as a condition precedent by which I was bound in honor, and therefore I have made no changes ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the war, volunteers enlisted in the Federal cavalry, who—far from being able to manage a horse—could not bridle one without assistance; and a conscript, who could keep his saddle through an entire day, without "taking a voluntary," was considered by his fellows as a credit to the regiment, and almost an accomplished dragoon. Such a thing as a military riding-school ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... generations. The chances of stopping war were small, and we 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
... his office of artist, and prefers to be directly a teacher, he robs himself of more than half his strength with those he can move only through the realization of themselves in others. The simple pathos, and the apparent indirectness of such a tale as that of 'Poticoushka,' the peasant conscript, is of vastly more value to the world at large than all his parables; and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,' the Philistine worldling, will turn the hearts of many more from the love of the world than such pale fables of the early Christian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rewarded with the appointment of Commissary of Police at Niort. On the order of Rougon, he arrested Martineau, Madame Correur's brother. He was removed from his position on account of having compromised himself by taking a bribe to procure a conscript exemption from ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... can punish 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, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 was ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... 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 not near, it was mid-summer, a sultry night, and the poor wretch fell ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the balloon type of aircraft has received a further illustration. They have rejected Highgate's fat conscript. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... 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 de Charney. By Alexandre Dumas. Countess ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Loyalist always grew eloquent as he referred to his exile for conscience' sake and to the planting by the conscript fathers of Canada of a new Troy under ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... militia. Virginia allowed free blacks to enlist after July 1775. 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. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... 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 needs, and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... extremely unfinished state, and Marshal Le Boeuf, who succeeded him, persevered with it in a very faint-hearted way. The regular army, however, was kept in fair condition, though it was never so strong as it appeared to be on paper. There was a system in vogue by which a conscript of means could avoid service by supplying a remplacant. Originally, he was expected to provide his remplacant himself; but, ultimately, he only had to pay a sum of money to the military authorities, who undertook to find a man to ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... could come into actual contact, that merciless weight of animosity, from the great man to his soldier had lain on the other like iron, and clogged him from all advancement. His thoughts were of it now. Only to-day, at an inspection, the accidentally broken saddle-girth of a boy-conscript had furnished pretext for a furious reprimand, a volley of insolent opprobrium hurled at himself, under which he had had to sit mute in his saddle, with no other sign that he was human beneath the outrage than ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in the religious. The Old Believer is emphatically the 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 Russia to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... towards him. They asked him if they could cross the Oise at Meriel. Pluquet replied that it was easy to do so, "but there were gendarmes to examine all who passed." At that they hesitated. They described themselves as conscript deserters coming from Valenciennes who wished to get back to their homes. Pluquet's account is so picturesque as to be ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... 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. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... worm. Scientists tell us that without 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
... should enter. So I wrote, inclosing my photograph, the one taken at Crespon's, in the Market Place, which represents me with chin closely shaven, a keen eye beneath my thick white eyebrows, my steel chain about my neck, my ribbon as an academy official, "the air of a conscript father upon his curule-chair," as M. Chalmette, our dean used to say. (He insisted also that I much resembled the late King Louis XVIII; less strongly, however.) I supplied, further, the best of references; the most flattering recommendations from the gentlemen of the college. By return of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of our salvation, Conscript Fathers,—by the Immortal Gods I conjure you!—and remember that you are the foremost men here, in the council chamber of the whole earth. Give one sign to the Roman people that even as now they pledge their valor—so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
