[Printed handbill.] Military and Naval Forces. Married or Single. Conscripts or Volunteers | Which and Why?'

Publication details: 
'Printed for and Published by ARNOLD LUPTON, 7, Victoria Street, S.W.' 31 December 1915.
£125.00
SKU: 12010

10pp., 12mo. Stapled and unbound as issued. Worn and stained, but with contents complete. Signed in type at end: 'ARNOLD LUPTON. | 7, VICTORIA STREET, | LONDON, S.W.' The key sentence reads: 'The question therefore arises, how far the Government of this country is justified in sending millions of young unmarried men to destruction, having regard to the fact that they leave behind them no children, no heirs of their undying fame, no means of maintaining the greatness of the British race, that to the extent to which these young bachelors are sacrificed, it is not merely their young lives are lost, [rest in bold] but the future of the British Empire and the British race, which is to that extent injured and weakened.' And the pamphlet concludes: 'All the talk of the Prime Minister's pledge is obviously nonsense. It is impossible to conceive that he has pledged himself and his Government to Compulsion for the sake of a possible addition of 200,000 men to an Army of Volunteers already numbering 5,501,000.' Uncommon: apart from a copy at the British Library, COPAC only records copies at the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Palace, Birmingham and the London School of Economics.