When the Territorial exclaims that, for his part, he would refuse to
inhabit a planet on which there was no hope of war, the peaceful
listener shudderingly charges the inventor of Territorials with
promoting a bloodthirsty mind. After all the prayers for peace in our
time--prayers in which even Territorials are expected to join on church
parade--it appears an impious folly to appraise war as a necessity for
human happiness. Or if indeed it be a blessing, however much in
disguise, why not boldly pray to have the full benefit of it in our
time, instead of passing it on, like unearned increment, for the
advantage of posterity? Such a thing is unimaginable. A prayer for war
would make people jump; it would empty a church quicker than the
collection. Nevertheless, it is probable that the great majority of
every congregation does in its heart share the Territorial's opinion,
and, if there were no possibility of war ever again anywhere in the
world, they would find life upon this planet a trifle flat.
The impulse to hostilities arises not merely from the delight in scenes
of blood enjoyed at a distance, though that is the commonest form of
military ardour, and in many a bloody battle the finest fruits of
victory are reaped over newspapers and cigars at the bar or in the back
garden. There is no such courage as glows in the citizen's bosom when he
peruses the telegrams of slaughter, just as there is no such ferocity as
he imbibes from the details of a dripping murder. "War! War! Bloody war!
North, South, East, or West!" cries the soldier in one of Mr. Kipling's
pretty tales; but in real life that cry arises rather from the
music-halls than from the soldier, and many a high-souled patriot at
home would think himself wronged if perpetual peace deprived him of his
one opportunity of displaying valour to his friends, his readers, or his
family. All these imaginative people, whose bravery may be none the less
genuine for being vicarious, must be reckoned as the natural supporters
of war, and, indeed, one can hardly conceive any form of distant
conflict for which they would not stand prepared.
But still, the widespread dislike of peace is not entirely derived from
their prowess; nor does it spring entirely from the nursemaid's love of
the red coat and martial gait, though this is on a far nobler plane, and
comes much nearer to the heart of things. The gleam of uniforms in a
drab world, the upright bearing, the rattle of a kettledrum, the boom of
a salute, the murmur of the "Dead March," the goodnight of the "Last
Post" sounding over the home-faring traffic and the quiet cradles--one
does not know by what substitutes eternal peace could exactly replace
them. For they are symbols of a spiritual protest against the
degradation of security. They perpetually re-assert the claim of a
beauty and a passion that have no concern with material advantages. They
sound defiance in the dull ears of comfort, and proclaim woe unto them
that are at ease in the city of life. Dimly the nursemaid is aware of
the protest; most people are dimly aware of it; and the few who
seriously labour for an unending reign of peace must take it into
account.
It is useless to allure mankind by promises of a pig's paradise. Much
has been rightly written about the horrors of war. Everyone knows them
to be sudden, hideous, and overwhelming; those who have seen them can
speak also of the squalor, the filthiness, the murderous swindling, and
the inconceivable absurdity of the whole monstrous performance. But the
horrors of peace, if not so obvious, come nearer to our daily life, and
we are naturally terrified at its softness, its monotony, and its
enfeebling relaxation. Of all people in the world the wealthy classes of
England and America are probably the furthest removed from danger, and
no one admires them in the least; no one in the least envies their
treadmill of successive pleasures. The most unwarlike of men are haunted
by the fear that perpetual peace would induce a general degeneration of
soul and body such as they now behold amid the rich man's sheltered
comforts. They dread the growth of a population slack of nerve, soft of
body, cruel through fear of pain, and incapable of endurance or high
endeavour. They dread the entire disappearance of that clear
decisiveness, that disregard of pleasure, that quiet devotion of self in
the face of instant death, which are to be found, now and again, in the
course of every war. Even peace, they say, may be bought too dear, and
what shall it profit a people if it gain a swill-tub of comforts and
lose its own soul?
The same argument is chosen by those who would persuade the whole
population to submit to military training, whether it is needful for the
country's defence or not. Under such training, they suppose, the
virtues that peace imperils would be maintained; a sense of equality and
comradeship would pervade all classes, and for two or three years of
life the wealthy would enjoy the realities of labour and discomfort. It
is a tempting vision, and if this were the only means of escape from
such a danger as is represented, the wealthy would surely be the first
to embrace it for their own salvation. But is there no other means?
asked Professor William James, and his answer to the question was that
distinguished psychologist's last service. What we are looking for, he
rightly said, is a moral equivalent for war, and he suddenly found it in
a conscription, not for fighting, but for work. After showing that the
life of many is nothing else but toil and pain, while others "get no
taste of this campaigning life at all," he continued:
"If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military
conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population
to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted
against _nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and
numerous other benefits to the commonwealth would follow.
The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought
into the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain
blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's real
relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently solid
and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines,
to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing,
clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and
tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames
of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according
to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and
to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer
ideas."
Here, indeed, is a vision more tempting than ever conscription was. To
be sure, it is not new, for Ruskin had a glimpse of it, and that was why
he induced the Oxford undergraduates to vary their comfortable Greek
studies and games at ball with a little honest work upon the Hinksey
road. But the vision is irresistible. There cannot be the smallest doubt
it will be realised, and when the young dukes, landed proprietors,
financiers, motorists, officers in the Guards, barristers, and curates
are marched off in gangs to their apportioned labour in the stoke-holes,
coal-mines, and December fishing fleets, how the workmen will laugh, how
exult!
Nor let it be supposed that the conscription would subject even the most
luxurious conscripts to any unendurable hardship. So hateful is idleness
to man that the toil of the poor is continually being adopted by the
rich as sport. To climb a mountain was once the irksome duty of the
shepherd and wandering hawker; now it is the privilege of wealth to hang
by the finger-nails over an abyss. Once it was the penalty of slaves to
pull the galleys; now it is only the well-to-do who labour day by day at
the purposeless oar, and rack their bodies with a toil that brings home
neither fish nor merchandise. Once it fell to the thin bowman and
despised butcher to provide the table with flesh and fowl; now, at
enormous expense, the rich man plays the poulterer for himself, and
statesmen seek the strenuous life in the slaughter of a scarcely edible
rhinoceros. Let the conscripts of comfort take heart. They will run more
risks in the galleries of the mines than on the mountain precipice, and
one night's trawl upon the Dogger Bank would provide more weight of fish
than if they whipped the Tay from spring to winter.
Under this great conscription, a New Model would, indeed, be initiated,
as far superior to the conscript armies as Cromwell's Ironsides were to
the mercenaries of their time. The whole nation from prince to beggar
would by this means be transformed, labour would cease to be despised or
riches to be worshipped, the reproach of effeminacy would be removed,
the horrors of peace mitigated, and the moral equivalent of war
discovered. For the first time a true comradeship between class and
class would arise, for, as Goethe said, work makes the comrade, and
democracy might have a chance of becoming a reality instead of a party
phrase. After three years' service down the sewers or at the smelting
works, our men of leisure would no longer raise their wail over national
degeneracy or the need of maintaining the standard of hardihood by
barrack-square drill. As things are now, it is themselves who chiefly
need the drill. "Those who live at ease," said Professor James, "are an
island on a stormy ocean." In the summing up of the nation they, in
their security, would hardly count, were they not so vocal; but the
molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea,
and hunger always at the door take care that, for all but a very few
among the people, the discipline of danger and perpetual effort shall
not be wanting. You do not find the pitman, the dustman, or the bargee
puling for bayonet exercise to make them hard, and if our nervous
gentlemen were all serving the State in those capacities, they might
even approach their addition sums in "Dreadnoughts" without a tremor.
Besides, as Professor James added for a final inducement, the women
would value them more highly.