Some one, I see, is lifting up his sweet voice in praise of Conscription.
It is only at long intervals that one reads this kind of thing in our
reviews or newspapers, and I am happy in believing that most English
people are affected by it even as I am, with the sickness of dread and of
disgust. That the thing is impossible in England, who would venture to
say? Every one who can think at all sees how slight are our safeguards
against that barbaric force in man which the privileged races have so
slowly and painfully brought into check. Democracy is full of menace to
all the finer hopes of civilization, and the revival, in not unnatural
companionship with it, of monarchic power based on militarism, makes the
prospect dubious enough. There has but to arise some Lord of Slaughter,
and the nations will be tearing at each other's throats. Let England be
imperilled, and Englishmen will fight; in such extremity there is no
choice. But what a dreary change must come upon our islanders if,
without instant danger, they bend beneath the curse of universal
soldiering! I like to think that they will guard the liberty of their
manhood even beyond the point of prudence.
A lettered German, speaking to me once of his year of military service,
told me that, had it lasted but a month or two longer, he must have
sought release in suicide. I know very well that my own courage would
not have borne me to the end of the twelvemonth; humiliation, resentment,
loathing, would have goaded me to madness. At school we used to be
"drilled" in the playground once a week; I have but to think of it, even
after forty years, and there comes back upon me that tremor of passionate
misery which, at the time, often made me ill. The senseless routine of
mechanic exercise was in itself all but unendurable to me; I hated the
standing in line, the thrusting-out of arms and legs at a signal, the
thud of feet stamping in constrained unison. The loss of individuality
seemed to me sheer disgrace. And when, as often happened, the
drill-sergeant rebuked me for some inefficiency as I stood in line, when
he addressed me as "Number Seven!" I burned with shame and rage. I was
no longer a human being; I had become part of a machine, and my name was
"Number Seven." It used to astonish me when I had a neighbour who went
through the drill with amusement, with zealous energy; I would gaze at
the boy, and ask myself how it was possible that he and I should feel so
differently. To be sure, nearly all my schoolfellows either enjoyed the
thing, or at all events went through it with indifference; they made
friends with the sergeant, and some were proud of walking with him "out
of bounds." Left, right! Left, right! For my own part, I think I have
never hated man as I hated that broad-shouldered, hard-visaged, brassy-
voiced fellow. Every word he spoke to me, I felt as an insult. Seeing
him in the distance, I have turned and fled, to escape the necessity of
saluting, and, still more, a quiver of the nerves which affected me so
painfully. If ever a man did me harm, it was he; harm physical and
moral. In all seriousness I believe that something of the nervous
instability from which I have suffered since boyhood is traceable to
those accursed hours of drill, and I am very sure that I can date from
the same wretched moments a fierceness of personal pride which has been
one of my most troublesome characteristics. The disposition, of course,
was there; it should have been modified, not exacerbated.
In younger manhood it would have flattered me to think that I alone on
the school drill-ground had sensibility enough to suffer acutely. Now I
had much rather feel assured that many of my schoolfellows were in the
same mind of subdued revolt. Even of those who, boylike, enjoyed their
drill, scarce one or two, I trust, would have welcomed in their prime of
life the imposition of military servitude upon them and their countrymen.
From a certain point of view, it would be better far that England should
bleed under conquest than that she should be saved by eager, or careless,
acceptance of Conscription. That view will not be held by the English
people; but it would be a sorry thing for England if the day came when no
one of those who love her harboured such a thought.