PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. The National Physique. EDWARD K. Root, M.D., HARTFORD. Members of the Connecticut Medical Society: When the 125th Annual Convention of this Society was held at New Haven, May 23d and 24th, 1917, the United States had been at war with the Imperial German Government a little over five weeks. Few of us then understood, and probably many still fail to actually realize now, the magnitude of the struggle that we are engaged in, and the far-reaching consequences which are sure to follow the cessation of the war when it finally does end. A war of such magnitude, involving so many contesting nations, would in itself defy all prophetic insight to gauge the possibilities of the future, but this struggle in particular, we are now beginning to understand, carries with it the promise of consequences so far-reaching, so stupendous in their range that we can only dimly apprehend, perhaps fear what the future may have for us. For nearly three hundred years we have lived under a social order which has guaranteed to each and all of us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which guaranteed to each the possession of any property he might acquire, the right to inherit from his forbears, and the right to bequeath to his wife and children anything he might save as the result of a laborious life. He was protected in his right to work, to choose his own avocation; he was protected in his right to come and go on his lawful errands, and was guaranteed against violence, robbery and murder. The law even provided that he should not carry weapons to defend himself, reserving that right to the State, and depriving the individual of the right to carry weapons to defend himself, believing it unnecessary. Now, we are confronted by an enemy whose entire system of government is autocratic instead of democratic, whose intelligence, whose foresight and whose efficiency is far beyond our own, but whose principles of government based upon autocracy, and whose ethical code based upon a philosophy that we cannot follow, is as opposed to our own as darkness from light. In defence we have taken up arms to preserve our system of democracy. We have yielded our individual rights as citizens and are submitting to a system of State control-a form in fact of state socialism, far beyond any experiment we have previously tried in the course of our development. The Government control of railroads, the regulation of the prices of foods, fuel and other necessities of life, the wholesale commandeering by the Government of ships, dock property, waterways, direct federal taxes, the income tax, and finally the establishment of the Selective Draft, the tax paid in blood, all suggest in outline the changes that have taken place in the year since the Society last met. All these changes in our scheme of government, the enormous centralizing of autocratic power in the Federal Government at Washington, are definitely war measures in order that we may carry on warfare as it is now waged with the greatest efficiency and least cost to ourselves; but when the time at last comes when fighting overseas ceases, when a truce or peace is declared with the Central Powers, are we prepared to disband our armies, to resume our normal course of life which existed prior to April 6th, 1917, and wait patiently until we are again threatened and attacked, or what is far more probable, attacked first without warning, plundered, slaughtered and perhaps bankrupted and then accused of aggressive warfare? Or, if no oversea foe has found that we possess that which we are too inert or cowardly to defend, have we no domestic foes, is there nothing in our social order itself that we or our children may not have to defend if we still believe in the sanctity of a just debt, the obligation of a contract, and the rights of the individual citizen to inherit from his father, to transmit property to his children, the right to work and to save? Are there no Bolsheviki in America ready to make our country a second Russia if opportunity offered? Most of us realize I think that anything we may have acquired that we value is equally coveted by any who are denied it. If we wish to hold it and transmit it to our children, whether it be civic liberty or personal property, we must be prepared to defend it at the risk of shedding blood. It is on the result of the Selective Draft and some points of interest that have arisen in connection with it that I desire to speak this morning. A selective draft is not new in this country. It goes as far back as the time of the colonies. On May 1st, 1637, the General Court of Hartford resolved, "We wage offensive war against the Pequot Indians, and 90 men were drafted from three towns, 42 from Hartford, 30 from Windsor, and 18 from Wethersfield, under the command of Captain John Mason, of Windsor; provided with arms and sent them out to join others to destroy the Pequot Indians." Compulsory military service was nothing new even as far back as the colonies; but it was not until the war between the States, until 1863, that a universal or general conscription was applied to raise troops. In the years 1863 and 1864, 11,017 men between 18 and 45 years of age were summoned for examination for a selective draft, not unlike in principle although different in application from the present law now being enforced. The application of the principle that every male citizen owes to his country to prepare himself to act as a soldier for the common defence is nothing new in older civilizations, and while at present it is applied as an emergency measure with the hope, latent if not expressed, but generally felt among us, that when the emergency is over, when the actual necessity of war ceases, the selective draft law will be repealed and our armed force revert to the small police detachment which protected us for so many years. Whether that is true or not, what the future has in store for us no one can tell, but it seems proper and fitting for us at this time to discuss some of the advantages which universal military training may give a nation, and before a professional body of men it seems fitting that we may properly discuss what the physical training of army life gives, what the discipline that life in the ranks affords, what the self-sacrifice the conscript rather than the volunteer endures, what all of these factors may do for our future young men. I have approached this subject |