PERVERSITIES OF THE ANTI-MILITARIST SPIRIT
If 'National Service,' or 'Conscription,' has actually become necessary
already, or may conceivably become so before long, it seems worth while
to glance at some of the considerations which have been urged in favour
of this system in the past, and also to examine some of the causes and
conditions which have hitherto led public opinion in the United
Kingdom, as well as in several of the Dominions, to regard the
principle of compulsion with hostility and distrust. The true nature
of what we call the 'Voluntary System,' and the reasons which have
induced a large section of our fellow-countrymen to regard it as one of
our most sacred institutions, are worth looking into, now that
circumstances may force us to abandon it in the near future.
Beyond the question, whether the system of recruiting, which has been
employed during the present war, can correctly be described as
'voluntary,' there is the further question, whether the system, which
is in use at ordinary times, and which produces some 35,000 men per
annum, can be so described. Lord Roberts always maintained that it
could not, and that its true title was 'the Conscription of Hunger.'
{383}
[Sidenote: NORMAL RECRUITING METHODS]
Any one who has watched the recruiting-sergeant at work, on a raw cold
day of winter or early spring, will be inclined to agree with Lord
Roberts. A fine, good-humoured, well-fed, well-set-up fellow, in a
handsome uniform, with rows of medals which light up the mean and dingy
street, lays himself alongside some half-starved poor devil, down in
his luck, with not a rag to his back that the north wind doesn't blow
through. The appetites and vanities of the latter are all of them
morbidly alert--hunger, thirst, the desire for warmth, and to cut a
smart figure in the world. The astute sergeant, though no professor of
psychology, understands the case thoroughly, as he marks down his man.
He greets him heartily with a 'good day' that sends a glow through him,
even before the drink at the Goat and Compasses, or Green Dragon has
been tossed off, and the King's shilling accepted.
Not that there is any need for pity or regret. These young men with
empty bellies, and no very obvious way of filling them, except by
violence--these lads with gloom at their hearts, in many cases with a
burden of shame weighing on them at having come into such a forlorn
pass--in nine cases out of ten enlistment saves them; perhaps in more
even than that.
But talk about compulsion and the voluntary principle! What strikes
the observer most about such a scene as this is certainly not anything
which can be truly termed 'voluntary.' If one chooses to put things
into ugly words--which is sometimes useful, in order to give a shock to
good people who are tending towards self-righteousness in their worship
of phrases--this is the compulsion of hunger and {384} misery. It
might even be contended that it was not only compulsion, but a mean,
sniggling kind of compulsion, taking advantage of a starving man.
The law is very chary of enforcing promises made under duress. If a
man dying of thirst signs his birthright away, or binds himself in
service for a term of years, in exchange for a glass of water, the ink
and paper have no validity. But the recruit is firmly bound. He has
made a contract to give his labour, and to risk his life for a long
period of years, at a wage which is certainly below the market rate;
and he is held to it. Things much more 'voluntary' than this have been
dubbed 'slavery,' and denounced as 'tainted with servile conditions.'
And the loudest denunciators have been precisely those
anti-militarists, who uphold our 'voluntary' system with the hottest
fervour, while reprobating 'compulsion' with the utmost horror.
[Sidenote: MORAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS]
We have heard much caustic abuse of the National Service League. It
has been accused of talking 'the cant of compulsion'; by which has been
meant that certain of its members have put in the forefront of their
argument the moral and physical advantages which they imagine universal
military training would confer upon the nation. Some may possibly have
gone too far, and lost sight of the need of the nation, in their
enthusiasm for the improvement of the individual. But if occasionally
their arguments assume the form of cant, can their lapse be compared
with the cant which tells the world smugly that the British Army is
recruited on the voluntary principle?
The 'economic argument,' as it is called, is another example. The
country would be faced with {385} ruin, we are told, if every
able-bodied man had to give 'two of the best years of his life,'[1] and
a week or two out of each of the ensuing seven, to 'unproductive'
labour. Sums have been worked out the to hundreds of millions
sterling, with the object of showing that the national loss, during a
single generation, would make the national debt appear insignificant.
How could Britain maintain her industrial pre-eminence weighted with
such a handicap?
One answer is that Britain, buoyed up though she has been by her
voluntary system, has not lately been outstripping those of her
competitors who carried this very handicap which it is now proposed
that she should carry; that she has not even been maintaining her
relative position in the industrial world in comparison, for example,
with Germany.
But there is also another answer. If you take a youth at the plastic
age when he has reached manhood, feed him on wholesome food, subject
him to vigorous and varied exercise, mainly in the open air, discipline
him, train him to co-operation with his fellows, make him smart and
swift in falling-to at whatever work comes under his hand, you are
thereby giving him precisely what, for his own sake and that of the
country, is most needed at the present time. You are giving him the
chance of developing his bodily strength under healthy conditions, and
you are giving him a general education and moral training which, in the
great majority of cases, will be of great value to him in all his after
life.
It is the regret of every one, who has studied our industrial system
from within, that men wear out too {386} soon. By the time a man
reaches his fortieth year--often earlier--he is too apt, in many
vocations, to be an old man; and for that reason he is in danger of
being shoved out of his place by a younger generation.
This premature and, for the most part, unnecessary ageing is the real
economic loss. If by taking two years out of a man's life as he enters
manhood, if by improving his physique and helping him to form healthy
habits, you can thereby add on ten or fifteen years to his industrial
efficiency, you are not only contributing to his own happiness, but are
also adding enormously to the wealth and prosperity of the country.
Any one indeed, who chooses to work out sums upon this hypothesis, will
hardly regard the national debt as a large enough unit for comparison.
The kernel of this matter is, that men wear out in the working classes
earlier than in others, mainly because they have no break, no rest, no
change, from the day they leave school to take up a trade, till the day
when they have to hand in their checks for good and all. It is not
effort, but drudgery, which most quickly ages a man. It is the
rut--straight, dark, narrow, with no horizons, and no general view of
the outside world--which is the greatest of social dangers. More than
anything else it tends to narrowness of sympathy and bitterness of
heart.
[Sidenote: UNDER-RATING OF CONSCRIPT ARMIES]
It would be cant to claim that universal military training will get rid
of this secular evil; but to say that it will help to diminish it is
merely the truth. The real 'cant' is to talk about the economic loss
under conscription; for there would undoubtedly be an immense economic
gain.
But indeed the advocacy of the voluntary system {387} is stuffed full
of cant.... We are all proud of our army; and rightly so. But the
opponents of universal military service go much further in this
direction than the soldiers themselves. They contrast our army, to its
enormous advantage, with the conscript armies of the continent, which
they regard as consisting of vastly inferior fighting men--of men, in a
sense despicable, inasmuch as their meek spirits have submitted tamely
to conscription.
Colonel Seely, who, when he touches arithmetic soars at once into the
region of poetry, has pronounced confidently that one of our voluntary
soldiers is worth ten men whom the law compels to serve. Sir John
Simon was still of opinion--even after several months of war--that one
of our volunteers was worth at least three conscripts; and he was
convinced that the Kaiser himself already knew it. What a splendid
thing if Colonel Seely were right, or even if Sir John Simon were right!
But is either of them right? So far as our voluntary army is
superior--and it was undoubtedly superior in certain respects at the
beginning of the war--it was surely not because it was a 'voluntary'
army; but because, on the average, it had undergone a longer and more
thorough course of training than the troops against which it was called
upon to fight. Fine as its spirit was, and high as were both its
courage and its intelligence, who has ever heard a single soldier
maintain that--measured through and through--it was in those respects
superior to the troops alongside which, or against which it fought?
As the war has continued month after month, and men with only a few
months' training have been {388} drafted across the Channel to supply
the British wastage of war, even this initial superiority which came of
longer and more thorough training has gradually been worn away. A time
will come, no doubt--possibly it has already come--when Germany, having
used up her trained soldiers of sound physique, has to fall back upon
an inferior quality. But that is merely exhaustion. It does not prove
the superiority of the voluntary system. It does not affect the
comparison between men of equal stamina and spirit--one set of whom has
been trained beforehand in arms--the other not put into training until
war began.
Possibly Colonel Seely spoke somewhat lightly and thoughtlessly in
those serene days before the war-cloud burst; but Sir John Simon spoke
deliberately--his was the voice of the Cabinet, after months of grim
warfare. To describe his utterances as cant does not seem unjust,
though possibly it is inadequate. We are proud of our army, not merely
because of its fine qualities, but for the very fact that it is what we
choose to call a 'voluntary' army. But what do they say of it in
foreign countries? What did the whole of Europe say of it during the
South African War? What are the Germans saying of it now?
Naturally prejudice has led them to view the facts at a different
angle. They have seldom referred to the 'voluntary' character of our
army. That was not the aspect which attracted their attention, so much
as the other aspect, that our soldiers received pay, and therefore,
according to German notions, 'fought for hire.' At the time of the
South African War all continental nations said of our army what {389}
the Germans still say--not that it was a 'voluntary' army, but that it
was a 'mercenary' army; and this is a much less pleasant-sounding
term.[2]
[Sidenote: THE CANT OF MILITARISM]
In this accusation we find the other kind of cant--the cant of
militarism. For if ours is a mercenary army, so is their own, in so
far as the officers and non-commissioned officers are concerned. But
as a matter of fact no part, either of our army or the existing German
army, can with any truth be described as 'mercenaries'; for this is a
term applicable only to armies--much more common in the past in Germany
than anywhere else--who were hired out to fight abroad in quarrels
which were not their own.
But although this German accusation against the character of our troops
is pure cant, it would not be wholly so were it levelled against the
British people. Not our army, but we ourselves, are the true
mercenaries; because we pay others to do for us what other nations do
for themselves. In German eyes--and perhaps in other eyes as well,
which are less willing to see our faults--this charge against the
British people appears maintainable. It is incomprehensible to other
nations, why we should refuse to recognise that it is any part of our
duty, _as a people_, to defend our country; why we will not admit the
obligation either to train ourselves to arms in time of peace, or to
risk our lives in time of war; why we hold obstinately to it that such
things are no part of {390} our duty as a people, but are only the duty
of private individuals who love fighting, or who are endowed with more
than the average sense of duty.
"As for you, the great British People," writes Hexenküchen
contemptuously, "you merely fold your hands, and say self-righteously,
that your duty begins and ends with paying certain individuals to fight
for you--individuals whose personal interest can be tempted with
rewards; whose weakness of character can be influenced by taunts, and
jeers, and threats of dismissal; or who happen to see their duty in a
different light from the great majority which calls itself (and is _par
excellence_) the British People...." This may be a very prejudiced
view of the matter, but it is the German view. What they really mean
when they say that England is to be despised because she relies upon a
mercenary army, is that England is to be despised because, being
mercenary, she relies upon a professional army. The taunt, when we
come to analyse it, is found to be levelled, not against the hired, but
against the hirers; and although we may be very indignant, it is not
easy to disprove its justice.
The British nation, if not actually the richest, is at any rate one of
the richest in the world. It has elected to depend for its safety upon
an army which cannot with justice be called either 'voluntary' or
'mercenary,' but which it is fairly near the truth to describe as
'professional.' The theory of our arrangement is that we must somehow,
and at the cheapest rate, contrive to tempt enough men to become
professional soldiers to ensure national safety. Accordingly we offer
such inducements to take up {391} the career of arms--instead of the
trades of farm labourer, miner, carpenter, dock hand, shopkeeper,
lawyer, physician, or stockbroker--as custom and the circumstances of
the moment appear to require.
In an emergency we offer high pay and generous separation allowances to
the private soldier. In normal times we give him less than the market
rate of wages.
[Sidenote: PAY OF THE BRITISH ARMY]
The pay of junior or subaltern officers is so meagre that it cannot, by
any possibility, cover the expenses which Government insists upon their
incurring. Captains, majors, and lieutenant-colonels are paid much
less than the wages of foremen or sub-managers in any important
industrial undertaking. Even for those who attain the most brilliant
success in their careers, there are no prizes which will stand
comparison for a moment with a very moderate degree of prosperity in
the world of trade or finance. They cannot even be compared with the
prizes open to the bar or the medical profession.
Hitherto we have obtained our officers largely owing to a firmly rooted
tradition among the country gentlemen and the military
families--neither as a rule rich men, or even very easy in their
circumstances as things go nowadays--many of them very poor--a
tradition so strong that it is not cant, but plain truth, to call it
sense of duty. There are other motives, of course, which may lead a
boy to choose this profession--love of adventure, comparative freedom
from indoor life, pleasant comradeship, and in the case of the middle
classes, recently risen to affluence, social aspirations. But even in
the last there is far more good than harm; though in anti-militarist
circles it is the unworthy aim which is usually dwelt upon with {392} a
sneering emphasis. For very often, when a man has risen from humble
circumstances to a fortune, he rejoices that his sons should serve the
state, since it is in his power to make provision. The example of his
neighbours, whose ancestors have been living on their acres since the
days of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, is a noble example; and he is
wise to follow it.
In the case of the rank and file of our army, a contract for a term of
years (with obligations continuing for a further term of years) is
entered into, and signed, under the circumstances which have already
been considered. We are faced here with a phenomenon which seems
strange in an Age which has conceded the right to 'down tools,' even
though by so doing a solemn engagement is broken--in an Age which has
become very fastidious about hiring agreements of most kinds, very
suspicious of anything suggestive of 'servile conditions' or 'forced
labour,' and which deprecates the idea of penalising breach of
contract, on the part of a workman, even by process in the civil courts.
As regards a private soldier in the British army, however, the Age
apparently has no such compunctions. His contract has been made under
duress. Its obligations last for a long period of years. The pay is
below the ordinary market rates. Everything in fact which, in equity,
would favour a revision, pleads in favour of the soldier who demands to
be released. But let him plead and threaten as he please, he is not
released. It is not a case of suing him for damages in the civil
courts, but of dealing with him under discipline and mutiny acts, the
terms of which are simple and drastic--in {393} peace time
imprisonment, in war time death. Without these means of enforcing the
'voluntary' system the British people would not feel themselves safe.
This phenomenon seems even stranger, when we remember that a large and
influential part of the British people is not only very fastidious as
to the terms of all other sorts of hiring agreements, as to rates of
pay, and as to the conditions under which such contracts have been
entered into--that it is not only most tender in dealing with the
breach of such agreements--but that it also regards the object of the
agreement for military service with particular suspicion. This section
of the British people is anti-militarist on conscientious grounds. One
would have thought, therefore, that it might have been more than
usually careful to allow the man, who hires himself out for lethal
purposes, to have the benefit of second thoughts; or even of third,
fourth, and fifth thoughts. For he, too, may develop a conscience when
his belly is no longer empty. But no: to do this would endanger the
'voluntary' system.
[Sidenote: THE ANTI-MILITARIST CONSCIENCE]
This anti-militarist section of the British people is composed of
citizens who, if we are to believe their own professions, love peace
more than other men love it, and hate violence as a deadly sin. They
are determined not to commit this deadly sin themselves; but being
unable to continue in pursuit of their material and spiritual affairs,
unless others will sin in their behalf, they reluctantly agree to
hire--at as low a price as possible--a number of wild fellows from the
upper classes and wastrels from the lower classes--both of whom they
regard as approximating to the reprobate type--to defend their
property, to keep {394} their lives safe, to enforce their Will as it
is declared by ballot papers and House of Commons divisions, and to
allow them to continue their careers of beneficent self-interest
undisturbed.
But for all that, we are puzzled by the rigour with which the contract
for military service is enforced, even to the last ounce of the pound
of flesh. Not a murmur of protest comes from this section of the
British people, although it has professed to take the rights of the
poorer classes as its special province. The explanation probably is
that, like King Charles I., they have made a mental reservation, and
are thus enabled to distinguish the case of the soldier from that of
his brother who engages in a civil occupation.
Roughly speaking, they choose to regard the civilian as virtuous, while
the soldier, on the other hand, cannot safely be presumed to be
anything of the sort. Sometimes indeed--perhaps more often than
not--he appears to them to be distinctly unvirtuous. The presumption
is against him; for if he were really virtuous, how could he ever have
agreed to become a soldier, even under pressure of want? For
regulating the service of such men as these force is a regrettable, but
necessary, instrument. The unvirtuous man has agreed to sin, and the
virtuous man acts justly in holding him to his bargain. If a soldier
develops a conscience, and insists on 'downing tools' it is right to
imprison him; even in certain circumstances to put him against a wall
and shoot him.
These ideas wear an odd appearance when we come to examine them
closely, and yet not only did they exist, but they were actually very
prevalent down to the outbreak of the present war. They {395} seem to
be somewhat prevalent, even now, in various quarters. But surely it is
strange that virtuous citizens should need the protection of unvirtuous
ones; that they should underpay; that they should adopt the methods of
'forced labour' as a necessary part of the 'voluntary system'; that
they should imprison and shoot men for breach of hiring
agreements--hiring agreements for long periods of years, entered into
under pressure of circumstances.
[Sidenote: ANTI-MILITARIST CONFIDENCE]
But there is a thing even stranger than any of these. Considering how
jealous the great anti-militarist section of our fellow-countrymen is
of anything which places the army in a position to encroach upon, or
overawe, the civil power, it seems very remarkable that they should
nevertheless have taken a large number of men--whose morals, in their
view, were below rather than above the average--should have armed them
with rifles and bayonets, and spent large sums of money in making them
as efficient as possible for lethal purposes, while refusing firmly to
arm _themselves_ with anything but ballot-boxes, or to make themselves
fit for any form of self-defence.
It seems never to have crossed the minds of the anti-militarist section
that those whom they thus regard--if not actually with moral
reprehension, at any rate somewhat askance--might perhaps some day
discover that there were advantages in being armed, and in having
become lethally efficient; that having studied the phenomena of
strikes, and having there seen force of various kinds at work--hiring
agreements broken, combinations to bring pressure on society
successful, rather black things occasionally hushed up and
forgiven--soldiers might draw their own conclusions. Having grown
tired of pay lower {396} than the market rate, still more tired of
moral lectures about the wickedness of their particular trade, and of
tiresome old-fashioned phrases about the subordination of the military
to the civil power--what if they, like other trades and classes, should
begin to consider the propriety of putting pressure on society, since
such pressure appears nowadays to be one of the recognised instruments
for redress of wrongs? ... Have not professional soldiers the power to
put pressure on society in the twentieth century, just as they have
done, again and again, in past times in other kingdoms and democracies,
where personal freedom was so highly esteemed, that even the freedom to
abstain from defending your country was respected by public opinion and
the laws of the land?
But nonsense! In Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Italy, and other
conscript countries armies are hundreds of times stronger than our own,
while the soldiers in these cases are hardly paid enough to keep a
smoker in pipe-tobacco. And yet they do not think of putting pressure
on society, or of anything so horrible. This of course is true; but
then, in these instances, the Army is only Society itself passing, as
it were, like a may-fly, through a certain stage in its life-history.
Army and Society in the conscript countries are one and the same. A
man does not think of putting undue pressure upon himself. But in our
case the Army and Society are not one and the same. Their relations
are those of employer and employed, as they were in Rome long ago; and
as between employer and employed, there are always apt to be questions
of pay and position.
It is useful in this connection to think a little of Rome with its
'voluntary' or 'mercenary' or {397} 'professional' army--an army
underpaid at first, afterwards perhaps somewhat overpaid, when it
occurred to its mind to put pressure on society.
But Rome in the first century was a very different place from England
in the twentieth. Very different indeed! The art and rules of war
were considerably less of an expert's business than they are to-day.
Two thousand years ago--weapons being still somewhat
elementary--gunpowder not yet discovered--no railway trains and tubes,
and outer and inner circles, which now are as necessary for feeding
great cities as arteries and veins for keeping the human heart
going--private citizens, moreover, being not altogether unused to
acting with violence in self-defence--it might have taken, perhaps,
100,000 disciplined and well-led reprobates a week or more to hold the
six millions of Greater London by the throat. To-day 10,000 could do
this with ease between breakfast and dinner-time. Certainly a
considerable difference--but somehow not a difference which seems
altogether reassuring.
Since the days of Oliver Cromwell the confidence of the
anti-militarists in the docility of the British Army has never
experienced any serious shock. But yet, according to the theories of
this particular school, why should our army alone, of all trades and
professions, be expected not to place its own class interests before
those of the country?
[Sidenote: ARMIES AS LIBERATORS]
When professional armies make their first entry into practical politics
it is almost always in the role of liberators and defenders of justice.
An instance might easily occur if one or other set of politicians, in a
fit of madness or presumption, were to ask, or order, the British Army
to undertake certain {398} operations against a section of their
fellow-countrymen, which the soldiers themselves judged to be contrary
to justice and their own honour.
Something of this kind very nearly came to pass in March 1914. The
Curragh incident, as it was called, showed in a flash what a perilous
gulf opens, when a professional army is mishandled. Politicians, who
have come by degrees to regard the army--not as a national force, or
microcosm of the people, but as an instrument which electoral success
has placed temporarily in their hands, and which may therefore be used
legitimately for forwarding their own party ends--have ever been liable
to blunder in this direction.
Whatever may have been the merits of the Curragh case, the part which
the British Army was asked and expected to play on that occasion, was
one which no democratic Government would have dared to order a
conscript army to undertake, until it had been ascertained, beyond any
possibility of doubt, that the country as a whole believed extreme
measures to be necessary for the national safety.
If professional soldiers, however high and patriotic their spirit, be
treated as mercenaries--as if, in their dealings with their
fellow-countrymen, they had neither souls nor consciences--it can be no
matter for surprise if they should come by insensible degrees to think
and act as mercenaries.... One set or other of party politicians--the
occurrence is quite as conceivable in the case of a Unionist Government
as in that of a Liberal--issues certain orders, which it would never
dare to issue to a conscript army, and these orders, to its immense
surprise, are not obeyed. Thereupon a Government, which only the day
before {399} seemed to be established securely on a House of Commons
majority and the rock of tradition, is seen to be powerless. The army
in its own eyes--possibly in that of public opinion also--has stood
between the people and injustice. It has refused to be made the
instrument for performing an act of tyranny and oppression. Possibly
in sorrow and disgust it dissolves itself and ceases to exist.
Possibly, on the other hand, it glows with the approbation of its own
conscience; begins to admire its own strength, and not improbably to
wonder, if it might not be good for the country were soldiers to put
forth their strong arm rather more often, in order to restrain the
politicians from following evil courses. This of course is the end of
democracy and the beginning of militarism.
An army which starts by playing the popular role of benefactor, or
liberator, will end very speedily by becoming the instrument of a
military despotism. We need look no farther back than Cromwell and his
major-generals for an example. We have been in the habit of regarding
such contingencies as remote and mediaeval; none the less we had all
but started on this fatal course in the spring and summer of last year.
We were then saved, not by the wisdom of statesmen--for these only
increased the danger by the spectacle which they afforded of timidity,
temper, and equivocation--but solely by the present war which, though
it has brought us many horrors, has averted, for a time at least, what
is infinitely the worst of all.
[Sidenote: SERVICE AND SUFFRAGE]
The conclusion is plain. A democracy which asserts the right of
manhood suffrage, while denying the duty of manhood service, is living
in a fool's paradise.
{400}
A democracy which does not fully identify itself with its army, which
does not treat its army with honour and as an equal, but which treats
it, on the contrary, as ill-bred and ill-tempered people treat their
servants--with a mixture, that is, of fault-finding and
condescension--is following a very perilous path.
An army which does not receive the treatment it deserves, and which at
the same time is ordered by the politicians to perform services which,
upon occasions, it may hold to be inconsistent with its honour, is a
danger to the state.
A democracy which, having refused to train itself for its own defence,
thinks nevertheless that it can safely raise the issue of 'the Army
versus the People,' is mad.
[1] This was the German period of training for infantry. The National
Service League proposal was four months.
[2] The pay of the French private soldier is, I understand, about a
sou--a halfpenny--a day. In his eyes the British soldier in the next
trench, who receives from a shilling to eighteenpence a day--and in the
case of married men a separation allowance as well--must appear as a
kind of millionaire. During the South African War the pay of certain
volunteer regiments reached the preposterous figure of five shillings a
day for privates. Men serving with our army as motor drivers--in
comparative safety--receive something like six shillings or seven and
sixpence a day.
{401}