ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the liberal conception of tacit consent provides a key to understanding the new relations between citizens, or rather, some citizens, and the state. It focuses on the issue of military service. It is important to stress, however, as an American secretary of state did in 1918, that the existence of treaties exempting subjects of the contracting parties from military service abroad does not constitute "evidence of a practise among nations to draft aliens into their forces". The politically alienated man has incurred social obligations by his residence, by the everyday contacts he maintains with other men and women, and by the benefits he accepts. The myths of common citizenship and common obligation are very important to the modern state, and perhaps even generally useful to its inhabitants, but they are myths nonetheless and cannot be allowed to determine the actual commitments of actual men and women.
