"Conscript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... 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. 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... 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 ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... power as yet remained to a 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 ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the March evening to take their places 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 their will, or wonderful their courage, hate war, and think ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 Modern ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... 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 sacred duties ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... tirailleur^, bashi-bazouk; [guerilla organization names: list], vietminh, vietcong; shining path; contras; huk, hukbalahap. mercenary, soldier of fortune; hired gun, gunfighter, gunslinger; bushwhacker, free lance, companion; Hessian. hit man torpedo, soldier. levy, draught; Landwehr [G.], Landsturm [G.]; conscript, recruit, cadet, raw levies. infantry, infantryman, private, private soldier, foot soldier; Tommy Atkins^, rank and file, peon, trooper, sepoy^, legionnaire, legionary, cannon fodder, food for powder; officer &c (commander) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... system known to modern nations, all with more or less success—voluntary enlistments, the draft, and bought substitutes—and I think that all officers of experience will confirm my assertion that the men who voluntarily enlisted at the outbreak of the war were the best, better than the conscript, and far better than the bought substitute. When a regiment is once organized in a State, and mustered into the service of the United States, the officers and men become subject to the same laws of discipline and government as the regular troops. They are in no sense "militia," ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... German people. This view has the merits of kindliness and convenience. Others warn us not to be misled by such sentimentalists, and assert that the heart of the German people is in the war. The point is of importance to us, because the work of the conscript in the field must be influenced by his private feelings. Notwithstanding all drill and sergeantry, the German Army remains a collection of human beings—and human beings more learned, if not better educated, than our own race! It is not a mere fighting machine, despite ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... infantry, whose attacks they must support with the finesse of scientific calculation plus the instinctive liaison which comes only with experience under trained officers, against the German Army which had no lack of material in its conscript ranks for promotion to fill vacancies in ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Coleridge. Columbus, 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. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... 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 of serving out red and black balls to its members at ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... mornings, and I poked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads 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 them, heard their first tales, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... honour of showing you a 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
... new men at every national election is to increase the troubles of the country. Among the causes of the Civil War the ambition to be made President must be reckoned. Every politician has carried a term at the White House in his portfolio, as every French conscript carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack; and the disappointments of so many aspirants swelled the number of the disaffected to the proportions of an army, counting all who expected office as the consequence of this man's or that man's elevation to the Presidency. Were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... 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 none too ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... 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 ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... 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 ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Marlbro' led, But freemen—Volunteers, A free-born race from fathers bred That won for us Poictiers; No conscript names were on the roll— All heroes dead and gone— That blazoned bright on Victory's scroll The name of Wellington: And Inkerman's immortal height Will tell for many a day How sternly sons of Freedom fight, Let odds be what they may. Thus Liberty scorns vain alarms, And answers back ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... such delinquency in the face of the 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 without ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... depends on drinking certain waters. In the healthy little island of St. Helena the 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 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... 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, Schurz', Schenck's, and Steinwehr's, supported by Milroy's independent ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... terror, and 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 commissioned, rode forth and disappeared, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... 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 Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... 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, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 the hands of the Jesuits, her religion ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... doctor, who was thoroughly aroused, "Do you expect us to sit here and listen to a conscript running down the Government—a man who never would have entered the service if he had not been compelled to do so? No, sir! I wouldn't hold my tongue under such circumstances if all the six-foot-four caterers in the squadron should ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... in our internal life. The immunity from militarism 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 found to condone or justify ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... was. The 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 ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... O conscript father,' said Carlo, willing to fall a little into his mood, 'you know that nothing will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... The born soldier is noticed at once, even in the small children; many generations of fighting ancestors have bequeathed a smartness and accuracy of movement which can be envied by many a Continental trained conscript. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... 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
... when most men 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 ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... thither in sorte, that Rome was like a forlorne and abandoned place. The fathers seing the citie thus relinquished, Horatius and Valerius, with diuers of the fathers, exclamed in this wise. "What do ye expect and looke for, ye fathers conscript? Will ye suffer al thinges to runne to extreame ruine and decay? Shall the Decemuiri still persiste in their stubburne and froward determinacions? What maner of gouernement is this (O ye Decemuiri) that ye thus lay holde vpon and enioye? Will ye pronounce and make lawes within your ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... despair addressed to Atticus; now he breaks out into a paean of triumph. We have to remember that eight months had intervened, and that the time had sufficed to turn darkness into light. "If I cannot thank you as I ought, O Conscript Fathers, for the undying favors which you have conferred on me, on my brother, and my children, ascribe it, I beseech you, to the greatness of the things you have done for me, and not to the defect of my virtue." Then he praises the two Consuls, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... 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 assent of the assembly. "And," ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 or modifications; ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... himself implicitly. At present he was still before the outwork of prejudice which must be stormed by every conscript in the army of literature: that he would carry it eventually he did not doubt. But this disappointment about, the committee hit him hard for a moment; it seemed like a forecast of a greater disaster. Mark, however, was of a sanguine temperament, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... 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 ocean. She ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... indifference to 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
... is carried to an extent, 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 to his ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... nothing past a bully of that stripe. He was capable of committing any kind of an atrocity. And his sort undoubtedly did. But what else can one expect from a conscript army, which, as it puts every man on its roster, must necessarily contain the worst as well as the best? Draft 1,000 men out of any community in any country and along with the decent citizens there will be a certain number ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... 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 ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... carried like that of Bismarck 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 ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... thereupon persuaded his companion to let himself be whipped; the boy enjoyed the experience, which was therefore often repeated. Jules P. himself, however, never took the slightest pleasure in playing the passive part. These practices were continued even after the friend became a conscript, when, however, they became very rare. Only once or twice has he ever done anything of this kind to girls who were strangers to him. Nor has he ever masturbated or had any desire for sexual intercourse. He contents himself with the pleasure of being occasionally able ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 Labor; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 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; ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... first place, the destructiveness of war waged on the scale and with the intensity which conscript armies, the new means of transportation and communication, the new artillery, the aeroplanes, the high explosives, and the continuity of the fighting on battle fronts of unexampled length, by night as well as by day, and in stormy and wintry ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... age and obligation: This entry gives the required ages for voluntary or conscript military service and the length ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... 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
... sang not of victory, but of death. There was a 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 their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... touchingly memorable to me—touchingly, and even grandly and tragically—never to be forgotten for the remainder of my life. Bid them, in my name, if they still love me, fight the good fight, and quit themselves like men in the warfare to which they are as if conscript and consecrated, and which lies ahead. Tell them to consult the eternal oracles (not yet inaudible, nor ever to become so, when worthily inquired of); and to disregard, nearly altogether, in comparison, the temporary noises, menacings, and deliriums. May they love wisdom, as wisdom, if she is ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... with strong knotted clubs, coming 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 ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... list], vietcong; shining path; contras; huk, hukbalahap. 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 powder; officer &c. (commander) 745; subaltern, ensign, standard bearer; spearman, pikeman[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... noble families who enjoy the title of Conscript. From these are chosen, every three months, three Conservatori and a Prior of the Wards, who form a committee for the superintendence of the walls and public monuments, and for the administration of the income of the Capitoline Chamber. If we look at them in connection with the ancient ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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
... 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
... live as a definitely determined 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 a soldier ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... the State exerts is a spiritual power, acting on or through the will of man. The volunteer armies do not really march to die with more readiness than the conscript armies. The sacrifice is not readily explicable by material causes. There is no material reason why the proletarian—who has no property to defend, who is more or less sure as a skilled craftsman of ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... reserves in men who could approach the continental field in, say, the first year, even under the most vigorous efforts, would never reach anything like the numbers that could be afforded by a conscript nation. The very maximum that can be or is hoped for by the most sanguine is the putting into the field, after at least a year of war, of less than three-sixteenths of the total Allied forces, although ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... patriotic passion. But it cannot be denied that there is more of mere passion, of mere preference and prejudice, in short of mere personal accident, in fighting another nation than in fighting another faith. The Crusader is in every sense more rational than the modern conscript or professional soldier. He is more rational in his object, which is the intelligent and intelligible object of conversion; where the modern militarist has an object much more confused by momentary ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... 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
... land, which was, we are told, directly held under the King, and 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
... 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 ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... 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 young Christian ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... 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 ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 that some of ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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, and the country had ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... choice. But in endeavouring to realize his supreme wisdom, nothing helps us more than the pettiness of the accusations brought against him by such historians as Suetonius—that he once remained seated to receive the whole body of Conscript fathers, that he had a gilded chair in the Senate house, and appointed magistrates at his own pleasure to hold office for terms of years, that he laughed at an unfavourable omen and made himself dictator for life; and such things, says ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 short periods. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... own 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 ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... attack 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 use ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... them without emotion, because the pathos of them became monotonous. It was curious how men said good-bye, often, to their wives and children and comrades at a street corner, or in the middle of the boulevards. A hundred times or more I saw one of these conscript soldiers who had put on his uniform again after years of civilian life, turn suddenly to the woman trudging by his side or to a group of people standing round him and say: "Alors, il faut dire Adieu et Au revoir!" One might imagine that he was going on a week-end visit and would ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... ceaseless strain upon the nerves had already begun to tell. As hardy fishermen, they would not have hesitated to launch their open boats in a storm to go to the rescue of a hapless vessel aground on the grim sand-banks of the Frisian shore. As the conscript crew of the submarine, compelled to keep within the limits of a steel box that almost momentarily threatened to be their tomb, their natural ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... 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 ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... plan of the campaign, to speak of the danger that might 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, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Tolbooth itself; and let me tell you, you are obliged to us for describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with whatever amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject, you lay entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our city have decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain in existence to confirm ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... complained 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... 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 and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 of peace ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... 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 the aegis of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... absence in the field, he opposed the Conscript Acts of the Confederate administration. He believed them arbitrary and unjust. He considered that this was a tendency toward centralization which the Confederate Government was fighting; that it placed too much power in the hands of one man; that it was deadly to States' Rights ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... 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 ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... so animated a 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 he ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... 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 history, or ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... 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
... his extraordinary knowledge of tactics. He it was who first discovered the method of "dressing" a line, by backing it up against a curbstone. He also divested military science of many pedantic terms, which tend only to confuse the young conscript, and dampen the military ardor of the patriot soldier. He substituted the brief and soldierly words of command, "haw!" "gee!" and "whoa!" for "left," "right," and "halt." His spirited "let her ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... 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 young soldier, a lancer, with a bright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 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
... rarely as they 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]
... as the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by generations ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... the left corner a great stove; in the right a sofa, covered with oil-cloth, a table with a cloth on it and a hanging lamp above it. Over the sofa on the wall hangs a picture with the Biblical subject: "Suffer little children to come unto me"; beneath it a photograph of BERND, showing him as a conscript, and several of himself and his wife. In the foreground, to the left, stands a china closet, filled with painted cups, glasses, etc. A Bible is lying on the chest of drawers; over the door to the hall hangs a chromolithograph ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 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 year 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 Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... talking to us both under the old mulberry-tree in our garden, when this state of things will be changed, and a boy who enters the service as I did on board one of our training-ships, will, as Bonaparte said the conscript carried a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack, keep snugly stowed away an admiral's cocked ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... American soldier is inspired by just as altruistic motives as his brother-Britisher. Compassion, indignation, love of justice, the determination to see right conquer are his incentives. You can make a man a conscript, drill him, dress him in uniform, but you cannot force him to face up to four years to do his job unless the ideals were there beforehand. I have seen American troop-ships come into the dock ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... 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
... peasantry that swept 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
... just called 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was stationed in Polotzk. I saw my cousin drill on the square, carrying a gun, on a Sabbath. I felt unholy, as if I had sinned the sin in my own person. It was easy to understand why mothers of conscript sons fasted and wept and prayed and worried themselves ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... McClellan, would now take Richmond, for we have not men enough at present to offer successful resistance; but he will fortify each step of his way, and lay grand plans, and thus delay until we can raise men enough by the conscript law to defeat him." I did not then think that his prediction would be verified, and hoped that McClellan would show that he was not delaying for nothing; but when I heard of the precipitate retreat ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... delineated various grades of female character in positions of trial. In "The Village Innkeeper" he has shown the weaker traits of woman distracted between an inborn sense of propriety and a foolish ambition for high, life. In the "Conscript" his heroine displays the nobler virtues of uncorrupted humble life; and, with few characters, taken from the lowest walks, he shows the triumph of honest, straightforward earnestness and pertinacious courage, even ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... the silence, no one wished to consider himself called upon as one of the Conscript Fathers, since no one rose. Then Don Filipo seized the opportunity and rose to speak. The conservatives winked and made ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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
... time that thou wert wed; Ten summers already are over thy head; I must find you a husband, if under the sun, The conscript catcher has left ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... 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 ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... 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
... pieces, his acting is quiet and excellent. Many of Ravel's characters have been taken by him in the English version. Ravel is seldom seen to greater advantage than as a soldier. He exactly renders the mingled simplicity and cunning of the conscript; the tricks of the barrack-room grafted upon clownish dulness. The piece called the Tourlourou—the French nickname for a recruit—founded on a novel of Paul de Kock's, was one of his triumphs, and another was Le Caporal et la Payse, Englished as "Seeing Wright." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... To mount my knee, and so began: "When first the War broke out, you see, Grandma became a V.A.D.; Your Aunties spent laborious days In working at Y.M.C.A.'s; The servants vanished. Cook was found Doing the conscript baker's round; The housemaid, Jane, in shortened skirt (She always was a brazen flirt), Forsook her dusters, brooms and pails To carry on with endless mails. The parlourmaid became a vet., The tweeny a conductorette, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... strengthen our 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 ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... and then make up in camp by stealing. Severe punishment was meted out when ammunition was thrown away. The debris on the line of march, and the waste, was tremendous. Only strict military discipline made property respected. Even then, the new conscript had to look out for his bright and serviceable musket when the old veteran's arms were lost or out of order. The newspaper correspondent owning a good horse had to keep watch and ward, while so many dismounted cavalrymen whose horses had been shot were as restless as fish out of water. ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... was playing to the army, nor accredits the view that his interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the legions.[611] The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was the miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deductions had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wage was but one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a day, as it had remained unaltered from the times of the Second ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... here to hide from the conscript officers. He has brought no end of provisions, and is here for the war. He has chosen well, for this county is so cleaned of men it won't pay to send the conscript ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Folle}. It 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. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Government by the Conscription Act, eventually defined his position, and that of a large following, in the extreme words: "No act of the Government of the United States prior to the secession of Georgia struck a blow at constitutional liberty so fell as has been stricken by the conscript acts." ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he took up arms for France, he was exercising no brave, no generous choice, but was the conscript of Destiny. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... await us? Casting aside all thought of 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 exclude ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... then entered into a long conversation, by which he drew out from the Frenchmen that a party of conscripts had been ordered to Flushing, and that they had dropped behind the main body. O'Brien passed himself off as a conscript belonging to the party, and me as his brother, who had resolved to join the army as a drummer, rather than part with him. In about an hour we arrived at St Nicholas, and after some difficulty obtained entrance into a cabaret. "Vive ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... much to expect. There are always a number of unoccupied young gentlemen 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
... on the violin and five on a wooden shoe. A hundred tickets at 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 marriage-bells, all were ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... every dollar's worth of property had been pledged to the cause, how different might have been the result? All this could have been done in the then condition of public sentiment; not a dissentient voice would have been heard. It would have been far more popular than the "Conscript Act" was a year later, and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... I lay down in my bed I lay down in no dread Conscript come and took me And dragged me ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... soon to expire. 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 ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... I shall seem to some of you, Conscript Fathers, to have made an incredible choice. For what each one of my hearers would not wish to do himself, he does not like to believe when another states it as accomplished. This is chiefly because every one is jealous ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... 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
... 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 in any of ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... 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
... "Let none of 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 ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... 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 Junior Classics • Various
... project approved by ministers and deputies?" said his host on hearing what was the errand on which he came there. "As well, my brother, might you assail the Gran Sasse d'Italia! There must be money in it, much money, for our Conscript Fathers." ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... out his conclusion with just his mother's leaping consecutiveness. "Conscript soldiers are the ruin of war.... Half the Germans and a lot of the French ought never to have been brought within ten ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... 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 Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the centre of the 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
... 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
... the diaphragm and its part in costal or rib-breathing, care should be taken to make clear why it is that, while this muscle is a valuable aid to inspiration, its value would be impaired were it whipped into action like a conscript instead of being drafted, so to speak, as ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... age (est.) for selective compulsory military service; 14-month conscript service ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 of the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... He 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 ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... breast of the great-coat he wore, but failed to penetrate it. Mr. Grimes, upon this, fired his pistol, loaded with ball and buck-shot, at Mons. La Branche, wounding him slightly in the hand, and leaving one or two of the conscript fathers, standing near, in doubt whether they were shot or no, so disgustingly close was the ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... improvement in transport, are any final proof of the success of industrial conscription. Industrial conscription in the proper sense of the words is impossible until a Government knows what it has to conscript. A beginning was made early this year by the introduction of labor books, showing what work people were doing and where, and serving as a kind of industrial passports. But in April this year these had ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... forget; God is not your conscript yet; You shall learn in dumb amaze That His ways are not your ways, That the mire through which you trod Is not the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... morning I was looking at a little engraving I had framed myself, and hung over my writing-table; it is a design of Gavarni's; in which, in a grave mood, he has represented a veteran and a conscript. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forward the conscript regiments with rapidity; and so large are his powers that the Secretary of War has but little to do. He is, truly, but a mere clerk. The correspondence is mostly referred to the different bureaus for action, whose experienced heads ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... 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 ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells |
