Among the many ways men have sought to create a national consciousness,
a fountain of pride to the individual citizen, is to build a strong body
for the great soul, and it would be an error to overlook--among other
modern uprisings of ancient Irish character--the revival of the military
spirit and its possible development in relation to the national being.
National solidarity may be brought about by pressure from without, or by
the fusion of the diverse elements in a nation by a heat engendered
from within. But to Create national solidarity by war is to attain but
a temporary and unreal unity, a gain like theirs who climb into the
Kingdom not by the straight gate, but over the wall like a robber. When
one nation is threatened by another, great national sacrifices will be
made, and the latent solidarity of its humanity be kindled. But when the
war is over, when the circumstances uniting the people for a time are
past, that spirit rapidly dies, and people begin their old antagonisms
because the social order, in its normal working, does not constantly
promote a consciousness of identity of interest.
Almost all the great European states have fortified their national
being by militarism. Everything almost in their development has been
subordinated to the necessities of national defense, and hence it is
only in times of war there is any real manifestation of national spirit.
It is only then that the citizens of the Iron Age feel a transitory
brotherhood. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, possible only in the Iron
Age, that the highest instances of national sacrifice are evoked by
warfare--the most barbarous of human enterprises. To make normal that
spirit of unity which is now only manifested in abnormal moments in
history should be our aim; and as it is the Iron Age, and material
forces are more powerful than spiritual, we must consider how these
fierce energies can be put in relation with the national being with
least debasement of that being. If the body of the national soul is too
martial in character, it will by reflex action communicate its character
to the spirit, and make it harsh and domineering, and unite against it
in hatred all other nations. We have seen that in Europe but yesterday.
The predominance in the body of militarist practice will finally drive
out from the soul those unfathomable spiritual elements which are the
body's last source power in conflict, and it will in the end defeat its
own object, which is power. When nations at war call up their reserves
of humanity to the last man capable of bearing arms, their leaders begin
also to summon up those bodiless moods and national sentiments which
are the souls of races, and their last and most profound sources of
inspiration and deathless courage. The war then becomes a conflict of
civilizations and of spiritual ideals, the aspirations and memories
which constitute the fundamental basis of those civilizations. Without
the inspiration of great memories or of great hopes, men are incapable
of great sacrifices. They are rationalists, and the preservation of the
life they know grows to be a desire greater than the immortality of the
spiritual life of their race. A famous Japanese general once said it was
the power to hold out for the last desperate quarter of an hour which
won victories, and it is there spiritual stamina reinforces physical
power. It is a mood akin to the ecstasy of the martyr through his
burning. Though in these mad moments neither spiritual nor material is
consciously differentiated, the spiritual is there in a fiery fusion
with all other forces. If it is absent, the body unsupported may take
to its heels or will yield. It has played its only card, and has not
eternity to fling upon the table in a last gamble for victory.
A military organization may strengthen the national being, but if it
dominates it, it will impoverish its life. How little Sparta has given
to the world compared with Attica. Yet when national ideals have been
created they assume an immeasurably greater dignity when the citizens
organize themselves for the defense of their ideals, and are prepared to
yield up life itself as a sacrifice if by this the national being may
be preserved. A creed always gains respect through its martyrs. We may
grant all this, yet be doubtful whether a militarist organization should
be the main support of the national being in Ireland. The character of
the ideal should, I believe, be otherwise created, and I am not
certain that it could not be as well preserved and defended by a
civil organization, such as I have indicated, as by armed power. Our
geographical position and the slender population of our country also
make it evident that the utmost force Ireland could organize would make
but a feeble barrier against assault by any of the greater States. We
have seen how Belgium, a country with a population larger than that of
Ireland, was thrust aside, crushed and bleeding, by one stroke from the
paw of its mighty neighbor.* The military and political institutions of
a small country are comparatively easy to displace, but it would be
a task infinitely more difficult to destroy ideals or to extinguish a
national being based on a social order, democratic and co-operative in
character, the soul of the country being continually fed by institutions
which, by their very nature, would be almost impossible to alter unless
destruction of the whole humanity of the country was aimed at. National
ideals, based on a co-operative social order, would have the same
power of resistance almost as a religion, which is, of all things, most
unconquerable by physical force, and, when it is itself militant, the
most powerful ally of military power. The aim of all nations is to
preserve their immortality. I do not oppose the creation of a national
army for this purpose. There are occasions when the manhood of a nation
must be prepared to yield life rather than submit to oppression, when
it must perish in self-contempt or resist by force what wrong would be
imposed by force. But I would like to point out that for a country in
the position of Ireland the surest means of preserving the national
being by the sacrifice and devotion of the people are economic and
spiritual.
* Since this book was written Ireland has had a tragic
illustration of the truth of what is urged in these pages.
Our political life in the past has been sordid and unstable because we
were uncultured as a nation. National ideals have been the possession of
the few in Ireland, and have not been diffused. That is the cause of our
comparative failure as a nation. If we would create an Irish culture,
and spread it widely among our people, we would have the same
unfathomable sources of inspiration and sacrifice to draw upon in our
acts as a nation as the individual has who believes he is immortal, and
that his life here is but a temporary foray into time out of eternity.
Yet we have much to learn from the study of military organization. The
great problem of all civilizations is the creation of citizens: that
is, of people who are dominated by the ideal of the general welfare,
who will sink private desire and work harmoniously with their
fellow-citizens for the highest good of their race. While we may all
agree that war brings about an eruption of the arcane and elemental
forces which lie normally in the pit of human life, as the forces which
cause earthquakes lie normally asleep in the womb of the world, none the
less we must admit that military genius has discovered and applied
with mastery a law of life which is of the highest importance to
civilization--far more important to civil even than to military
development--and that is the means by which the individual will forget
his personal danger and sacrifice life itself for the general welfare.
In no other organization will men in great masses so entirely forget
themselves as men will in battle under military discipline. What is the
cause of this? Can we discover how it is done and apply the law to civil
life?
The military discipline works miracles. The problem before the captains
of armies is to take the body of man, the most naturally egoistic of
all things, which hates pain and which will normally take to its legs in
danger and try to save itself, and to dominate it so that the body and
the soul inhabiting it will stand still and face all it loathes. And the
problem is solved in the vast majority of cases. After military training
the civilians who formerly would fly before a few policemen will
manfully and heroically stand, not the blows of a baton, but a whole
hail of bullets, a cannonade lasting through a day; nay, they will for
weeks and months, day by day, risk and lose life for a cause, for an
idea, at a word of command. They may not have half as good a cause to
lose life for as they had as a mob of angry civilians, but they will
face death now, and the chances of mutilation and agony worse
than death. Can we inspire civilians with the same passionate
self-forgetfulness in the pursuit of the higher ideals of peace? Men in
a regiment have to a large extent the personal interests abolished. The
organization they now belong to supports them and becomes their life. By
their union with it a new being is created. Exercise, drill, maneuver,
accentuate that unity, and esprit de corps arises, so that they feel
their highest life is the corporate one; and that feeling is fostered
continually, until at last all the units, by some law of the soul, are
as it were in spite of themselves, in spite of the legs which want to
run, in spite of the body which trembles with fear, constrained to
move in obedience to the purpose of the whole organism expressed by its
controlling will; and so we get these devoted masses of men who advance
again and again under a hail more terrible than Dante imagined falling
in his vision of the fiery world.
There is nothing like it in civilian life, but yet the aim of the higher
minds in all civilizations is to create a similar devotion to civic
ideals, so that men will not only, as Pericles said, "give their bodies
for the commonwealth," but will devote mind, will, and imagination with
equal assiduity and self-surrender to the creation of a civilization
which will be the inheritance of all and a cause of pride to every one,
and which will bring to the individual a greater beauty and richness of
life than he could finally reach by the utmost private efforts of which
he was capable.
I believe that an organization of society, such as I have indicated,
would evolve gradually a similar passion for the general zeal, having,
without the stern restraint militarism imposes on its units, a like
power of turning the thoughts to the general good.
I may say also that to create a militarist organization, before the
natural principles to be safe-guarded are well understood and a common
possession of all the people in the country, would be a danger akin to
the peril of allowing children to play with firearms. We may find it a
bad business to create natural ideals as they are required, just as it
is a perilous business to try to create an army when a country is in a
state of war. If we do not rapidly create a national culture embodying
the fundamental ideas we wish to see prevailing in society our volunteer
armies will be subject to influences from the baser sort of politicians
who would force party aims on the country. We shall have a wretched
future unless the soul of the country can dominate the physical forces
in it, unless ideals of national conduct, liberty of speech and thought,
of justice and brotherhood, exist to inspire and guide it, and are
recognized by all and appealed to by all parties equally.
We are standing on the threshold of nationhood, and it is problems like
these we should be setting ourselves to solve, unless we are to be an
unimportant province of the world, a mere administrative area inhabited
by a quite undistinguished people.