ONCE again we are hearing raised voices from Warwick Camp ? only they are not emanating from the Sergeant Major on the parade ground. It seems that every year at this time Bermudians hear a combination of plaintive cries and dire threats from the Bermuda Regiment. The Regiment brass weep in public about the failure of recruits to turn up for military service and then threaten the young conscripts with arrest if they continue to dodge their public duty.

Bermuda Regiment Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Eddie Lamb is adamant that the Regiment will move to drafting women or change into an all-volunteer militia but instead will continue to go after draft dodgers and put them before the courts if need be for their non-compliance.

I suppose this state of affairs says something about the state of modern Bermuda. We are being forced to resort to old-fashioned press-gang tactics to bring our military up to strength, much as the British had to do in the early stages of their development as a sea power ? except that in Bermuda's case there is no empire to defend or war to fight, facts that are not lost on our young men, apparently.

The trouble is, unlike in some other countries, there is very little incentive among young people to join the army. In other countries, particularly poorer countries where there is unemployment because of poor economic prospects, joining the army is often viewed as a means for breaking out of the cycle of poverty. In the army you may not only get paid and trained but you also receive three square meals a day.

With overemployment in Bermuda, participation in a part-time militia holds no such appeal for the vast majority of young men. Couple that with the fact that there are very few full-time career prospects in the Bermuda Regiment and it does not surprise me that there are so many draft-dodgers among each new batch of conscripts.

Colonel Lamb, interviewed in last week'Newsmaker column, admitted that he was a reluctant recruit and only volunteered at 18 to get his military service out of the way.

That is an interesting admission because the Colonel did not go into the Regiment out of a sense of duty to the country. So the question is, why did he sign on? An answer to that question may hold the key as to why Bermuda's young men are reluctant to serve their country by willingly going into the army.

As things stand now, even if Bermuda were to have an all-volunteer army that was to include non-Bermudians and Bermudian women, this would be unlikely to provoke a sense of shame among some of Bermuda's male population for their failure to come forward to serve their country.

Now this is a powerful statement to make about Bermuda's male population and, of course, it certainly does not apply across the board. But something is preventing Bermudians from having a natural sense of duty towards their country.

Could it be that a lack of national identity is one of the factors that makes young men so unwilling to serve their country by going into the Regiment when they are called? I think so. I also believe this is one of the sociological reasons for the recent spate of gang warfare in Bermuda. Before you are tempted to dismiss my theory out of hand, just consider some of the other areas in Bermudian society where we can identify the same factor at play.

instance, there no longer seems to be any sense of pride associated in playing for Bermuda's national sports teams, at least among some young Bermudians. In the area of soccer, for instance, many players feel more loyalty to their club team than they do to the national squad.

And this lack of a national identity is not only to be found among Bermuda's young people; it is also prevalent among the older generations. Recently I engaged a couple of colleagues on this question ? what do we owe our country.

One man was a little older than myself, the other somewhat younger. The discussion began when I suggested that there could be circumstances when individuals would be expected to do something for their country without any expectation of rewards ? financial or otherwise.

I said this particularly applied in the area of sports ? where you may be called on to represent your country ? and service in the military.

My comments sparked explosions of negative opinions from my colleagues. For they could not see circumstances under which they would do something for their country without getting something in return ? and what they clearly meant was getting paid for their contributions.

Delving into Bermuda's racially divided past, they recalled that many of Bermuda's black sportsmen got very little out of representing Bermuda from the island's old economic power brokers, meaning the white community. Of course, this is a separate issue but not entirely unconnected from the issue of national identity.

We should not be surprised about this lack of a cohesive national identity in Bermuda today. We were never taught about taking pride in Bermuda when we were in school. In fact, when I was at school Bermuda as a country was a nonentity as all the focus was on Britain, the so-called Mother Country.

I did not know what it meant to have a Bermudian national identity until I became politically aware in the 1960s and '70s. Then I studied what other peoples meant when they talked about loyalty to their country. I also became aware of what other peoples were prepared to do to fight ? and if need be die ? for their country's Independence.

Interestingly during the debate leading up to Sir John Swan's Independence referendum, I was a strong and outspoken supporter of the initiative even though the Progressive Labour Party had called for its supporters to boycott the plebiscite.

Word got back to me that the late PLP leader Frederick Wade could not understand why I was so adamant on the question of Independence; that not even political loyalty to the PLP could not sway me from supporting a United Bermuda Party initiative.

He forgot what the party had taught me with respect to the quest for Bermudian Independence and what I had learned on my own.

, as a country, continue to pour scorn on the question of Bermudian identity ? a national identity ? yet we want all the things that go with it. We want our young men to answer the call to serve their country by going into the Bermuda Regiment; we want the outside world, in particular Britain, to respect our status as a self-governing country. We want all of these things without going all the way.