The National Service League was a British pressure group founded in February 1902 to alert the country to the inadequacy of the British Army to fight a major war and to propose the solution of national service. The League argued for four years of compulsory military training for home defence for every men aged between eighteen and thirty.Compulsory military service conscription was not popular and "aroused the long-standing antipathy toward standing armies and smacked of continental-style militarism". By October 1904 it had only 1,725 members but membership grew to 21,500 in December 1908 and it claimed a further 30,000 "adherents".