"It's the unwilling led by the unqualified doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.'' So says one of the hundreds of Bermuda's reluctant recruits who are forced to serve in the Regiment part-time for up to three years.

Now the Regiment is employing extra staff to go after around 1,000 missing recruits who have ignored the latest call-up.

One recruit, who spoke anonymously because under Regiment rules he could be jailed for talking to the press, says why he believes conscription is a military monstrosity.

He said: "I like a lot of the people involved with the Bermuda Regiment, but slavery is slavery -- anything that strips a person of their God-given human right is slavery.

"The Bermuda Regiment's mission, as a military defending a democracy, is not to enslave 700 out of 60,000 people, and expect those few to save the world.

"The US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, the Scandinavia countries, even Russia have abandoned conscription.

"The only nations doing it are China, Vietnam, North Korea, and other despotic countries of the world.

"More than half the population here are automatically excluded -- women.

"But why. What makes them so special? "They live here with the rights that I have -- in some cases more -- but half the responsibility.

"Think about it -- only a select group of guys get called instead of the everybody else -- there's females, expats, students and others to choose from.'' Unwilling led by the unqualified "Then the few who are pushed in -- because no body would walk in there -- have to do whatever the army want.

"Because if they don't, they go to jail. What gets to me is that I could get slapped with a three-month jail term and a $2,250 fine just for talking to you! "So here's your options. Go to the Regiment and suffer, or go to jail and suffer. There's no other form of national service.

"The Defence Act was written during the Cold War -- that time when NATO and the Warsaw Pact were going to annihilate the planet with weapons of mass destruction.

"I can see why during that time someone might want to have a big army.

"But even in World War Two the British only took a small number of Bermudian soldiers. It's antiquated and it goes against contemporary military practice.

"Even the officers admit that they were just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

"Think about it, what do the Marines really think, what do the British Army officers and soldiers really think when they serve here? "Where's the goddamned review that supposed to turn us from a bunch of uninterested conscripts into a real army? "Who would you want at the corner of Court and Victoria, the guys who want to be there (who are about one third of the privates), or a small bunch of professionals? "Let's make it a small, company-sized professional standing unit, supplemented by two hundred or so, male or female volunteers, who get paid like reserve constables do, and it will be a force to be reckoned with.'' "What gets me is how everyone who has never been in the Regiment says that the Regiment is good for me.

"How come everyone else seems to know what's best for me? "If it's so good up there why do all the kids fear the day they get called? And when they are there why do all the guys say they don't like it? "It could be done better, but the NCOs carry on arrogantly.

"I don't think that marching us up and down, is doing anything for Bermuda.

"It's really funny that a lot of the senior people in the upper echelons of Bermudian society, haven't served in the Regiment.