EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM--HISTORIC.
_EUROPE._
The Standing Army a Legacy of Evil from the Middle Ages. -- It is the
Controlling Feature of the European Situation. -- Its Collateral
Evils: Wars and Debts. -- The Debts of Europe Represent a Series of
Colossal Crimes against the People; with the Armies and Navies they
Absorb the Bulk of the Annual Revenue. -- The People Fleeing from
them. -- They Threaten Bankruptcy; they Prevent Education. -- Germany,
the best-educated Nation in Europe, losing most by Emigration. -- Her
People will not Endure the Standing Army. -- The Folly of the European
International Policy of Hate. -- It is Possible for Europe to Restore
to Productive Employments 3,000,000 of men, to place at the Disposal
of her Educators $700,000,000, instead of $70,000,000 per annum, and
to pay her National Debts in Fifty-four Years, simply by the
Disbandment of her Armies and Navies. -- The Armament of Europe Stands
in the Way of Universal Education and of Universal Industrial
Prosperity. -- Standing Armies the Last Analysis of Selfishness; they
are Coeval with the Revival during the Middle Ages of the Greco-Roman
Subjective Methods of Education. -- They must go out when the New
Education comes in.
The mediæval period conferred upon man two great blessings--a new
continent and the art of printing. It also left a legacy of evil. With
the partition of Europe into great States the modern age began, and it
began with this inheritance of evil from the Middle Ages--the standing
army.
The feudal lords wrecked their estates and sacrificed their lives during
the Crusades, and a middle class arose and united with the kings in the
government of the State. But this alliance was of short duration; it
soon gave way to an alliance which proved to be enduring--an alliance
between the aristocracy and the kings.
By the ruin of feudalism thousands of serfs were set free. Trained to
arms, it was easy to make soldiers of them. They were accordingly
converted into mercenary troops--mustered into the service of the new
alliance as guards of the modern State. Thus the standing armies of the
“great powers” originated. This legacy of evil has so increased in
magnitude that it is, to-day, the dominant feature of European public
economy, and the portentous fact of the social problem.
The standing armies of Europe number two million five hundred thousand
men, and their naval auxiliaries consist of three thousand vessels,
thirty thousand guns, and two hundred thousand men. This is the mammoth
evil bequeathed to Europe by the Middle Ages, and out of it many
collateral evils have sprung, as wars, debts, and exorbitant tax
levies.[E25]
Thirty years ago the national debts of the governments of Europe had
risen to $9,000,000,000. Since that time they have almost trebled! The
cause of this vast increase is easy to find. It consists chiefly of four
great wars, namely, the Crimean war of 1854-56, the Franco-Sardinian war
against Austria in 1859, the German-Italian war of 1866, and the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870-72. These wars were waged to maintain what
is termed the balance of power; they involved no principle affecting the
rights of man. Whatever their issue, no gain could hence accrue to the
people of Europe. And this is the nature of most of the wars in which
the standing armies of Europe have been employed since their
organization. But the European budget shows that they are the
overshadowing feature of the European governmental systems.
The annual revenue of the States of Europe is about $1,725,000,000. Of
this sum $700,000,000 is devoted to the support of the standing armies
and navies, and as much more is required to meet the interest charge on
the debts created in the prosecution of wars waged to maintain the
balance of power! Thus, of the aggregate of European revenue, the sum of
$1,400,000,000 is devoted to the purely supposititious theory that the
subjects of the great powers are inflamed with an intense desire to cut
one another’s throats, while the small sum of $325,000,000 is left for
the support of the civil service, comprising all the strictly legitimate
objects of government, and including education!
The national debts of Europe represent a series of colossal crimes
against the people. They were incurred in the prosecution of unnecessary
wars, and for the support of unnecessary standing armies. With relation
to these debts the people are divided into two classes--one class owns
them and the other class pays interest on them. This relationship
comprehends future generations in perpetuity. Every child born in Europe
inherits either an estate in these debts or an obligation to contribute
towards the payment of the interest upon them. Thus the fruits of a
great crime have been transmuted into a vested right in one class of
people, and into a vested wrong in another class.[85]
[85] “For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the
Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the founding
of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with
some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit
of paper gives me the right to tax you every year, and make you pay me
two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me;
but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to
you, any summer’s day, that you had better not? Where would my seven
thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves a
rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no
real existence--it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two
hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn’t got it. And this
is surely a very odd kind of money for a country to boast of.”--“Fors
Clavigera,” Part I., p. 67. By John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1880.
If the European standing armies and navies had not been raised and kept
up, and if the revenue devoted to their support had been expended for
schools, there would not now be an uneducated person in Europe. If these
standing armies and navies were now disbanded, and the revenue at
present expended for their support diverted to the support of schools,
and so applied continuously for half a century, there would not be, at
the end of that period, an illiterate person in Europe.
Under existing conditions the debts of the European nations cannot be
paid. But vast as the sum of them is, their payment is not only
possible, but practicable in a very short time. Disband the standing
armies and navies, and continue the present rate of taxation, and there
would be an annual surplus revenue of $700,000,000. Apply this sum,
together with the surplus of the interest appropriation, accruing
through the resulting yearly decrease of the interest charge, to the
liquidation of these debts, and they would be extinguished in about
twenty years.[E26] But if the period during which provision is made for
the extinguishment of these debts be extended to fifty-four years, and,
meantime, the present rate of taxation be maintained, there would be
released and rendered available for educational purposes, annually, the
sum of $600,000,000.
What is the purpose, it may be inquired, of these calculations? Their
purpose is to show what the armies and navies of Europe cost, and what
they stand in the way of. They cost so much that not a dollar of the
national debts of Europe can be paid while they continue to exist. They
cost so much that the people who are taxed to support them are fleeing
from them as from a scourge. They cost so much that the decline of the
nations which support them has already begun, and this decline can be
arrested only by their disbandment.
That the nations of Europe are declining is shown by the statistics of
emigration. The foundation of national prosperity is manual labor. There
must be a solid basis of industrial growth for the superstructure of
elegance, refinement, luxury, and culture. Manual labor is as essential
to triumphs in literature, music, and the fine arts as the foundations
of the Brooklyn Bridge, buried in the earth, are to the beautiful arch
which spans the great river. And in the strife for supremacy between the
nations of the world the maintenance of these triumphs depends, also,
upon manual labor.[86] The real flower of a population is, therefore,
its labor class. All other classes depend upon it, and all national
triumphs spring from it. Hence a drain upon the labor class of a nation
is a drain upon its most vital resource. The nation that suffers such a
drain continuously is in its decadence. It loses some of its vigor, some
of its productive power, and the loss is not supplied. True, the poor
emigrant takes with him no part of the splendors of the country he
leaves, but his brawny arm and skilled hand have contributed to the
support of national pomp and social elegance, and as he steps aboard the
steamer he withdraws that support forever.
[86] “Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to. First, you
spend eighty millions of money in fireworks [war], doing no end of
damage in letting them off.
“Then you borrow money to pay the firework-maker’s bill, from any
gain-loving persons who have got it.
“And then, dressing your bailiff’s men in new red coats and cocked
hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take
the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what you
have borrowed, and the expense of the cocked hats besides.
“That is ‘financiering,’ my friends, as the mob of the money-makers
understand it. And they understand it well. For that is what it always
comes to, finally--taking the peasant by the throat. He _must_
pay--for he only _can_. Food can only be got out of the ground, and
all these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but
ways of getting at last down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching
the roots from him as he digs.”--“Fors Clavigera,” Part II., p. 27. By
John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1882.
Napoleon the Infamous plundered the conquered capitals of Europe to
beautify and enrich the art treasuries of Paris. The art treasures of
Europe are destined to cross the ocean, in the track of the column of
emigration, if the flower of her labor class continues to flee from her
standing armies and navies, as the statues of Rome followed the army of
the modern Cæsar. For where the flower of the world’s labor class
gathers, there wealth most abounds. Labor, not gold and silver, is the
source of wealth, hence it is to the laborer that art triumphs are due,
and this is the order of their development. The laborer provides for
immediate, pressing wants; he is prudent, and accumulates a surplus; he
hungers for education; he develops a love of the beautiful; he seeks to
dignify his life and adorn his home; he patronizes art; he draws to
himself the art treasures of the world.
The standing armies and navies of Europe have cost the European laborer
the sacrifice of all these pleasing and noble aspirations.[E27] Beyond
the point of providing for “immediate pressing wants” he has not been
able to pass. His surplus goes to the tax-gatherer, to feed and clothe
the army and the navy. His desire for education, his love of the
beautiful, his hope of a dignified life, and of a home adorned by
art--these all are dreams, illusions, which vanish into thin air in the
presence of the substantial fact of the annual European budget--for the
support of the standing armies and navies $700,000,000!
In the way of the payment of the national debts of Europe her standing
armies and navies rear themselves like an impassable wall. Against any
general educational system they have hitherto constituted an
insurmountable barrier; and in the future, as in the past, their
maintenance dooms the masses to illiteracy. They stand in the way
especially of the incorporation, in the curriculum of the public
schools, of the manual element in education, because it is the most
expensive, as it is the most important part of instruction.
Germany affords an admirable example of the power of education, even
though defective in character, and of the disgust with which standing
armies inspire an intelligent people. The Germans are the best-educated
people in Europe. The educational system of Germany was established by
Prussia as a politico-economic measure after the humiliation of the
German States by Bonaparte. Said Frederick William, “Though territory,
power, and prestige be lost, they can be regained by acquiring
intellectual and moral power.” The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war of
1870 verified the truth of this prediction. Her freedom from debt
enabled Prussia to inaugurate and carry forward a comprehensive
educational system, which in turn enabled her not only to vanquish her
ancient enemy, but to make France pay the cost of her own humiliation.
Thus at a single stroke Prussia avenged the defeats suffered at the
hands of the first Napoleon, and permanently weakened France by
compelling her vastly to increase her national debt.
The alacrity with which the French people subscribed for the new bonds
was much remarked upon, at the time, as evincing both financial
soundness and patriotism. But the really grave feature of the
situation--the vast augmentation of the public burdens of France--was
scarcely mentioned, and was, perhaps, philosophically considered only by
that astute statesman, Prince Bismarck. The war with Germany cost France
$2,000,000,000, and compelled an enormous increase of taxation. The debt
statement for 1877 was $4,635,000,000--the expenditures $533,000,000;
and of this latter sum $373,000,000 were absorbed by the army, the navy,
and the national debt!
The significant feature of the European situation is the freedom from
debt of Germany. It is by virtue of this fact that she holds the first
place in Europe. Her rate of taxation is as low as that of little
Switzerland. All the other Great Powers are hampered by great debts.
Spain is bankrupt; she does not pay the interest on her debt. Austria
increases her debt every year; she is practically bankrupt. It is only a
question of time, if standing armies and navies continue to be
maintained and wars to occur, when all the debtor nations will be
reduced to bankruptcy.[87] The nation sinks as the column of debt
rises. France cannot double her debt again and make her people pay
interest on it. England draws from her citizens a larger _per capita_
revenue than any other nation of Europe, except France, and she has
nearly touched the limit of their capacity to pay taxes. A sudden and
considerable increase of her debt would strain the Government, and might
shatter it.
[87] “The progress of the enormous debts which at present oppress, and
will in the long run probably ruin, all the great Nations of Europe,
has been pretty uniform.”--“Wealth of Nations,” Vol. III., p. 392. By
Adam Smith, LL.D., F.R.S. Edinburgh, 1819.
Thus, the more searching the analysis of the European situation, the
more clear does the exceptional strength of Germany appear. But out of
her abundant strength a weakness has been evolved. The system of
education that rendered the Germans so powerful against France as
soldiers, has made them thoughtful citizens. It has revolutionized the
public sentiment of Germany on the subject of government. In the place
of passion it has substituted reason. The Prussian “subject” for whom
the king thought, has become a German citizen who thinks for himself,
and one of his earliest reflections is that, in modern civilization, a
standing army is a solecism. The ignorant Prussian hated the French
because hatred of them was enjoined upon him as the correlative of the
duty of blind devotion to his king. But the educated German knows that
the sole motive of the continuance of the standing army is the
maintenance of the balance of power, which is merely a tacit agreement
between the European rulers, by divine right, to perpetuate their own
lease of power. Hence the “intellectual and moral power” conferred upon
the German people, by education, reacts upon Germany in the form of a
drain of the flower of her population by emigration.
The citizenship of Germany is more valuable, in an economic sense, than
that of any other country of Europe--more valuable because Germany is
the most powerful nation of the European family of States; more valuable
because of them all she alone is free from debt; more valuable by reason
of her more moderate scale of taxation. But she still furnishes the
heaviest contingent to the column of emigration steadily moving towards
the United States. In a word, the most valuable citizenship in
Europe--that of Germany--is least regarded and most freely surrendered.
Why? Because the Germans are the best-educated people in Europe. Poor as
the German primary school system is, it is universal, and it has
destroyed what it was founded chiefly to promote and perpetuate, namely,
reverence for, and loyalty to, government by Divine right. German
intelligence revolts from taxation for the support of a standing army.
It revolts from the theory and policy of hate upon which standing armies
are based. It comprehends perfectly that the standing army is a menace
to the freedom of the citizen, at home, rather than a defence against
pretended danger from abroad. It scorns, as absurd, the threadbare
assumption that Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and Germans
desire to fly at one another’s throats, and that they can be restrained
only by a cordon of bayonets.[E28] It realizes that the perpetuation of
the era of hate, through the standing army, retards the mental and
physical progress of the human race, which would be greatly promoted by
the free intermingling of the various nationalities of Europe.[88] That
it is from the standing army that the emigrant flees is shown by the
records of the military department of the German government.
[88] The multiplicity of languages is due to the policy of
international hate, inaugurated by the nations of Europe to promote
the selfish purposes of rulers. Barbarism is diversity; civilization
is unity. The human race is one, provided it is civilized, and it
should have but one language. Language is a tool, and time consumed in
acquiring skill in the use of more than one tool designed for the same
end, is wasted. The standing armies of Europe obstruct the way to
unity of language. The time will come when all civilized peoples will
speak one tongue, probably the English. Then language will cease to be
a mere vain accomplishment, and become what it ought always to have
been, the simple means of familiarizing the mind with things, and of
the communication of knowledge.
In the year 1883 twenty-nine thousand men were arrested for attempting
to emigrate from Germany to avoid the required military service, and
more than a hundred thousand others, from whom service was due, refused,
both to report for duty, and to furnish the required excuses for the
failure to enroll themselves.
The law of Germany requires every male citizen, capable of bearing arms,
to serve three years in the standing army--to devote three of the best
years of his life to the preservation of the balance of power in Europe!
In addition, he must serve four years in the reserve, and five years in
the landwehr. And this service is regarded as a debt due the government.
Every male child born in Germany contracts this debt, in contemplation
of law, in the act of drawing his first breath, and nothing but death
releases him from the obligation. Having been taught in the emperor’s
schools to love the emperor, when he reaches the military age, a musket
is placed in his hands, and he is taught to shoot the emperor’s
enemies. If he refuses to enter the army he is fined; if he refuses to
pay the fine he is imprisoned.
The German emperor attributes the decline in the military organization
to the negligence of his military staff, but its true cause is the
German educational system. The steady augmentation of the rolls of
military delinquents is the measure of the growth of German
intelligence. The ease with which Germany conquered France flattered the
vanity of the educated German, but it did not prevent him from
emigrating to America. To the cultured mind the army that wins the
contest in which no principle is involved is as odious as the army that
loses. To the cultured mind all standing armies are odious, because they
are an embodied assumption of the barbarism of man, and a denial of the
efficacy of reason. The great stream of German emigration attests the
superiority of German culture. The educated German declines to learn the
art of shooting the emperor’s enemies, but he knows that Germany is, in
fact, governed by its standing army--by muskets--and he quits the
country.
Thus the chief power of Germany becomes her chief weakness. A system of
education which has made her the first nation in Europe produces
wide-spread discontent among her people, because she is governed by
obsolete ideas. Nor can the loss in virile force suffered by Germany,
through emigration, be made good by a counter movement of immigrants
from the less favored countries of Europe. The economic condition of
Germany--her freedom from debt and her comparatively low rate of
taxation--invite such a movement. But the European policy of
international hate, created and perpetuated by standing armies, forbids
Germany to recoup her losses of men to America, through corresponding
gains of men from the overtaxed populations of neighboring countries.
The grinning skeletons of a hundred battles in which the rival
nationalities of Europe have been pitted against one another, rise to
challenge the social intermingling of peoples separated for centuries by
the arts of diplomacy, traditions of blood and flames, and the serried
ranks of standing armies.
The disposition of Germans to emigrate irritates the emperor and his
prime-minister. The loss of numbers might be borne, for notwithstanding
the steady outward flow of emigrants there is a slight increase of
population in Germany. But it is the quality of the exodus that annoys
the emperor and his chancellor. The German emigrants are strong men and
women--strong mentally and physically. All the weaklings, all the
paupers, all the imbeciles, the aged, and the infirm remain, only the
young and vigorous go. Those who go have been taught at the expense of
the State to love the emperor and hate his enemies, but they do neither.
The German system of education, from the point of view of rulers by
divine right, is, hence, a conspicuous failure. It makes better men but
poorer subjects. The more thoroughly the man is educated the more
valuable he is to himself and to the community, but the less valuable to
his king. His growth in intelligence is the measure of his decline in
reverence for rulers by divine right, and the standing armies by which
they are alone supported. This is the cause of German emigration, and
its effect is to weaken the German Empire. Germany is not so strong as
she was when her armies swept over France; she declines in power each
year, through the loss of men--the sole support of a State.[E29] They
flee from her standing army to the United States, a republic with only
a handful of soldiers.
The system of education established to increase the power of Prussia in
Europe has accomplished its purpose. But it has done much
more--something never thought of by its founders. It has produced a
wide-spread feeling of intelligent discontent; and discontent is an
inarticulate cry for reform. The cultured German scorns the standing
army, refuses to serve in it, protests against its longer existence, and
demands more and better education for his children. His protest is
unheeded, and he quits the country. But the demand for higher education
is not, cannot be, disregarded. Intelligence is contagious; it infects
with a thirst for knowledge all with whom it comes in contact. Education
is the arch-revolutionist whose onward march is irresistible. Soon a
riper culture will make the German Protestants more courageous and more
imperative in their demands, and they will remain in the country to
enforce them. Education made Germany the first military power in Europe;
but education could not have been put to a more ignoble service. The
desire of intelligent Germans is that Germany shall become the first
industrial power in Europe, and this desire can be realized by the
disbandment of her standing army.
This review of the situation in Europe shows that it is practicable for
her to restore, at once, to productive employments three millions of
men--the flower of her population--now not only idle, but a public
charge. It shows, also, that it is practicable for Europe to place, at
once, at the disposal of her educators $700,000,000 per annum instead of
$70,000,000 per annum, as at present. The corollary of these two
propositions is a third, namely, that it is practicable for Europe to
extinguish her national debts in fifty-four years. It follows that the
regular armies of Europe alone stand in the way of universal education,
and of universal industrial prosperity.
Standing armies everywhere within the lines of advanced civilization
must soon disappear before the march of education.[89] Social questions
cannot much longer be settled by emigration. The world’s virgin soil is
being rapidly appropriated. When the surface of the whole earth shall
have become occupied, barbarisms of every nature will be intolerable.
Man must then be highly civilized, and the only highly civilizing
influence is education. The age of force is passing away; the age of
science and art--the age of industrial development--has begun, and
standing armies are as abnormal in Europe now as slavery was in the
United States twenty-five years ago.[90]
[89] “This nation to-day is in profound peace with the world; but in
my judgment it has before it a great duty, which will not only make
that profound peace permanent, but shall set such an example as will
absolutely abolish war on this continent, and by a great example and a
lofty moral precedent shall ultimately abolish it in other continents.
I am justified in saying that every one of the seventeen independent
Powers of North and South America is not only willing but ready--is
not only ready but eager--to enter into a solemn compact in a congress
that may be called in the name of peace, to agree that if, unhappily,
differences shall arise--as differences will arise between men and
nations--they shall be settled upon the peaceful and Christian basis
of arbitration.
“And, as I have often said before, I am glad to repeat, in this great
centre of civilization and power, that in my judgment no national
spectacle, no international spectacle, no continental spectacle, could
be more grand than that the republics of the Western world should meet
together and solemnly agree that neither the soil of North nor that of
South America shall be hereafter stained by brothers’ blood.”--Extract
from the Speech of Hon. James G. Blaine at the Delmonico Dinner,
October 29, 1884.
[90] “It is only slowly, and after having been long in contact with
society, that man becomes more indulgent towards others and more
severe towards himself.”--“Suicide: an Essay on Comparative Moral
Statistics,” p. 226. By Henry Morselli, M.D. New York: D. Appleton &
Co., 1882.
Standing armies are the instruments of tyranny; they are the last
analysis of selfishness, the incarnation of depravity; for they do not
reason--they strike. It is worthy of note that the standing armies of
Europe are coeval with the revival of learning, and the revival of
learning was a revival of the Greco-Roman subjective educational
methods. The logical effect of those methods was the promotion of
selfishness, and the standing armies conserved the selfish designs of
the rulers of the newly-formed States. It is hence not a mere
coincidence that standing armies and the revival of learning through
subjective processes of thought are of common origin. The Machiavellian
philosophy of cruelty, duplicity, and contempt of man sprung logically
from egoism, and as logically led to the formation of standing
armies--bodies of armed men, trained, under compulsion, to kill, burn,
and destroy.
The synonyms of the standing army are selfishness and its vile issue,
feudalism, serfdom, slavery, ignorance, and contempt of man. These
conditions are passing away, and the standing army, the worst, as it is
the most costly relic of savagery, must pass away with them. It cannot
withstand the advance of the new education, whose mission is peace,
whose quest is the truth, whose premise is a fact, whose conclusion is a
thing of use and beauty, and whose goal is justice.
[E25] War is not merely a relic of barbarism; it is barbarism
triumphant. It is evidence of the presence, active and malignant, of
all the bad passions of man. Nor are idle armies less infamous than
armies in deadly conflict. Carlyle well says that the one monster in
the world is the idle man; and the standing army is a vast horde of
idle men quartered on the community. The standing armies of Europe, on
parade, in barracks, and in forts, are as unmixed an evil as the
legions of Rome were in Gaul, in Greece, or before Carthage. It is a
shame to civilization that arbitration did not long ago take the place
of the coarse brutality of war. The _duello_ between Nations is not
less absurd, and it is a thousand-fold more wicked, than the _duello_
between individuals. It is savagery pure and simple, the child of
selfishness, and not less inconsistent with a high state of
civilization than slavery.
[E26] Of the British funding system when it was in its infancy, as
early as 1748, Lord Bolingbroke said: “It is a method by which one
part of the nation is pawned to the other, with hardly any hope left
of ever being redeemed.”
See, also, in the _North American Review_ for September, 1886, an
exhaustive article on the impolicy of national debt perpetuation, by
N. P. Hill, in which it is alleged that “great interests are at work
to prevent the payment of the national debt of the United States.”
[E27] In his recent great work--“The Wonderful Century”--Mr. Alfred
Russel Wallace, on the authority of “The Statesman’s Year Book” for
1897, states that the standing armies and navies of Europe number
three millions of men; cost 180,000,000 pounds sterling per annum, and
withdraw from useful employments ten millions of men engaged in
repairing the waste of war.--“The Wonderful Century,” pp. 335-336. New
York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1898.
[E28] “I know now that my fellowship with others cannot be shut off by
a frontier, or by a government decree which decides that I belong to
some particular political organization. I know now that all men are
everywhere brothers and equals. When I think now of all the evil I
have done, that I have endured, and that I have seen about me, arising
from national enmities, I see clearly that it is all due to that gross
imposture called patriotism--love for one’s native land.” ... “I
understand now that true welfare is possible for me only on condition
that I recognize my fellowship with the whole world.”--“My Religion,”
p. 256. By Count Leo Tolstoi. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
[E29] There is another cause of the decline of Germany: War degrades;
it is a reversion toward barbarism. Not only is the soldier brutalized
by martial exercises and scenes of carnage, but the moral and mental
fibre of the people of a nation which indulges in war is rendered
coarser. The remark of M. Renan on the subject is profoundly
philosophical:
“The man who has passed years in the carriage of arms after the German
fashion is dead to all delicate work whether of the hand or
brain.”--“Recollections of my Youth,” p. 159. By Ernest Renan. New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883.