When the recruiting sergeants came to mobilise Odysseus for the siege of Troy, the guileful king of Ithaca feigned madness, driving his plough back and forth across a beach and seeding it with grains of salt.
In decades gone by, Germany’s draft dodgers and conscientious objectors resorted to an array of similarly inventive ruses, from faking chronic illness to devising long autobiographical texts on the roots of their pacifism.
Now, as the government prepares to bring back a small-scale form of national service, the old boxes of tricks are being dusted off.
