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.
CHAPTER I
THE BRITISH ARMY AND THE PEACE OF EUROPE
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.
CHAPTER II
THE COMPOSITION OF THE BRITISH ARMY
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.
CHAPTER III
LORD ROBERTS'S WARNINGS
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!
CHAPTER IV
LORD KITCHENER'S TASK
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.
CHAPTER V
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]
CHAPTER VI
METHODS OF RECRUITING
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.
CHAPTER VII
PERVERSITIES OF THE ANTI-MILITARIST SPIRIT
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.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
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.
CHAPTER IX
THE CRUCIBLE OF WAR
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
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