Now I saw still in my Dream, that they went on until they were
come to the place that Simple and Sloth and Presumption lay and
slept in, when Christian went by on Pilgrimage. And behold they
were hanged up in irons, a little way off on the other side.
Then said Mercy to him that was their Guide and Conductor,
What are those three men? And for what are they hanged there?
GREAT-HEART: These three men were men of very bad qualities,
they had no mind to be Pilgrims themselves, and whosoever they
could they hindered. They were for sloth and folly themselves,
and whoever they could persuade with, they made so too, and
withal taught them to presume that they should do well at last.
They were asleep when Christian went by, and now you go by they
are hanged.
MERCY: But could they persuade any to be of their opinion?
GREAT-HEART: Yes, they turned several our of the way.
There was Slow-pace, that they persuaded to do as they. They
also prevailed with one Short-wind, with one No-heart, with one
Linger-after-lust, and with one Sleepy-head, and with a young
woman her name was Dull, to turn out of the way and become as
they. Besides they brought up an ill report of your Lord,
persuading others that he was a Task-master. They also brought up
an evil report of the good Land saying 'twas not half so good as
some pretend it was. They also began to vilify his Servants, and
to count the very best of them meddlesome troublesome busy-bodies.
The Pilgrim's Progress.
Many people who were not in the habit of concerning
themselves with party politics endeavoured, during
the autumn of 1911, and from that time forward,
to straighten out their ideas on the twin problems
of Foreign Policy and Defence. They were moved
thereto mainly by the Agadir incident. Moreover,
a year later, the Balkan war provided an object lesson
in the success of sudden onset against an unprepared
enemy. Gradually also, more and more attention
was focussed upon the large annual increases in
preparation of the warlike sort, which successive
budgets, presented to the Reichstag, had been unable
to hide away. In addition to these, came, early in
1913, the sensational expansion of the German military
establishment and the French reply to it, which have
already been considered.
Private enquirers of course knew nothing of Lord
Haldane's rebuff at Berlin in 1912, for that was a
Government secret. Nor had they any means of
understanding more than a portion of what was
actually afoot on the Continent of Europe in the
matter of armaments and military preparations.
Their sole sources of information were official papers
and public discussions. Many additional facts beyond
these are brought to the notice of governments through
their secret intelligence departments. All continental
powers are more or less uncandid, both as regards
the direction and the amount of their expenditure
on armaments. In the case of Germany concealment
is practised on a greater scale and more methodically
than with any other. Ministers obviously knew a
great deal more than the British public; but what
was known to the man-in-the-street was sufficiently
disquieting, when he set himself to puzzle out its
meanings.
At this time (during 1912, and in the first half
of 1913, until anxiety with regard to Ireland
began to absorb public attention) there was a very
widely-spread and rapidly-growing concern as to
the security of the country. For nearly seven
years Lord Roberts, with quiet constancy, had been
addressing thin and, for the most part, inanimate
gatherings on the subject of National Service.
Suddenly he found himself being listened to with
attention and respect by crowded audiences.
Lord Roberts had ceased to be Commander-in-Chief
in 1904. After his retirement, and in the
same year, he revisited the South African battlefields.
During this trip, very reluctantly—for he
was no lover of change—he came to the conclusion
that in existing circumstances 'national service'
was a necessity. On his return to England he
endeavoured to persuade Mr. Balfour's Government
to accept his views and give effect to them. Failing
in this, he resigned his seat upon the Committee of
Imperial Defence in 1905, in order that he might be
able to advocate his opinion freely. He was then
in his seventy-fourth year. It was not, however,
until seven years later[1] that his words can be said
to have arrested general attention.
NATIONAL ANXIETY
The truth was that the nation was beginning to
be dissatisfied with what it had been told by the
party speakers and newspapers, on the one side
and the other, regarding the state of the national
defences. It had not even the consolation of feeling
that what the one said might be set against the
other, and truth arrived at by striking a balance
between them. This method of the party system,
which was supposed to have served fairly well in
other matters, failed to reassure the nation with
regard to its military preparations. The whole of
this subject was highly complicated, lent itself readily
to political mystery, and produced in existing
circumstances the same apprehensions among ordinary men
as those of a nervous pedestrian, lost in a fog by the
wharf side, who finds himself beset by officious and
quarrelsome touts, each claiming permission to set
him on his way.
The nation was disquieted because it knew that
it had not been told the whole truth by either set of
politicians. It suspected the reason of this to be
that neither set had ever taken pains to understand
where the truth lay. It had a notion, moreover,
that the few who really knew, were afraid—for party
reasons—to speak out, to state their conclusions, and
to propose the proper remedies, lest such a course
might drive them from office, or prevent them from
ever holding it. Beyond any doubt it was true that
at this time many people were seriously disturbed
by the unsatisfactory character of recent Parliamentary
discussions, and earnestly desired to know
the real nature of the dangers to be apprehended,
and the adequacy of our preparations for meeting
them.
There had always been a difficulty in keeping
the Army question from being used as a weapon in
party warfare. As to this—looking back over a long
period of years—there was not much to choose between
the Radicals, Liberals, or Whigs upon the one hand,
and the Unionists, Conservatives, or Tories on the
other. Military affairs are complicated and
technical; and the very fact that the line of country is
so puzzling to the ordinary man had preserved it as
the happy hunting-ground of the politician. When
an opportunity presented itself of attacking the
Government on its army policy, the opposition—whether
in the reign of Queen Victoria or in that of
Queen Anne—rarely flinched out of any regard for
the national interest. And when Parliamentary
considerations and ingrained prejudices made it seem a
risky matter to undertake reforms which were
important, or even essential, the Government of the
day just as rarely showed any disposition to discharge
this unpopular duty.
While at times naval policy, and even foreign
policy, had for years together been removed out of
the region of purely party criticism, army policy had
ever remained embarrassed by an evil tradition.
From the time of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough,
to the time of Field-Marshal Sir John French—from
a date, that is, only a few years after our modern
Parliamentary system was inaugurated by the 'Glorious
Revolution,' down to the present day—the
characteristic of almost every opposition with regard
to this matter, had been factiousness, and that of
almost every Government evasion. Neither the one
side nor the other had ever seemed able to approach
this ill-fated topic with courage or sincerity, or to
view it with steady constancy from the standpoint
of the national interest.
THE BLOOD TAXES
For several years past the country had been
watching a conspicuous example of this ingrained
habit of manoeuvring round the Army in order to
obtain party advantage. From 1912 onwards, until
more interesting perplexities provided a distraction,
a great part of the Liberal press and party had been
actively engaged in the attempt to fix the Unionist
party with responsibility for the proposals of the
National Service League. The Opposition, it is
hardly necessary to record, were innocent of this
charge—criminally innocent; but it was nevertheless
regarded as good party business to load them
with the odium of 'conscription.' The 'blood-taxes,'
as it was pointed out by one particularly
zealous journal, would be no less useful than the
'food-taxes' as an 'election cry,' which at this
time—more than ever before—appeared to have become
the be-all and end-all of party activities.
It was obvious to the meanest capacity that
these industrious politicians were not nearly so much
concerned with the demerits, real or supposed, of
National Service, as with making their opponents
as unpopular as possible. In such an atmosphere
of prejudice it would have required great courage
and determination in a statesman to seek out and
proclaim the true way to security, were it national
service or anything else which entailed a sacrifice.
Was it wonderful that when people examined
the signs of the times in the early part of 1913,
they should have found themselves oppressed by
feelings of doubt and insecurity? A huge German
military increase; a desperate French effort in
reply; war loans (for they were nothing else) on a
vast scale in both countries—what was the meaning
of it all? To what extent was British safety
jeopardised thereby?
To these questions there was no answer which
carried authority; the official oracles were dumb.
We are a democratic country, and yet none of our
rulers had ever yet spoken plainly to us. None of
the Secretaries for War, none of the Prime Ministers
since the beginning of the century, had ever stated
the issue with uncompromising simplicity, as the
case required. None of them had ever taken the
country into his confidence, either as to the extent
of the danger or as to the nature of the remedy. It
is necessary to assume—in the light of subsequent
events—that these statesmen had in fact realised
the danger, and were not ignorant of the preparations
which were required to forestall it. Certainly it
is hard to believe otherwise; but at times, remembering
their speeches and their acts, one is inclined to
give them the benefit, if it be a benefit, of the doubt.
BRITAIN AND EUROPEAN INTERESTS
The question at issue was in reality a graver matter
than the security of the United Kingdom or the
British Empire. The outlook was wider even than
this. The best guarantee for the preservation of
the peace of Europe, and of the World, would have
been a British army proportionate to our population
and resources. There could be no doubt of this.
For half a century or more we had, half unconsciously,
bluffed Europe into the belief that we did in fact
possess such an army; but gradually it had become
plain that this was not the case. Since the Agadir
incident the real situation was apparent even to the
man in the street—in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, the
Hague, Vienna, Rome, and Petrograd—in every
capital, indeed, save perhaps in London alone.
If England had possessed such an army as would
have enabled her to intervene with effect in European
affairs, she would almost certainly never have been
called upon to intervene.[2] Peace in that case would
have preserved itself. For Europe knew—not from
our professions, but from the obvious facts, which
are a much better assurance—that our army would
never be used except for one purpose only, to maintain
the balance of Power. She knew this to be our only
serious concern; and, except for the single nation
which, at any given time, might be aiming at
predominance, it was also the most serious concern of
the whole of Europe. She knew us to be disinterested,
in the diplomatic sense, with regard to all other
European matters. She knew that there was nothing
in Europe which we wished to acquire, and nothing—save
in the extreme south-west, a rock called
Gibraltar, and in the Mediterranean an island called
Malta—which we held and were determined to maintain.
In the chancelleries of Europe all this was
clearly recognised. And more and more it was
coming to be recognised also by the organs of public
opinion on the Continent.
The population of France is roughly forty millions;
that of Germany} sixty-five millions; that of the
United Kingdom, forty-five millions. As regards
numbers of men trained to bear arms, France by
1911 had already come to the end of her resources;
Germany had still considerable means of expansion;
Britain alone had not yet seriously attempted to
put forth her strength. Had we done so in time
the effect must have been final and decisive; there
would then have been full security against disturbance
of the peace of Europe by a deliberately calculated
war.
Europe's greatest need therefore was that Britain
should possess an army formidable not only in valour,
but also in numbers: her greatest peril lay in the
fact that, as to the second of these requirements,
Britain was deficient. No power from the Atlantic
seaboard to the Ural Mountains, save that one
alone which contemplated the conquest and spoliation
of its neighbours, would have been disquieted—or
indeed anything else but reassured—had the British
people decided to create such an army. For by
reason of England's peculiar interests—or rather
perhaps from her lack of all direct personal interests
in European affairs, other than in peace and the
balance of power—she was marked out as the natural
mediator in Continental disputes. In these high
perplexities, however, it is not the justice of the
mediator which restrains aggression, so much as
the fear inspired by his fleets and the strength of
his battalions.
The doubt and anxiety of public opinion in 1912
were not allayed when the strength and composition
of the British Army came to be considered.
Leaving out of account those troops which were
recruited and maintained in India, the Dominions,
and the Dependencies, the actual number of British
regulars employed in garrison duty abroad was in
round figures 125,000 men. The number in the
United Kingdom was approximately the same; but
by no means the whole of these were fit to take the
field. The total strength of the Regular Army in
1912-1913 might therefore be taken at somewhere
between 250,000 and 254,000 men,[1] of whom half
were permanently out of this country, while from
25,000 to 50,000 could not be reckoned on as
available in case of war, for the reason that they were
either recent recruits or 'immatures.'[2]
The reserves and additional troops which would
be called out in the event of a serious war were so
different in character that it was impossible simply
to throw them into a single total, and draw conclusions
therefrom according to the rules of arithmetic. For
when people spoke of the Army Reserve, the Special
Reserve, and the Territorial Army, they were talking
of three things, the values of which were not at all
comparable. The first were fully trained fighting
soldiers; the second were lads with a mere smattering
of their trade; while the third were little more
than an organised schedule of human material—mainly
excellent—which would become available for
training only at the outbreak of war, and whose
liability for service was limited to home defence.
The sum-total of these reserves and additional troops
was roughly 450,000 men; but this row of figures
was entirely meaningless, or else misleading, until
the significance of its various factors was grasped.[3]
THE THREE RESERVES
The first of these categories, the Army Reserve,
was the only one which could justly claim to rank
as a true reserve—that is, as a fighting force, from
the outbreak of war equal in calibre to the Continental
troops against which, it would be called upon to
take the field.
The Army Reserve consisted of men who had
served their full time in the Regular Army. They
were therefore thoroughly trained and disciplined,
needing only a few days—or at most weeks—to rub
the rust off them.[4] Nominally their numbers were
137,000[5] men; but as over 8000 of these were living
out of the United Kingdom the net remainder had
to be taken at something under 130,000. Moreover,
as the Army Reserve depended automatically upon
the strength of the Regular Army, and as the strength
of this had recently been reduced, it seemed
necessarily to follow that ultimately there would be a
considerable diminution.
The second category to which the name of a
reserve was given was the Special Reserve. This,
however, was no true reserve like the first, for it was
wholly unfit to take the field upon the outbreak of
hostilities. It was the modern substitute for the
Militia, and was under obligation to serve abroad in
time of war. The term of enlistment was six years,
and the training nominally consisted of six months
in the first year, and one month in camp in each of
the succeeding years. But in practice these
conditions had been greatly relaxed. It was believed
that, upon the average, the term of training amounted
to even less than the proposals of the National Service
League,[6] which had been criticised from the official
standpoint—severely and not altogether unjustly—on
the ground that they would not provide soldiers
fit to be drafted immediately into the fighting line.
Notwithstanding the inadequacy of its military
education, this Special Reserve was relied upon in
some measure for making up the numbers of our
Expeditionary Force[7] at the commencement of war,
and individuals from it, and even in some cases units,
would therefore have been sent out to meet the
conscript armies of the Continent, to which they were
inferior, not only in length and thoroughness of
training, but also in age. It was important also to
bear in mind that they would be led by comparatively
inexperienced and untrained officers. The strength
of the Special Reserve was approximately 58,000[8]
men, or lads. Under the most favourable view it
was a corps of apprentices whose previous service
had been of a very meagre and desultory character.
The third category was the Territorial Army,
whose term of service was four years and whose
military training, even nominally, only consisted of
fifteen days in camp each year, twenty drills the first
year, and ten drills each year after that. In reality
this training had, on the average, consisted of very
much less. This force was not liable for service
abroad, but only for home defence.
The minimum strength of the Territorial Army
was estimated beforehand by Lord Haldane at
316,000 men; but these numbers had never been
reached. The approximate strength was only
260,000 men, of whom only about half had qualified,
both by doing fifteen days in camp, and by passing
an elementary test in musketry.[9] These numbers had
recently shown a tendency to shrink rather than swell.[10]
THEIR VALUES AND TRAINING
The value of the Territorial Army, therefore, was
that of excellent, though in certain cases immature,
material, available for training upon the outbreak
of war. But in spite of its high and patriotic spirit
it was wholly unfit to take the field against trained
troops until it had undergone the necessary training.
In the event of war we could not safely reckon
upon being able to withdraw our garrisons from
abroad.[11] Consequently, in the first instance, and
until the Special Reserve and the Territorial Army
had been made efficient, all we could reasonably
depend upon for serious military operations, either at
home or abroad, were that part of the Regular Army
which was in the United Kingdom, and the Army
Reserve.
In round figures therefore our soldiers immediately
available for a European war (i.e. that portion of
the Regular Army which was stationed at home and
the Army Reserve) amounted on mobilisation to
something much under 250,000 men. Our apprentice
troops (the Special Reserve), who were really
considerably less than half-made, numbered something
under 60,000 men. Our unmade raw material (the
Territorial Army), excellent in quality and
immediately available for training, might be taken at
260,000 men.
The main consideration arising out of this analysis
was of course the inadequacy of the British Army to
make good the numerical deficiency of the Triple
Entente in the Western theatre during the onset and
the grip of war. Supposing England to be involved
in a European war, which ran its course and was
brought to a conclusion with the same swiftness
which had characterised every other European
war within the last half century, how were our
half-made and our unmade troops to be rendered
efficient in time to effect the result in any way
whatsoever?
SCARCITY OF OFFICERS
There was yet another consideration of great
gravity. If our full Expeditionary Force were sent
abroad we should have to strain our resources to the
utmost to bring it up to its full nominal strength and
keep it there. The wastage of war would necessarily
be very severe in the case of so small a force;
especially heavy in the matter of officers. Consequently,
from the moment when this force set sail, there would
be a dearth of officers in the United Kingdom
competent to train the Special Reserve, the Territorial
Army, and the raw recruits. Every regular and
reserve officer in the country would be required in
order to mobilise the Expeditionary Force, and keep
it up to its full strength during the first six months.
As things then stood there was a certainty—in case
of war—of a very serious shortage of officers of suitable
experience and age to undertake the duties, which
were required under our recently devised military
system.[12]
Half-made soldiers and raw material alike would
therefore be left to the instruction of amateur or
hastily improvised officers—zealous and intelligent
men without a doubt; but unqualified, owing to their
own lack of experience, for training raw troops, so as
to place them rapidly on an equality with the armies
to which they would find themselves opposed. What
the British system contemplated, was as if you were
to send away the headmaster, and the assistant-masters,
and the under-masters, leaving the school
in charge of pupil-teachers.
In no profession is the direct personal influence
of teaching and command more essential than in
the soldier's. In none are good teachers and leaders
more able to shorten and make smooth the road to
confidence and efficiency. Seeing that we had chosen
to depend so largely upon training our army after
war began, it might have been supposed, that at least
we should have taken care to provide ourselves with
a sufficient number of officers and non-commissioned
officers, under whose guidance the course of education
would be made as thorough and as short as possible.
This was not the case. Indeed the reverse was the
case. Instead of possessing a large number of officers
and non-commissioned officers, beyond those actually
required at the outbreak of war for the purpose of
starting with, and repairing the wastage in the
Expeditionary Force, we were actually faced, as
things then stood, with a serious initial shortage of
the officers required for this one purpose alone.
Lord Haldane in framing the army system which
is associated with his name chose to place his trust
in a small, highly-trained expeditionary force for
immediate purposes, to be supplemented at a later
date—if war were obliging enough to continue for so
long—by a new army of which the Territorials formed
the nucleus, and which would not begin its real
training until after the outbreak of hostilities. Under
the most favourable view this plan was a great gamble;
for it assumed that in the war which was contemplated,
the onset and the grip periods would be passed
through without crushing disaster, and that England
would, in due course, have an opportunity of making
her great strength felt in the drag. It will be said
that Lord Haldane's assumption has been justified
by recent events, and in a sense this is true; but by
what merest hair-breadth escape, by what sacrifices
on the part of our Allies, at what cost in British lives,
with what reproach to our national good name, we
have not yet had time fully to realise.
But crediting Lord Haldane's system, if we may,
with an assumption which has been proved correct,
we have reason to complain that he did not act boldly
on this assumption and make his scheme, such as it
was, complete and effective. For remember, it was
contemplated that the great new army, which was
to defend the existence of the British Empire in the
final round of war, should be raised and trained upon
the voluntary principle—upon a wave of patriotic
enthusiasm—after war broke out. This new army
would have to be organised, clothed, equipped, armed,
and supplied with ammunition. The 'voluntary
principle' did not apply to matters of this kind. It
might therefore have been expected that stores
would be accumulated, and plans worked out upon
the strictest business principles, with philosophic
thoroughness, and in readiness for an emergency
which might occur at any moment.
WANT OF STORES AND PLANS
Moral considerations which precluded 'conscription'
did not, and could not, apply to inanimate
material of war, or to plans and schedules of army
corps and camps, or to a body of officers enlisted of
their own free will. It may have been true that to
impose compulsory training would have offended
the consciences of free-born Britons; but it was
manifestly absurd to pretend that the accumulation
of adequate stores of artillery and small arms, of
shells and cartridges, of clothing and equipment,
could offend the most tender conscience—could
offend anything indeed except the desire of the
tax-payer to pay as few taxes as possible.
If the British nation chose to bank on the
assumption, that it would have the opportunity given
it of 'making good' during the drag of war, it should
have been made to understand what this entailed
in the matter of supplies; and most of all in reserve
of officers. All existing forces should at least have
been armed with the most modern weapons. There
should have been arms and equipment ready for the
recruits who would be required, and who were relied
upon to respond to a national emergency. There
should have been ample stores of every kind,
including artillery, and artillery ammunition, for that
Expeditionary Force upon which, during the first
six months we had decided to risk our national
safety.
But, in fact, we were provided fully in none of
these respects. And least of all were we provided in
the matter of officers. There was no case of conscience
at stake; but only the question of a vote in the
House of Commons. We could have increased our
establishment of officers by a vote; we could have
laid in stores of ammunition, of clothing, of equipment
by a vote. But the vote was not asked for—it might
have been unpopular—and therefore Lord Haldane's
scheme—in its inception a gamble of the most
hazardous character—was reduced to a mere
make-believe, for the reason that its originator lacked
confidence to back his own 'fancy.'
Looking back at the Agadir incident, it seemed
plain enough, from a soldier's point of view, that the
British Expeditionary Force was inadequate, in a
purely military sense, to redress the adverse balance
against the French, and beat back a German invasion.
The moral effect, however, of our assistance would
undoubtedly have been very great, in encouraging
France and Belgium by our comradeship in arms,
and in discouraging Germany, by making clear to
her the firmness of the Triple Entente.
But by the summer of 1914—three years later—this
position had undergone a serious change. In
a purely military sense, the value of such aid as it had
been in our power to send three years earlier, was
greatly diminished. The increase in the German
striking force over that of France, which had taken
effect since 1911, was considerably greater than the
total numbers of the army which we held prepared
for foreign service. This was fully understood
abroad; and the knowledge of it would obviously
diminish the moral as well as the material effect of
our co-operation.
COST OF FULL INSURANCE
In order that the combined forces of France and
England might have a reasonable chance of holding
their own[13] against Germany, until Russian pressure
began to tell, the smallest army which we ought to
have been able to put in the field, and maintain there
for six months, was not less than twice that of the
existing Expeditionary Force. From a soldier's point
of view 320,000 men instead of 160,000 was the very
minimum with which there might be a hope of
withstanding the German onset; and for the purpose of
bringing victory within sight it would have been
necessary to double the larger of these figures. In
order to reach the end in view, Britain ought to have
possessed a striking force at least half as large as that
of France, in round figures between 600,000 and
750,000 men.
This was how the matter appeared in 1912, viewed
from the standpoint of a soldier who found himself
asked to provide a force sufficient, not for
conquest—not for the purpose of changing the map of Europe to
the advantage of the Triple Entente—but merely in
order to safeguard the independence of Belgium and
Holland, to prevent France from being crushed by
Germany,[14] and to preserve the security of the British
Empire.
The political question which presented itself to
the minds of enquirers was this—If the British nation
were told frankly the whole truth about the
Army, would it not conceivably decide that
complete insurance was a better bargain than half
measures? What force ought we to be prepared to
send to France during the first fortnight of war in
order to make it a moral certainty that Germany
would under no circumstances venture to attack
France?
To questions of this sort it is obviously impossible
to give certain and dogmatic answers. There are
occasions when national feeling runs away with
policy and overbears considerations of military
prudence. The effects of sudden panic, of a sense of
bitter injustice, of blind pride or overweening
confidence, are incalculable upon any mathematical basis.
But regarding the matter from the point of view of
the Kaiser's general staff, whose opinion is usually
assumed to be a determining factor in German
enterprises, a British Expeditionary Force,
amounting to something over 600,000 men, would have
been sufficient to prevent the occurrence of a
coolly calculated war. And in the event of war
arising out of some uncontrollable popular impulse, a
British Army of this size would have been enough,
used with promptitude and under good leadership, to
secure the defeat of the aggressor.
An Expeditionary Force of 320,000 men would
mean fully trained reserves of something over 210,000
in order to make good the wastage of war during a
campaign of six months. Similarly an Expeditionary
Force of 600,000 would mean reserves of 400,000. In
the former case a total of 530,000 trained soldiers,
and in the latter a total of 1,000,000, would therefore
have been required.[15]
Even the smaller of these proposed increases
in the Expeditionary Force would have meant
doubling the number of trained soldiers in the British
Army; the larger would have meant multiplying it
by four. Under what system would it be possible
to achieve these results if public opinion should
decide that either of them was necessary to national
security? The answer was as easy to give as the
thing itself seemed hard to carry out.
LIMITS OF VOLUNTARY ENLISTMENT
It had become clear a good deal earlier than the
year 1914 that the limit of voluntary enlistment,
under existing conditions, had already been reached
for the Regular as well as the Territorial Army. If,
therefore, greater numbers were required they could
only be provided by some form of compulsory service.
There was no getting away from this hard fact which
lay at the very basis of the situation.
If security were the object of British policy, the
Expeditionary Force must be fully trained before
war broke out. It would not serve the purpose for
which it was intended, if any part of it, or of its
reserves, needed to be taught their trade after war
began. Thoroughness of training—which must under
ordinary circumstances[16] be measured by length of
training—appeared to be a factor of vital importance.
Given anything like equality in equipment, generalship,
and position, men who had undergone a full two
years' course—like the conscript armies of the
Continent—ought to have no difficulty in defeating a
much larger force which had less discipline and
experience.
The lessons of the South African War were in
many ways very useful; but the praise lavishly, and
justly, given to volunteer battalions by Lord Roberts
and other distinguished commanders, needed to be
studied in the light of the circumstances, and these
were of a peculiar character. For one thing our
antagonists, the Boers, were not trained troops,
and moreover, their policy to a large extent was to
weary us out, by declining decisive action and
engaging us in tedious pursuits. Our volunteers,
for the most part, were picked men. Although only
half-trained—perhaps in the majority of cases wholly
untrained—circumstances in this case permitted of
their being given the time necessary for gaining
experience in the field before being required to fight.
This was an entirely different state of affairs from
what might be looked for in a European war, in a
densely peopled country, covered with a close
network of roads and railways—a war in which great
masses of highly disciplined soldiers would be hurled
against one another systematically, upon a settled
plan, until at last superiority at one point or another
should succeed in breaking down resistance. The
South African war and a European war were two
things not in the least comparable.
THE PEOPLE HAD A RIGHT TO KNOW
Before the nation could be expected to come to a
final decision with regard to the insurance premium
which it was prepared to pay, it would require to be
fully informed upon a variety of subordinate points
of much importance. Cost was a matter which could
not be put lightly on one side; our peculiar obligations
in regard to foreign garrisons was another; the
nature of our industrial system was a third; and
there were many besides. But the main and
governing consideration, if we wished to retain our
independence as a nation, was—what provisions were
adequate to security? The people wanted to know,
and had a right to know, the facts. And in the end,
with all due regard for our governors, and for the
self-importance of political parties, it was not either
for ministers or partisans to decide this question on
behalf of the people; it was for the people, on full
and honest information, to decide it for themselves.
Lord Roberts addressed many meetings in favour
of National Service during the years which followed
his return from South Africa in 1905; but the first
of his speeches to arrest widespread popular
attention was delivered in the Free Trade Hall at
Manchester, on October 22, 1912. A popular audience
filled the building to overflowing, listened with
respect, and appeared to accept his conclusions with
enthusiasm. His words carried far beyond the walls
of the meeting-place, and caused something approaching
a sensation, or, as some thought, a scandal, in
political circles.
Of the commentators upon this speech the greater
part were Liberals, and these condemned his
utterances with unanimity in somewhat violent language.
Official Unionism was dubious, uncomfortable, and
disapproving: it remained for the most part dumb.
A few voices were raised from this quarter in open
reprobation; a few others proclaimed their independence
of party discipline and hastened to approve
his sentiments.
There was no doubt of one thing—Lord Roberts's
speech had at last aroused public interest. For
the first time during the National Service agitation
blood had been drawn. This was mainly due to the
object-lesson in the consequences of military
unpreparedness, which the first Balkan War was just
then unfolding before the astonished eyes of Europe.
In addition, those people, who for a year past had
been puzzling their heads over the true meaning
of the Agadir crisis, had become impressed with
the urgent need for arriving at a clear decision
with regard to the adequacy of our national
defences.
NEED FOR NATIONAL SERVICE
The speech was a lucid and forcible statement
of the need for compulsory military training. It
was interesting reading at the time it was delivered,
and in some respects it is even more interesting to-day.
It was compactly put together, not a thing of patches.
A man who read any part of it would read it all.
Yet in accordance with custom, controversy raged
around three isolated passages.
The first of these runs as follows: "In the year
1912, our German friends, I am well aware, do
not—at least in sensible circles—assert dogmatically
that a war with Great Britain will take place this
year or next; but in their heart of hearts they
know, every man of them, that—just as in 1866
and just as in 1870—war will take place the instant
the German forces by land and sea are, by their
superiority at every point, as certain of victory as
anything in human calculation can be made certain.
Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck.
That is the time-honoured policy of her Foreign
Office. That was the policy relentlessly pursued
by Bismarck and Moltke in 1866 and 1870. It
has been her policy decade by decade since that
date. It is her policy at the present hour."
The second passage followed upon the first:
"It is an excellent policy. It is or should be the
policy of every nation prepared to play a great
part in history. Under that policy Germany has,
within the last ten years, sprung, as at a bound,
from one of the weakest of naval powers to the
greatest naval power, save one, upon this globe."
The third passage came later: "Such, gentlemen,
is the origin, and such the considerations which
have fostered in me the growth of this conviction—the
conviction that in some form of National Service
is the only salvation of this Nation and this Empire.
The Territorial Force is now an acknowledged
failure—a failure in discipline, a failure in numbers,
a failure in equipment, a failure in energy."[1]
The accuracy of the first and third of these
statements now stands beyond need of proof. It was
not truer that Germany would strike so soon as her
rulers were of opinion that the propitious hour had
struck, than it was that, when the British Government
came to take stock of their resources at the
outbreak of war, they would find the Territorial Army
to be lacking in the numbers, equipment, training,
and discipline, which alone could have fitted it for
its appointed task—the defence of our shores against
invasion. Slowly, and under great difficulties, and
amid the gravest anxieties these defects had
subsequently to be made good, hampering the while our
military operations in the critical sphere.
The second statement was of a different character,
and taken by itself, without reference to the context,
lent itself readily to misconception as well as
misconstruction. A certain number of critics, no doubt,
actually believed, a still larger number affected to
believe, that Lord Roberts was here advocating the
creation of a British army, for the purpose of attacking
Germany, without a shred of justification, and at
the first favourable moment.
The whole tenor of this speech, however, from
the first line to the last, made it abundantly clear
that in Lord Roberts's opinion Britain could have
neither motive nor object for attacking Germany;
that the sole concern of England and of the British
Empire with regard to Germany was, how we might
defend our possessions and secure ourselves against
her schemes of aggression.
POINTS OF CRITICISM
Lord Roberts, however, had in fact pronounced
the intentions which he attributed to Germany to
be 'an excellent policy,' and had thereby seemed
to approve, and recommend for imitation, a system
which was revolting to the conscience of a Christian
community.
The idea that Lord Roberts could have had any
such thoughts in his mind seemed merely absurd to
any one who knew him; nay, it must also have
seemed inconceivable to any one who had taken
the trouble to read the speech itself in an
unprejudiced mood. To an ordinary man of sense it
did not need Lord Roberts's subsequent letter of
explanation[2] to set his opinions in their true light.
It was clear that his object, in this 'peccant
passage,' had merely been to avoid a pharisaical
condemnation of German methods and ambitions,
and to treat that country as a worthy, as well as a
formidable, antagonist. Being a soldier,
however,—not a practised platform orator alive to the dangers
of too-generous concession—he went too far. The
words were unfortunately chosen, seeing that so
many critics were on the watch, not to discover the
true meaning of the speech, but to pounce on any
slip which might be turned to the disadvantage of
the speaker.
At first there was an attempt on the part of certain
London[3] Liberal journals to boycott this speech.
Very speedily, however, it seemed to dawn upon
them that they had greater advantages to gain by
denouncing it. A few days later, accordingly, the
torrent of condemnation was running free. The
ablest attack appeared in the Nation,[4] and as this
pronouncement by the leading Radical weekly was
quoted with approval by the greater part of the
ministerial press throughout the country, it may
fairly be taken as representing the general view
of the party.
A RADICAL ATTACK
The article was headed A Diabolical Speech,
and its contents fulfilled the promise of the title.
"There ought," said the writer, "to be some means
of bringing to book a soldier, in the receipt of
money from the State, who speaks of a friendly
Power as Lord Roberts spoke of Germany." He
was accused roundly of predicting and encouraging
a vast and 'hideous conflict' between the
two countries. Lord Roberts was a 'successful'[5]
soldier; but 'without training in statesmanship.' He
'had never shown any gift for it.' His was
'an average Tory intellect.' He was a 'complete
contrast to Wellington, who possessed two great
qualities; for "he set a high value on peace, and
he knew how to estimate and bow to the governing
forces of national policy.... Lord Roberts
possesses neither of these attributes. He is a mere
jingo in opinion and character, and he interprets
the life and interests of this nation and this Empire
by the crude lusts and fears which haunt the
unimaginative soldier's brain."
We may pause at this breathing-place to take
note of the healing influences of time. Radical
journalists of 1832, and thereabouts, were wont to
say very much the same hard things of the Duke
of Wellington, as those of 1912 saw fit to apply to
Earl Roberts.... We may also remark in passing,
upon the errors to which even the most brilliant
of contemporary judgments are liable. There has
never been a man in our time who set a higher value
on peace than Lord Roberts did. He realised,
however, not only the intrinsic value of peace, but
its market cost. His real crime, in the eyes of pacifists,
was that he stated publicly, as often as he had the
chance, what price we must be prepared to pay, if
we wanted peace and not war. It was in this sense,
no doubt, that he did not know 'how to estimate and
bow to the governing forces of national policy.' His
blunt warnings broke in rudely and crudely upon the
comfortable discourse of the three counsellors—Simple,
Sloth, and Presumption, who, better than any others,
were skilled in estimating the 'governing forces,' and
the advantages to be gained by bowing to them.
The writer in the Nation then proceeded to riddle
Lord Roberts's theories of defence. "He desires
us to remain a 'free nation' in the same breath
that he invites us to come under the yoke of
conscription"—intolerable, indeed, that the citizens
of a free nation should be ordered to fit themselves
for defending their common freedom—"conscription,
if you please, for the unheard-of purpose of overseas
service in India and elsewhere...." This invitation
does not seem to be contained in this, or any
other of Lord Roberts's speeches; but supposing it to
have been given, it was not altogether 'unheard-of,'
seeing that, under the law of conscription prevalent
(for example) in Germany, conscript soldiers can be
sent to Palestine, or tropical Africa as lawfully as into
Luxemburg, Poland, or France. According to the
Nation, the true theory of defence was Sea Power;
but this, it appeared, could not be relied on for all
time.... "While our naval monopoly—like our
commercial monopoly—cannot exist for ever, our
sea power and our national security depend on our
ability to crush an enemy's fleet.... We were never
so amply insured—so over-insured—against naval
disaster as we are to-day."
A LIBERAL ATTACK
"Lord Roberts's proposition, therefore," the writer
continued, "is merely foolish; it is his way of
commending it, which is merely wicked. He speaks
of war as certain to take place 'the instant' the
German forces are assured of 'superiority at every
point,' and he discovers that the motto of German
foreign policy is that Germany strikes when Germany's
hour has struck. Germany does not happen to
have struck anybody since 1870, and she struck
then to secure national unity, and to put an end to
the standing menace of French imperialism. Since
then she has remained the most peaceful and the
most self-contained, though doubtless not the most
sympathetic, member of the European family....
Germany, the target of every cheap dealer in historic
slapdash, is in substance the Germany of 1870"
(i.e. in extent of territory), "with a great industrial
dominion superadded by the force of science and
commercial enterprise. That is the story across
which Lord Roberts scrawls his ignorant libel....
By direct implication he invites us to do to Germany
what he falsely asserts she is preparing to do to
us. These are the morals, fitter for a wolf-pack
than for a society of Christian men, commended
as 'excellent policy' to the British nation in the
presence of a Bishop of the Anglican Church."
This was very vigorous writing; nor was there
the slightest reason to suspect its sincerity. In the
nature of man there is a craving to believe; and if
a man happens to have his dwelling-place in a world
of illusion and unreality, it is not wonderful that he
should believe in phantoms. The credulity of the
Nation might appear to many people to amount
to fanaticism; but its views were fully shared, though
less tersely stated, by the whole Liberal party,
by the greater proportion of the British people,
and not inconceivably by the bulk of the Unionist
opposition as well. The Government alone, who had
learned the true facts from Lord Haldane eight
months earlier, knew how near Lord Roberts's
warnings came to the mark.
This article set the tone of criticism. The
Manchester Guardian protested against the "insinuation
that the German Government's views of international
policy are less scrupulous and more cynical than
those of other Governments." Germany has never
been accused with justice "of breaking her word,
of disloyalty to her engagements, or of insincerity.
Prussia's character among nations is, in fact, not
very different from the character which Lancashire
men give to themselves as compared with other
Englishmen. It is blunt, straightforward, and
unsentimental...." How foolish, moreover, are
our fears of Germany when we come to analyse them.
"We have no territory that she could take, except,
in tropical Africa, which no sane man would go to
war about. Our self-governing colonies could not
in any case be held by force; and Canada is
protected in addition by the Monroe doctrine. Egypt
is not ours to cede. Malta could not be had
without war with Italy nor India without war with
Russia."[6]
This was a proud statement of the basis of British
security, and one which must have warmed the
hearts, and made the blood of Cromwell and Chatham
tingle in the shades. Egypt, which we had rescued
from a chaos of civil war, bankruptcy, and corruption,
which during more than thirty years we had administered
as just stewards for the benefit of her people,
which we had saved from conquest and absorption
by savage hordes—Egypt was not ours to cede.
For the rest our dependencies were not worth taking
from us, while our 'colonies' could defend themselves.
By the grace of Italy's protection we should be
secured in the possession of Malta. India would
be preserved to us by the goodwill of Russia, and
Canada by the strong arm of the United States....
Such at that time were the views of the Liberal
journal foremost in character and ability.
A UNIONIST ATTACK
Somewhat later the Daily News took the field,
making up for lost time by an exuberance of
misconstruction.... "The whole movement as
represented by the National Service League is definitely
unmasked as an attempt to get up, not defence, but
an invasion of German territory. This discovery,
which for years has been suspected, is most valuable
as showing up the real object of the League, with its
glib talk about military calisthenics. Lord Roberts
may have been indiscreet, but at least he has
made it clear that what the League wants is war."[7]
On the same day, in order that the Liberals
might not have a monopoly of reprobation, the
Evening Standard, in an article entitled A Word
with Lord Roberts, rated him soundly for having
"made an attack upon Germany and an attack
upon the Territorial Force...." "It is mere
wanton mischief-making for a man with Lord
Roberts's unequalled prestige to use words which
must drive every German who reads them to
exasperation." And yet no signs whatsoever were
forthcoming that so much as a single Teuton had
been rendered desperate, or had taken the words
as in the least degree uncomplimentary. Up to the
day of his death—and indeed after his death[8]—Lord
Roberts was almost the only Englishman of
his time of whom Germans spoke with consistent
respect.... "Do not," continues this lofty and
sapient mentor, "Do not let us talk as if the Kaiser
could play the part of a Genghis Khan or an Attila,
ravening round the world at the head of armed
hordes to devour empires and kingdoms."[9] And
yet how otherwise has the whole British Press been
talking ever since the middle of August 1914? If
during this period of nine months, the Evening
Standard has kept all reference to Attila and his
Huns out of its columns, its continence is unique.
It would serve no useful purpose to set out further
items of criticism and abuse from the leader and
correspondence columns of newspapers, or from the
speeches of shocked politicians. The Nation, the
Manchester Guardian, and the Daily News are entitled,
between them, to speak for the Liberal party; and
if it cannot be said that the Evening Standard is
quite similarly qualified in respect of the Unionists,
there is still no doubt that the views which it expressed
with so much vigour, prescience, and felicity were
held by many orthodox members of its party.
Colonel Bromley-Davenport, for example, who
had been Financial Secretary to the War Office in the
late Unionist Government, spoke out strongly against
Lord Roberts's comments upon the efficiency of the
Territorial Force. 'Compulsory service,' in his
opinion, 'was not necessary....' And then, with
a burst of illuminating candour—"Which of the
great parties in the state would take up compulsory
service and fight a general election upon it? The
answer was that neither of the parties would;
and to ask for compulsory military service was
like crying for the moon."[10] The power of any
proposal for winning elections was to be the touchstone
of its truth. It would be impossible to state more
concisely the attitude of the orthodox politician.
Which party, indeed, we may well ask, would have
fought a general election on anything, however
needful, unless it hoped to win on it?
MINISTERIAL ATTACKS
The attitude of Ministers, however, with regard
to Lord Roberts's speech is much more worthy of
remark than that of independent journalists and
members of Parliament. For the Government knew
several very important things which, at that time,
were still hidden from the eyes of ordinary men.
It was eight months since Lord Haldane had
returned from Germany, concealing, under a smiling
countenance and insouciant manner, a great burden of
care at his heart. If on his return he spoke cheerily
on public platforms about the kindness of his
entertainment at Berlin, and of the greatness and goodness
of those with whom he had there walked and talked,
this was merely in order that his fellow-countrymen
might not be plunged in panic or despondency. He
had learned the mind of Germany, and it was no
light lesson. He had imparted his dreadful secret
to his colleagues, and we have learned lately from
Mr. Asquith himself what that secret was.... The
rulers of Germany, 'to put it quite plainly,' had
asked us for a free hand to overbear and dominate
the European world, whenever they deemed the
opportunity favourable. They had demanded this
of the astounded British emissary, "at a time when
Germany was enormously increasing both her
aggressive and defensive resources, and especially
upon the sea." To such a demand but one answer
was possible, and that answer the British Government
had promptly given—so we are led to infer—in clear
and ringing tones of scorn.[11]
The Government knew for certain what nobody
else did. They knew what the aims of Germany
were, and consequently they knew that Lord Roberts
had spoken nothing but the truth.
And yet, strange to relate, within a few days we
find Mr. Runciman, a member of the Cabinet,
administering a severe castigation to Lord Roberts. The
Manchester speech was "not only deplorable and
pernicious,' but likewise 'dangerous.' If it was
resented in Germany, Mr. Runciman 'would like
Germany to know that it is resented no less in
England...." Lord Roberts had been a great
organiser of the National Service League, the object
of which was 'practically conscription'; but "he
knows little of England, and certainly little of the
North of England, if he imagines we are ever likely
to submit to conscription"—not even apparently
(for there are no reservations) as an alternative to
conquest; or as a security against murder, arson,
and rape.... "War is only inevitable when statesmen
cannot find a way round, or through, difficulties
that may arise; or are so wicked that they prefer
the hellish method of war to any other method of
solution; or are so weak as to allow soldiers,
armament makers, or scaremongers to direct their
policy."[12] Lord Roberts was not, of course, an
armament maker, but he was a scaremonger and a
soldier, and as such had no right to state his views
as to how peace might be kept.
When Sir Edward Grey was asked if any
representation had been addressed by Germany to the
Foreign Office with reference to Lord Roberts's
utterances, he deprecated, with frigid discretion, the
idea that either Government should make official
representation to the other about 'unwise or
provocative speeches.'[13] When Sir William Byles
plied the Secretary of State for War, Colonel Seely,
with questions as to the revocability of Lord Roberts's
pension, the answer was solemn and oracular, but
no rebuke was administered to the interrogator.[14]
MR. ACLAND'S PERSISTENCY
But perhaps the most puzzling thing of all, is the
persistency with which Mr. Acland (Sir Edward Grey's
Under-Secretary) pursued Lord Roberts for some
three weeks after the rest were finished with him.
It might have been expected that Mr. Acland's chief,
who knew 'the dreadful secret,' would have curbed
his subordinate's excess of zeal.
Mr. Acland distorted the Manchester speech into
an appeal to the British people to put themselves
"in a position to strike at the Germans, and to
smash them in a time of profound peace, and without
cause." And this fanciful gloss he rightly denounces,
in accents which remind us not a little of the Reverend
Robert Spalding, as 'nothing less than a wicked
proposal.'[15] ... For England to adopt compulsory
military service would be "an utterly criminal and
provocative proceeding against other countries of the
world...." Here, indeed, is much food for wonder.
What single country of the world would have regarded
the adoption of national service by England as
'provocative'? What single country, except
Germany, would even have objected to it? And
what more right would Germany have had to object
to our possessing a formidable army, than we had
right to object to her possessing a formidable
navy?
When some days later Mr. Acland is reproached
with having misrepresented Lord Roberts's original
statement, he replies loftily that he "was justified
at the time in supposing that this was his real
meaning."[16] One wonders why. Lord Roberts had
said nothing which any careful reader of his whole
speech—an Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, for
example, quoting and speaking with a due sense
of his great responsibilities—could conceivably have
understood to bear this interpretation.
A fortnight later Mr. Acland returns to the charge
once more. "Lord Roberts," he says courteously,
"has since explained that he did not mean what
his words seemed so plainly to mean"—that is,
the smashing of Germany in time of profound peace
and without any cause.... Danger to peace, the
representative of the Foreign Office assures his
audience, "does not come from any action of His
Majesty's Government. It arises, if at all, from
irresponsible utterances such as those which we
heard from Lord Roberts. I very much regret
that harm must have been done between the two
countries by Lord Roberts's speech."[17]
Although an under-secretary does not always
enjoy the full confidence of his official superior,
he would presumably obey orders—even an order to
hold his tongue—if any were given. Consequently,
although Lord Haldane's dreadful secret may have
been kept from Mr. Acland, as unfit for his innocent
and youthful ears, it is surprising that he was never
warned of the dangers of the path in which he was
so boldly treading. The discourtesies of youth to
age are not easily forgiven, especially where they are
founded upon misrepresentation, and when, as in
this case, the older man was right and the younger
wrong as to the facts.
LORD ROBERTS WAS RIGHT
It will be said—it has indeed been already said—by
way of excuse for the reticence of the Government
with regard to the intentions, which German statesmen
revealed to Lord Haldane, at Berlin, in February
1912—that by keeping back from the country the
knowledge which members of the Cabinet possessed,
they thereby prevented an outbreak of passion and
panic which might have precipitated war. This
may be true or untrue; it can neither be proved
nor controverted; but at any rate it was not in
accordance with the principle of trusting the people;
nor would it have prevented the Government and
their supporters—when war broke out—from making
amends to Lord Roberts and others whom, on grounds
of high policy, they had felt themselves obliged, in
the past to rebuke unjustly and to discredit without
warrant in the facts. This course was not impossible.
Peel, a very proud man, made amends to Cobden,
and his memory does not stand any the lower for it.
With regard to those journalists and private
politicians whose mistakes were not altogether their
own fault—being due in part at least, to the
concealment of the true facts which the Government had
practised—it would not have been in the least wounding
to their honour to express regret, that they had
been unwittingly the means of misleading the people,
and traducing those who were endeavouring to lead
it right. In their patriotic indignation some of
these same journalists and politicians had
overstepped the limits of what is justifiable in party
polemics. They had attacked the teaching at the
Military Colleges, because it sought to face the
European situation frankly, and to work out in the
lecture-room the strategical and tactical consequences
which, in case of war, might be forced upon us by our
relations with France and Russia. It would have
done these high-minded journalists no harm in the
eyes of their fellow-countrymen, had they
acknowledged frankly that when in former days they had
denounced the words of Lord Roberts as 'wicked'
and his interpretation of the situation as inspired
by "the crude lusts and fears which haunt the
unimaginative soldier's brain"—when they had
publicly denounced as 'a Staff College Cabal' teachers
who were only doing their duty—they had unwittingly
been guilty of a cruel misjudgment.
FAILURE TO MAKE AMENDS
It is not a little remarkable that in 1912—indeed
from 1905 to 1914—Lord Roberts, who, according
to the Nation, possessed but 'an average Tory
intellect,' should have trusted the people, while a
democratic Government could not bring itself to
do so. The Cabinet, which knew the full measure
of the danger, concealed it out of a mistaken notion
of policy. Their henchmen on the platform and in
the press did not know the full measure of the danger.
They acted either from natural prejudice, or official
inspiration—possibly from a mixture of both—when
they made light of the danger and held up to scorn
any one who called attention to it. The whole body
of respectable, word-worshipping, well-to-do Liberals
and Conservatives, whom nothing could stir out of
their indifference and scepticism, disapproved most
strongly of having the word 'danger' so much as
mentioned in their presence. The country would
to-day forgive all of these their past errors more
easily if, when the crisis came, they had acted a
manly part and had expressed regret. But never a
word of the sort from any of these great public
characters!
Lord Roberts had been seeking for seven years to
persuade the nation to realise that it was threatened
by a great danger; that it was unprepared to encounter
the danger; that by reason of this unpreparedness,
the danger was brought much nearer. Until October
1912, however, he had failed signally in capturing
the public ear. The people would not give him
their attention either from favour or indignation.
The cause of which he was the advocate appeared
to have been caught in an academic backwater.
But from that time forward, Lord Roberts had
no reason to complain of popular neglect. Overcoming
his natural disinclination to platform oratory
and political agitation, sacrificing his leisure, putting
a dangerous strain upon his physical strength, he
continued his propaganda at a series of great meetings
in the industrial centres. Everywhere he was listened
to with respect, and apparently with a great measure
of agreement. Only on one occasion was he treated
with discourtesy, and that was by a civic dignitary
and not by the audience. But he had now become
an important figure in the political conflict, and he
had to take the consequences, in a stream of abuse
and misrepresentation from the party which
disapproved of his principles; while he received but
little comfort from the other party, which lived in
constant terror lest it might be thought to approve
of them. Lord Roberts's advocacy of national
service continued up to the autumn of 1913, when
the gravity of the situation in Ireland made it
impossible to focus public interest on any other subject.
TRIUMPH OF VOLUNTARY SYSTEM
After the present war had run its course for a
month or two, the minds of many people reverted
to what Lord Roberts had been urging upon his
fellow-countrymen for nine years past. His warnings
had come true; that at any rate was beyond doubt.
The intentions which he had attributed to Germany
were clearly demonstrated, and likewise the vastness
and efficiency of her military organisation. The
inadequacy of British preparations was made plain.
They were inadequate in the sense that they had
failed to deter the aggressor from a breach of the
peace, and they had been equally inadequate for
withstanding his onset. The deficiencies of the
Territorial Army in numbers, discipline, training,
and equipment had made it impossible to entrust
it with the responsibility of Home Defence
immediately upon the outbreak of war. As a consequence
of this, the whole of the Regular Army could
not be released for foreign service, although Sir John
French's need of reinforcements was desperate.
Notwithstanding, however, that Lord Roberts's
warnings had come true, many people professed to
discover in what had happened a full justification—some
even went so far as to call it a 'triumph'—for
the voluntary system.
Even after the first battle of Ypres, those who
held such views had no difficulty in finding evidences
of their truth on all hands. They found them in
the conduct of our army in France, and in the courage
and devotion with which it had upheld the honour
of England against overwhelming odds. They found
it in the response to Lord Kitchener's call for
volunteers, and in the eagerness and spirit of the New
Army. They found it in our command of the sea,
in the spirit of the nation, and in what they read in
their newspapers about the approval and admiration
of the world.
In the short dark days of December and January
we were cheered by many bold bills and headlines
announcing what purported to be victories; and
we were comforted through a sad Christmastide by
panegyrics on British instinct, pluck, good-temper,
energy, and genius for muddling through. Philosophic
commentators pointed out that, just as
Germany was becoming tired out and short of ammunition,
just as she was bringing up troops of worse and
worse quality, we should be at our very best, wallowing
in our resources of men and material of war. Six
months, a year, eighteen months hence—for the
estimates varied—Britain would be invincible.
Economic commentators on the other hand impressed
upon us how much better it was to pay through the
nose now, than to have been bleeding ourselves
white as the Germans, the French, and the Russians
were supposed (though without much justification)
to have been doing for a century.
To clinch the triumph of the voluntary system—when
the Hour came the Man came with it.
LORD KITCHENER'S APPOINTMENT
Many of these things were truly alleged. Lord
Kitchener at any rate was no mirage. The gallantry
of our Army was no illusion; indeed, its heroism
was actually underrated, for the reason that the
extent of its peril had never been fully grasped.
Although British commerce had suffered severely
from the efforts of a few bold raiders, the achievements
of our Navy were such that they could quite
fairly be described, as having secured command of
the sea.[1] The German fleet was held pretty closely
within its harbours. We had been able to move
our troops and munitions of war wherever we pleased,
and so far, without the loss of a ship, or even of a
man. Submarine piracy—a policy of desperation—had
not then begun. The quality of the New Army,
the rapidity with which its recruits were being
turned into soldiers, not only impressed the public,
but took by complete surprise the severest of military
critics.
This is not the place for discussing how Lord
Kitchener came to be appointed Secretary of State
for War, or to attempt an estimate of his character
and career.[2] He was no politician, but a soldier
and an administrator. He was in his sixty-fifth
year, and since he had left the Royal Military Academy
in 1871, by far the greater part of his work had been
done abroad—in the Levant, Egypt, South Africa,
and India.[3] In no case had he ever failed at anything
he had undertaken. The greater part of his work
had been completely successful; much of it had been
brilliantly successful. He believed in himself; the
country believed in him; foreign nations believed
in him. No appointment could have produced a
better effect upon the hearts of the British people
and upon those of their Allies. The nation felt—if
we may use so homely an image in this connection—that
Lord Kitchener was holding its hand confidently
and reassuringly in one of his, while with the other
he had the whole race of politicians firmly by the
scruff, and would see to it that there was no nonsense
or trouble in that quarter.
It is no exaggeration to say that from that time
to this,[4] Lord Kitchener's presence in the Cabinet
has counted for more with the country, than that
of any other minister, or indeed than all other
ministers put together. That in itself proves his
possession of very remarkable qualities; for nine
such months of public anxiety and private sorrow,
as England has lately known, will disturb any reputation
which is not firmly founded upon merit. During
this time we have seen other reputations come and
go; popularities made, and unmade, and remade.
We have seen great figures all but vanish into the
mist of neglect. But confidence in Lord Kitchener
has remained constant through it all. Things may
have gone wrong; the Government may have made
mistakes; even the War Office itself may have
made mistakes; yet the faith of the British people
in the man of their choice has never been shaken
for an instant.
HIS GRASP OF ESSENTIALS
The highest of all Lord Kitchener's merits is, that
being suddenly pitchforked into office by an emergency,
he nevertheless grasped at once the two or three
main features of the situation, and turned the whole
force of his character to dealing with them, letting
the smaller matters meanwhile fall into line as best
they might. He grasped the dominating factor—that
it was essential to subordinate every military
and political consideration to supporting France,
whose fight for her own existence was equally a
fight for the existence of the British Empire. He
grasped the urgent need for the enrolment of many
hundreds of thousands of men fit for making into
soldiers, if we were to win this fight and not lose it.
He grasped the need for turning these recruits into
soldiers at a pace which hardly a single military
expert believed to be possible. He may, or may
not, have fully grasped at the beginning, the difficulties—mainly
owing to dearth of officers—with which he
was faced: but when he did grasp them, by some
means or another, he succeeded in overcoming them.
It is dangerous to speak of current events in
confident superlatives; but one is tempted to do
so with regard to the training of the New Army.
Even the most friendly among expert critics believed
that what Lord Kitchener had undertaken was a thing
quite impossible to do in the prescribed time. Yet he
has done it. And not only the friendly, but also the
severest critics, have admitted that the New Army
is already fit to face any continental army, and that,
moreover, to all appearance, it is one of the finest
armies in history. The sternest proof is yet to
come; but it is clear that something not far short
of a miracle has been accomplished.
If we search for an explanation of the miracle,
we find it quite as much in Lord Kitchener's character
as in his methods. Fortunately what was so painfully
lacking in the political sphere was present in
the military—Leadership.
HIS DISADVANTAGES
Despite the support which Lord Kitchener derived
from the public confidence he laboured under several
very serious disadvantages. A man cannot spend
almost the whole of his working life out of England,
and then return to it at the age of sixty-four,
understanding all the conditions as clearly as if he had
never left it. Lord Kitchener was ignorant not
only of English political conditions, but also of English
industrial conditions, which in a struggle like the
present are certainly quite as important as the
other. He may well have consoled himself, however,
with the reflection that, although he himself was
lacking in knowledge, his colleagues were experts
in both of these spheres.
It was inevitable that Lord Kitchener must
submit to the guidance of Ministers in the political
sphere, providing they agreed with his main objects—the
unflinching support of France, and the creation
of the New Army.
In the industrial sphere, on the other hand, it
was the business of Ministers, not merely to keep
themselves in touch with Lord Kitchener's present
and future needs, and to offer their advice and help
for satisfying them, but also to insist upon his listening
to reason, if in his urgent need and unfamiliarity
with the business world, he was seen to be running
upon danger in any direction.
It is impossible to resist the impression that,
while his colleagues held Lord Kitchener very close
by the head as to politics, and explained to him
very clearly what they conceived the people would
stand and would not stand, they did not show
anything like the same vigilance or determination in
keeping him well advised as to the means of procuring
the material of war.
As regards the business world the position at this
time[1] was a singularly difficult one. Within a few
days of the outbreak of war, orders from all parts
of the globe were forthcoming, on so vast a scale
that the ordinary means of coping with them were
wholly inadequate. It was not possible to walk out
of the War Office and buy what was wanted in the
shops. In a very brief period the whole industrial
system of the United Kingdom was congested with
orders.
In Lord Kitchener's former experience of military
and civil administration the difficulty had usually
been to get the money he needed, in order to carry
out his reforms and undertakings. But here was a
case where he could have all the money he chose to
ask for; it was the commodities themselves which
could not be had either for money or love.
ORGANISATION OF RESOURCES
When war broke out the industries of France and
Belgium were paralysed—the former temporarily,
the latter permanently. We could buy nothing in
France; France, on the other hand, was buying eagerly
in England. And so was Russia, not herself as yet
a great industrial producer. And so were Belgium,
Servia, Italy, Roumania, Greece, Japan—indeed the
whole world, more or less—belligerents and neutrals
alike—except the two Powers with which we were at
war. All these competitors were in the field against
the War Office, running up prices, and making the
fortunes of enterprising middlemen, who flocked to
the feast, like vultures from all corners of the sky.
The industrial situation, therefore, needed the sternest
regulation, and needed it at once. For it was essential
to secure our own requirements, and to make certain
that our Allies secured theirs, at a fair price and in
advance of all other purchasers.
Moreover, it was obviously necessary to look an
immense way ahead, especially as regards munitions
of war; to aid with loans, and encourage with orders,
firms able and willing to make what was required.
It was essential that makers of arms and supplies
should be stimulated to undertake vast increases of
their staff and plant. Before the battle of the Marne
was ended it was known, only too well, that every
nation in Europe—with the single exception of
Germany—had grossly underestimated the expenditure
of artillery ammunition under conditions of
modern warfare. It was of the most immediate
urgency to concert with our Allies, and with our
manufacturers, in order to set this trouble right. It
was as necessary for the Allies to organise their
resources as it was for them to organise their armies.
The second, indeed, was impossible without the first,
as Germany well knew, and in her own case had
already practised.
Finally, there was the problem—half industrial,
half political—of labour; its hours, conditions, and
remuneration. Without the utmost vigilance and
sympathy, without a constant inspiration of duty,
without political leadership which appealed to the
imagination and heart of the people, there were bound
to be endless troubles and confusion; there were
bound to be disputes, quarrels, stoppages, and
strikes.
The prices of certain munitions and materials
were almost anything the makers liked to name.
Money was flying about, and everybody was aware
of it. Human nature was sorely tempted. The
future was anxious and uncertain. People dependent
for a living on their own exertions, were beset with a
dangerous inclination to hold out their pitchers, in the
hopes of catching some portion of the golden shower
while it lasted. The idea that workmen were, on
the average, any greedier than their masters is only
held by persons who have little knowledge of the
facts. Cost of living had risen rapidly; this might
have been foreseen from the beginning, as well as
the dangers which it contained.
In such circumstances as these the baser appetites
of mankind are always apt to break loose and gain
the upper hand, unless there is a firm leadership of
the nation. That is where the statesman should
come in, exercising a sagacious control upon the
whole organisation of industry; impressing on masters
the need for patience and sympathy; on their
men the need for moderation; on all the need for
sacrifices.
During the months of February, March, and
April 1915 there was a loud outcry, led by a member
of the Government, deploring the lack of munitions
of war, and attributing the deficiency to
a want of industry and energy on the part of a
section of the working classes. Their frequent
abstentions were condemned, and drunkenness was
alleged to have been, in many cases, a contributory
cause.
MINISTERIAL INCONSISTENCIES
Then Mr. Asquith came forward and astonished
the world by denying stoutly that there was, or ever
had been, any deficiency in munitions of war.[2] He
assured the country that so long ago as September
he had "appointed a committee ... to survey the
situation."[3] He said nothing about irregularity of
work, or about drunkenness as a cause of it. On
the contrary, he produced the impression that the
Army was as well provided as it could be, and that
the behaviour of the whole world of industry had
been as impeccable as the foresight and energy of
the Government.
The country found it difficult to reconcile these
various statements one with another. It found it
still more difficult to reconcile Mr. Asquith's
assurances with what it had heard, not only from other
Ministers, but from generals in their published
communications. Private letters from the front for
months past had told a very different story from
that which was told, in soothing tones, to the
Newcastle audience. These had laid stress upon the
heavy price paid in casualties, and the heavy handicap
imposed on military operations, owing to shortage
of artillery ammunition. The appointment of the
Committee alone was wholly credited; the rest of
these assurances were disbelieved.
COMPLAINTS ABOUT MUNITIONS
Indeed it was impossible to doubt that there had
been miscalculation and want of foresight in various
directions; and it would have been better to admit
it frankly. The blame, however, did not rest upon
Lord Kitchener's shoulders, but upon those of his
colleagues. They understood the industrial
conditions of the United Kingdom; he did not and
could not; and they must have been well aware of
this fact. It was not Lord Kitchener's business, nor
had he the time, to make himself familiar with those
matters which are so well understood by the Board
of Trade, the Local Government Board, and the
Treasury. His business was to help France, to get
recruits as best he could, to train them as soon as
he could, and to send them out to beat the Germans.
It was the business of the Government—expert in
British political and industrial conditions—to put him
in the way of getting his recruits, and the equipment,
supplies, and munitions of war which were necessary
for making them effective.[4]
If Lord Kitchener is not to be held primarily
responsible for the delay in providing war material,
just as little is he to be blamed for the methods of
recruiting. For he had to take what the politicians
told him. He had to accept their sagacious views
of what the people would stand; of 'what they would
never stand'; of what 'from the House of Commons'
standpoint' was practicable or impracticable.
Lord Kitchener wanted men. During August
and September he wanted them at once—without a
moment's delay. Obviously the right plan was to
ask in a loud voice who would volunteer; to take as
many of these as it was possible to house, clothe,
feed, and train; then to sit down quietly and consider
how many more were likely to be wanted, at what
dates, and how best they could be got. But as
regards the first quarter of a million or so, which
there were means for training at once, there was
only one way—to call loudly for volunteers. The
case was one of desperate urgency, and as things
then stood, it would have been the merest pedantry
to delay matters until a system, for which not even
a scheme or skeleton existed before the emergency
arose, had been devised. The rough and ready
method of calling out loudly was open to many
objections on the score both of justice and efficiency,
but the all-important thing was to save time.
NEED FOR A SYSTEM
Presumably, by and by, when the first rush was
over, the Cabinet did sit down round a table to talk
things over. We may surmise the character of the
conversation which was then poured into Lord
Kitchener's ears—how England would never stand
this or that; how no freeborn Englishman—especially
north of the Humber and the Trent,[1] whence the
Liberal party drew its chief support—would tolerate
being tapped on the shoulder and told to his face
by Government what his duty was; how much less
would he stand being coerced by Government into
doing it; how he must be tapped on the shoulder
and told by other people; how he must be coerced
by other people; how pressure must be put on by
private persons—employers by threats of dismissal—young
females of good, bad, and indifferent character
by blandishments and disdain. The fear of starvation
for the freeborn Englishman and his family—at
that time a real and present danger with many minds—or
the shame of receiving a white feather, were the
forces by which England and the Empire were to be
saved at this time of trial. Moreover, would it not
lead to every kind of evil if, at this juncture, the
country were to become annoyed with the Government?
Better surely that it should become annoyed
with any one rather than the Government, whose
patriotic duty, therefore, was to avoid unpopularity
with more devoted vigilance than heretofore, if such
a thing were possible.
One can imagine Lord Kitchener—somewhat weary
of discussions in this airy region, and sorely perplexed
by all these cobwebs of the party system—insisting
doggedly that his business was to make a New Army,
and to come to the assistance of France, without a
day's unnecessary delay. He must have the men;
how was he to get the men?
And one can imagine the response. "Put your
trust in us, and we will get you the men. We
will go on shouting. We will shout louder and
louder. We will paste up larger and larger pictures
on the hoardings. We will fill whole pages of
the newspapers with advertisements drawn up
by the 'livest publicity artists' of the day. We
will enlist the sympathies and support of the
press—for this is not an Oriental despotism, but
a free country, where the power of the press is
absolute. And if the sympathies of the press are
cool, or their support hangs back, we will threaten
them with the Press Bureau. We will tell the
country-gentlemen, and the men-of-business, that
it is their duty to put on the screw; and most of
these, being easily hypnotised by the word 'duty,'
will never dream of refusing. If their action is
resented, and they become disliked it will be
very regrettable; but taking a broad view, this
will not be injurious to the Liberal party in the
long run.
"Leave this little matter, Lord Kitchener, to
experts. Lend your great name. Allow us to
show your effigies to the people. Consider what a
personal triumph for yourself if, at the end of this
great war, we can say on platforms that you and we
together have won it on the Voluntary System.
Trust in us and our methods. We will boom your
New Army, and we will see to it at the same time
that the Government does not become unpopular,
and also, if possible, that the Empire is saved."
THE ADVERTISEMENT CAMPAIGN
So they boomed the Voluntary System and the
New Army in Periclean passages; touched with awe
the solemn chords; shouted as if it had been Jericho.
Two specimens, out of a large number of a
similar sort—the joint handiwork apparently of the
'publicity artists,' bettering the moving appeals of
the late Mr. Barnum, and of the party managers,
inspired by the traditions of that incomparable ex-whip,
Lord Murray of Elibank—are given below.[2] It is of
course impossible to do justice here to the splendour
of headlines and leaded capitals; but the nature of
the appeal will be gathered clearly enough. Briefly,
the motive of it was to avoid direct compulsion by
Government—which would have fallen equally and
fairly upon all—and to substitute for this, indirect
compulsion and pressure by private individuals—which
must of necessity operate unequally, unfairly,
and invidiously. To say that this sort of thing is
not compulsion, is to say what is untrue. If, as
appears to be the case, the voluntary system has
broken down, and we are to have compulsion, most
honest men and women will prefer that the compulsion
should be fair rather than unfair, direct rather than
indirect, and that it should be exercised by those
responsible for the government of the country, rather
than by private persons who cannot compel, but can
only penalise.
By these means, during the past six months, a
great army has been got together—an army great in
numbers,[3] still greater in spirit; probably one of the
noblest armies ever recruited in an cause. And
Lord Kitchener has done his part by training this
army with incomparable energy, and by infusing into
officers and men alike his own indomitable resolution.
The high quality of the New Army is due to the
fact that the bulk of it consists of two kinds of men,
who of all others are the best material for soldiers.
It consists of men who love fighting for its own
sake—a small class. It also consists of men who hate
fighting, but whose sense of duty is their guiding
principle—fortunately a very large class. It consists
of many others as well, driven on by divers motives.
But the spirit of the New Army—according to the
accounts of those who are in the best position to
judge—is the spirit of the first two classes—of the
fighters and the sense-of-duty men. It is these who
have leavened it throughout.
ITS EFFECT ON PUBLIC OPINION
This magnificent result—for it is magnificent,
whatever may be thought of the methods which
achieved it—has been claimed in many quarters—Liberal,
Unionist, and non-party—as a triumph for
the voluntary system. But if we proceed to question
it, how voluntary was it really? Also how just?
Did the New Army include all, or anything like all,
those whose clear duty it was to join? And did it
not include many people who ought never to have
been asked to join, or even allowed to join, until
others—whose ages, occupations, and responsibilities
marked them out for the first levies—had all been
called up?
There is also a further question—did the country,
reading these various advertisements and placards—heroic,
melodramatic, pathetic, and facetious—did
the country form a true conception of the gravity of
the position? Was it not in many cases confused
and perplexed by the nature of the appeal? Did
not many people conclude, that things could not
really be so very serious, if those in authority resorted
to such flamboyant and sensational methods—methods
so conspicuously lacking in dignity, so
inconsistent with all previous ideas of the majesty
of Government in times of national peril?
The method itself, no doubt, was only unfamiliar
in so far as it used the King's name. It was familiar
and common enough in other connections. But a
method which might have been unexceptionable for
calling attention to the virtues of a shop, a soap, a
circus, or a pill, seemed inappropriate in the case of
a great nation struggling at the crisis of its fate.[4]
Each of us must judge from his own experience
of the effect produced. The writer has heard harsher
things said of these appeals by the poor, than by the
well-to-do. The simplest and least sophisticated
minds are often the severest critics in matters of
taste as well as morals. And this was a matter of
both. Among townspeople as well as countryfolk
there were many who—whether they believed or
disbelieved in the urgent need, whether they responded
to the appeal or did not respond to it—regarded the
whole of this 'publicity' campaign with distrust
and dislike, as a thing which demoralised the country,
which was revolting to its honour and conscience,
and in which the King's name ought never to have
been used.[5]
ON THE WORKING CLASSES
On the part of the working-classes there were
other objections to the methods employed. They
resented the hints and instructions which were so
obligingly given by the 'publicity artists' and the
'party managers' to the well-to-do classes—to
employers of all sorts—as to how they should bring
pressure to bear upon their dependents. And they
resented—especially the older men and those with
family responsibilities—the manner in which they
were invited by means of circulars to signify their
willingness to serve—as they imagined in the last dire
necessity—and when they had agreed patriotically to
do so, found themselves shortly afterwards called
upon to fulfil their contract. For they knew that in
the neighbouring village—or in the very next
house—there were men much more eligible for military
service in point of age and freedom from family
responsibilities, who, not having either volunteered,
or filled up the circular, were accordingly left
undisturbed to go about their daily business.[6]
The attitude of the country generally at the
outbreak of war was admirable. It was what it
should have been—as on a ship after a collision, where
crew and passengers, all under self-command, and
without panic, await orders patiently. So the country
waited—waited for clear orders—waited to be told,
in tones free from all ambiguity and hesitation, what
they were to do as classes and as individuals. There
was very little fuss or confusion. People were
somewhat dazed for a short while by the financial crisis;
but the worst of that was soon over. They then
said to themselves, "Let us get on with our ordinary
work as hard as usual (or even harder), until we
receive orders from those responsible for the ship's
safety, telling us what we are to do."
BUSINESS AS USUAL
There was a certain amount of sparring, then and
subsequently, between high-minded journalists, who
were engaged in carrying on their own business as
usual, and hard-headed traders and manufacturers
who desired to do likewise. The former were perhaps
a trifle too self-righteous, while the latter took more
credit than they deserved for patriotism, seeing that
their chief merit was common sense. To have stopped
the business of the country would have done nobody
but the Germans any good, and would have added
greatly to our national embarrassment.
At times of national crisis, there will always
be a tendency, among most men and women, to
misgivings, lest they may not be doing the full measure
of their duty. Their consciences become morbidly
active; it is inevitable that they should; indeed it
would be regrettable if they did not. People are
uncomfortable, unless they are doing something they
have never done before, which they dislike doing,
and which they do less well than their ordinary work.
In many cases what they are inspired to do is less
useful than would have been their ordinary work,
well and thoughtfully done. At such times as these
the Society for Setting Everybody Right always
increases its activities, and enrols a large number of
new members. But very soon, if there is leadership
of the nation, things fall into their proper places and
proportions. Neither business nor pleasure can be
carried on as usual, and everybody knows it. There
must be great changes; but not merely for the sake
of change. There must be great sacrifices in many
cases; and those who are doing well must give a
helping hand to those others who are doing ill. But
all—whether they are doing well or ill from the standpoint
of their own private interests—must be prepared to
do what the leader of the nation orders them to do.
This was fully recognised in August, September,
October, and November last. The country expected
orders—clear and unmistakable orders—and it was
prepared to obey whatever orders it received.
But no orders came. Instead of orders there were
appeals, warnings, suggestions, assurances. The
panic-monger was let loose with his paint-box of
horrors. The diffident parliamentarian fell to his
usual methods of soothing, and coaxing, and shaming
people into doing a very vague and much-qualified
thing, which he termed their duty. But there was no
clearness, no firmness. An ordinary man will realise
his duty so soon as he receives a definite command,
and not before. He received no such command; he
was lauded, lectured, and exhorted; and then was left
to decide upon his course of action by the light of his
own reason and conscience.[7]
He was not even given a plain statement of the
true facts of the situation, and then left at peace to
determine what he would do. He was disturbed in
his meditations by shouting—more shouting—ever
louder and louder shouting—through some thousands
of megaphones. The nature of the appeal was
emotional, confusing, frenzied, and at times degrading.
Naturally the results were in many directions most
unsatisfactory, unbusinesslike, and disorderly. The
drain of recruiting affected industries and individuals
not only unequally and unfairly, but in a way
contrary to the public interest. If Government will
not exercise guidance and control in unprecedented
circumstances, it is inevitable that the country must
suffer.
AN ORGIE OF SENSATIONALISM
To judge from the placards and the posters, the
pictures and the language, a casual stranger would
not have judged that the British Empire stood at
the crisis of its fate; but rather that some World's
Fair was arriving shortly, and that these were the
preliminary flourishes. Lord Kitchener cannot have
enjoyed the pre-eminence which was allotted to him
in our mural decorations, and which suggested that
he was some kind of co-equal with the famous Barnum
or Lord George Sanger. Probably no one alive hated
the whole of this orgie of vulgar sensationalism,
which the timidity of the politicians had forced upon
the country, more than he did.[8]
Having stirred up good and true men to join the
New Army, whether it was rightly their turn or not;
having got at others in whom the voluntary spirit
burned less brightly, by urging their employers to
dismiss them and their sweethearts to throw them
over if they refused the call of duty, the 'publicity
artists' and the 'party managers' between them
undoubtedly collected for Lord Kitchener a very
fine army, possibly the finest raw material for an
army which has ever been got together. And Lord
Kitchener, thereupon, set to work, and trained
this army as no one but Lord Kitchener could have
trained it.
These results were a source of great pride and
self-congratulation among the politicians. The
voluntary principle—you see how it works! What
a triumph! What other nation could have done
the same?
Other nations certainly could not have done the
same, for the reason that there are some things which
one cannot do twice over, some things which one
cannot give a second time—one's life for example,
or the flower of the manhood of a nation to be made
into soldiers.
Other nations could not have done what we were
doing, because they had done it already. They had
their men prepared when the need arose—which we
had not. Other nations were engaged in holding the
common enemy at enormous sacrifices until we made
ourselves ready; until we—triumphing in our
voluntary system, covering ourselves in self-praise,
and declaring to the world, through the mouths of
Sir John Simon and other statesmen, that each of
our men was worth at least three of their 'pressed
men' or conscripts—until we came up leisurely with
reinforcements—six, nine, or twelve months
hence—supposing that by such time, there was anything
still left to come up for. If the Germans were then
in Paris, Bordeaux, Brest, and Marseilles, there
would be—temporarily at least—a great saving of
mortality among the British race. If, on the other
hand, the Allies had already arrived at Berlin without
us, what greater triumph for the voluntary principle
could possibly be imagined?
A FRENCH VIEW
Putting these views and considerations—which
have so much impressed us all in our own recent
discussions—before a French officer, I found him
obstinate in viewing the matter at a different angle.
He was inclined to lay stress on the case of Northern
France, and even more on that of Belgium, whose
resistance to the German invasion we had wished for
and encouraged, and who was engaged in fighting
our battles quite as much as her own. The voluntary
principle, in spite of its triumphs at home—which he
was not concerned to dispute—had not, he thought,
as yet been remarkably triumphant abroad; and
nine months had gone by since war began.
He insisted, moreover, that for years before war
was declared, our great British statesmen could not
have been ignorant of the European situation, either
in its political or its military aspects. Such ignorance
was inconceivable. They must have suspected the
intentions of Germany, and they must have known
the numbers of her army. England had common
interests with France. Common interests, if there
be a loyal understanding, involve equal sacrifices—equality
of sacrifice not merely when the push comes,
but in advance of the crisis, in preparation for it—a
much more difficult matter. Why then had not our
Government told the British people long ago what
sacrifice its safety, no less than its honour, required
of it to give?
I felt, after talking to my friend for some time,
that although he rated our nation in some ways very
highly indeed, although he was grateful for our
assistance, hopeful of the future, confident that in
Lord Kitchener we had found our man,
nothing—nothing—not even selections from Mr. Spender's
articles in the Westminster Gazette, or from Sir John
Simon's speeches, or Sir John Brunner's assurances
about the protection afforded by international
law—could induce him to share our own enthusiasm for
the voluntary system.... The triumph of the
voluntary system, he cried bitterly, is a German
triumph: it is the ruin of Belgium and the devastation
of France.
And looking at the matter from a Frenchman's
point of view, there is something to be said for his
contention.
Apart from any objections which may exist to
British methods of recruiting since war broke out—to
their injustice, want of dignity, and generally to
their demoralising effect on public opinion—there
are several still more urgent questions to be
considered. Have those methods been adequate? And
if so, are they going to continue adequate to the end?
Is there, in short, any practical need for conscription?
We do not answer these questions by insisting
that, if there had been conscription in the past, we
should have been in a much stronger position when
war broke out; or by proving to our own satisfaction,
that if we had possessed a national army, war would
never have occurred. Such considerations as these
are by no means done with; they are indeed still
very important; but they lie rather aside from the
immediate question with which we are now faced,
and which, for lack of any clear guidance from those
in authority, many of us have been endeavouring of
late to solve by the light of our own judgment.
NEED FOR NATIONAL SERVICE
The answer which the facts supply does not seem
to be in any doubt. We need conscription to bring
this war to a victorious conclusion. We need
conscription no less in order that we may impose terms
of lasting peace. Conscription is essential to the
proper organisation not only of our manhood, but
also of our national resources.[9] Judging by the
increasing size, frequency, and shrillness of recent
recruiting advertisements, conscription would seem
to be equally essential in order to secure the number
of recruits necessary for making good the wastage of
war, even in the present preliminary stage of the war.
And morally, conscription is essential in order that
the whole nation may realise, before it is too late, the
life-or-death nature of the present struggle; in order
also that other nations—our Allies as well as our
enemies—may understand—what they certainly do
not understand at present—that our spirit is as firm
and self-sacrificing as their own.
The voluntary system has broken down long ago.
It broke down on the day when the King of England
declared war upon the Emperor of Germany. From
that moment it was obvious that, in a prolonged war,
the voluntary system could not be relied upon to
give us, in an orderly and businesslike way, the
numbers which we should certainly require. It was
also obvious that it was just as inadequate for the
purpose of introducing speed, order, and efficiency
into the industrial world, as strength into our military
affairs.
So far, however, most of the accredited oracles of
Government have either denounced national military
service as un-English, and a sin against freedom; or
else they have evaded the issue, consoling their
various audiences with the reflection, that it will be
time enough to talk of compulsion, when it is clearly
demonstrated that the voluntary system can no longer
give us what we need. It seems improvident to
wait until the need has been proved by the painful
process of failure. The curses of many dead nations
lie upon the procrastination of statesmen, who waited
for breakdown to prove the necessity of sacrifice.
Compulsion, like other great changes, cannot be
systematised and put through in a day. It needs
preparation. If the shoe begins to pinch severely
in August, and we only then determine to adopt
conscription, what relief can we hope to experience
before the following midsummer? And in what
condition of lameness may the British Empire be by
then?
"But what," it may be asked, "of all the official
and semi-official statements which have been uttered
in a contrary sense? Surely the nation is bound
to trust its own Government, even although no
facts and figures are offered in support of their
assurances."
VALUE OF OFFICIAL ASSURANCES
Unfortunately it is impossible to place an implicit
faith in official and semi-official statements, unless
we have certain knowledge that they are confirmed
by the facts. There has been an abundance of such
statements in recent years—with regard to the
innocence of Germany's intentions—with regard to
the adequacy of our own preparations—while only
a few weeks ago Mr. Asquith himself was assuring us
that neither the operations of our own army, nor
those of our Allies' armies, had ever been crippled,
or even hampered, by any want of munitions.
When, therefore, assurances flow from the same
source—assurances that there is no need for
compulsory military service—that the voluntary system
has given, is giving, and will continue to give us all
we require—we may be forgiven for expressing our
incredulity. Such official and semi-official
statements are not supported by any clear proofs. They
are contradicted by much that we have heard from
persons who are both honest, and in a position to know.
They are discredited by our own eyes when we read the
recruiting advertisements and posters. It seems safer,
therefore, to dismiss these official and semi-official
assurances, and trust for once to our instinct and
the evidence of our own senses. It seems safer also
not to wait for complete breakdown in war, or
mortifying failure in negotiations for peace, in order
to have the need for national service established
beyond a doubt.
If 'National Service,' or 'Conscription,' has
actually become necessary already, or may
conceivably become so before long, it seems worth
while to glance at some of the considerations which
have been urged in favour of this system in the
past, and also to examine some of the causes and
conditions which have hitherto led public opinion in
the United Kingdom, as well as in several of the
Dominions, to regard the principle of compulsion
with hostility and distrust. The true nature of
what we call the 'Voluntary System,' and the reasons
which have induced a large section of our
fellow-countrymen to regard it as one of our most sacred
institutions, are worth looking into, now that
circumstances may force us to abandon it in the near
future.
Beyond the question, whether the system of
recruiting, which has been employed during the
present war, can correctly be described as 'voluntary,'
there is the further question, whether the system,
which is in use at ordinary times, and which produces
some 35,000 men per annum, can be so described.
Lord Roberts always maintained that it could not, and
that its true title was 'the Conscription of Hunger.'
NORMAL RECRUITING METHODS
Any one who has watched the recruiting-sergeant
at work, on a raw cold day of winter or early spring,
will be inclined to agree with Lord Roberts. A fine,
good-humoured, well-fed, well-set-up fellow, in a
handsome uniform, with rows of medals which light
up the mean and dingy street, lays himself alongside
some half-starved poor devil, down in his luck, with
not a rag to his back that the north wind doesn't
blow through. The appetites and vanities of the
latter are all of them morbidly alert—hunger, thirst,
the desire for warmth, and to cut a smart figure in
the world. The astute sergeant, though no professor
of psychology, understands the case thoroughly, as he
marks down his man. He greets him heartily with
a 'good day' that sends a glow through him, even
before the drink at the Goat and Compasses, or Green
Dragon has been tossed off, and the King's shilling
accepted.
Not that there is any need for pity or regret.
These young men with empty bellies, and no very
obvious way of filling them, except by violence—these
lads with gloom at their hearts, in many cases
with a burden of shame weighing on them at having
come into such a forlorn pass—in nine cases out of
ten enlistment saves them; perhaps in more even
than that.
But talk about compulsion and the voluntary
principle! What strikes the observer most about
such a scene as this is certainly not anything which
can be truly termed 'voluntary.' If one chooses to
put things into ugly words—which is sometimes
useful, in order to give a shock to good people who
are tending towards self-righteousness in their worship
of phrases—this is the compulsion of hunger and
misery. It might even be contended that it was not
only compulsion, but a mean, sniggling kind of
compulsion, taking advantage of a starving man.
The law is very chary of enforcing promises made
under duress. If a man dying of thirst signs his
birthright away, or binds himself in service for a term
of years, in exchange for a glass of water, the ink
and paper have no validity. But the recruit is
firmly bound. He has made a contract to give his
labour, and to risk his life for a long period of years,
at a wage which is certainly below the market rate;
and he is held to it. Things much more 'voluntary'
than this have been dubbed 'slavery,' and denounced
as 'tainted with servile conditions.' And the loudest
denunciators have been precisely those anti-militarists,
who uphold our 'voluntary' system with the hottest
fervour, while reprobating 'compulsion' with the
utmost horror.
MORAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS
We have heard much caustic abuse of the National
Service League. It has been accused of talking 'the
cant of compulsion'; by which has been meant that
certain of its members have put in the forefront of
their argument the moral and physical advantages
which they imagine universal military training would
confer upon the nation. Some may possibly have
gone too far, and lost sight of the need of the nation,
in their enthusiasm for the improvement of the
individual. But if occasionally their arguments
assume the form of cant, can their lapse be compared
with the cant which tells the world smugly that
the British Army is recruited on the voluntary
principle?
The 'economic argument,' as it is called, is
another example. The country would be faced with
ruin, we are told, if every able-bodied man had to
give 'two of the best years of his life,'[1] and a week
or two out of each of the ensuing seven, to
'unproductive' labour. Sums have been worked out the
to hundreds of millions sterling, with the object of
showing that the national loss, during a single generation,
would make the national debt appear insignificant.
How could Britain maintain her industrial
pre-eminence weighted with such a handicap?
One answer is that Britain, buoyed up though
she has been by her voluntary system, has not lately
been outstripping those of her competitors who
carried this very handicap which it is now proposed
that she should carry; that she has not even been
maintaining her relative position in the industrial
world in comparison, for example, with Germany.
But there is also another answer. If you take
a youth at the plastic age when he has reached
manhood, feed him on wholesome food, subject him
to vigorous and varied exercise, mainly in the open
air, discipline him, train him to co-operation with
his fellows, make him smart and swift in falling-to
at whatever work comes under his hand, you are
thereby giving him precisely what, for his own sake
and that of the country, is most needed at the present
time. You are giving him the chance of developing
his bodily strength under healthy conditions, and
you are giving him a general education and moral
training which, in the great majority of cases, will
be of great value to him in all his after life.
It is the regret of every one, who has studied our
industrial system from within, that men wear out too
soon. By the time a man reaches his fortieth
year—often earlier—he is too apt, in many vocations, to
be an old man; and for that reason he is in danger
of being shoved out of his place by a younger
generation.
This premature and, for the most part, unnecessary
ageing is the real economic loss. If by taking two
years out of a man's life as he enters manhood, if by
improving his physique and helping him to form
healthy habits, you can thereby add on ten or fifteen
years to his industrial efficiency, you are not only
contributing to his own happiness, but are also adding
enormously to the wealth and prosperity of the
country. Any one indeed, who chooses to work out
sums upon this hypothesis, will hardly regard the
national debt as a large enough unit for comparison.
The kernel of this matter is, that men wear out in
the working classes earlier than in others, mainly
because they have no break, no rest, no change,
from the day they leave school to take up a trade,
till the day when they have to hand in their checks
for good and all. It is not effort, but drudgery, which
most quickly ages a man. It is the rut—straight,
dark, narrow, with no horizons, and no general view
of the outside world—which is the greatest of social
dangers. More than anything else it tends to
narrowness of sympathy and bitterness of heart.
UNDER-RATING OF CONSCRIPT ARMIES
It would be cant to claim that universal military
training will get rid of this secular evil; but to say
that it will help to diminish it is merely the truth.
The real 'cant' is to talk about the economic loss
under conscription; for there would undoubtedly be
an immense economic gain.
But indeed the advocacy of the voluntary system
is stuffed full of cant.... We are all proud of
our army; and rightly so. But the opponents of
universal military service go much further in this
direction than the soldiers themselves. They
contrast our army, to its enormous advantage, with the
conscript armies of the continent, which they regard
as consisting of vastly inferior fighting men—of men,
in a sense despicable, inasmuch as their meek spirits
have submitted tamely to conscription.
Colonel Seely, who, when he touches arithmetic
soars at once into the region of poetry, has pronounced
confidently that one of our voluntary soldiers is
worth ten men whom the law compels to serve.
Sir John Simon was still of opinion—even after several
months of war—that one of our volunteers was worth
at least three conscripts; and he was convinced that
the Kaiser himself already knew it. What a splendid
thing if Colonel Seely were right, or even if Sir John
Simon were right!
But is either of them right? So far as our
voluntary army is superior—and it was undoubtedly
superior in certain respects at the beginning of the
war—it was surely not because it was a 'voluntary'
army; but because, on the average, it had undergone
a longer and more thorough course of training than
the troops against which it was called upon to fight.
Fine as its spirit was, and high as were both its
courage and its intelligence, who has ever heard
a single soldier maintain that—measured through
and through—it was in those respects superior
to the troops alongside which, or against which it
fought?
As the war has continued month after month,
and men with only a few months' training have been
drafted across the Channel to supply the British
wastage of war, even this initial superiority which
came of longer and more thorough training has
gradually been worn away. A time will come, no
doubt—possibly it has already come—when Germany,
having used up her trained soldiers of sound physique,
has to fall back upon an inferior quality. But that
is merely exhaustion. It does not prove the
superiority of the voluntary system. It does not
affect the comparison between men of equal stamina
and spirit—one set of whom has been trained beforehand
in arms—the other not put into training until
war began.
Possibly Colonel Seely spoke somewhat lightly
and thoughtlessly in those serene days before the
war-cloud burst; but Sir John Simon spoke deliberately—his
was the voice of the Cabinet, after months of
grim warfare. To describe his utterances as cant
does not seem unjust, though possibly it is inadequate.
We are proud of our army, not merely because of
its fine qualities, but for the very fact that it is
what we choose to call a 'voluntary' army. But
what do they say of it in foreign countries? What
did the whole of Europe say of it during the South
African War? What are the Germans saying of it now?
Naturally prejudice has led them to view the facts
at a different angle. They have seldom referred to
the 'voluntary' character of our army. That was
not the aspect which attracted their attention, so
much as the other aspect, that our soldiers received
pay, and therefore, according to German notions,
'fought for hire.' At the time of the South African
War all continental nations said of our army what
the Germans still say—not that it was a 'voluntary'
army, but that it was a 'mercenary' army; and this
is a much less pleasant-sounding term.[2]
THE CANT OF MILITARISM
In this accusation we find the other kind of cant—the
cant of militarism. For if ours is a mercenary
army, so is their own, in so far as the officers and
non-commissioned officers are concerned. But as a
matter of fact no part, either of our army or the
existing German army, can with any truth be described
as 'mercenaries'; for this is a term applicable only
to armies—much more common in the past in
Germany than anywhere else—who were hired out
to fight abroad in quarrels which were not their own.
But although this German accusation against the
character of our troops is pure cant, it would not
be wholly so were it levelled against the British
people. Not our army, but we ourselves, are the
true mercenaries; because we pay others to do for
us what other nations do for themselves. In German
eyes—and perhaps in other eyes as well, which are
less willing to see our faults—this charge against the
British people appears maintainable. It is
incomprehensible to other nations, why we should refuse to
recognise that it is any part of our duty, as a people,
to defend our country; why we will not admit the
obligation either to train ourselves to arms in time
of peace, or to risk our lives in time of war; why we
hold obstinately to it that such things are no part of
our duty as a people, but are only the duty of private
individuals who love fighting, or who are endowed
with more than the average sense of duty.
"As for you, the great British People," writes
Hexenküchen contemptuously, "you merely fold your
hands, and say self-righteously, that your duty begins
and ends with paying certain individuals to fight
for you—individuals whose personal interest can be
tempted with rewards; whose weakness of character
can be influenced by taunts, and jeers, and threats
of dismissal; or who happen to see their duty in a
different light from the great majority which calls
itself (and is par excellence) the British People...." This
may be a very prejudiced view of the matter,
but it is the German view. What they really mean
when they say that England is to be despised because
she relies upon a mercenary army, is that England
is to be despised because, being mercenary, she relies
upon a professional army. The taunt, when we
come to analyse it, is found to be levelled, not against
the hired, but against the hirers; and although we
may be very indignant, it is not easy to disprove its
justice.
The British nation, if not actually the richest,
is at any rate one of the richest in the world. It has
elected to depend for its safety upon an army which
cannot with justice be called either 'voluntary' or
'mercenary,' but which it is fairly near the truth
to describe as 'professional.' The theory of our
arrangement is that we must somehow, and at the
cheapest rate, contrive to tempt enough men to
become professional soldiers to ensure national safety.
Accordingly we offer such inducements to take up
the career of arms—instead of the trades of farm
labourer, miner, carpenter, dock hand, shopkeeper,
lawyer, physician, or stockbroker—as custom and
the circumstances of the moment appear to require.
In an emergency we offer high pay and generous
separation allowances to the private soldier. In
normal times we give him less than the market rate
of wages.
PAY OF THE BRITISH ARMY
The pay of junior or subaltern officers is so meagre
that it cannot, by any possibility, cover the expenses
which Government insists upon their incurring.
Captains, majors, and lieutenant-colonels are paid
much less than the wages of foremen or sub-managers
in any important industrial undertaking. Even for
those who attain the most brilliant success in their
careers, there are no prizes which will stand
comparison for a moment with a very moderate degree
of prosperity in the world of trade or finance. They
cannot even be compared with the prizes open to the
bar or the medical profession.
Hitherto we have obtained our officers largely
owing to a firmly rooted tradition among the country
gentlemen and the military families—neither as a
rule rich men, or even very easy in their circumstances
as things go nowadays—many of them very poor—a
tradition so strong that it is not cant, but plain truth,
to call it sense of duty. There are other motives, of
course, which may lead a boy to choose this profession—love
of adventure, comparative freedom from indoor
life, pleasant comradeship, and in the case of the
middle classes, recently risen to affluence, social
aspirations. But even in the last there is far more
good than harm; though in anti-militarist circles it
is the unworthy aim which is usually dwelt upon with
a sneering emphasis. For very often, when a man
has risen from humble circumstances to a fortune, he
rejoices that his sons should serve the state, since it
is in his power to make provision. The example of
his neighbours, whose ancestors have been living on
their acres since the days of the Plantagenets or
the Tudors, is a noble example; and he is wise to
follow it.
In the case of the rank and file of our army, a
contract for a term of years (with obligations
continuing for a further term of years) is entered into,
and signed, under the circumstances which have
already been considered. We are faced here with
a phenomenon which seems strange in an Age which
has conceded the right to 'down tools,' even though
by so doing a solemn engagement is broken—in an
Age which has become very fastidious about hiring
agreements of most kinds, very suspicious of anything
suggestive of 'servile conditions' or 'forced labour,'
and which deprecates the idea of penalising breach of
contract, on the part of a workman, even by process
in the civil courts.
As regards a private soldier in the British army,
however, the Age apparently has no such
compunctions. His contract has been made under
duress. Its obligations last for a long period of
years. The pay is below the ordinary market rates.
Everything in fact which, in equity, would favour
a revision, pleads in favour of the soldier who
demands to be released. But let him plead and
threaten as he please, he is not released. It is not a
case of suing him for damages in the civil courts, but
of dealing with him under discipline and mutiny
acts, the terms of which are simple and drastic—in
peace time imprisonment, in war time death.
Without these means of enforcing the 'voluntary'
system the British people would not feel themselves
safe.
This phenomenon seems even stranger, when we
remember that a large and influential part of the
British people is not only very fastidious as to the
terms of all other sorts of hiring agreements, as to
rates of pay, and as to the conditions under which such
contracts have been entered into—that it is not only
most tender in dealing with the breach of such
agreements—but that it also regards the object of the
agreement for military service with particular
suspicion. This section of the British people is
anti-militarist on conscientious grounds. One would have
thought, therefore, that it might have been more
than usually careful to allow the man, who hires
himself out for lethal purposes, to have the benefit of
second thoughts; or even of third, fourth, and fifth
thoughts. For he, too, may develop a conscience
when his belly is no longer empty. But no: to do
this would endanger the 'voluntary' system.
THE ANTI-MILITARIST CONSCIENCE
This anti-militarist section of the British people is
composed of citizens who, if we are to believe their own
professions, love peace more than other men love it,
and hate violence as a deadly sin. They are
determined not to commit this deadly sin themselves;
but being unable to continue in pursuit of their
material and spiritual affairs, unless others will sin
in their behalf, they reluctantly agree to hire—at as
low a price as possible—a number of wild fellows from
the upper classes and wastrels from the lower classes—both
of whom they regard as approximating to the
reprobate type—to defend their property, to keep
their lives safe, to enforce their Will as it is declared
by ballot papers and House of Commons divisions,
and to allow them to continue their careers of
beneficent self-interest undisturbed.
But for all that, we are puzzled by the rigour
with which the contract for military service is enforced,
even to the last ounce of the pound of flesh. Not a
murmur of protest comes from this section of the
British people, although it has professed to take the
rights of the poorer classes as its special province. The
explanation probably is that, like King Charles I.,
they have made a mental reservation, and are thus
enabled to distinguish the case of the soldier from
that of his brother who engages in a civil occupation.
Roughly speaking, they choose to regard the
civilian as virtuous, while the soldier, on the other
hand, cannot safely be presumed to be anything of
the sort. Sometimes indeed—perhaps more often
than not—he appears to them to be distinctly
unvirtuous. The presumption is against him; for if he
were really virtuous, how could he ever have agreed
to become a soldier, even under pressure of want?
For regulating the service of such men as these force
is a regrettable, but necessary, instrument. The
unvirtuous man has agreed to sin, and the virtuous
man acts justly in holding him to his bargain. If a
soldier develops a conscience, and insists on 'downing
tools' it is right to imprison him; even in certain
circumstances to put him against a wall and shoot him.
These ideas wear an odd appearance when we
come to examine them closely, and yet not only did
they exist, but they were actually very prevalent
down to the outbreak of the present war. They
seem to be somewhat prevalent, even now, in various
quarters. But surely it is strange that virtuous
citizens should need the protection of unvirtuous
ones; that they should underpay; that they should
adopt the methods of 'forced labour' as a necessary
part of the 'voluntary system'; that they should
imprison and shoot men for breach of hiring
agreements—hiring agreements for long periods of years,
entered into under pressure of circumstances.
ANTI-MILITARIST CONFIDENCE
But there is a thing even stranger than any of
these. Considering how jealous the great
anti-militarist section of our fellow-countrymen is of
anything which places the army in a position to
encroach upon, or overawe, the civil power, it seems
very remarkable that they should nevertheless have
taken a large number of men—whose morals, in their
view, were below rather than above the average—should
have armed them with rifles and bayonets, and
spent large sums of money in making them as efficient
as possible for lethal purposes, while refusing firmly to
arm themselves with anything but ballot-boxes, or
to make themselves fit for any form of self-defence.
It seems never to have crossed the minds of the
anti-militarist section that those whom they thus
regard—if not actually with moral reprehension,
at any rate somewhat askance—might perhaps some
day discover that there were advantages in being
armed, and in having become lethally efficient; that
having studied the phenomena of strikes, and having
there seen force of various kinds at work—hiring
agreements broken, combinations to bring pressure
on society successful, rather black things occasionally
hushed up and forgiven—soldiers might draw their
own conclusions. Having grown tired of pay lower
than the market rate, still more tired of moral lectures
about the wickedness of their particular trade, and
of tiresome old-fashioned phrases about the
subordination of the military to the civil power—what if
they, like other trades and classes, should begin to
consider the propriety of putting pressure on society,
since such pressure appears nowadays to be one of the
recognised instruments for redress of wrongs? ... Have
not professional soldiers the power to put
pressure on society in the twentieth century, just as
they have done, again and again, in past times in
other kingdoms and democracies, where personal
freedom was so highly esteemed, that even the freedom
to abstain from defending your country was respected
by public opinion and the laws of the land?
But nonsense! In Germany, France, Russia,
Austria, Italy, and other conscript countries armies
are hundreds of times stronger than our own, while
the soldiers in these cases are hardly paid enough to
keep a smoker in pipe-tobacco. And yet they do
not think of putting pressure on society, or of
anything so horrible. This of course is true; but then,
in these instances, the Army is only Society itself
passing, as it were, like a may-fly, through a certain
stage in its life-history. Army and Society in the
conscript countries are one and the same. A man
does not think of putting undue pressure upon
himself. But in our case the Army and Society are
not one and the same. Their relations are those of
employer and employed, as they were in Rome long
ago; and as between employer and employed, there
are always apt to be questions of pay and position.
It is useful in this connection to think a little
of Rome with its 'voluntary' or 'mercenary' or
'professional' army—an army underpaid at first,
afterwards perhaps somewhat overpaid, when it
occurred to its mind to put pressure on society.
But Rome in the first century was a very different
place from England in the twentieth. Very different
indeed! The art and rules of war were considerably
less of an expert's business than they are to-day.
Two thousand years ago—weapons being still
somewhat elementary—gunpowder not yet discovered—no
railway trains and tubes, and outer and inner
circles, which now are as necessary for feeding great
cities as arteries and veins for keeping the human
heart going—private citizens, moreover, being not
altogether unused to acting with violence in
self-defence—it might have taken, perhaps, 100,000
disciplined and well-led reprobates a week or more to
hold the six millions of Greater London by the throat.
To-day 10,000 could do this with ease between
breakfast and dinner-time. Certainly a considerable
difference—but somehow not a difference which
seems altogether reassuring.
Since the days of Oliver Cromwell the confidence
of the anti-militarists in the docility of the British
Army has never experienced any serious shock. But
yet, according to the theories of this particular school,
why should our army alone, of all trades and professions,
be expected not to place its own class interests
before those of the country?
ARMIES AS LIBERATORS
When professional armies make their first entry
into practical politics it is almost always in the role
of liberators and defenders of justice. An instance
might easily occur if one or other set of politicians,
in a fit of madness or presumption, were to ask, or
order, the British Army to undertake certain
operations against a section of their fellow-countrymen,
which the soldiers themselves judged to be contrary
to justice and their own honour.
Something of this kind very nearly came to pass
in March 1914. The Curragh incident, as it was
called, showed in a flash what a perilous gulf opens,
when a professional army is mishandled. Politicians,
who have come by degrees to regard the army—not
as a national force, or microcosm of the people, but
as an instrument which electoral success has placed
temporarily in their hands, and which may therefore
be used legitimately for forwarding their own party
ends—have ever been liable to blunder in this
direction.
Whatever may have been the merits of the Curragh
case, the part which the British Army was asked and
expected to play on that occasion, was one which
no democratic Government would have dared to
order a conscript army to undertake, until it had been
ascertained, beyond any possibility of doubt, that
the country as a whole believed extreme measures
to be necessary for the national safety.
If professional soldiers, however high and patriotic
their spirit, be treated as mercenaries—as if, in their
dealings with their fellow-countrymen, they had
neither souls nor consciences—it can be no matter for
surprise if they should come by insensible degrees to
think and act as mercenaries.... One set or other of
party politicians—the occurrence is quite as conceivable
in the case of a Unionist Government as in that
of a Liberal—issues certain orders, which it would
never dare to issue to a conscript army, and these
orders, to its immense surprise, are not obeyed.
Thereupon a Government, which only the day before
seemed to be established securely on a House of
Commons majority and the rock of tradition, is seen
to be powerless. The army in its own eyes—possibly
in that of public opinion also—has stood between the
people and injustice. It has refused to be made the
instrument for performing an act of tyranny and
oppression. Possibly in sorrow and disgust it
dissolves itself and ceases to exist. Possibly, on the
other hand, it glows with the approbation of its own
conscience; begins to admire its own strength, and
not improbably to wonder, if it might not be good for
the country were soldiers to put forth their strong
arm rather more often, in order to restrain the
politicians from following evil courses. This of course is
the end of democracy and the beginning of militarism.
An army which starts by playing the popular
role of benefactor, or liberator, will end very speedily
by becoming the instrument of a military despotism.
We need look no farther back than Cromwell and
his major-generals for an example. We have been
in the habit of regarding such contingencies as remote
and mediaeval; none the less we had all but started
on this fatal course in the spring and summer of last
year. We were then saved, not by the wisdom of
statesmen—for these only increased the danger by
the spectacle which they afforded of timidity, temper,
and equivocation—but solely by the present war
which, though it has brought us many horrors, has
averted, for a time at least, what is infinitely the
worst of all.
SERVICE AND SUFFRAGE
The conclusion is plain. A democracy which
asserts the right of manhood suffrage, while denying
the duty of manhood service, is living in a fool's
paradise.
A democracy which does not fully identify itself
with its army, which does not treat its army with
honour and as an equal, but which treats it, on the
contrary, as ill-bred and ill-tempered people treat
their servants—with a mixture, that is, of fault-finding
and condescension—is following a very perilous
path.
An army which does not receive the treatment it
deserves, and which at the same time is ordered by
the politicians to perform services which, upon
occasions, it may hold to be inconsistent with its
honour, is a danger to the state.
A democracy which, having refused to train itself
for its own defence, thinks nevertheless that it can
safely raise the issue of 'the Army versus the People,'
is mad.
Prior to the present war the chief bugbears
encountered by Lord Roberts, and indeed by all
others whose aim it was to provide this country with
an army numerically fit to support its policy, were
the objections, real or imaginary, of the British race
to compulsory service, and more particularly to
compulsory service in foreign lands. These prejudices
were true types of the bugbear; for they were born
out of opinion and not out of the facts.
The smaller fry of politicians, whose fears—like
those of the monkeys—are more easily excited by
the front-row of things which are visible, than by
the real dangers which lurk behind in the shadow,
are always much more terrified of opinion than of
the facts. This is precisely why most politicians
remain all their lives more unfit than any other class
of man for governing a country. Give one of these
his choice—ask him whether he will prefer to support
a cause where the facts are with him, but opinion is
likely for many years to be running hard against him,
or another cause where these conditions are reversed—of
course he will never hesitate a moment about
choosing the latter. And very probably his manner
of answering will indicate, that he thinks you insult
his intelligence by asking such a question.
It is only the very rare type of big, patient politician,
who realises that the facts cannot be changed
by opinion, and that in the end opinion must be
changed by the facts, if the two happen to be opposed.
Such a one chooses accordingly, to follow the facts in
spite of unpopularity.
The little fellows, on the contrary, with their
large ears glued anxiously to the ground, keep ever
muttering to themselves, and chaunting in a sort of
rhythmical chorus, the most despicable incantation
in the whole political vocabulary:—"We who aspire
to be leaders of the People must see to it that we are
never in advance of the People.... The People
will never stand this: the People will never stand
that.... Away with it therefore; and if possible
attach it like a mill-stone round the necks of our
enemies."
Of course they are quite wrong. The People will
stand anything which is necessary for the national
welfare, if the matter is explained to them by a big
enough man in accents of sincerity.
A defensive force which will on no account cross
the frontier is no defensive force at all. It is only
a laughing-stock.
A frontier is sometimes an arbitrary line drawn
across meadow and plough; sometimes a river;
sometimes a mountain range; sometimes, as with
ourselves, it is a narrow strip of sea—a 'great ditch,'
as Cromwell called it contemptuously.
The awful significance, however, of the word
'frontier' seems to deepen and darken as we pass
from the first example to the fourth. And there is
apparently something more in this feeling than the
terrors of the channel crossing or of a foreign language.
Territorials may be taken to Ireland, which is a
longer sea-journey than from Dover to Calais; but
to be 'butchered abroad'—horrible!
It is horrible enough to be butchered anywhere,
but why more horrible in the valley of the Rhine
than in that of the Thames? If national safety
demands butchery, as it has often done in the past,
surely the butchery of 50,000 brave men on the
borders of Luxemburg is a less evil than the butchery
of twice that number in the vicinity of Norwich?
And if we are to consider national comfort as well as
safety, it is surely wise to follow the German example
and fight in any man's country rather than in
our own. The only question of real importance
is this:—At what place will the sacrifice of life
be most effective for the defence of the country?
If we can answer that we shall know also where
it will be lightest.[1]
THE HONOUR OF THE ARMY
The school of political thought which remained
predominant throughout the great industrial epoch
(1832-1886) bitterly resented the assumption, made by
certain classes, that the profession of arms was more
honourable in its nature, than commerce and other
peaceful pursuits. The destruction of this supposed
fallacy produced a great literature, and even a
considerable amount of poetry. It was a frequent theme
at the opening of literary institutes and technical
colleges, and also at festivals of chambers of commerce
and municipalities. Professors of Political Economy
expounded the true doctrine with great vehemence,
and sermons were preached without number upon
the well-worn text about the victories of peace.
This reaction was salutary up to a point. It
swept away a vast quantity of superannuated rubbish.
International relations were at this time just as much
cumbered with old meaningless phrases of a certain
sort, in which vainglory was the chief ingredient, as
they have recently been cumbered with others of a
different sort in which indolence was the chief ingredient.
Inefficiency, indifference, idleness, trifling, and
extravagance were a standing charge against soldiers as
a class; and though they were never true charges
against the class, they were true, for two generations
following after Waterloo, against a large number of
individuals. But this reaction, like most other
reactions, swept away too much.
THE PROFESSION OF ARMS
A mercenary soldiery which looks to enrich itself
by pay and plunder is an ignoble institution. It
has no right to give itself airs of honour, and must be
judged like company promotion, trusts, or any of
the many other predatory professions of modern
times. It is also a national danger, inasmuch as its
personal interest is to foment wars. The British
Army has never been open to this charge in any
period of its history.
A profession in which it is only possible, by the most
severe self-denial and economy, for an officer—even
after he has arrived at success—to live on his pay, to
marry, and to bring up a family, can hardly be ranked
as a money-making career. Pecuniary motives,
indeed, were never the charge against 'the military'
except among the stump-orator class. But
professional indifference and inefficiency were, at that
particular time, not only seriously alleged, but were
also not infrequently true. It was a good thing that
slackness should be swept away. That it has been
swept away pretty thoroughly, every one who has
known anything about the Army for a generation
past, is well aware.
But the much-resented claim to a superiority in
the matter of honour is well founded, and no amount
of philosophising or political-economising will ever
shake it. Clearly it is more honourable for a man
to risk his life, and what is infinitely more
important—his reputation and his whole future career—in
defence of his country, than it is merely to build up
a competency or a fortune. The soldier's profession
is beset by other and greater dangers than the physical.
Money-making pursuits are not only safer for the skin,
but in them a blunder, or even a series of blunders,
does not banish the hope of ultimate success. The
man of business has chances of retrieving his position.
Many bankrupts have died in affluence. In politics,
a man with a plausible tongue and a certain quality
of courage, will usually succeed in eluding the
consequences of his mistakes, by laying the blame on
other people's shoulders. But the soldier is rarely
given a second chance; and he may easily come down
at the first chance, through sheer ill-luck, and not
through any fault of his own. Such a profession
confers honour upon its members.
Law, trade, and finance are not in themselves, as
was at one time thought, dishonourable pursuits;
but neither are they in themselves honourable. They
are neither the one nor the other. It casts no slur
upon a man to be a lawyer, a tradesman, or a banker;
but neither does it confer upon him any honour.
But military service does confer an honour. The
devotion, hardship, and danger of the soldier's life are
not rewarded upon a commercial basis, or reckoned
in that currency.
Some people are inclined to mock at the respect—exaggerated
as they think—which is paid by conscript
countries to their armies. For all its excesses and
absurdities, this respect is founded upon a true
principle—a truer principle of conduct than our own.
In countries where most of the able-bodied men
have given some years of their lives gratuitously to
the service of their country, the fact is brought home
to them, that such service is of a different character
from the benefits which they subsequently confer
upon the State by their industry and thrift, or by
growing rich.
A THEORY OF BRITISH FREEDOM
From the national point of view, it is ennobling
that at some period of their lives the great majority
of citizens should have served the commonwealth
disinterestedly. This after all is the only principle
which will support a commonwealth. For a commonwealth
will not stand against the shocks, which
history teaches us to beware of, merely by dropping
papers, marked with a cross, into a ballot-box once
every five years, or even oftener. It will not stand
merely by taking an intelligent interest in events,
by attending meetings and reading the newspapers,
and by indulging in outbursts of indignation or
enthusiasm. It will only stand by virtue of personal
service, and by the readiness of the whole people,
generation by generation, to give their lives
and—what is much harder to face—the time and irksome
preparation which are necessary for making the
sacrifice of their lives—should it be called
for—effective for its purpose.
If the mass of the people, even when they have
realised the need, will not accept the obligation of
national service they must be prepared to see their
institutions perish, to lose control of their own
destinies, and to welcome another master than
Democracy, who it may well be, will not put them
to the trouble of dropping papers, marked with a
cross, into ballot-boxes once in five years, or indeed
at all. For a State may continue to exist even if
deprived of ballot-boxes; but it is doomed if its
citizens will not in time prepare themselves to defend
it with their lives.
The memories of the press-gang and the militia
ballot are dim. Both belong to a past which it is
the custom to refer to with reprobation. Both were
inconsistent with equal comradeship between classes;
with justice, dignity, honour, and the unity of the
nation; and on these grounds they are rightly
condemned.
But the press-gang and the militia ballot have
been condemned, and are still condemned, upon other
grounds which do not seem so firm. Both have
been condemned as contravening that great and
laudable principle of British freedom which lays it
down that those who like fighting, or prefer it to
other evils—like starvation and imprisonment—or
who can be bribed, or in some other way persuaded
to fight, should enjoy the monopoly of being
'butchered,' both abroad and at home. And it has
been further maintained by those who held these
views, that people who do not like fighting, but choose
rather to stay at home talking, criticising, enjoying
fine thrills of patriotism, making money, and sleeping
under cover, have some kind of divine right to go on
enjoying that form of existence undisturbed. Since
the Wars of the Roses the latter class has usually
been in a great majority in England. Even during
the Cromwellian Civil War the numbers of men,
capable of bearing arms, who actually bore them,
was only a smallish fraction of the entire population.
The moral ideals of any community, like other
things, are apt to be settled by numbers. With the
extension of popular government, and the increase
of the electorate, this tendency will assert itself more
and more. But providing the people are dealt with
plainly and frankly, without flattery or deceit—like
men and not as if they were greedy children—the
moral sense of a democracy will probably be sounder
and stronger than that of any other form of State.
Even in England, however, there have been
lapses, during which the people have not been so
treated, and the popular spirit has sunk, owing to
mean leadership, into degradation. During the whole
of the industrial epoch the idea steadily gained in
strength, that those whose battles were fought for
them by others, approached more nearly to the type
of the perfect citizen than those others who actually
fought the battles; that the protected were worthier
than the protectors.
According to this view the true meaning of
'freedom' was exemption from personal service.
The whole duty of the virtuous citizen with regard
to the defence of his country began and ended with
paying a policeman. With the disappearance of
imminent and visible danger, the reprobate qualities
of the soldier became speedily a pain and a scandal
to godly men. In time of peace he was apt to be
sneered at and decried as an idler and a spendthrift,
who would not stand well in a moral comparison with
those steady fellows, who had remained at home,
working hard at their vocations and investing their
savings.
NINETEENTH CENTURY NOTIONS
The soldier, moreover, according to Political
Economy, was occupied in a non-productive trade,
and therefore it was contrary to the principles of that
science to waste more money upon him than could
be avoided. Also it was prudent not to show too
much gratitude to those who had done the fighting,
lest they should become presumptuous and formidable.
This conception of the relations between the army
and the civilian population has been specially marked
at several periods in our history—after the
Cromwellian wars; after the Marlborough wars; after
1757; but during the half century which followed
Waterloo it seemed to have established itself
permanently as an article of our political creed.
After 1815 there was an utter weariness of fighting,
following upon nearly a quarter of a century of war.
The heroism of Wellington's armies was still tainted
in the popular memory by the fact that the prisons
had been opened to find him recruits. The industrial
expansion and prodigious growth of material wealth
absorbed men's minds. Middle-class ideals, middle-class
prosperity, middle-class irritation against a
military caste which, in spite of its comparative
poverty, continued with some success to assert its
social superiority, combined against the army in
popular discussions. The honest belief that wars
were an anachronism, and that the world was now
launched upon an interminable era of peace, clothed
the nakedness of class prejudice with some kind of
philosophic raiment. Soldiers were no longer needed;
why then should they continue to claim the lion's
share of honourable recognition?
Up to August 1914 the chief difficulties in the
way of army reformers were how to overcome the
firmly-rooted ideas that preparations for war upon a
great scale were not really necessary to security, and
that, on those rare occasions when fighting might be
necessary, it should not be undertaken by the most
virtuous class of citizens, but by others whose lives
had a lower value. If the citizen paid it was enough;
and he claimed the right to grumble even at paying.
This was the old Liberal faith of the eighteen-fifties,
and it remained the faith of the straitest Radical sect,
until German guns began to batter down the forts of
Liège.
A CHANGE OF TONE
But any one who remembers the state of public
opinion between 1870 and 1890, or who has read the
political memoirs of that time, will realise that a change
has been, very slowly and gradually, stealing over public
opinion ever since the end of that epoch. In those
earlier times the only danger which disturbed our
national equanimity, and that only very slightly,
was the approach of Russia towards the north-western
frontier of India. The volunteer movement came
to be regarded more and more by ordinary people
in the light of a healthy and manly recreation, rather
than as a duty. A lad would make his choice, very
much as if volunteering were on a par with rowing,
sailing, hunting, or polo. It is probably no exaggeration
to say that nine volunteers out of every ten, who
enrolled themselves between 1870 and 1890, never
believed for a single moment that there was a chance
of the country having need of their services.
Consequently, except in the case of a few extreme
enthusiasts, it never appeared that there was
anything unpatriotic in not joining the volunteers.
One has only to compare this with the attitude
which has prevailed since the Territorial Army came
into existence, to realise that there has been a stirring
of the waters, and that in certain quarters a change
had taken place in the national mood. With regard
to the Territorials the attitude of those who joined,
of those who did not join, of the politicians, of the
press, of public opinion generally was markedly
different from the old attitude. It was significant
that a man who did not join was often disposed to
excuse and to justify his abstention. The
conditions of his calling, or competing duties made it
impossible for him; or the lowness of his health, or
the highness of his principles in some way interfered.
There was a tendency now to explain what previously
would never have called for any explanation.
The causes of this change are not less obvious
than its symptoms. It is an interesting coincidence
that Lord Kitchener had a good deal to do with it.
The destruction of the bloodthirsty tyranny of the
Khalifa (1898), and the rescue of a fertile province
from waste, misery, and massacre, caused many
people to look with less disapproving eyes than
formerly upon the profession of the soldier. The
long anxieties of the South African War, and the
levies of volunteers from all parts of the Empire, who
went out to take a share in it, forced men to think
not only more kindly of soldiers, but also to think
of war itself no longer as an illusion but as a
reality.[2]
The events which happened during the last
decade—the creation of the German Navy—the attempt
and failure of the British Government to abate the
rivalry in armaments—the naval panic and the
hastily summoned Defence Conference in 1909—the
Russo-Japanese war—the Agadir crisis—the two
Balkan wars—the military competition between
Germany and France—all these combined to sharpen
the consciousness of danger and to draw attention
to the need for being prepared against it.
These events, which crowded the beginning of the
twentieth century, stirred and troubled public opinion
in a manner which not only Mr. Cobden, who died in
1865, but almost equally Mr. Gladstone, who survived
him by more than thirty years, would have utterly
refused to credit. Both these statesmen had been
convinced that the world was moving steadily
towards a settled peace, and that before another
century had passed away—possibly even in a single
generation—their dreams of general disarmament
would be approaching fulfilment.
And to a certain extent our own generation
remains still affected by the same notions. Amid
the thunders of more than a thousand miles of battle
we still find ourselves clinging tenaciously to the
belief, that the world has entered suddenly, and
unexpectedly, upon an abnormal period which, from
its very nature, can only be of very brief duration.
This comforting conviction does not appear to rest
upon solid grounds. In the light of history it would
not seem so certain that we have not passed out of
an abnormal period into the normal—if lamentable—condition
when a nation, in order to maintain its
independence, must be prepared at any moment to
fight for its life.
It would be profitless to pursue these speculations.
It is enough for our own generation that we now
find ourselves in a situation of the gravest danger;
and that it depends upon the efforts which we as a
nation put forth, more than upon anything else,
whether the danger will pass away or settle down
and become chronic.
NATURE OF GERMAN ENMITY
Although we failed to perceive or acknowledge
the danger until some nine months ago, it had been
there for at least fifteen years, probably for twice
that number.
German antagonism to England has been compounded
of envy of our possessions, contempt for
our character, and hatred of our good fortune. What
galled our rival more than anything else, was the
fact that we enjoyed our prosperity, and held our
vast Empire, upon too easy terms. The German
people had made, and were continuing to make,
sacrifices to maintain their position in the world,
while the British people in their view were making
none. And if we measure national sacrifices by
personal service, and not merely in money payments,
it is difficult to see what answer is to be given to this
charge.
It is clear that unless the result of this war be to
crush Germany as completely as she herself hoped
at the beginning of it, to crush France, our own
danger will remain, unless Germany's chief grievance
against us is meanwhile removed. It is not a
paradox, but merely a statement of plain fact, to say
that Germany's chief grievance against ourselves
was, that we were not prepared to withstand her
attack. Her hatred, which has caused, and still
causes us so much amazement, was founded upon
the surest of foundations—a want of respect. The
Germans despised a nation which refused to recognise
that any obligation rested on its citizens, to fit
themselves, by serious training, for defence of their
inheritance. And they will continue to despise us
when this war is over if we should still fail to recognise
this obligation. Despising us, they will continue
also to hate us; the peace of the world will still be
endangered; and we shall not, after all our sacrifices,
have reached the security at which we aimed.
HEART-SEARCHINGS
We may end this war without winning it, and at
the same time without being defeated. And although
it appears to be still believed by some persons that
we can win, in some sort of fashion, without accepting
the principle of national service, even those who
entertain this dangerous confidence will hardly dare
to deny that, after a war which ends without a
crowning victory, we shall have to accept conscription
at once upon the signature of peace.
For it should be remembered that we have
other things to take into account besides the mood
of Germany. If we stave off defeat, only with the
assistance of allies—all of whom have long ago
adopted universal military service in its most rigorous
form—we shall have to reckon with their appraisement
of the value of our assistance. If we are
to judge by Germany's indomitable enterprise
during the past two generations, she is likely to recover
from the effects of this war at least as rapidly as
ourselves. And when she has recovered, will she
not hunger again for our possessions, as eagerly as
before, if she sees them still inadequately guarded?
And maybe, when that time comes, there may be
some difficulty in finding allies. For a Power which
declines to recognise the obligation of equal sacrifices,
which refuses to make preparations in time of peace,
and which accordingly, when war occurs, is ever found
unready, is not the most eligible of comrades in arms.
In a recent letter the Freiherr von Hexenküchen
refers, in his sour way, to some of the matters which
have been discussed in this chapter.... "The
British People," he writes, "appear to be mightily
exercised just now about their own and their
neighbours' consciences; about what they may or may
not do with decency; about whether or no football
matches are right; or race-meetings; or plays,
music-hall entertainments, concerts, the purchase
of new clothes, and the drinking of alcohol; whether
indeed any form of enjoyment or cheerfulness ought
to be tolerated in present circumstances.
"But although you vex yourselves over these
and other problems of a similar kind, you never
seem to vex yourselves about the abscess at the
root of the tooth.
"The Holy Roman Empire, which was not holy,
nor Roman, nor yet an empire, reminds me not a
little of your so-called voluntary military system,
which is not voluntary, nor military, nor yet a
system. It is only a chaos, a paradox, and a
laughing-stock to us Germans.
"It is our army, and not yours, which really rests
on a voluntary basis. Our whole people for a
century past have voluntarily accepted the obligation
of universal military service. Those amongst
us who have raised objections to this system are
but an inconsiderable fraction; negligible at any
time, but in this or any other great crisis, not merely
negligible, but altogether invisible and inaudible.
"Our people desire their army to be as it is,
otherwise it would not be as it is. No Kaiser, or
Bureaucracy, or General Staff could impose such
a system against the public will and conscience.
Your people, on the other hand, have refused as
a people to accept the military obligation. By
various devices they endeavour to fix the burden
on the shoulders of individuals. Is this the true
meaning of the word 'voluntary'—to refuse? ... Sir,
I desire to be civil; but was there ever a more
conspicuous instance of cant in the whole history
of the world, than your self-righteous boastings about
your 'voluntary' military system?
"You may wonder why I bracket these two things
together—your soul-searchings about amusements
of all kinds, and your nonsensical panegyrics on the
voluntary' principle.... To my eyes they are
very closely connected.
THE DUTY OF CHEERFULNESS
"Cheerfulness is a duty in time of war. Every
man or woman who smiles, and keeps a good heart,
and goes about his or her day's work gaily, helps
by so much to sustain the national spirit. Not
good, but harm, is done to the conduct of the war,
by moping and brooding over casualty lists, and
by speculations as to disasters which have occurred,
or are thought to be imminent. But there is one
essential preliminary to national cheerfulness—before
a nation can be cheerful it must have a good
conscience; and it cannot have a good conscience
unless it has done its duty.
"Your nation has a bad conscience. The reason
is that, as a nation, it has not done its duty. This
may be the fault of the leaders who have not dared
to speak the word of command. But the fact
remains, that you well know—or at any rate suspect
in your hearts—that you have not done your whole
duty. And consequently you cannot be really
cheerful about anything. As you go about your
daily work or recreations, you are all the while
looking back over your shoulders with misgiving.
As a nation you have not—even yet—dedicated
yourselves to this war. When you have done so—if
ever you do—your burden of gloom and mistrust
will fall from your back, like that of Christian as he
passed along the highway, which is fenced on either
side with the Wall that is called Salvation."
In the great American Civil War, the Southern
States, which aimed at breaking away from the Union,
adopted conscription within a year from the
beginning. They were brave fighters; but they were
poor, and they were in a small minority. The
Northern States—confident in their numbers and
wealth—relied at first upon the voluntary system.
It gave them great and gallant armies; but these
was not enough; and as months went by President
Lincoln realised that they were not enough.
Disregarding the entreaties of his friends, to
beware of asking of the people 'what the people
would never stand,' disregarding the clamours of
his enemies about personal freedom, he insisted upon
conscription, believing that by these means alone
the Union could be saved. And what was the result?
A section of the press foamed with indignation.
Mobs yelled, demonstrated, and in their illogical
fury, lynched negroes, seeing in these unfortunates
the cause of all their troubles. But the mobs were
not the American people. They were only a noisy
and contemptible minority of the American people,
whose importance as well as courage had been vastly
over-rated. The quiet people were in deadly earnest,
and they supported their President.[3]
LINCOLN AND CONSCRIPTION
But the task which Lincoln set himself was one
of the hardest that a democratic statesman ever
undertook. The demand which he determined to
make, and did make, may well have tried his heart
as he sat alone in the night watches. For compulsion
was a violation of the habits and prejudices of the
old American stock, while it was even more distasteful
to new immigrants. It was contrary to the traditions
and theories of the Republic, and, as many thought,
to its fundamental principles. It was open to scornful
attack on grounds of sentiment. Against a foe who
were so weak, both in numbers and wealth, how
humiliating to be driven to such desperate measures!
But most of all—outweighing all other
considerations—this war of North and South was not only
war, but civil war. Families and lifelong friendships
were divided. What compulsion meant, therefore,
in this case was, that brothers were to be forced to
kill brothers, husbands were to be sent out to slay
the kinsmen of their wives, or—as they marched with
Sherman through Georgia—to set a light with their
own hands to the old homesteads where they had
been born. Between the warring States there were
no differences of blood, tradition, or religion; or of
ideas of right and wrong; no hatred against a foreign
race; only an acute opposition of political ideals.
Compulsion, therefore, was a great thing to ask of
the American people. But the American people
are a great people, and they understood. And
Lincoln was a great man,—one of the greatest, noblest,
and most human in the whole of history,—and he
did not hesitate to ask, to insist, and to use force.
What the end was does not need to be stated here;
except merely this, that a lingering and bloody war
was thereby greatly shortened, and that the Union
was saved.
The British Government and people are faced
to-day with some, but not all—and not the greatest—of
Lincoln's difficulties. Our traditions and theories
are the same, to a large extent, as those which prevailed
in America in 1863. But unlike the North we have
had recent experience of war, and also of the sacrifices
which war calls for from the civilian population.
By so much the shock of compulsion would find us
better prepared.
But the other and much greater difficulties which
beset Lincoln do not exist in the case of the British
Government. We are not fighting against a foe
inferior in numbers, but against one who up till now
has been greatly superior in numbers—who has also
been greatly superior in equipment, and preparation,
and in deeply-laid plans. We are fighting against
a foe who has invaded and encroached; not against
one who is standing on the defensive, demanding
merely to be let go free. The family affections and
friendships which would be outraged by conscription
in this war against Germany are inconsiderable; mere
dust in the balance. The present war is waged against
a foreign nation; it is not civil war. It is waged
against an enemy who plainly seeks, not his own
freedom, but our destruction, and that of our Allies.
It is waged against an enemy who by the treacherous
thoroughness of his peace-time preparations, appears
to our eyes to have violated good faith as between
nations, as in the conduct of the campaign he has
disregarded the obligations of our common humanity,
We may be wrong; we may take exaggerated views
owing to the bitterness of the struggle; but such is
our mind upon the matter.
Lincoln's task would have been light had such
been the mind of the Northern States half a century
ago, and had he been faced with nothing more
formidable than the conditions which prevail in
England to-day. It does not need the courage of a
Lincoln to demand from our people a sacrifice, upon
which the safety of the British Empire depends,
even more certainly, than in 1863 did that of the
American Union.
If in the foregoing pages the Liberal party has
come in for the larger share of criticism, the reason
is, that during the ten critical years, while dangers
were drawing to a head, a Liberal Government
chanced to be in power. That things would have
been managed better and more courageously had
the Unionists been in power may be doubted; and
certainly it is no part of my present task to champion
any such theory.
The special type of politician whose influence
has wrought so much evil of late is no peculiar product
of the Liberal party. He is the product of the party
system in its corrupt decadence. You find him in
the ranks of the Opposition as well as in those of
the Ministerialists, just as you find good and true
men in both. In this last lies our hope. In our
present trouble good and true men have a chance
of taking things into their own hands, which has been
denied to them for many generations.
This book has been written to establish the Need
for National Service, in order that the British Empire
may maintain itself securely in the present
circumstances of the world. If this contention be true it
is obvious that a corresponding Duty lies upon
the whole nation to accept the burden of military
service.
Neither need nor duty has ever been made clear
to the British people by their leaders. Owing to the
abuses of the party system, increasing steadily over
a considerable period of years, a certain type of
politician has been evolved, and has risen into great
prominence—a type which does not trust the people,
but only fears them. In order to maintain themselves
and their parties in power, politicians of this
type have darkened the eyes and drugged the spirit
of the nation.
It is no part of the plan of this volume to offer
criticisms upon the naval and military aspects of
the present war, or upon the wisdom or unwisdom
of the operations which have been undertaken by
land and sea. All that need be said in this connection
may be put into a very few words.
As we read and re-read British history we cannot
but be impressed with the fact that our leading
statesmen, misled by the very brilliancy of their
intellectual endowments, have always been prone to
two errors of policy, which the simpler mind of the
soldier instinctively avoids. They have ever been
too ready to conclude prematurely that a certain line
of obstacles is so formidable that it cannot be forced;
and they have also ever been too ready to accept
the notion, that there must surely be some ingenious
far way round, by which they may succeed in
circumventing the infinite.
MAIN PRINCIPLE OF STRATEGY
The defect of brilliant brains is not necessarily a
want of courage—daring there has usually been in
plenty—but they are apt to lack fortitude. They
are apt to abandon the assault upon positions which
are not really invulnerable, and to go off, chasing
after attractive butterflies, until they fall into
quagmires. Dispersion of effort has always been the
besetting sin of British statesmen and the curse of
British policy. There is no clearer example of this
than the case of William Pitt the Younger, who
went on picking up sugar islands all over the world,
when he ought to have been giving his whole
strength to beating Napoleon.
Very few obstacles are really insurmountable,
and it is usually the shortest and the safest course
to stick to what has been already begun. Especially
is this the case when your resources in trained soldiers
and munitions of war are painfully restricted. At
the one point, where you have decided to attack,
the motto is push hard; and at all others, where
you may be compelled to defend yourselves, the
motto is hold fast.
The peril of British war councils in the past has
always been (and maybe still is) the tendency of
ingenious argument to get the better of sound
judgment. In the very opposite of this lies safety.
We find the true type of high policy, as well as
of successful campaigning, in the cool and patient
inflexibility of Wellington, holding fast by one
main idea, forcing his way over one obstacle after
another which had been pronounced invincible—through
walled cities; into the deep valleys of the
Pyrenees; across the Bidassoa—till from the crests
of the Great Rhune and the Little his soldiers looked
down at last upon the plains of France.
Our most urgent problem with regard to the
present war, is how we may win it most thoroughly;
but, in addition to this, there are two questions
which have recently engaged a good deal of public
attention. There is a Political question—what sort
of European settlement is to take place after the
war? And there is also a Criminal question—what
sort of punishment shall be meted out, if crimes,
contrary to the practice of war among civilised
and humane states, have been committed by our
antagonists?
I have not attempted to deal with either of these.
They do not seem to be of extreme urgency; for
unless, and until, we win the war it is somewhat idle
to discuss the ultimate fate of Europe or the penalty
of evil deeds. You cannot restore stolen property
until you have recovered it, and you cannot punish
a malefactor, nor is it very convenient even to try
him, while he is still at large. If that be true, which
was said of old by a great king—I do not make peace
with barbarians but dictate the terms of their
surrender—we are still a long way from that.
I have not occupied myself therefore with what
are termed 'German atrocities.' So far as this
matter is concerned, I am satisfied to let it rest for
the present upon the German statement of intentions
before war began,[1] and upon the proclamations which
have been issued subsequently, with the object of
justifying their mode of operations by sea and land.
The case against Germany on her own admission, is
quite strong enough without opening a further
inquisition under this heading.[2]
WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING ABOUT
It is essential, however, to realise the falsities
and perversities upon which the great fabric of
German policy is founded; for otherwise we shall
never understand either the nature of the enemy
with whom we are at present engaged, or the full
extent of the danger by which, not only we, but
civilisation itself is now threatened. It is essential
that the whole British race should understand the
nature of the evils against which they are fighting—the
ambitions of Germany—the ruthless despotism
of the Prussian system—the new theories of right
and wrong which have been evolved by thinkers
who have been paid, promoted, and inspired by the
State, in order to sanctify the imperial policy of
spoliation.
It is also essential for us to realise the nature of
those things for which we are fighting—what we
shall save and secure for our posterity in case of
victory; what we stand to lose in event of defeat.
The preservation or ruin of our inheritance, spiritual
and material—the maintenance or overthrow of our
institutions, traditions, and ideas—the triumph, of
these, or the supplanting of them by a wholly
different order, which to our eyes wears the appearance
of a vast machine under the control of savages—are
the main issues of the present war. And when
now at last, we face them squarely, we begin to
wonder, why of late years, we have been wont to
treat problems of national defence and imperial
security with so much levity and indifference.
It is profitable to turn our eyes from the
contemplation of German shortcomings inwards upon
our own. If we have been guilty as a people
during recent times of weakness, blindness, indolence,
or cowardice, we should face these facts squarely,
otherwise there is but a poor chance of arriving at
better conditions. If we have refused to listen to
unpleasant truths, and to exchange a drowsy and
dangerous comfort against sacrifices which were
necessary for security, it is foolish to lay the whole
blame upon this or that public man, this or that
government. For, after all, both public men and
governments were our own creation; we chose them
because we liked them; because it gave us pleasure
and consolation to listen to their sayings; because
their doings and their non-doings, their un-doings
and their mis-doings were regarded with approval
or indifference by the great bulk of our people.
It would be wise also to take to heart the lesson,
plainly written across the record of the last nine
months, that the present confusion of our political
system is responsible, as much as anything—perhaps
more than anything—for the depreciated currency
of public character. The need is obvious for a
Parliament and a Government chosen by the Empire,
responsible to the Empire, and charged with the
security of the Empire, and with no other task.
CAUSES OF WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH
Why we are fighting at all is one of our problems;
why we are finding it so hard to win is another. In
what does the main strength of our enemies consist?
And in what does our own chief weakness consist?
To say that our weakness is to be sought in our
own vices, and the strength of our enemies in their
virtues, is of course a commonplace. But one has
only to open the average newspaper to realise the
need for restating the obvious. For there the
contrary doctrine is set forth daily and weekly with
a lachrymose insistency—that our hands are weakened
because we are so good; that the Germans fight at
an enormous advantage because they are so wicked
and unscrupulous.
But the things which we are finding hardest to
overcome in our foes are not the immoral gibberings of
professors, or the blundering cynicism of the German
Foreign Office, or the methodical savagery of the
General Staff, whether in Belgium or on the High
Seas. These are sources of weakness and not of
strength; and even at the present stage it is clear
that, although they have inflicted immeasurable
suffering, they have done the German cause much
more harm than good.
Our real obstacles are the loyalty, the self-sacrifice,
and the endurance of the German people.
The causes of British weakness are equally plain.
Our indolence and factiousness; our foolish
confidence in cleverness, manoeuvres, and debate for
overcoming obstacles which lie altogether outside
that region of human endeavour; our absorption as
thrilled spectators in the technical game of British
politics[3]—these vices and others of a similar
character, which, since the beginning of the war we have
been struggling—like a man awakening from a nightmare—to
shake off, are still our chief difficulties. It
is a hard job to get rid of them, and we are not yet
anything like halfway through with it.
It must be clear to every detached observer,
that the moral strength of England in the present
struggle—like that of France—does not lie in
Government or Opposition, but in the spirit of the people;
that this spirit has drawn but little support, in the
case of either country, from the leadership and
example of the politicians; and that there is little
cause in either case to bless or praise them for the
fidelity of their previous stewardship. In the case of
France this national spirit was assured at the
beginning; in our own case the process of awakening has
proceeded much more slowly.
ILLUSIONS OF SUCCESS
It is essential to put certain notions out of our
heads and certain other notions into them. From
the beginning of the war, a large part of the
press—acting, we are entitled to suppose, in patriotic
obedience to the directions of the Press Bureau—has
fostered ideas which do not correspond with the
facts. Information has been doled out and presented
in such a way as to destroy all sense of proportion
in the public mind.
It is not an uncommon belief,[4] for example, that
we with our Allies—ever since the first onset, when,
being virtuously unprepared, we were pushed back
some little distance—have been doing much better
than the Germans; that for months past our
adversaries have been in a desperate plight—lacking
ammunition, on the verge of bankruptcy and
starvation, and thoroughly discouraged.
There is also a tendency to assume—despite Lord
Kitchener's grave and repeated warnings to the
contrary—that the war is drawing rapidly to a
conclusion, and that, even if we may have to submit
to some interruption of our usual summer holidays,
at any rate we shall eat our Christmas dinners in an
atmosphere of peace and goodwill.
The magnitude of the German victories, both in the
East and West, during the earlier stages of the war,
is not realised even now by the great majority of
our fellow-countrymen; while the ruinous consequences
of these victories to our Allies—the occupation
of Belgium, of a large part of northern France,
and of Western Poland—is dwelt on far too lightly.
Nor is it understood by one man in a hundred, that
up to the end of last year, British troops were never
holding more than thirty miles, out of that line of
nearly five hundred which winds, like a great snake,
from Nieuport to the Swiss frontier. On the
contrary, it is quite commonly believed that we have
been doing our fair share of the fighting—or even
more—by land as well as sea.
A misleading emphasis of type and comment,
together with a dangerous selection of items of news,
are responsible for these illusions; while the
prevalence of these illusions is largely responsible for
many of our labour difficulties.
Such dreams of inevitable and speedy victory
are no doubt very soothing to indolent and timid
minds, but they do not make for a vigorous and
resolute spirit in the nation, upon which, more
than upon anything else, the winning of this war
depends.
In some quarters there appears still to linger a
ridiculous idea that we went into this war, out of
pure chivalry, to defend Belgium.[5] We went into
it to defend our own existence, and for no other
reason. We made common cause with Allies who
were menaced by the same danger as ourselves; but
these, most fortunately, had made their preparations
with greater foresight than we had done. The actual
fighting has taken place, so far, in their territories
and not in ours; but the issue of this war is not one
whit less a matter of life-or-death for us, than it is
for them.
DEMOCRACY NOT INVINCIBLE
Quite recently I have seen our present situation
described glowingly and self-complacently as the
'triumph of the voluntary system.' I must be
blind of both eyes, for I can perceive no 'triumph'
and no 'voluntary' system. I have seen the
territories of our Allies seized, wasted, and held fast
by an undefeated enemy. I have seen our small
army driven back; fighting with as much skill
and bravery as ever in its history; suffering losses
unparalleled in its history; holding its own in
the end, but against what overwhelming numbers
and by what sacrifices! The human triumph is
apparent enough; but not that of any system,
voluntary or otherwise. Neither in this record of
nine months' 'hard and hot fighting' on land, nor in
the state of things which now exists at the end of it
all, is there a triumph for anything, or any one, save
for a few thousands of brave men, who were left to
hold fast as best they could against intolerable odds.
Certain contemporary writers appear to claim
more for that form of representative government,
which we are in the habit of calling 'democracy,'
than it is either safe to count on, or true to assert. In
their eyes democracy seems to possess a superiority
in all the higher virtuous qualities—'freedom,' in
particular—and also an inherent strength
which—whatever may be the result of the present
war—makes the final predominance of British institutions
only a matter of time.[6]
I do not hold with either of these doctrines.
Universal superiority in virtue and strength is too
wide a claim to put forward for any system of government.
And 'freedom' is a very hard thing to define.
It is not merely that the form of constitution,
which we call 'democracy,' is obviously not the best
fitted for governing an uncivilised or half-civilised
people. There are considerations which go much
deeper than that—considerations of race, religion,
temperament, and tradition. As it has been in the
past, so conceivably it may be again in the future,
that a people, which is in the highest degree civilised
and humane, will seek to realise its ideals of freedom
in some other sphere than the control of policy and
legislation according to the electoral verdicts of its
citizens. It is even possible that its national
aspirations may regard some other end as a higher good
even than freedom. We cannot speak with certainty
as to the whole human race, but only with regard to
ourselves and certain others, who have been bred
in the same traditions.
If a personal and autocratic government—the
German for example—is able to arouse and maintain
among its people a more ardent loyalty, a firmer
confidence, a more constant spirit of self-sacrifice
(in time of peace as well as war), I can see no good
reason for the hope, that democracy, merely because,
in our eyes, it approaches more nearly to the ideal
of the Christian Commonwealth, will be able to
maintain itself against the other. A highly centralised
system of government has great natural advantages
both for attack and defence; and if in addition it be
supported by a more enduring fortitude, and a more
self-denying devotion, on the part of the people, it
seems almost incredible that, in the end, it will not
prevail over other forms of government which have
failed to enlist the same support.
The strength of all forms of government alike,
whether against foreign attack or internal disintegration,
must depend in the long last upon the spirit
of the people; upon their determination to maintain
their own institutions; upon their willingness to
undertake beforehand, as well as during the excitement
of war, those labours and sacrifices which are
necessary for security. The spirit is everything.
And in the end that spirit which is strongest is likely
to become predominant, and to impose its own forms,
systems, and ideas upon civilised and uncivilised
nations alike.
A considerable part of the world—though it may
have adopted patterns of government which are either
avowedly democratic or else are monarchies of the
constitutional sort (in essence the same)—is by no
means wedded to popular institutions; has no deep-rooted
traditions to give them support; could easily,
therefore, and without much loss of self-respect,
abandon them and submit to follow new fashions.
But with the United Kingdom, the self-governing
Dominions, and the United States it is altogether
different.
To exchange voluntarily, merely because circumstances
rendered it expedient to do so, a system
which is the only one consistent with our notions of
freedom would be an apostasy. It would mean our
immediate spiritual ruin, and for that reason also
our ultimate material ruin. On the other hand, to
continue to exist on sufferance, without a voice in
the destinies of the world, would be an even deeper
degradation. To be conquered outright, and absorbed,
would be an infinitely preferable fate to either of these.
NEED OF LEADERSHIP
The nations of the world have one need in
common—Leadership. The spirit of the people can do much,
but it cannot do everything. In the end that form
of government is likely to prevail which produces the
best and most constant supply of leaders. On its
own theories, democracy of the modern type ought
to out-distance all competitors; under this system
capacity, probity, and vigour should rise most easily
to the top.
In practice, however, democracy has come under
the thumb of the Party System, and the Party System
has reached a very high point of efficiency. It has
bettered the example of the hugest mammoth store
in existence. It has elaborated machinery for
crushing out independent opinion and for cramping the
characters of public men. In commending its wares
it has become as regardless of truth as a vendor of
quack medicines. It pursues corruption as an end,
and it freely uses corruption—both direct and
indirect—as the means by which it may attain its end. If
the Party System continues to develop along its
present lines, it may ultimately prove as fatal to the
principle of democracy as the ivy which covers and
strangles the elm-trees in our hedgerows.
Leadership is our greatest present need, and it
is there that the Party System has played us false.
To manipulate its vast and intricate machinery there
arose a great demand for expert mechanicians, and
these have been evolved in a rich profusion. But
in a crisis like the present, mechanicians will not
serve our purpose. The real need is a Man, who by
the example of his own courage, vigour, certainty,
and steadfastness will draw out the highest qualities
of the people; whose resolute sense of duty will brush
opportunism aside; whose sympathy and truthfulness
will stir the heart and hold fast the conscience of the
nation. Leadership of this sort we have lacked.
The Newcastle speech with its soft words and
soothing optimism was not leadership. It does not
give confidence to a horse to know that he has a
rider on his back who is afraid of him.
NEED FOR FRANKNESS
It is idle at this stage to forecast the issue of the
present war. Nevertheless we seem at last to have
begun to understand that there is but a poor chance
of winning it under rulers who are content to wait
and see if by some miracle the war will win itself;
or if by another miracle our resources of men and
material will organise themselves. Since the battle
of the Marne many sanguine expectations of a speedy
and victorious peace have fallen to the ground.
The constant burden of letters from soldiers at the
front is that the war—so far as England is concerned—is
only just beginning. And yet, in spite of all these
disappointments and warnings, the predominant
opinion in official circles is still, apparently, as
determined as ever to wait and see what the people
will stand, although it is transparently clear what they
ought to stand, and must stand, if they are to remain
a people.
We cannot forecast with certainty the issue of the
present war, but hope nevertheless refuses to be bound.
There is a false hope and a true one. There may be
consolation for certain minds, but there is no safety
for the nation, in the simple faith that democracy
is in its nature invincible. Democracy is by no
means invincible. On the contrary, it fights at a
disadvantage, both by reason of its inferiority in
central control, and because it shrinks from
ruthlessness. Nevertheless we may believe as firmly as
those who hold this other opinion that in the end it
will conquer. Before this can happen it must find
a leader who is worthy of its trust.
Since August 1914 we have learned many things
from experience which we previously refused to
credit upon any human authority. We are not
altogether done with the past; for it contains lessons
and warnings—about men as well as things—which it
would be wasteful to forget. But our main concern
is with the present. And we are also treading very
close on the heels of the future, when—as we
trust—the resistance of our enemies will be beginning to
flag; when the war will be drawing to an end;
afterwards through anxious years (how many we
cannot guess) when the war has ended, and when the
object of our policy will be to keep the peace which
has been so dearly bought.
Lord Roberts was right in his forecast of the
danger; nor was he less right in his perception of
England's military weakness and general
unpreparedness for war. But was he also right as to the
principle of the remedy which he proposed? And
even if he were right as things stood when he uttered
his warnings, is his former counsel still right in our
present circumstances, and as we look forward into
the future? Is it now necessary for us to accept
in practice what has always been admitted in the
vague region of theory—that an obligation lies upon
every citizen, during the vigour of his age, to place
his services, and if need be his life, at the disposal
of that state under whose shelter he and all those
who are most dear to him have lived?
THE PEOPLE WILL NOT FLINCH
There is always danger in treating a free people
like children; in humouring them, and coaxing them,
and wheedling them with half-truths; in asking
for something less than is really needed, from fear
that to ask for the whole would alarm them too
much; with the foolish hope that when the first
demand has been granted it will then be easy enough
to make them understand how much more is still
necessary to complete the fabric of security; that
having deceived them once, it will be all the easier
to deceive them again.
As we look back over our country's history we
find that it was those men who told the people the
whole truth—or what, at least, they themselves
honestly believed to be the whole truth—who most
often succeeded in carrying their proposals through.
In these matters, which touch the very life and soul
of the nation, all artifice is out of place. The power
of persuasion lies in the truthfulness of the advocate,
no less than in the truth of his plea. If the would-be
reformer is only half sincere, if from timidity or
regard for popular opinion he chooses to tell but half
his tale—selecting this, suppressing that, postponing
the other to a more propitious season—he loses by
his misplaced caution far more than half his strength.
When there is a case to be laid before the British
People it is folly to do it piecemeal, by astute stages
of pleading, and with subtle reservations. If the
whole case can be put unflinchingly it is not the
People who will flinch. The issue may be left with
safety to a tribunal which has never yet failed in
its duty, when rulers have had the courage to say
where its duty lay.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.