diplomacy is not easy to devise, and that high personal character and
class disinterestedness (the latter at present unattainable) on the part
of our diplomatists will be as vital as ever. I well know that diplomacy
is carried on at present not only by official correspondence meant for
possible publication and subject to an inspection which is in some
degree a responsible inspection, but by private letters which the King
himself has no right to read. I know that even in the United States,
where treaties and declarations of war must be made by Parliament, it is
nevertheless possible for the President to bring about a situation in
which Congress, like our House of Commons in the present instance, has
no alternative but to declare war. But though complete security is
impracticable, it does not follow that no precautions should be taken,
or that a democratic tradition is no safer than a feudal tradition. A
far graver doubt is raised by the susceptibility of the masses to war
fever, and the appalling danger of a daily deluge of cheap newspapers
written by nameless men and women whose scandalously low payment is a
guarantee of their ignorance and their servility to the financial
department, controlled by a moneyed class which not only curries favour
with the military caste for social reasons, but has large direct
interests in war as a method of raising the price of money, the only
commodity the moneyed class has to sell. But I am quite unable to see
that our Junkers are less susceptible to the influence of the Press than
the people educated by public elementary schools. On the contrary, our
Democrats are more fool-proof than our Plutocrats; and the ravings our
Junkers send to the papers for nothing in war time would be dear at a
halfpenny a line. Plutocracy makes for war because it offers prizes to
Plutocrats: Socialism makes for peace because the interests it serves
are international. So, as the Socialist side is the democratic side, we
had better democratize our diplomacy if we desire peace.
II.
*RECRUITING.*
And now as to the question of recruiting. This is pressing, because it
is not enough for the Allies to win: we and not Russia must be the
decisive factor in the victory, or Germany will not be fairly beaten,
and we shall be only rescued _proteges_ of Russia instead of the
saviours of Western Europe. We must have the best army in Europe; and we
shall not get it under existing arrangements. We are passing out of the
first phase of the war fever, in which men flock to the colours by
instinct, by romantic desire for adventure, by the determination not, as
Wagner put it, "to let their lives be governed by fear of the end," by
simple destitution through unemployment, by rancour and pugnacity
excited by the inventions of the Press, by a sense of duty inculcated in
platform orations which would not stand half an hour's discussion, by
the incitements and taunts of elderly non-combatants and maidens with a
taste for mischief, and by the verses of poets jumping at the cheapest
chance in their underpaid profession. The difficulty begins when all the
men susceptible to these inducements are enlisted, and we have to draw
on the solid, sceptical, sensible residuum who know the value of their
lives and services and liberties, and will not give them except on
substantial and honourable conditions. These Ironsides know that it is
one thing to fight for your country, and quite another to let your wife
and children starve to save our rich idlers from a rise in the supertax.
They also know that it is one thing to wipe out the Prussian drill
sergeant and snob officer as the enemies of manhood and honour, and
another to let that sacred mission be made an excuse for subjecting us
to exactly the same tyranny in England. They have not forgotten the "On
the knee" episode, nor the floggings in our military prisons, nor the
scandalous imprisonment of Tom Mann, nor the warnings as to military law
and barrack life contained even in Robert Blatchford's testimony that
the army made a man of him.
*What the Labour Party Owes to the Army.*
And here is where the Labour Party should come in. The Labour Party's
business is to abolish the Militarist soldier, who is only a quaint
survival of the King's footman (himself a still quainter survival of the
medieval baron's retainer), and substitute for him a trained combatant
with full civil rights, receiving the Trade Union rate of wages proper
to a skilled worker at a dangerous trade. It must co-operate with the
Trade Unions in fixing this moral minimum wage for the citizen soldier,
and in obtaining for him a guarantee that the wage shall continue until
he obtains civil employment on standard terms at the conclusion of the
war. It must make impossible the scandal of a monstrously rich peer (his
riches, the automatic result of ground land-landlordism, having "no
damned nonsense of merit about them") proclaiming the official weekly
allowance for the child of the British soldier in the trenches. That
allowance is eighteenpence, being less than one third of the standard
allowance for an illegitimate child under an affiliation order. And the
Labour Party must deprive the German bullet of its present double effect
in killing an Englishman in France and simultaneously reducing his
widow's subsistence from a guinea a week to five shillings. Until this
is done we are simply provoking Providence to destroy us.
I wish I could say that it is hardly necessary to add that Trade
Unionism must be instituted in the Army, so that there shall be
accredited secretaries in the field to act as a competent medium of
communication between the men on service and the political
representatives of their class at the War Office (for I shall propose
this representative innovation presently). It will shock our colonels;
but I know of no bodies of men for whom repeated and violent shocking is
more needed and more likely to prove salutary than the regimental masses
of the British army. One rather pleasant shock in store for them is the
discovery that an officer and a gentleman, whose sole professional
interest is the honour and welfare of his country, and who is bound to
the mystical equality of life-and-death duty for all alike, will get on
much more easily with a Trade Union secretary than a commercial employer
whose aim is simply private profit and who regards every penny added to
the wages of his employees as a penny taken off his own income. Howbeit,
whether the colonels like it or not--that is, whether they have become
accustomed to it or not--it has to come, and its protection from Junker
prejudice is another duty of the Labour Party. The Party as a purely
political body must demand that the defender of his country shall retain
his full civil rights unimpaired; that, the unnecessary, mischievous,
dishonourable and tyrannical slave code called military law, which at
its most savagely stern point produced only Wellington's complaint that
"it is impossible to get a command obeyed in the British Army," be
carted away to the rubbish heap of exploded superstitions; and that if
Englishmen are not to be allowed to serve their country in the field as
freely as they do in the numerous civil industries in which neglect and
indiscipline are as dangerous as they are in war, their leaders and
Parliamentary representatives will not recommend them to serve at all.
In wartime these things may not matter: discipline either goes by the
board or keeps itself under the pressure of the enemy's cannon; and
bullying sergeants and insolent officers have something else to do than
to provoke men they dislike into striking them and then reporting them
for two years' hard labour without trial by jury. In battle such
officers are between two fires. But soldiers are not always, or even
often, at war; and the dishonour of abdicating dearly-bought rights and
liberties is a stain both on war and peace. Now is the time to get rid
of that stain. If any officer cannot command men without it, as
civilians and police inspectors do, that officer has mistaken his
profession and had better come home.
*Obsolete Tests in the Army.*
Another matter needs to be dealt with at the same time. There are
immense numbers of atheists in this country; and though most of them,
like the Kaiser, regard themselves as devout Christians, the best are
intellectually honest enough to object to profess beliefs they do not
hold, especially in the solemn act of dedicating themselves to death in
the service of their country. Army form E 501 A (September, 1912)
secured to these the
[Illustration: JOHN GALSWORTHY. (_Photo by E.O. Hoppe_.) _See Page_
102]
[Illustration: RUDYARD KIPLING _(Photo by E.O. Hoppe_.) _See Page_ 106]
benefit of the Bradlaugh Affirmation Act of 1888, as the enlisting
soldier said simply "I, So and So, do make Oath, &c." But recruits are
now confronted with another form (E 501, June, 1914) running "I, So and
So, swear by Almighty God, &c." On September 1st, at Lord Kitchener's
call, a civil servant obtained leave to enlist and had the oath put to
him, in this form by the attesting officer. He offered to swear in the
1912 form. This was refused; and we accordingly lost a recruit of just
that sturdily conscientious temper which has made the most formidable
soldiers known to history. I am bound to add, however, that the
attesting officer, on being told that the oath would be a blasphemous
farce to the conscience of the recruit, made no difficulty about that,
and was quite willing to accept him if he, on his part, would oblige by
professing what he did not believe. Thus a Ghoorka's religious
conscience is respected: an Englishman's is insulted and outraged.
But, indeed, all these oaths are obstructive and useless superstitions.
No recruit will hesitate to pledge his word of honour to fight to the
death for his country or for a cause with which he sympathizes; and that
is all we require. There is no need to drag in Almighty God and no need
to drag in the King. Many an Irishman, many a colonial Republican, many
an American volunteer who would fight against the Prussian monarchy
shoulder to shoulder with the French Republicans with a will, would
rather not pretend to do it out of devotion to the British throne. To
vanquish Prussia in this war we need the active aid or the sympathy of
every Republican in the world. America, for instance, sympathizes with
England, but classes the King with the Kaiser as an obsolete
institution. Besides, even from the courtly point of view the situation
is a delicate one. Why emphasize the fact that, formally speaking, the
war is between two grandsons of Albert the Good, that thoroughbred
German whose London monument is so much grander than Cromwell's?
The Labour Party should also set its face firmly against the abandonment
of Red Cross work and finance, or the support of soldiers' families, or
the patrolling of the streets, to amateurs who regard the war as a
wholesome patriotic exercise, or as the latest amusement in the way of
charity bazaars, or as a fountain of self-righteousness. Civil
volunteering is needed urgently enough: one of the difficulties of war
is that it creates in certain departments a demand so abnormal that no
peace establishment can cope with it. But the volunteers should be
disciplined and paid: we are not so poor that we need spunge on anyone.
And in hospital and medical service war ought not at present to cost
more than peace would if the victims of our commercial system were
properly tended, and our Public Health service adequately extended and
manned. We should therefore treat our Red Cross department as if it were
destined to become a permanent service. No charity and no amateur
anarchy and incompetence should be tolerated. As to allowing that
admirable detective agency for the defence of the West End against
begging letter writers, the Charity Organization Society to touch the
soldier's home, the very suggestion is an outrage. The C.O.S., the Poor
Law, and the charitable amateur, whether of the patronizing or prying or
gushing variety, must be kept as far from the army and its folk as if
they were German spies. The business of our fashionable amateurs is to
pay Income Tax and Supertax. This time they will have to pay through the
nose, vigorously wrung for that purpose by the House of Commons; so they
had better set their own houses in order and leave the business of the
war to be officially and responsibly dealt with and paid for at full
standard rates.
*Wanted: Labour Representation in the War Office.*
But parliamentary activity is not sufficient. There must be a more
direct contact between representative Labour and the Army, because
Parliament can only remedy grievances, and that not before years of
delay and agitation elapse. Even then the grievances are not dealt with
on their merits; for under our party system, which is the most
abominable engine for the perversion and final destruction of all
political conscience ever devized by man, the House of Commons never
votes on any question but whether the Government shall remain in office
or give the Opposition a turn, no matter what the pretext for the
division may be. Only in such emergencies as the present, when the
Government is forced to beg the Labour members to help them to recruit,
is there a chance of making reasonable conditions for the soldier.
*The Four Inoculations.*
It is therefore necessary that the War Office should have working class
representatives on all committees and councils which issue notices to
the public. There is at present, it would seem, not a single person in
authority there who has the faintest notion of what the immense majority
of possible British recruits are thinking about. The results have been
beyond description ludicrous and dangerous. Every proclamation is
urgently worded so as to reassure recruits with £5,000 a year and repel
recruits with a pound a week. On the very day when the popular Lord
Kitchener, dropping even the _et rex meus_ of Wolsey, frankly asked the
nation for 100,000 men for his army, and when it was a matter of life
and death that every encouragement should be held out to working men to
enlist, the War Office decided that this was the psychological moment to
remind everybody that soldiers on active service often die of typhoid
fever, and to press inoculation on the recruits pending the officially
longed-for hour when Sir Almroth Wright's demand for compulsion can be
complied with. I say nothing here about the efficacy of inoculation.
Efficacious or not, Sir Almroth Wright himself bases his demand for
compulsion on the ground that it is hopeless to expect the whole army to
submit to it voluntarily. That being so, it seems to me that when men
are hesitating on the threshold of the recruiting station, only a German
spy or our War Office (always worth ten thousand men to our enemies)
would seize that moment to catch the nervous postulant by the sleeve and
say, "Have you thought of the danger of dysentery?" The fact that the
working class forced the Government, very much against its doctor-ridden
will, to abolish compulsory vaccination, shews the extent to which its
households loathe and dread these vaccines (so called, but totally
unconnected with cows or Jenner) which, as they are continually reminded
by energetic anti-inoculation propagandists in largely circulated
journals and pamphlets, not to mention ghastly photographs of disfigured
children, sometimes produce worse effects than the diseases they are
supposed to prevent. Indifferent or careless recruits are easily induced
to submit to inoculation by little privileges during the ensuing
indisposition or by small money bribes; and careful ones are
proselytized by Sir Almroth's statistics; but on the whole both
inoculation and amateur medical statistics are regarded with suspicion
by the poor; and the fact that revaccination is compulsory in the
regular army, and that the moral pressure applied to secure both typhoid
inoculation and vaccination both in the regular army and the
Territorials is such as only a few stalwarts are able to resist, is
deeply resented. At present the inoculation mania has reached the pitch
of proposing no less than four separate inoculations: revaccination,
typhoid, cholera, and--Sir Almroth's last staggerer--inoculation against
wounds! When the War Office and its medical advisers have been
successfully inoculated against political lunacy, it will be time enough
to discuss such extravagances. Meanwhile, the sooner the War Office
issues a proclamation that no recruit will be either compelled or
importuned to submit to any sort of inoculation whatever against his
will, the better for the recruiting, and the worse for the enemy.
*The War Office Bait of Starvation.*
But this blunder was a joke compared to the next exploit of the War
Office. It suddenly began to placard the country with frantic assurances
to its five-thousand-a-year friends that they would be "discharged with
all possible speed THE MINUTE THE WAR IS OVER." Only considerations of
space restrained them, I presume, from adding "LAWN TENNIS, SHOOTING,
AND ALL THE DELIGHTS OF FASHIONABLE LIFE CAN BE RESUMED IMMEDIATELY ON
THE FIRING OF THE LAST SHOT." Now what does this mean to the wage
worker? Simply that the moment he is no longer wanted in the trenches he
will be flung back into the labour market to sink or swim without an
hour's respite. If we had had a Labour representative or two to help in
drawing up these silly placards--I am almost tempted to say if we had
had any human being of any class with half the brains of a rabbit
there--the placards would have contained a solemn promise that no single
man should be discharged at the conclusion of the war, save at his own
request, until a job had been found for him in civil life. I ask the
heavens, with a shudder, do these class-blinded people in authority
really intend to take a million men out of their employment; turn them
into soldiers; and then at one blow hurl them back, utterly unprovided
for, into the streets?
But a War Office capable of placarding Lord Roberts's declaration that
the men who are enlisting are doing "what all able-bodied men in the
kingdom should do" is clearly ignorant enough for anything. I do not
blame Lord Roberts for his oratorical flourish: we have all said things
just as absurd on the platform in moments of enthusiasm. But the
officials who reproduced it in cold blood would have us believe that
soldiers live on air; that ammunition drops from heaven like manna; and
that an army could hold the field for twenty-four hours without the
support of a still more numerous body of civilians working hard to
support it. Sane men gasp at such placards and ask angrily, "What sort
of fools do you take us for?" I have in my hand a copy of _The Torquay
Times_ containing a hospitable invitation to soldiers' wives to call at
the War Office, Whitehall, S.W., if they desire "assistance and
explanation of their case." The return fare from Torquay to London is
thirty shillings and sixpence third class; but the War Office no doubt
assumes that all soldiers' wives keep motor cars. Still, let us be just
even to the War Office. It did _not_ ask the soldiers' wives for forms
of authorization to pay the separation allowance to their bankers every
six months. It actually offered the money monthly!
*Delusive Promises.*
The middle and upper classes are nearly as bad as the War Office. They
talk of keeping every man's place open for him until the end of the war.
Obviously this is flatly impossible. Some places can be kept, and no
doubt are being kept. Some functions are suspended by the war and cannot
be resumed until the troops return to civil life and resume them.
Employers are so hardened to the daily commercial necessity for
discharging men without a thought as to what is to become of them that
they are quite ready to undertake to sack the replacers when the troops
come back. Also the return of peace may be followed by a revival of
trade in which employment may not be hard to find, even by discharged
soldiers, who are always passed over in the labour market in favour of
civilians, as those well know who have the task of trying to find places
for them. But these considerations do not justify an attempt to persuade
recruits that they can go off soldiering for months--they are told by
Lord Kitchener that it will probably be for years--and then come back
and walk to their benches or into their offices and pick up their work
as if they had left only the night before. The very people who are
promising this are raising the cry "business as usual" in the same
breath. How can business be carried on as usual, or carried on at all,
on unoccupied office stools and at counters with no men behind them?
Such rubbish is an insult to the recruit's intelligence. These promises
of keeping places open were made to the men who enlisted for South
Africa, and were of course broken, as a promise to supply green cheese
by quarrying the moon would have been broken. New employees must be
found to do the work of the men who are in the field; and these new ones
will not all be thrown into the street when the war is over to make room
for discharged soldiers, even if a good many of these soldiers are not
disqualified by their new training and habits for their old employment.
I repeat, there is only one assurance that can be given to the recruits
without grossly and transparently deluding them; and that is that they
shall not be discharged, except at their own request, until civil
employment is available for them.
*Funking Controversy.*
This is not the only instance of the way in which, under the first scare
of the war, we shut our eyes and opened our mouths to every folly. For
example, there was a cry for the suspension of all controversy in the
face of the national danger. Now the only way to suspend controversial
questions during a period of intense activity in the very departments in
which the controversy has arisen is to allow them all to be begged.
Perhaps I should not object if they were all begged in favour of my own
side, as, for instance, the question of Socialism was begged in favour
of Socialism when the Government took control of the railways; bought up
all the raw sugar; regulated prices; guaranteed the banks; suspended the
operation of private contracts; and did all the things it had been
declaring utterly and eternally Utopian and imposible when Socialists
advocated them. But it is now proposed to suspend all popular liberties
and constitutional safeguards; to muzzle the Press, and actually to have
no contests at bye-elections! This is more than a little too much. We
have submitted to have our letters, our telegrams, our newspapers
censored, our dividends delayed, our trains cut off, our horses and even
our houses commandeered, our streets darkened, our restaurants closed,
and ourselves shot dead on the public highways if we were slow to
realize that some excited person bawling in the distance was a sentry
challenging us. But that we are to be politically gagged and enslaved as
well; that the able-bodied soldier in the trenches, who depends on the
able-minded civilian at home to guard the liberties of his country and
protect him from carelesness or abuse of power by the authorities whom
he must blindly and dumbly obey, is to be betrayed the moment his back
is turned to his fellow-citizens and his face to the foe, is not
patriotism: it is the paralysis of mortal funk: it is the worst kind of
cowardice in the face of the enemy. Let us hear no more of it, but
contest our elections like men, and regain the ancient political
prestige of England at home as our expeditionary force has regained it
abroad.