It is doubtful how far, even if as civilians we get over our natural
dislike of talking of military change as “progress,” there has been any
considerable advance in the larger aspects of military science within
the century. The genius of Bonaparte, working upon the foundations laid
by Frederick the Great, established a century ago principles which are
essentially applicable to the military matters of the present day; and
although the scientific developments of artillery and musketry have
affected the dispositions of battle-fields, the essential principles of
the art of preparation for war and of strategy stand where they stood
before.
Scharnhorst was the Prussian officer who began to reduce the
Napoleonic military system to rules applicable to the use of German
armies. Under Bonaparte the whole management of the army was too
often concentrated in the hands of the man of genius, and the actual
method of Napoleon had the defect that, failing the man of genius
at the head of the army, it broke down. The main change made by the
Germans, who followed Scharnhorst, in the course of the century has
been to codify the Napoleonic system so that it was possible to more
generally decentralize in practice without impairing its essence. They
have also established a division of its supply department (under a
Minister of War) from the “brain of the army,” as Mr. Spenser Wilkinson
has well called it, which manages the preparation for the strategy
of war and the strategy itself. These so-called Prussian principles
of decentralization and “initiative” are, however, not new and not
Prussian, and may be discovered in the conversations of Napoleon
Bonaparte. The French in 1870 had forgotten his teaching, and the
Germans had retained it. It is, nevertheless, the case that the number
of men placed in the field by the military powers having increased,
the intelligent initiative of corps commanders and even of generals
commanding divisions has become the more essential. It is impossible
that the great general staff can give orders in advance which will
cover the responsibility of all the inferior generals, and brains
have to be added in all ranks to obedience. The commander-in-chief in
the field cannot with advantage drown himself in details, and he can
only provide in his orders an outline sketch which his subordinates
in various parts of the field of operations have to fill in. The
“initiative of subordinates” is but the natural division of labor.
If I, a civilian student of military politics, rather than a military
expert, have been called upon to write upon the military progress of
the century, it must be because of a desire to bring largely into the
account the changes in military organization which on the continent
of Europe have made it permanently national, and which in the United
States made it temporarily national during the Civil War, and would
make it so again in the event of any fresh struggle on a great scale in
which the North American continent might become involved.
Although the “armed nation” has replaced in France, Germany,
Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Roumania, and Bulgaria the smaller
professional armies of the eighteenth century, the popular belief that
the numerical strength of field armies has enormously increased is not
so completely well founded as at first sight might be supposed. It is
true that each nation can put into the entire field of warfare larger
numbers than that nation could put into the field a century ago.
But it is still not beyond the bounds of possibility that in certain
cases small armies may produce results as remarkable as those which
attended British operations in the Peninsula in the early part of the
nineteenth century, and, on the other hand, although there will, upon
the whole, in future continental wars, be larger armies in the field,
no one general is likely personally to handle or to place upon a field
of battle a larger army than that with which Napoleon traversed Europe
before he invaded Russia.
The principles of pure military science as set forth in books have
not been greatly changed during the nineteenth century. The Prussian
Clausewitz only explained for us the doctrines of Bonaparte; and the
latest writers—such as the Frenchmen Derrécagaix and Lewal—only
continue Clausewitz. The theory of the armed nation has received
extension, but, after all, the Prussian system in its essentials
dates from Jena, and the steps by which it has produced the admirable
existing armies of France, Austria, and Roumania have been but slow.
The United States stand apart. Their resources are so fabulously great
that they and they alone are able to wait for war before making war
preparations. No power will attack the United States. All powers will
submit to many things and yield many strong points rather than fight
the United States. The only territorial neighbors of the republic
are not only not in a position to enter into military rivalry with
her on the American continent, but are not advancing their military
establishments with the growth of their or of her population. They are
of themselves not only unable to attack, but equally unable in the long
run effectively to resist her.
The whole question, then, unfortunately for us Europeans, is a
European question, and I need make but little reference to happier
lands across the greater seas.
In Europe the United Kingdom stands absolutely apart. The existence of
the British Empire depends less upon our armies than on our fleets.
India is garrisoned by a small but costly army, sufficient for present
needs, but insufficient to meet their probable growth. The home army,
kept mainly in England and Ireland (and in Ireland now only because
life is cheap in Ireland and the country healthy and well fitted for
the drill and discipline of troops), has been chiefly a nursery for the
white army in India, and will be for that in South Africa and in India.
The expeditions which the country is obliged to send from time to time
across the seas have but a domestic interest, and are unimportant when
viewed from a world-wide military stand-point. In the event of war the
attention of the country would be concentrated upon her fleets, with a
view to retain that command of the sea without which her old-fashioned
army would be useless.
Belgium has an old-fashioned army of another type. A small force of
conscripts is “drawn” and the men are allowed to find substitutes for
money. But Belgium and the other smaller Powers, except Switzerland,
Roumania, and Bulgaria, may be neglected in our survey. Switzerland has
developed an excellent army of a special local type, a cheap but highly
efficient militia, the most interesting point about which is that,
while field artillery is supposed to be difficult of creation and only
to be obtained upon a costly and regular system, Switzerland produces
an excellent field artillery upon a militia footing. The garrison
artillery militia of Great Britain have longer training than the field
artillery of the Swiss Federation, but the results of the training
are very different. Similarly, while cavalry is supposed to be in the
same position as artillery in these matters, Hungary produces a good
cavalry upon a militia system. It is, however, to the native army in
India that we have to turn if we want to see what long service cavalry
in past centuries used to be, for in these days of shorter service
cavalry at least has suffered a decline, and, so far from cavalry, on
the whole, presenting us with a picture of military progress in the
century, the cavalry of the present day is not to be compared with the
cavalry of the past. Roumania and Bulgaria, although small countries,
have remarkable armies of the most modern type, of great strength
when considered proportionately to their populations; but these need
not come under our examination, because substantially they are on the
Prussian plan.
Russia differs from Germany, France, and Austria in having an immense
peace army. Her peace army is indeed as large as that of the whole
of the Triple Alliance, and the enormous distances of Russia and the
difficulties of mobilization and concentration force her into the
retention and development of a system which is now peculiar to herself.
The armies of Russia resemble more closely (although on a far larger
scale) the old armies of the time before the changes which followed
1866 than the French, German, and Austrian armies of to-day. Italy is
decreasing her army, and has been driven by her financial straits to
completely spoil a system which was never good except on paper. It is
doubtful whether now in a sudden war the Italians could put into the
field any thoroughly good troops, except their Alpine battalions, which
are equal to those of the French. The Austrian system does not differ
sufficiently from those of Germany and of France to be worthy special
note, although it may be said in passing that the Austrian army is now
considered by competent observers to be excellent. We may take as our
type of the armies of to-day those of Germany and of France. These
armies are also normal as regards their cost. Great Britain having no
conscription, and being in the habit of paying dearly for all services,
is extravagant in her military expenditure for the results obtained.
Switzerland and Russia, with their different systems, and for different
reasons, obtain their armies very cheaply; and if we wish to know the
cost of the modern military system it is to Germany and to France that
we should turn.
Those who would study the French or German army for themselves will
find a large literature on the subject. The principles which govern
the establishment of an armed nation upon the modern Prussian scale,
improved after the experiences of 1866 and again after those of 1870,
are explained in the work of Von der Goltz, _The Nation in Arms_. Those
who would follow these principles into their detailed application, and
see how the armies are divided between, and nourished and supplied from
the military districts of one of the great countries, will find the
facts set forth in such publications as the illustrated _Annual of the
French Army_, published each year by Plon, Nourrit, et Cie., or in the
official handbooks published by the Librairie Militaire Baudoin.
In the time of Bonaparte and even in the time of the Second Empire in
France army corps were of varying strength, and there was no certain
knowledge on the part of administrators less admirable than the first
Napoleon himself of the exact numbers of men who could be placed in
the field. In 1870 Louis Napoleon was wholly misinformed as to his
own strength and as to that of his opponents, which were, however,
accurately known to Von Moltke. In these days such confusions and
difficulties are impossible. The army corps of the great military
powers are of equal strength and would be equally reinforced in the
extraordinarily rapid mobilization which would immediately precede and
immediately follow a declaration of war. The chief changes in the
century have been a greater exactitude in these respects, a general
increase of numbers (especially a great increase in the strength of
field artillery), and in these last years a grouping of the army corps
into armies, which exist in Germany, France, and Russia even in time of
peace, with all their generals and staffs named ready for war. In each
of the great military countries the army is guided by the counsel of a
general staff. Around the chief of the staff and the Minister of War
are the “generals of armies,” and in France a potential generalissimo
(who on the outbreak of war would often be superseded by another
general in the actual command). In the case of Germany the command
would now be exercised by the young Emperor. In the case of France it
would be exercised by the generalissimo, with the chief of the staff
as his “Berthier” or major-general. Enormously important duties in the
case of armies so unwieldy as the entire forces of the first line and
of the second line in Germany or France and of the first line in Russia
would be exercised by the “generals of armies.” These generals in time
of peace are called “inspectors of armies” in France, Germany, and
Austria, and they inspect groups of army corps which would be united
in war to form the armies which these generals would actually command.
These generals also form the council of war or principal promotion
board and committee of advice for the generalissimo and chief of the
staff. In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the German Emperor and the
Emperor-King respectively are virtual general inspectors-in-chief of
the whole army, but in France and in Russia there is less unity of
command. The Minister of War in Russia, in Germany, and in France is
intended to be at the head of the supplies of the army in time of war,
directing the administration from the capital, and not taking his place
in the field.
The Prussian system, as far as the men are concerned, was adopted
after the disasters of Prussia early in the century, in order to pass
great numbers of men through the ranks without attracting attention by
keeping up a large peace army. The system is now maintained by Germany,
Austria, and France for a different reason. Such powers desire to
have an enormous force for war, but, for budgetary reasons, to keep
with the flag in time of peace the smallest force which is consistent
with training the men sufficiently to enable them upon mobilization
to be brought back to their regiments as real soldiers. It is these
considerations which have induced the younger and more thoughtful of
the Prussian generals to force on Germany a reduction of the period
of infantry service to two years. The army in time of peace becomes
a mere training-school for war, and the service is made as short as
possible, given the necessity of turning out a man who for some years
will continue to have the traditions of a soldier. It is a question
whether something has not been sacrificed, in France, at all events,
to uniformity. A longer period of training is undoubtedly necessary
to make an efficient cavalry soldier than is necessary to make an
efficient infantry private; and a man who has served about two and a
half years only in a cavalry regiment cannot in the majority of cases
be brought back into the cavalry after he has returned to civil life.
Cavalry, in the modern armies, is likely to be a diminishing force as
war goes on. The armies will enter upon war with a number of infantry
which can be kept up, the losses of war being supplied by reserve men
as good as the men of the first line; but each army will enter upon
war with a force of cavalry which will be rapidly destroyed if it is
much used, and which will not be replaced in the same manner. The
reserve cavalry of which the French press boasts is a paper force,
and the pretended mobilization of two of its regiments a farce. The
French would take the field with the cavalry of the first line only,
seventy-nine regiments of five hundred horses (all over six years old),
or less than half the eighty-four thousand cavalry with which Napoleon
marched in 1812. The same thing might possibly be said of artillery as
is said of cavalry but for the fact that Switzerland tells a different
story as to the possibility of rapidly training artillerymen with a
considerable measure of success. The French improvised artillery of the
latter part of the war of 1870 were also a creditable force, while it
was discovered to be impossible to create a cavalry.
The efficiency of the reserves in France, Germany, and Austria is
tested by the calling out of large portions of them every year for
training, and they are found, as far as the infantry go, thoroughly
competent for the work of war. The difficulties as regards cavalry are
so obvious that it is becoming more and more recognized by Germany
and by France that the cavalry will have to take the field as they
stand in peace, and that their reserve men will have to be kept back
with a view to the selection among them of those who are fit to serve
as cavalry, and the relegation of the greater number to the train
and other services where ability to ride and manage horses is more
necessary than the smartness of a good cavalryman. France and Germany
nominally look forward to the creation of two kinds of armies in time
of war, one of the first line to take the field at once, and the other
to guard the communications and garrison and support the fortresses,
but in fact it is the intention of these powers to divide their armies
into three—a field army of the first line, a field army of the second
line, out of which fresh army corps will at once be created on the
outbreak of war, and, thirdly, a territorial army for communications
and for fortress purposes and as a last reserve. It is a portion of the
French and German system that each army corps of the first line—and
the same would be the case in war with the second line corps—has its
separate organization of ammunition train and baggage train, and draws
as largely as possible its supplies from its own territorial district.
The peace strength of the great modern armies is for France and Germany
about five hundred thousand men each, and the war strength between four
million and five million men each. The peace strength of Russia is now
over nine hundred thousand men. Of the war armies the training is not
uniformly complete, but there are in Germany, France, Austria, and
Roumania sufficient reserves of clothing and rifles to equip the war
armies of those powers for the field.
The cost of the system of a modern army is very much less than that
of the old-fashioned armies. The United Kingdom spent till lately
(including loan money) about eighteen million pounds sterling upon
her army, India rarely less than fourteen million pounds sterling and
an average of fifteen million pounds, and the British Empire, outside
the United Kingdom and India, two million pounds, or an average of
thirty-five million pounds sterling in all upon land forces. The
expenditure of the United Kingdom upon land forces has been permanently
increased to an enormous extent by the South African war and cannot now
be estimated. The expenditure of France and Germany upon land forces is
greatly less; and of Russia, large as is her peace army, less again.
But France and Germany in the event of war can immediately each of them
place millions of armed men in the field in proper army formation and
with adequate command, whereas the United Kingdom can place a doubtful
three corps in the field in India with great difficulty, and, in the
true sense of the word, no organized force at all at home without
an incredible amount of reorganization and waste of time after the
declaration of war. It is contended by the authorities responsible
for the British army that two army corps could be placed in the field
at home, and elaborate paper arrangements exist for this purpose; but
the facts are as I state them, and not as they are professed to be.
It is pretended that three corps of regulars were despatched to South
Africa. But the cavalry and artillery were, in fact, created by lavish
expenditure a long time after the war had begun and after disasters
caused by their non-existence.
Centralized as is the administrative system of France and Germany
in everything except war, the necessities of modern warfare have
forced upon the governments of those countries a large amount of
decentralization as concerns military matters, and the less efficient
military machines of the United Kingdom and of Russia are far more
centralized than are the more efficient machines of Germany and of
France. The army corps districts have in the latter countries so much
autonomy as to recall to the political student the federal organization
of the United States rather than the government of a highly centralized
modern power. As soon, however, as war breaks out, the military states
of time of peace would be grouped, and the four or five groups known
as “armies,” also, of course, theoretically, brought together under
the directing eye of the generalissimo. In the case, at all events, of
Germany, unity of direction is perfectly combined with decentralization
and individual initiative.
The mode in which a modern army on the anticipation of war prepares
itself for the field is extraordinarily rapid in point of time as
compared with the mode found necessary in the time of Napoleon
Bonaparte; and it is this rapidity of mobilization and concentration
which strikes the observer as the greatest change or progress of the
century in connection with armies. But it is a mere consequence of
railroads and telegraphs, and is only the application to military
purposes of those increased facilities of locomotion which have
played so great a part in the progress of the century. Mobilization
is, of course, the union at points fixed beforehand of the men of the
reserves who bring the army up to its war footing, and the clothing and
equipment of these men, and the distribution to the mobilized regiments
of their full materials of war. The cavalry and horse artillery kept
upon the frontier are now in a condition of permanent readiness in
the principal military countries, as they would be used to cover the
mobilization of the remainder of the army. The moment mobilization is
accomplished concentration takes place—on the frontier in the case of
the principal powers. Near the line of concentration are forts, which
play a greater part in the French scheme of defence than they do in
the German. The French in the days of their weakness after 1870 both
constructed a line of intrenched camps and built a kind of wall of
China along the most exposed portion of their eastern frontier; whereas
the Germans are prepared to rely upon their field armies, supported by
a few immense fortresses, such as those (on their western frontier) of
Metz and Strasburg. The French keep in front of their fortresses at
Nancy a strong division, which is virtually always on a war footing,
and both in France and Germany the frontier corps are at a higher peace
strength than those of the interior, and are meant to take the field
at once so as to help the cavalry and horse artillery to protect the
mobilization and concentration of the remainder, and, if possible, to
disturb the mobilization and concentration of the foe. Those who would
study modern armies for themselves should visit Nancy and Metz, but
should not neglect the Swiss annual manœuvres.
The work of the recruit of Germany and of France, during his two years’
or nearly three years’ training as the case may be, is as hard as any
human work; and the populations of the continental countries submit,
not on the whole unwillingly, from patriotic motives, to a slavery
of which the more fortunate inhabitants of the United Kingdom and of
the United States have no conception. The British or the Belgian paid
recruit would mutiny if forced to work as works the virtually unpaid
and ill-fed recruit of Russia, Germany, Austria, and France. The
enormous loss to many industries which is caused by the withdrawal of
the men at the age of twenty, just when they are most apt to become
skilled workmen, is in the opinion of some Germans compensated for by
the habit of discipline and the moral tone of stiffness and endurance
which is communicated to the soldier for the rest of his life. This is
perhaps more true of the German character than it is of the inhabitants
of the other countries; and in France, at least, the soldier training
of the entire population is a heavy drawback to industrial and
to intellectual life. There are, however, as will be seen in the
concluding passage of this article, other considerations to be taken
into account, some of which tell the other way.
The one successful exception to the prevailing military system of the
day is to be found in Switzerland, which has a very cheap army of the
militia type, but one which is, nevertheless, pronounced efficient by
the best judges. The mobilization of Switzerland in 1870 was more rapid
than that of either Germany or France, and, great as are the strides
that both France and Germany have made in rapidity of organization
and as regards numbers since 1870, the Swiss also have reorganized
their mobilization system since that time, and are still able, at a
much less proportional cost, to place in the field at least as large a
proportional force as Germany, and this force believed to be efficient,
although not largely provided with cavalry.
The greatest change in the battle-fields of the future, as compared
with those of a few years ago, will be found in the development and
increased strength of the artillery. A modern army, when it takes up a
position, has miles of front almost entirely occupied with guns, and
the guns have to fire over the infantry, because there is no room for
such numbers of guns to be used in any other way. The attacking side
(if both, indeed, in one form or another, do not attempt attack) will
be chiefly occupied in obtaining positions on which to place its guns,
and the repeating-rifle itself, deadly as is its fire, cannot contend
at ranges over a thousand yards, unless the riflemen are heavily
intrenched, with the improved shrapnel fire of modern guns. The early
engagements of a war will, indeed, be engagements of cavalry massed
upon the frontier on the second day of mobilization, so rapid will the
opening of war in the future be. This cavalry will be accompanied by
horse artillery and followed by light infantry, constantly practised in
rapid marching in time of peace, or by mounted infantry. But the great
battle-fields of the later weeks will be battle-fields, above all, of
artillery. The numbers engaged will be so great that the heaviest of
all the responsibilities of the generals will be the feeding of their
troops during the battles prolonged during several days, which will
probably occur, and it is doubtful how far the old generals (often
grown unwieldy in time of peace) will be able to stand the daily
and nightly strain of war. Jomini has said that when both sides are
equally strong in numbers, in courage, and in many other elements of
force, the great tragedy of Borodino is the typical battle. Lewal
has pointed out that in the battles of the future such equality must
be expected: “The battle will begin on the outbreak of war in the
operations of the frontier regiments. The great masses as they come
to the field will pour into a fight already raging. The battle will
be immense and prolonged.” Promotion will probably be rapid among the
generals, owing to incompetence and retirement, and certainly among
other officers owing to their exposure in these days of smokeless
powder, when good shots can pick off officers in a manner unknown in
wars which have hitherto occurred. Whether it will be possible to get
armies to advance under heavy fire after the officers have been killed
is doubtful, when we remember that modern armies consist of the whole
population, cowards and brave men alike, and that regimental cohesion
is weakened by the sudden infusion of an overwhelming proportion of
reserve men at the last moment. On the other hand, in the German army
the reserve men will be fewer in the first line than in the French, and
the regimental system more available in the field, while on the French
side the greater military aptitude of the French race may perhaps be
counted upon to remedy the comparative defect. The Prussians make up
for the inferior military aptitude of the German people by patriotism,
discipline, and the conferring of honor and of civil employment, in
after life, on all who do their duty in war. They also provide more
effectively than do the French against incapacity in high place. Above
all, however, we should attach importance to the wisdom of successive
Kings of Prussia in treating the Prussian army as an almost sacred
institution, and in constantly working in time of peace to make it and
keep it a perfect instrument of war.
The weakest point, relatively speaking, in the French organization,
and the strongest point, relatively speaking, in the German, is the
officering of the second and third line. The one-year-volunteer system
gives the Germans excellent “territorial” officers, while the French
have been forced virtually to abolish it as impossible of successful
application in a country so jealous of privilege as is modern France.
The territorial infantry regiments of France would be excellent for
the defence of fortresses, but would for field purposes be inferior
to that part of the Prussian landwehr which would remain over after
the completion of the reserve corps. The reserve cavalry regiments of
France have been created in order to provide promotion and sinecure
appointments, and would not produce a cavalry fit for true cavalry
service in the field. It would carry us beyond the proper limits of
this article to explain how it is that the French could create a field
artillery of the second line in time of war which would probably be
superior to that of Germany. This forms a set-off against some other
inferiority of the French.
The newest point in the development of modern armies is the recent
separation in the German army of the cavalry intended for patrol duties
from the cavalry intended for fighting in the field. We have had to
face the same problem in South Africa, but this condition of our war
was peculiar.
It has been said that the history of warfare is the history of the
struggle among weapons, and that each change in tactics and even in
strategy has come from scientific change affecting weapons. In the
century we have seen the change from the smooth-bore to the rifle
and from the ordinary to the repeating rifle. We have seen the
modifications of artillery, which are beginning to give an application
of the quick-firing principle to field artillery, and the use of high
explosive shells, likely to affect by their explosion even those who
are near the bursting shell and who are not struck by its fragments.
Smokeless powder has altered the look of battles and has reduced their
noise. It provides excuse for the incompetent. It would be easy,
however, to exaggerate the importance of these changes as regards
tactics, and still more with regard to strategy, while with tactics we
are not here concerned. The great continental military nations have
hitherto not allowed themselves to be much affected by the changes in
the weapons, and many of the modern fads which are adopted in small
armies are condemned by the leaders of these great forces. The British
machine guns, for example, like British mounted infantry, are generally
regarded on the continent as a fancy of our own. All nations have their
military fads, except, perhaps, the severely practical Germans. Russia
has its dragoon organization, from which it is receding; America has
her dynamite gun; the French have their submarine torpedo-boats. Our
machine guns are not thought much more of by most Prussians than the
steam-gun of 1844, ridiculed by Dickens in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. If
great change was to have been made in the art of war by modern weapons,
one would have thought that the first things to disappear would be all
vestige of protective armor and the use of cavalry in the field. Yet
protective armor has been recently restored to as large a proportion
of many armies as used it in the wars of the beginning of the century,
and the use of cavalry in the field is defended as still possible by
all the highest authorities on the continent. My own opinion on such
matters is that of a layman and should be worthless, but it agrees with
that of several distinguished military writers. I confess that I doubt
whether in future wars between good armies, such as those of France and
Germany, it will be possible to employ cavalry on the field of battle,
and I go so far as to think that the direct offensive, still believed
in by the Prussians, will be found to have become too costly to be
possible. Our South African experience is not, however, regarded by
continental authorities as conclusive.
The author of _Ironclads in Action_, Mr. Wilson, who has made a very
thorough study of the future of naval war, has pointed out with great
force the most striking difficulties of war in the future as caused by
the enormous concentration of forces in a particular tract of country.
The result of that concentration must be great difficulties about
supply, prolonged battles of an indecisive kind leading to exposure,
absence of sleep, and to conditions which would form the severest
strain for professional men of war, while those who will now be subject
to them will be the ordinary population, not very specially warriors,
except so far as patriotism may in some cases make up as regards
courage and endurance for absence of military tradition. The vast
number of wounded will be exposed for longer periods than was the case
in many of the earlier wars; but when we remember Leipsic, and Dresden,
and the retreat from Moscow, it is again easy to see that the change
is rather in the direction of generalization of conditions, which
were formerly exceptional, than a change to conditions wholly without
precedent.
I have all through this article written of Germany and France as the
modern military countries to be taken as a standard in all comparisons.
The French have imitated the Germans very closely since the war of
1870. But, although imitation is generally feeble, it must always be
borne in mind that the French people have greater military aptitude
than the German, and that unless beaten at the beginning of a war they
are always in the highest degree formidable. The perfection of system
is to be found in Germany, and the peculiarities of the German system
are the combination of enlightened patriotism in all its individuality
with iron discipline. The system is so strong that unless well managed
it would crush out individual responsibility; but the system itself
encourages this individual responsibility all down the gradations of
the army to the humblest non-commissioned officer and even to the
detached private. The universality of promotion by a certain high
standard of merit and the absence of jobbery are more thoroughly
obtained in Germany than in any other army, and Lord Wolseley’s
criticisms on the 1898 manœuvres of our own army, criticisms renewed in
1900, in which he told us that no one had done well in the field, and
that this proved that no one could have done his duty during the past
year, would be impossible in Germany, and must have shocked military
opinion throughout that country.
It is not unusual to assume that the enormous military establishments
of the continent of Europe are an almost unmixed evil. But this may
perhaps be disputed on two grounds. In some cases, such as that of
Italy, the army acts as a kind of rough national university in which
the varied life of districts often discordant is fused into a patriotic
whole, dialects are forgotten, and a common language learned. In
the case of France the new military system is a powerful engine of
democracy. There is a French prince (not of the blood) serving at
this moment in a squad of which the corporal is a young peasant from
the same department. A few years ago I found the Duc de Luynes, who
is also Duc de Chaulnes and Duc de Chevreuse, the owner of Dampierre,
the personal friend of kings, serving, by his own wish, for, as the
eldest son of a widow, he was exempt, as a private of dragoons, and
respectfully saluting young officers, some of whom were his own
tenants. The modern military system of the continent, in the case of
France and Germany at least, may also, I think, be shown to have told
in favor of peace. It is possible for us to occasionally demand a war
with the greater freedom, because we do not as a rule know what war
means. Those of us who have seen something of it with our own eyes are
a very small minority. But every inhabitant of France and Germany has
the reality of war brought home to him with the knowledge that those
of his own kin would have to furnish their tribute of “cannon flesh”
(as the French and Germans call it) at the outbreak of any war; and the
influence of the whole of the women of both countries is powerfully
exerted in consequence upon the side of peace.