The National Service League (NSL) was a British pressure group founded in February 1902 to campaign for the introduction of compulsory military training in Great Britain, in order to protect the country against invasion, particularly from Germany.
The League advocated the introduction of four years of compulsory military training for men aged between eighteen and thirty, for the purpose of home defence.
[1] Britain was one of the few western states not to have a mass conscript army, and compulsory military service was not a popular idea in the country.
[3] The League was founded on 26 February 1902 at the instigation of Conservative politician Lord Newton, with the fourth Duke of Wellington as its first president.
[9] At a broader level, conscription of the kind envisaged was seen as a way to encourage national regeneration and counter moral decadence and physical deterioration.