THE FUTURE 
 OF MILITARISM 
 
 J. M. ROBERTSON 
 
 1 
 
THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
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THE FUTURE OF 
 MILITARISM 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF F. SCOTT 
 
 OLIVER'S "ORDEAL BY BATTLE" 
 
 By the RT. HON. J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. 
 (" ROLAND ") 
 
 LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. 
 ADELPHI TERRACE, W.C. 
 
First 2MhHshed in 1916. 
 Second Impression, 1916. 
 
 {All rights rmrved.) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAO» 
 
 I. CONCERNING PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 1 
 
 II. WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE - - - 19 
 
 III. CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR - 37 
 
 IV. THE CHIMERA OF GREAT ARMIES WITHOUT 
 
 WAR - - - - - 69 
 
 V. THE DREAM OF MILITARISM WITHOUT DIS- 
 TRUST - - - - - 87 
 
 VI. THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM - - 101 
 
 VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM - - 119 
 
 VIII. CONCERNING DISCIPLINE - - - 157 
 
 ■^ .« t\ 
 
 i^'rlrUI hi 
 
CONCERNING PARTIES AND THE 
 PARTY TRUCE 
 
THE 
 FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CONCERNING PARTIES AND THE 
 PARTY TRUCE 
 
 Those who, like Mr. F. S. Oliver, are 
 concerned about the power of the Party 
 System, have many grounds for comfort. 
 When leaders of parties agree to a patriotic 
 truce, any half-dozen of their normal ad- 
 herents can see to it that domestic strife 
 shall continue. You have only to say that 
 you put country above party and you are 
 self- absolved. You can then proceed in 
 war-time to asperse at will the majority of 
 your countrymen, the Party System,5the 
 
 3 
 
THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 party you most dislike, its leaders, their 
 policy, Parliamentary institutions, trial by 
 jury, lawyers, logic, labour, payment of 
 members, and things in general, provided 
 only that you balance your praise of Ger- 
 man militarism by criticism of the German 
 spy system, which is solidly unpopular ; sniff 
 from time to time at your own leaders, to 
 show you are no partisan ; and establish 
 your patriotism by extolling Lord Roberts, 
 and claiming that Conscription for all eter- 
 nity must be established at the close of the 
 war, with no nonsense about proper pay- 
 ment. 
 
 It would be quite wrong to call this kind 
 of thing unpatriotic. It is for many men 
 the way of being patriotic : they are so 
 constructed. To have their own way ver- 
 bally if they cannot have it otherwise is for 
 them the first condition of comfort; only 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 5 
 
 thus can they feel that they remain free 
 Britons. Fortunately for them, they are 
 usually above the military age, and so can- 
 not be put in the ranks, where the need to 
 have your own way, verbally or otherwise, 
 is so imperfectly recognized. 
 
 The Party System has certainly its bad 
 points, like the universe, and like most 
 human institutions ; but it has one advan- 
 tage, which will for some time insure its 
 continuance : it saves the community from 
 the man who must have his own way. The 
 faculties of self-suppression in time of trial, 
 and of co-operation in difficulty, happen to 
 be more necessary to the weal of nations 
 than Conscription, which has many times 
 failed to save. One nation, and one only, 
 in modern times, has thus far had the fate 
 of national suppression — a fate, it is to be 
 hoped, ere long to be reversed— and this was 
 
6 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 not because of lack of fighting power, but 
 because its institutions recognized that every 
 man ought to have his own way. In Mr. 
 F. S. OUver, and in his kaleidoscopic essay 
 entitled " Ordeal by Battle," we have 
 an interesting survival of the type and 
 the methods of the Polish aristocracy 
 of the eighteenth century. That aristo- 
 cracy had no Party System ; and as it 
 had no other system, it made an end 
 of Poland for about a century and a half. 
 When Poland, as we all trust, is nationally 
 reconstituted, it will probably be unnecessary 
 to provide against the revival of the Liberum 
 Veto. The experiment was quite sufficiently 
 tried. If, on the other hand, Turkey should 
 fall from nationhood, it will not be by reason 
 of undue devotion to the Party System or 
 inattention to German military ideals. 
 Of course, Mr. Oliver, whose mind is 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 7 
 
 made up about one thing, and one thing 
 only — to wit, the perpetual necessity of Con- 
 scription — feels that, with that established, 
 there can be no danger of national over- 
 throw. But perhaps some of the friends of 
 Mr. Oliver can realize that, if only every- 
 body is determined to play Mr. Oliver's 
 game in war-time, it will matter very little 
 how the army is recruited. If everybody is 
 to have his own way, vilifying his own 
 nation and its leaders, scouting the prevail- 
 ing policy, promising disaster if his policy is 
 not adopted, and stirring up all manner of 
 strife for his own gratification, any army — 
 conscript or voluntary — will soon be a broken 
 reed. Mr. Oliver, of course, expects that 
 the army will do as it is told ; the joys of 
 the free-lance are not for the trenches, but 
 for those who stay at home. But there will 
 be plenty of us at home, above the military 
 
8 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 age, to keep Mr. Oliver company in domestic 
 strife if we are so disposed ; and if only Mr. 
 Oliver's ideals of patriotism become popular 
 in Britain, it seems rather doubtful v^hether 
 a British army can ever be led anywhere. 
 The Oliverian principle is that in war-time 
 it is dulce et decorum to run amok against 
 everything about you that is recalcitrant to 
 your inspired conception of the national 
 needs ; and if your ideal is that an army 
 should be very large, but never fight — which 
 would seem to be Mr. Oliver's — it will be 
 your patriotic business to prevent its 
 fighting. 
 
 On this suggestion it may perhaps occur 
 to some of Mr. Oliver's admirers that they 
 have really no case against the Union of 
 Democratic Control or Mr. Bernard Shaw. 
 Mr. Shaw, they may say, plays Germany's 
 game, whereas Mr. Oliver only plays the 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 9 
 
 German game, denouncing Germany in the 
 lump while extolling its constituent ele- 
 ments and justifying its ideals in detail. 
 But parts of Mr. Oliver's book are quite as 
 gratifying to the Germans as anything writ- 
 ten by Mr. Shaw, which is saying a good 
 deal. And if Mr. Oliver cannot simply 
 hold his tongue and help his country, why 
 should Mr. Shaw, who has such a large 
 German public to hold on to ? 
 
 In some of his many moods, Mr. Oliver 
 would perhaps admit that the members of 
 the Union of Democratic Control are quite 
 as well-meaning men as he is. They are 
 not all peace-at-any-price men. A few 
 years ago some of them were eager to make 
 an enemy of Russia by getting the British 
 Government to insult the Tsar. Others 
 were even zealous to send an ultimatum to 
 Russia on behalf of Persia. At present they 
 
10 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 are deeply impressed by the utilitarian con- 
 sideration of the importance of stopping 
 bloodshed and freeing Belgium from occu- 
 pation, at the cost of prostration before 
 Germany. Justice is become for them, in 
 comparison, an empty word. When the 
 alleged offender was Russia, they were will- 
 ing to face pandemonium for supposed 
 justice' sake. But why should not they, in 
 war-time, proclaim their ideals at any cost of 
 national division, when Mr. Oliver sets them 
 the example ? 
 
 In their view — or the view of some of 
 them — Viscount Grey wrought for war. 
 In the view of Mr. Oliver, Viscount Grey 
 is an amiable blunderer who wanted peace, 
 but did not know how to secure it; while 
 Mr. Asquith is a lazy lawyer who does not 
 like action, and is concerned only to avoid 
 it. Mr. Oliver is patriotically anxious to 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 11 
 
 lay the blame of the war on everybody who 
 did not agree with him and the late Lord 
 Roberts — the one man with whom he avows 
 himself in complete agreement. Surely the 
 Union of Democratic Control, on Mr. 
 Oliver's Old Pohsh principles, have the same 
 right, or duty, of patriotically condemning 
 everybody who accepted the war, or is 
 resolved to fight to a finish. 
 
 Our two types of extremist, really, have a 
 great deal in common. They are all for 
 national unity, if only it be unity with them. 
 Mr. Oliver has an obviously keen sense of 
 that kind of national duty. As he remarks : 
 " A soldier who has enlisted voluntarily, and 
 another who is a conscript or * pressed ' man, 
 have equally to fight their country's enemies 
 when they are ordered to do so."* And in 
 his preface he explains that " it is not only 
 
 * " Ordeal by Battle/' ed. 1915, p. 263. 
 
12 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 military duties which the State is entitled to 
 command its citizens to perform unquestion- 
 ingly in times of danger, but also civil 
 duties. It is not only men between the 
 ages of twenty and thirty-eight to whom 
 the State should have the right to give 
 orders, but men and women of all ages. 
 Under conditions of modern warfare it is 
 not only armies which need to be disciplined, 
 but whole nations." Only not Olivers. Dis- 
 cipline, mental or political, is not for them. 
 They proceed, as Mr. Oliver tells us he does, 
 upon instinct. And when instinct moves 
 them to asperse their Government, their 
 countrymen in the mass, and all classes but 
 their own, proclaiming the substantial justice 
 of German attacks upon British character, 
 and promoting party strife and class divisions, 
 why, it must just be done. 
 
 Once more, if everybody at home were as 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 13 
 
 much inspired by instinct as Mr. Oliver, 
 with what success would an Oliverian war 
 be conducted ? Mr. Oliver's friends are no 
 doubt free to reply that there are few people 
 like Mr. Oliver, though they do their best 
 to confute such a plea by backing him. 
 But it becomes necessary to point out to 
 him and them that if they will not hold 
 their peace they cannot expect other people 
 to do so. Mr. Asquith has appealed for a 
 stoppage of recrimination, and they will not 
 cease. Had the Government suppressed 
 Mr. Oliver's book, as the German Govern- 
 ment would have done with any equally 
 factious — or independent — German book, 
 we should have had an interesting light on 
 the sincerity of Mr. Oliver's doctrine that 
 the State has a right to call for unquestion- 
 ing obedience from all its citizens. For Mr. 
 Oliver, Vetat, cest moi. Silence and obedi- 
 
14 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 ence are for mere citizens and politicians ; it is 
 his high task, upon instinct, to flagellate them. 
 And as our unhappy institutions, which he 
 sees to be so deplorably lacking in machinery 
 for discipline, leave him free to set the 
 heather on fire at his sweet will, there is 
 nothing for it but to employ in the national 
 defence the feeble instruments of reason and 
 logic, which he so contemns, but which he so 
 weakly consents to try to use. Mr. Oliver 
 is intent upon reforming all the rest of us. 
 He will perhaps admit, then, that the instinct 
 of self-defence, whose vitality he avows, may 
 fitly move us to attempt to reform him, or, 
 if that be impossible, to expose him. 
 
 Under the spell of his amiable hallucination 
 that all decent people are bound to think 
 as he does, Mr. Ohver predicts that this 
 war will make an end of parties in Britain. 
 Those of his admirers who have any faculty 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 15 
 
 for realizing facts might do well to take note 
 of the prediction, as a test of Mr. Oliver's 
 depth of common sense, to say nothing of his 
 prophetic instinct. It would be a fine thing, 
 truly, if after the war men who used to fight 
 factiously over every political issue, from 
 Home Rule to National Insurance, could 
 consent to debate all things dispassionately, 
 like members of a Board of Directors. But 
 when we realize that JNIr. Oliver's own con- 
 conception of non-party Government is just 
 the supremacy of an Oliver party, which is 
 to represent the *' true ore," everything else 
 being '* dross to cake upon the surface," our 
 optimistic hopes are apt to be dashed. The 
 substitution of unselfish conference and 
 deliberation for the old party spirit will be 
 brought about, if at all, only by the spirit of 
 self-suppression and considerate sympathy, 
 involving the courteous acceptance of the 
 
16 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 majority vote for the time being. And 
 when the very prophecy of the disappearance 
 of faction is made in the spirit of sheer 
 faction and the language of primeval arro- 
 gance, we realize that *' it's lang ere the deil 
 dee at the dyke side." 
 
 The Conservative leaders who have joined 
 the Coalition have honourably observed 
 their pact. Before the Coalition some of 
 them had not very anxiously observed the 
 truce. But the very conditions of the much 
 criticized Party System secure the loyalty 
 of Ministers to the Government they join ; 
 and Mr. Bonar Law, formerly the most 
 virulent of opponents, has done more than 
 be merely loyal : he has admittedly worked 
 in the fullest spirit of unity. Mr. Walter 
 Long, who used to feel so acutely the short- 
 comings of the War Office, has not only 
 done his own work faithfully, but has risen 
 
PARTIES AND THE PARTY TRUCE 17 
 
 to the height of rebuking a former colleague 
 for serving in the War Office in the fore- 
 noon and disparaging it in the afternoon. 
 
 All this is gain, and it may well be that 
 after the war Ministers and politicians who 
 have amicably co-operated for purposes of 
 war will recognize each other's honesty and 
 abstain from virulent strife in peace. But 
 to proclaim that all past political history is 
 to be cancelled by a cabal of Conscriptionists 
 with the war-cry of " A plague o' both your 
 houses I" is to remind sane men that the 
 Party System arose out of the instinct of 
 strife, and that the instinct of strife cannot 
 possibly supersede it. When Lord Boling- 
 broke found that, distrusted by his own 
 former comrades, he could not break the 
 party in power, he clutched at the formula 
 of a Patriot Party, which was to supersede 
 all others — as if ** party" did not mean 
 
18 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 "section." The. device which failed BoUng- 
 broke has appealed to other politicians in 
 our own day, but never to citizens enough 
 to form a perceptible *' party." And so it 
 will ever be. If the kingdom of heaven is 
 not practicable within the parties, it will 
 certainly not come to them from without, 
 whether by war or Conscription. If there 
 is to be reform, we must all, more or less, 
 be in it. And before the Oliverians can 
 help to reform us they will have to reform 
 themselves. Which, they will probably say 
 with Euclid, is absurd. 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 
 
 There can be no objection to the criticism 
 that Mr. OHver's book is a medley, seeing 
 that he avows as much. Two of its Parts, 
 " I fear," he confesses, " diverge to a greater 
 or less extent from the main purpose of the 
 book." And there are only four Parts in 
 all. But it is important to know that there 
 was a "main purpose." Like a certain for- 
 gotten party — was it " Young England " ? — 
 the book has a little of everything. It dis- 
 cusses Lord Roberts ; the futility of Pacifism ; 
 the causes of the war ; the character of the 
 Germans, of their Kaiser, their Press, their 
 professors ; their miscalculations ; their hatred 
 
 21 
 
«a THE FUTURE OF MIIJTARISM 
 
 of England ; their past history ; their recent 
 developments ; Treitschke and Nietzsche — 
 especially Nietzsche ; the German virtues ; 
 the British vices; democracy; Mr. Asquith; 
 Viscount Grey ; Lord Haldane's mission ; 
 lawyers ; priests ; professors ; payment of 
 members ; the Labour Party ; the lack of 
 leadership in the Conservative Party ; the 
 Expeditionary Force ; Sir John Simon ; 
 and so back again to Lord Roberts ; then 
 back again to history, the Soudan, South 
 Africa ; the views of Mr. Oliver's typified 
 German, Count Hexenklichen ; President 
 Lincoln ; and yet again back to I^ord 
 Roberts and Conscription. In the con- 
 cluding chapter, after a reminder that the 
 noxious Liberal politician is "no peculiar 
 product of the Liberal party," but ''the 
 product of the party system in its corrupt 
 decadence," we learn that "This book has 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 2S 
 
 been written to establish the A^eed for 
 National Service." 
 
 Now, partly because so many men of Mr. 
 Oliver's way of thinking would not work 
 loyally for the voluntary system, we actually 
 have Conscription for the period of the war ; 
 and, writing before that was established, Mr. 
 Oliver expressed his confidence that even 
 the " some persons " — a handful, evidently, 
 in his opinion — who believed that we might 
 win the war without it, would " hardly dare 
 to deny that, after a war which ends with- 
 out a crowning victory, we shall have to 
 accept Conscription at once upon the 
 signature of peace." ■^' So that the reason 
 for writing the book in 1915 was far from 
 clear ; and the reason for running a cheap 
 edition of it in 1916, after Conscription has 
 been established, is still darker. If we do 
 
 * P. 414. 
 
24 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 not secure a crowning victory, Conscription, 
 we are told, is secure. If we do, we shall at 
 least be safe for the time being; in which 
 case the need for Mr. Oliver's running amok 
 at present is not easily to be detected. 
 
 The solution would seem to be either that 
 the most keenly felt need was for Mr. Oliver 
 to unburden himself of all his grievances, or 
 that, fearing to see Conscription abandoned 
 when peace comes, he felt it necessary to 
 have all the possible fat in the fire during 
 the war, even to the extent of lampooning 
 in the lump lawyers, priests, professors, and 
 politicians, whose support to his scheme 
 might seem to be of some importance. 
 And the truth would appear to be that 
 both solutions are valid. Mr. Oliver is 
 both sure and unsure about the triumph of 
 his ideal. He has few beliefs that will hold 
 out for two chapters, his mind being notably 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 25 
 
 hospitable to contradictions ; but, as he tells 
 us, he goes upon his instinct, like Lord 
 Roberts. His admiration for that illustrious 
 soldier is very intelligible, for by his account 
 the Earl " was a poor arguer : I think argu- 
 ment was painful to him ; also that he re- 
 garded it as a sad waste of the short span of 
 human life. It was not difficult to out- 
 argue him." 
 
 Mr. Oliver, conscious of a kindred cast of 
 mind, lets us know that he has an invincible 
 contempt for logic. Like the coster, he is 
 not arguing with us, he is telling us. He 
 and Lord Roberts are not men to be argued 
 with. " If I were asked," he writes, " to 
 name Lord Roberts's highest intellectual 
 quality, I should say unhesitatingly that it 
 was his instinct. And if I were asked to 
 name his highest moral quality, I should 
 say, also unhesitatingly, that it was the un- 
 
86 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 shakable confidence with which he trusted 
 his instinct. But the firmness of his trust 
 was not due in the least to self-conceit, or 
 arrogance, or obstinacy. He obeyed his 
 instinct as he obeyed his conscience — 
 humbly and devoutly. The dictates of 
 both proceeded from the same source. It 
 was not his own cleverness which led him to 
 his conclusions, but the hand of Providence 
 which drew aside a veiU cind enabled him to 
 see the truthr * 
 
 De mortuis . . . ; and we shall leave Lord 
 Roberts alone, especially as he is not known 
 to have been guilty of professing to be 
 specially enlightened by Providence as to 
 the principles of army formation. But, at 
 the risk of being logical, it must be pointed 
 out that Mr. Oliver must be conscious of 
 special illumination at the hand of Provi- 
 
 * Preface^ p. xxiii. 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 27 
 
 dence, to validate his revelation to us con- 
 cerning the late Field- Marshal. From Mr. 
 Oliver's point of view, it is thus idle for 
 anyone to argue against him. As he tells 
 us, ingenuity and eloquence — by which he 
 means arguments — '* are a curse at councils 
 of war, and state, and business. Indeed, 
 wherever action of any kind has to be 
 determined upon, they are a curse. It was 
 Lord Roberts's special gift that, out of the 
 medley of unanswerable reasons, he had an 
 instinct for selecting those which really 
 mattered, and keeping his mind close shut 
 against the rest." 
 
 The trouble is that Mr. Oliver's own 
 admirers think Mm eloquent, and consider 
 him to have put the arguments for Con- 
 scription most skilfully — in fact, ingeniously ! 
 From which it will begin to appear to the 
 reader, without any trouble on the part of 
 
28 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 his opponents, that Mr. Oliver is, after all, 
 only a very puzzle-headed person, playing 
 at being a prophet. Like FalstafF — of 
 whose personal charm he is not devoid — 
 he knows the right thing by instinct. In 
 one place he is at pains to explain to us 
 " how good the grounds were on which the 
 best-informed and most efficient bureaucracy 
 in the world decided that the British Empire 
 would remain neutral in the present war. 
 Looked at from the strictly intellectual 
 standpoint, the reasons which satisfied 
 German statesmen with regard to Britain's 
 neutrality were overwhehning, . . . None 
 the less, the judgment of the Kaiser and his 
 Ministers was not only bad, but inexcusably 
 bad. We expect more from statesmen than 
 that they should arrive at logical conclu- 
 sions. Logic in such cases is nothing; all 
 that matters is to be right ; but unless 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 29 
 
 instinct rules and reason serves, right judg- 
 ment will rarely be arrived at in such 
 matters as these." 
 
 It is worth while to pause for a moment 
 over this Falstaffian exposition. A little 
 while before, it will be remembered, Mr. 
 Oliver had been explaining that Lord 
 Roberts's highest intellectual quality was 
 his instinct. Now we learn from him that 
 everything concerned with ascertaining the 
 actual trend of events is " strictly intel- 
 lectual," and has nothing to do with instinct. 
 Further, the German bureaucracy were the 
 best informed in the world, and they had 
 " overwhelmingly " good ** grounds " for 
 their judgment. Still, their judgment was 
 not only bad, but inexcusably bad ; and this 
 because — with all their concern to acquire 
 information — they were really logical and 
 lacked instinct. Now, seeing that instinct 
 
30 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 was conferred upon Lord Roberts and 
 (by implication) on Mr. Oliver by special 
 miracle, it seems hard to pronounce the 
 Germans inexcusable for not having it. 
 And the rest of us, being left like the 
 Germans to our unaided faculties (though 
 the Germans, having Gott viit Uns, of 
 course do not admit any such thing), are 
 driven to ask whether our inspired instructor 
 is not, after all, only a German with a 
 difference — a person convinced that he 
 knows all things when he knows nothing 
 *' that matters"; a person who has been at 
 a University and thinks that logic consists 
 in guessing wrong, and that instinct is divine 
 revelation — in short, a puzzle-headed leader 
 of the puzzle-headed. 
 
 After all, the rest of us have our instincts, 
 though we lack the courage to call them 
 Providential illuminations. And some of 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 31 
 
 us had an instinct about Mr. Oliver from 
 his preface onwards ; though we still took 
 the trouble to read him. Not being satisfied 
 that the affirmation of one's instinct is a 
 decisive substitute for argument, we are fain 
 to defer avowal of what instinct hinted. 
 But the reader who has noted that dis- 
 closure about Providence and Lord Roberts 
 is apt to feel new instinctive stirrings when 
 he reads shortly afterwards that, " Whether 
 the prevailing priesthood wears white robes 
 and fillets, or rich vestments, or cassocks 
 and Geneva bands, or the severer modern 
 garb of the professor or politician, it appears 
 to be equally prone to dogmatic blasphemy. 
 There is no proof that the war was pre- 
 ordained either by a Christian God or by 
 the laws of Pagan Nature." Dogmatic 
 blasphemy, like instinct and pohtical virtue, 
 would seem to be the preserve of the 
 
32 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Oliverian. The proof that the instinct for 
 Conscription comes straight from Providence 
 is clear, of course, to him. 
 
 And yet Mr. Oliver, not content v^ith 
 informing us that he has an instinct for 
 which Providence has drawn aside the veil 
 that hampers ordinary instinctive vision, has 
 been at pains to write a bulky book in which, 
 most of the time, he puts on the semblance 
 of a mere reasoner. He offers what his 
 admirers believe to be evidence, and what 
 some of them declare to be convincing argu- 
 ments. They have even been heard to call 
 him a logical reasoner. Apparently they 
 feel that to order readers to accept what 
 they are told by a writer who has instinct 
 aided by revelation from Providence is not 
 quite a good enough way of subverting the 
 Party System and converting the nation. 
 If the present writer were to say that Mr. 
 
AVHY MR. OLIVP]R WROTE 33 
 
 Oliver is an emotionalist devoid of logic and 
 avowedly enlightened by miracle (which in 
 his case would certainly seem to be neces- 
 sary), they would probably disown the soft 
 impeachment, and challenge antagonists to 
 confute him on the merits of his case. 
 
 That is what it is here proposed to do ; 
 but the Oliverians would really do well to 
 settle with Mr. Oliver as to what their case 
 is to be. As Lord JMelbourne told his 
 Cabinet, it does not matter much what 
 they say, but they had better say the same 
 thing. JNIr. Oliver recognizes the sagacity 
 of Lincoln ; and it was Lincoln who pointed 
 out that you can fool some of the people 
 all the time, and all of the people some of 
 the time, but not all the people all the 
 time. 
 
 In this matter, as in others, there is a 
 notable community of feeling between Mr. 
 
34 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Oliver and the extremists at the other pole 
 of *' instinct." The conscientious objectors 
 like him, feel that they have an inner light, 
 which outshines all other men's reasoning, 
 and nullifies logic. Their sincere disregard 
 of logic is proved — in a number of cases— 
 by their declaration that they will do 
 nothing which can even indirectly assist 
 war, whereas not one has refused to pay the 
 additional income-tax imposed for w^ar pur- 
 poses. But, as Mr. Oliver insists, logic does 
 not matter when you have instinct ; and most 
 people, on the other hand, seem to feel that 
 the inner light does not matter much, either. 
 In view, then, of the ostensibly general 
 assent to the laws of reason, it seems fitting 
 to deal with Mr. Oliver's case as he in general 
 presents it, dismissing as an irrelevant device 
 his claim to Providential backing. 
 
 He has written his book, he tells us, to 
 
WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 
 
 establish the Need for Conscription ; and by 
 " establish " he must be held to mean " prove," 
 or **give reasons for," unless he wishes to be 
 regarded simply as a British Mahdi, demand- 
 ing the allegiance of the faithful. At the 
 same time he has avowedly devoted half of 
 his book to topics which diverge from that 
 purpose, because " compression is a difficult 
 and lengthy process." Further, as he tells 
 us in his preface, " the greater part of this 
 volume has been written in haste." Mr. 
 Oliver emulates the — perhaps legendary — 
 Irishman who wrote a long letter because 
 he had not time to write a short one. And 
 he has written in haste, and with some fifty 
 per cent, of avowed irrelevance, a book 
 which in all its parts runs to incrimination, 
 recrimination, and aspersion of all who sub- 
 stantially disagree with him, incidentally 
 impugning the honesty of the majority of 
 
36 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 politicians and the character or the capacity 
 or the sincerity of the nation's leaders — to 
 say nothing of all lawyer-politicians and 
 most priests and professors. And all this in 
 the name of national unity in war-time, and 
 the principles of personal discipline and un- 
 questioning obedience to the need of the 
 State. 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE 
 OF WAR 
 
CHAPTER 111 
 
 CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF W^AR 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to discuss here the 
 question whether Conscription was needed 
 in order to win the war. Tliat was not and 
 is not Mr. Ohver's objective. If he has any 
 general principle at all, it is this, that Con- 
 scription is the way, and the only way, to 
 prevent war ; that it must be maintained at 
 all times, to that end ; and that if we had had 
 Conscription in Britain we should not have 
 had the war — or need not have had it. This 
 doctrine pervades Mr. Oliver's book from 
 beginning to end, as it always pervaded the 
 propaganda of the National Service League. 
 The fact that some of its leaders — including 
 
 39 
 
40 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Lord Roberts — from time to time preached 
 the older doctrine that war is a beneficent 
 and purifying thing, which saves nations 
 from decadence, does not alter the other 
 fact. As Mr. Oliver insists, logic does not 
 matter when you are a Conscriptionist upon 
 instinct. 
 
 Working up to his thesis that British 
 Conscription could have prevented the war, 
 Mr. Oliver makes early play with the pro- 
 position put by M. Sazonof, on July 25, 
 1914, "that if Britain then took her stand 
 firmly with France and Russia there would 
 be no war ; but that if we failed them then, 
 rivers of blood would flow, and in the end 
 we should be dragged into war." Of course 
 Mr. Oliver does not believe the first of these 
 three propositions. His own (later) state- 
 ment is that " it was clearly absurd to think 
 that our own small force was at all adequate, 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 41 
 
 in a military sense, to deter Germany from 
 engaging in a war of aggression."* But he 
 thinks it good business to make play with 
 M. Sazonof s utterance in such a way as to 
 suggest that M. Sazonof thinks England is 
 to blame for the war — this by way of pro- 
 moting the unity of the Allies. He asks : 
 " Was M. Sazonof right ?"t and he affects to 
 leave the question open, while believing that 
 M. Sazonof was wTong, in the sense which 
 he by implication gives to M. Sazonofs 
 words. M. Sazonof held that *' unfortunately 
 Germany was convinced that she could count 
 upon the neutrality of England." All the 
 while Mr. Oliver is convinced that, even if 
 Germany had expected England to fight, 
 our small force was quite inadequate to 
 deter Germany from waging a war of 
 aggression. 
 
 * P. 260. t P, 32. 
 
42 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 What he is oftenest sure of — one must 
 not put the case higher than that — is that 
 " This war was not inevitable ; it could have 
 been avoided, but on one condition — if 
 England had been prepared. England was 
 not prepared, either morally or materially."* 
 Preparation, for Mr. Oliver, means a con- 
 script army, on the German scale. If any 
 positive meaning can be attached to any 
 of his utterances, he means here that an 
 England with an army on the Continental 
 scale could have deterred Germany from 
 aggression. 
 
 This would seem to be clear enough ; yet 
 a little earlier we find Mr. Oliver, comment- 
 ing on the American Civil War, deciding 
 " how futile is the assurance that economic 
 and material considerations will suffice to 
 make war impossible between nations who 
 
 * P. SI. 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 43 
 
 have not even the tie of a common mother- 
 tongue."* Military strength would seem to 
 be a material consideration, even in the 
 elastic terminology of Mr. Oliver. So that 
 in one mood he is sure that neither moral 
 nor material considerations can deter nations 
 from war, and in another mood equally sure 
 that material considerations can have this 
 deterrent effect. Some of Mr. Oliver's 
 adherents will probably reply that he means 
 '* only in certain cases," that he speaks of 
 this war in particular. But if Mr. Oliver 
 only meant that the establishment of a con- 
 script army would have prevented war with 
 Germany in 1914, while leaving it possible in 
 any future year, he would be trifling rather 
 too grossly with his readers. His argument 
 means, if it is anything more than a piece of 
 Northcliffian journalism, framed for mere 
 * P. 11. 
 
44 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 momentary aspersion, that Germany would 
 have given up aggression if Britain had 
 adopted compulsory service before 1914, 
 and that all other military dangers could be 
 similarly averted. 
 
 So that, as always in the polemic of Mr. 
 Oliver and the National Service League, we 
 have our choice between two fundamentally 
 frustrative propositions — that war will never 
 cease, and that it can be prevented by 
 universal armament on the largest possible 
 scale. Between these contradictions Mr. 
 Oliver passes his entire mental life. He is 
 " born divided," as somebody said of ancient 
 Greece ; and he solaces himself, as we have 
 seen, with the pronouncement that logic 
 does not matter, and that it is instinct that 
 settles at any given moment what is right, 
 in any calculation as to the future. To 
 admit that neither instinct nor logic can 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF W^AR 45 
 
 safely predict the future is far too unpreten- 
 tious a course for Mr. Oliver, and would, 
 besides, be incompatible with the premiss of 
 Providential revelation. 
 
 His method, accordingly, is to advance 
 his contradictions alternately, like the figures 
 in a Swiss clock. And, as he has some 
 aspirations to philosophy, he even puts a 
 sort of philoso23hic case for the method of 
 Conscription. He leans much to aphorism, 
 and is understood to have given much satis- 
 faction to a select circle of readers by such 
 profundities as these : 
 
 Things unmerchantable cannot be pur- 
 chased with the finest of fine gold. 
 
 Unfortunately, the inabihty to think a 
 thing is no more a protection against its 
 occurrence than the inability to see a thing 
 gives security to the ostrich. 
 
 The dream of Gei^man expansion, as year 
 by year it took firmer hold upon the popular 
 imagination, produced, as might have been 
 expected, a desire that it might he realized. 
 
46 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Intellectually disciplined by such com- 
 paratively safe thinking, Mr. Oliver from 
 time to time essays higher flights. As 
 thus: 
 
 The British people knew that Germany 
 was talking nonsense; but, unfortunately, 
 they never fully realized that she was sincere, 
 and meant all the things she said (p. 40). 
 
 This may be taken as a presentation of 
 what Mr. Oliver later calls the One-ness 
 of Things. But he is not wedded to that 
 way of thinking, any more than to any 
 other. As he tells us : 
 
 The mind of the ordinary man, like that 
 of the philosopher, is hypnotized by a basic 
 assumption of the One-ness of Things. He 
 wants to trace all trouble to a single root 
 [in Mr. Oliver's normal manner], as if it 
 were a corn and could be extracted. But 
 in an inquiry like the present we are con- 
 fronted at every turn with the Two ness of 
 Things, or, indeed, with the Multiplicity of 
 Things (p. 79). 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF V\^AR 47 
 
 Therefore we must not at this point 
 believe what Mr. OHver told us on p. 40. 
 At p. 81 we are warned that our ** tempta- 
 tion " is " to visuaHze a single, gross, over- 
 bearing, and opinionated type of the Teuton 
 species." When Mr. Oliver is on the tack 
 of Oneness, Germany is " she," meaning all 
 the things " she " says. When he is awake 
 to Two-ness and MultipHcity, his previous 
 vision of " she " is a " temptation " which 
 we must eschew. In the same fashion Mr. 
 Oliver is honestly hostile to " dogmatic blas- 
 phemy " when he is not dogmatically blas- 
 pheming on his own account. 
 
 Thus it comes about that the main 
 purpose of his book is to maintain both 
 terms of a loose contradiction. For a 
 strictly logical reader it would matter little 
 further that both propositions are incapable 
 of proof, and probably both false, one being, 
 
48 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 on realization, a kind of delirious absurdity. 
 But, as Mr. Oliver has really some ground 
 for believing (witness the sales of his 
 book), the majority of his public are 
 not strictly logical, and it is accordingly 
 expedient to deal with the two terms 
 of his contradiction separately, on their 
 merits. 
 
 First in natural order of discussion comes 
 the theorem that if Britain had had com- 
 pulsory service before 1914 the present war 
 would not have taken place. It is significant 
 of Mr. Oliver's hazy habit of mind that he 
 never chronologically limits his proposition, 
 or discusses what might have happened at 
 any given stage of a process of preparation. 
 Ostensibly the proposition is : Had England 
 in 1914 possessed a conscript army of (say) 
 three or four millions, Germany would not 
 have entered upon the present war unless 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 49 
 
 she were assured that England would remain 
 neutral. That is to say, we should not have 
 had the war of 1914-1916, with Germany and 
 Austria and Bulgaria and Turkey arrayed 
 against Russia, Serbia, France, Belgium, 
 Italy, and Britain. Such a proposition, 
 obviously, might be assumed to be true 
 without in the slightest degree making for 
 the larger proposition that British Conscrip- 
 tion could prevent war, either for Britain or 
 for any of the present belligerents. For the 
 slightest consideration of the case raises the 
 two alternative questions whether (1) an 
 adoption of a system of Conscription by 
 Britain might not have led to an earlier 
 war ; and (2) whether, supposing Britain to 
 have established a system of Conscription 
 by 1914, foreign alliances would not by that 
 time have been so rearranged that a war 
 equally vast and much more disadvan- 
 
 4 
 
50 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 tageous for England would have been the 
 result. 
 
 It will be observed that Mr. Oliver and 
 his party, conscious as they are of their 
 instinctive sagacity, never contemplate the 
 question whether a resort to Conscription in 
 this country, at any time after 1902, would 
 or would not have precipitated German 
 aggression. To omit to take into account 
 such a contingency will by many people be 
 recognized to be a course worthy only of 
 simpletons ; and Mr. Oliver and his friends 
 do omit it. There is no simpleton like your 
 ideologue conscious of instinctive insight 
 and Divine guidance. Mr. Oliver does in 
 one passage recognize that Germany's main 
 motive for attacking Russia in 1914 was 
 that " she stood midway in a great military 
 and naval reformation, than which no situa- 
 tion is more deplorable for the purposes of 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVErNTIVE OF WAR 51 
 
 carrying on a campaign." * That is to say, 
 a country changing its mihtary system under 
 the eye of a powerful enemy determined 
 upon aggression puts itself in a very de- 
 plorable position. As to Germany's deter- 
 mination, JNIr. Oliver avows his conviction 
 many times over. In so many words he 
 declares *'that she deliberately aimed at 
 war, and that when there seemed a chance 
 of her plan miscarrying, she promptly took 
 steps to make peace impossible " (p. 35). 
 
 Yet Mr. Oliver always reasons — for he 
 constantly goes through the forms of 
 reasoning — on the assumption that if at 
 any time Britain had decided to create a 
 conscript army, avowing (as he and his 
 friends would have taken care to do) that 
 
 * P. 47. This was the view of the German 
 Ambassador at Vienna. Mr. Oliver in effect concurs. 
 Compare pp. 23, 276. 
 
52 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 she did so with a special eye to Germany, 
 Germany would have sat quiet and allowed 
 the process to be peacefully completed. 
 Such is the faith of the Conscriptionist 
 ideologue. 
 
 There is no time reservation, be it 
 observed, in Mr. Oliver's exposition. He 
 points a series of six " warnings " between 
 1905 and 1913, plainly implying that at any 
 one of these points Britain would have done 
 well to adopt Conscription. On every 
 assumption upon which Mr. OHver pro- 
 ceeds, it follows that Germany, being deter- 
 mined to crush England, would have pre- 
 cipitated war precisely at the moment at 
 which it would have meant the maximum 
 of disadvantage to us. To argue otherwise 
 is to negate all Mr. Oliver's premisses as to 
 the deliberate purpose of the enemy. Of 
 course Mr. Oliver can fall back — he probably 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 53 
 
 will — on the position that we ought to have 
 had Conscription long before 1900 ; that in 
 that case Germany would not have provoked 
 war; and that, even if she had forced it while 
 we were setting up Conscription, we should 
 have been no worse off than we actually 
 were. But even if the last of these propo- 
 sitions were granted, we should have arrived, 
 not at the proof, but at the utter stultifica- 
 tion of Mr. Oliver's thesis that a resort to a 
 policy of Conscription between 1905 and 
 1913 would have prevented this war. In 
 the terms of the case, it would just have 
 hastened the war. 
 
 As for the alternative thesis that had we 
 had Conscription before 1900 there would 
 have been no war with Germany, and no 
 great European war, it is again a negation 
 of all Mr. Oliver's own premisses. When 
 his immediate aim is to show that pacifists 
 
54 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 in general are fools, he insists on the utter 
 incalculableness of the forces which produce 
 wars. They are best to be understood or 
 appreciated (he assures us) by listening to 
 music. Some ideal, some passion, some 
 suddenly touched memory, plays upon a 
 nation's heart-strings, and war ensues. But 
 as soon as the pacifists have been duly 
 disparaged, Mr. Oliver's instinct alters its 
 objective. It is now essential to explain 
 that wars can be prevented if only we do 
 what Mr. Oliver wants — which oddly happens 
 to be in effect what militarists have always 
 wanted to do, and have normally done, 
 through ten thousand years of human 
 history, red on every page with battle 
 blood. 
 
 Equally positive is his premiss as to the 
 intentions of the German " she." In so 
 many words he tells us that *' German dis- 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 55 
 
 trust of England was based upon the surest 
 of all foundations — upon her own fixed and 
 envious determination to overthrow our 
 Empire and rob us of our property."* But 
 as soon as the question becomes one of 
 policy, Mr. Oliver's accommodating instinct 
 informs him that the fixed and envious 
 determination can be unfixed and put to 
 sleep by the simple device of establishing 
 Conscription in Great Britain. Hatred of 
 our power is to be turned away by making 
 our power at once greater and more obvious. 
 As to German hatred, JNIr. Oliver is suffi- 
 ciently explicit. Of all the forces making 
 for war in Europe, he writes : 
 
 By far the most formidable in recent 
 times have been the attitude of public 
 opinion in Germany towards England ; the 
 hatred of England which has been sedu- 
 lously and systematically inculcated among 
 
 * P. 70. 
 
56 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 the people of all ranks ; the suspicions of 
 our policy which have been sown broad- 
 cast ; the envy of our position in the world 
 which has been instilled, without remission, 
 by all and sundry the agencies and indi- 
 viduals subject to the orders and inspira- 
 tion of Government. An obsession has 
 been created, by these means, which has 
 distorted the whole field of German vision. 
 National ill-will accordingly has refused to 
 yield to any persuasion. Like its contrary, 
 the passion of love, it has burned all the 
 more fiercely, bei7ig unrequited. 
 
 The fatuity of the two last words is 
 notable, even in Mr. Oliver's propaganda. 
 Every one of his readers must be perfectly 
 well aware that they are false. The journal- 
 istic faction to which Mr. Oliver belongs 
 has requited German hatred at every step 
 with a hatred to the full as blatant, even if 
 only sectional ; and if at any stage stimula- 
 tion of German hatred could be said to be 
 noticeably lacking in the rest of the British 
 Press, the politicians of Mr. Oliver's way of 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 57 
 
 thinking have seen to it that the stimulus 
 was given. That, of course, is all in the 
 ordinary way of national life — so obviously 
 so that it would be idle to deplore it. But 
 it might have been supposed that even the 
 smallest modicum of common sense would 
 have revealed to JMr. Oliver and his ad- 
 herents that such a state of national hatred 
 as he describes in Germany could not pos- 
 sibly be modified by a marked new develop- 
 ment of British military power. 
 
 If it be answered that the question is not 
 the removal of German hatred, but proper 
 provision against it, we come to the next 
 step in the argument — if, that is, the 
 instinct - illuminated Conscriptionist will 
 condescend to seem to argue. The prop- 
 osition at this stage will presumably be 
 that with a conscript army as well as a 
 supreme navy Britain could defy German 
 
58 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 hatred. But what Mr. Ohver is contending 
 for is that British Conscription would not 
 merely make Britain safe in war, but would 
 prevent war. And this is the proposition 
 that raises the fundamental question of the 
 sanity of the Conscriptionist instinct. 
 
 Men who possess the normal instincts, but 
 are wont to check them by reflection, can 
 at once realize that a Germany filled with 
 hate and distrust of England would either, 
 as aforesaid, precipitate a war while England 
 was ostensibly getting ready for one, or, if 
 for any reason unable to do so, would re- 
 adjust its whole system of aUiances. Mr. 
 Oliver and his faction, in their simple- 
 minded way, now take for granted — that 
 is, when they are putting the thesis of the 
 prevention of war — that whatever European 
 war might have taken place in this genera- 
 tion would have been a war with the chief 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 59 
 
 belligerents placed exactly as they now 
 stand : Russia allied with France, Britain, 
 and presumably Italy, against the Central 
 Powers. But Mr. Oliver's doctrine implies 
 that the policy of Conscription should have 
 been resorted to long ago. Supposing, then, 
 it had been resorted to in view of the " warn- 
 ings" of the period 1899-1902, what were 
 likely to have been the results in the way of 
 alliances ? At that time, as a result of the 
 happy play of the instincts which guide 
 Mr. Oliver, Britain was in bad odour from 
 St. Petersburg to Rome. Germany, about 
 whose antipathy there could be no doubt, 
 was slightly more correct in her attitude 
 than was France, where the antipathy was 
 certainly vigorous. One result of French 
 manifestations was a gross and open menace 
 to France by Mr. Chamberlain, one of the 
 few statesmen admired and extolled by Mr. 
 
60 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Oliver. Had Britain in 1903 — ostensibly 
 the most favourable time — begun to establish 
 Conscription, what would have been the 
 result, as regards international alliances ? 
 
 Will the most puzzle-headed of the 
 Olircrians pretend that it would have been 
 an alliance with France ? We have Mr. 
 Oliver's own reminder that at Leicester, on 
 November 80, 1899, Mr. Chamberlain "had 
 even gone the length of suggesting an 
 alliance [with Germany], and had been 
 denounced immediately by the whole 
 German Press, although it was understood 
 at the time that he had spoken with the august 
 encouragement of the Kaiser and his Chan- 
 cellorr'^ That is to say, Mr. Oliver believes 
 — let us say, knows — that his ideal English 
 statesman was in 1899 perfectly prepared to 
 enter into an alliance with Germany against 
 ^ P. ^b. 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 61 
 
 France and Russia. Add that many people 
 in France were at the same time prepared 
 to enter into an alHance with Germany 
 against England, and we have a broad 
 indication of the possibility of international 
 developments under the sway of "instinct." 
 Now, that the whole German Press would 
 denounce a proposal known to be favoured 
 by the Kaiser and his Chancellor is sufficiently 
 improbable. But even if it were so in 1899, 
 when France was equally hostile, it is fairly 
 obvious that just as French feeling was later 
 modified, so German feeling might have 
 been, provided that Britain had rapidly set up 
 a system of Conscription, and had remained 
 hotly hostile to France, under Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's guidance. The Kaiser's own feehngs 
 — or at least his policy — had altered after 
 the explosion evoked by his famous message 
 to President Kruger ; and German policy in 
 
62 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 the matter of alliances has in the historic past 
 been at least as adaptable as that of other 
 countries. If, then, Mr. Oliver could have 
 had his way in 1903, with Mr. Chamberlain in 
 effective command, Europe might very well 
 have had, instead of the present war, a war 
 in which England was the ally of Germany 
 against France, Belgium, and Russia. For 
 Mr. Oliver must be well aware that, given 
 such a fatal alliance to begin with, the 
 military '* instinct " in Britain would have 
 accepted the foul invasion of Belgium, just 
 as the military instinct has done in Germany. 
 As he uneasily remembers, it was Lord 
 Roberts who in this country gave the 
 authoritative military certificate to German- 
 ism : 
 
 Germany strikes when Germany's hour has 
 struck. That is the time-honoured policy 
 of her Foreign Office. . It is an eoccel- 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 63 
 
 lent policy. It is, or should be, the policy of 
 every nation prepared to play a great part 
 in history.^ 
 
 It will hardly be disputed that Lord 
 Roberts, as a soldier, would in any war have 
 reckoned it no part of his business to discuss 
 the ethics of the military action of his 
 country's ally. It would seem then that, 
 whatever else our alleged '* unpreparedness " 
 has brought about, it has saved us from 
 that alliance with Germany against the 
 cause of civilization which would probably 
 have come about if in 1903 we had prepared 
 as Mr. Oliver would have liked, with ]\Ir. 
 Chamberlain in effective command of the 
 ship of State. 
 
 Of course that was not the only possi- 
 bility. Mr. Oliver can see and say when it 
 suits him that the risks of misunderstanding 
 
 * Speech at Manchester^ October 22, 191 2, quoted 
 by Mr. Oliver, pp. 333, 334. 
 
64 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 and war between nations are numerous. 
 We have had many occasions of friction with 
 Russia in Asia ; and it is one of the claims 
 of Viscount Grey to national gratitude that 
 he has always saved us from that fatal 
 growth of animosity towards Russia which 
 the Conscriptionist type of politician was 
 at all times so ready to foster, sometimes 
 with the assistance of the professed pacifists, 
 whose dislike of Russian autocracy made 
 them ready to face war with Russia in the 
 supposed interests of humanity. The '' un- 
 prepared " policy, so called, in the hands of 
 Liberal statesmen, has kept us on the side of 
 civilization against its worst enemy, when 
 the Oliverian policy would either have landed 
 us in alliance with German militarism, or — 
 what would have been as disastrous materi- 
 ally as that would have been morally — 
 brought about a Russo-German alliance 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF V^AR 65 
 
 in opposition to which we might or might 
 not have had the support of the Western 
 Powers now fighting by our side. 
 
 If it be asked why these possibiUties are 
 here discussed, now that the Fates have 
 happily ranked us on the right side, the 
 answer is simple. It is Mr. Oliver and his 
 faction who, by unscrupulously arguing that 
 the war is due to British " unpreparedness," 
 force a true statement of the case. Their 
 object is not merely to insure a continuance 
 of Conscription after the war. They are 
 bent above all things on discrediting those 
 who resisted their short-sighted and fore- 
 thoughtless policy. And it is their malice 
 that exposes them. Men bent simply on 
 securing Conscription, as being in their 
 opinion the only adequate means of national 
 defence, would have been content to put the 
 positive reasons as they saw them. If they 
 
 5 
 
66 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 really believed they had good reasons to 
 show, and put any reliance on the process 
 of rational persuasion, they would not have 
 resorted to the quackery of claiming that 
 Lord Roberts had Divine illumination from 
 Providence, and at the same time that right 
 instinct was all that was required, the right 
 instinct being their specialty. Above all, 
 if they had possessed what other people are 
 content to call common sense, they would 
 never have put forward the worse than 
 empty pretence that any form of military 
 preparation by Britain would have precluded 
 the possibility of war with an enemy whom 
 they themselves represented to be unalter- 
 ably determined on aggrandizement at 
 Britain's expense. 
 
 Bent above all things on stirring up 
 domestic strife in war-time, they blindly 
 argue that the adoption of Conscription by 
 
CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 67 
 
 Britain at any time in the past would have 
 resulted in our having the present alliances 
 and no others ; though they av ow that in 
 1899 Mr. Chamberlain, with the assent of 
 the Kaiser and his Chancellor, was anxious 
 for a German alliance. Blind to the im- 
 plications of their own theory, they assume 
 at the same time that our adoption of Con- 
 scription at any time after 1906 would have 
 led to no precipitation of war by Germany ; 
 when, on Lord Roberts's avowed view, that 
 would have been precisely the time for 
 Germany to strike, catching us at the 
 moment of maximum confusion in our 
 military system. And, capping all their 
 absurdities by a supreme absurdity, they 
 all along gravely parade the theory that 
 peace on earth is to be secured by all the 
 nations of the earth being at all times armed 
 to the utmost of their power — this while 
 
68 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 positing for the very purpose of the thesis 
 the fundamental and immutable character 
 of the war spirit, the war instinct, and the 
 thousand and one incalculable motives and 
 incitements to war. On this supreme ab- 
 surdity it is necessary to concentrate our 
 thoughts. 
 
THE CHIMERA OF GREAT 
 ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHIMERA OF GREAT ARMIES 
 WITHOUT WAR 
 
 In his interesting prefatory account of the 
 late General Gough, Mr. Oliver tells how 
 that brilliant soldier believed that the war 
 "might have been avoided upon one con- 
 dition, and one only — if England had been 
 prepared." " I don't think," he continues — 
 
 " I don't think I have ever known anyone 
 — certainly never any anti-militarist — whose 
 hatred and horror of war gave the same im- 
 pression of intensity and reality as his. Not 
 metaphorically, but as a bare fact, his feel- 
 ings with regard to it were too deep for 
 words ; he would suddenly break off speak- 
 ing about things which had occurred in his 
 own experience — in particular, about loss of 
 friends and comrades. He was an Irishman, 
 
 71 
 
72 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 and had not the impassive coldness of some 
 of the great soldiers. But most of all he 
 hated war when it was not inevitable — 
 when with foresight and courage it might 
 have been averted, as in his opinion this 
 war might have been." 
 
 Elsewhere Mr. Oliver expresses a doubt 
 whether any war was ever inevitable ; and 
 he well may. The philosophic problem of 
 the meaning of the word '* inevitable " is not 
 one for Mr. Oliver's intellect to sound ; but, 
 taking him on his own ground, we have 
 only to point out that in terms of his own 
 doctrine all wars may in future be prevented 
 by the simple device of universal Conscrip- 
 tion, followed up by constant lavish ex- 
 penditure upon armaments. This view, of 
 course, he holds along with his other doctrine 
 that neither moral nor material considera- 
 tions can prevent war, even between people 
 of the same race, when cause for war is felt 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 73 
 
 to exist, and his avowed conviction that 
 permanent cause for war with England 
 exists in the German consciousness. But, 
 then, that is Mr. Ohver's way — his way of 
 exemphfying " the Two-ness of things." 
 
 Some of his readers must have in- 
 stinctively, if not logically, shunned this 
 ever-present contradiction of his book by 
 simply adopting the more alluring of the 
 two formulas of the National Service 
 League — the formula that preparedness can 
 prevent all war. It appears to be quite 
 certain that thousands of that faction cherish 
 that incomparable chimera. It is implicit 
 in the conviction of General Gough that 
 this war would have been avoided if Britain 
 had been prepared with a conscript army. 
 If this war, why not every war ? By 
 common consent, Germany is as determined 
 an enemy as we are ever likely to have ; and 
 
74 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 in the terms of the Conscriptionist argument 
 she will remain a determined enemy. Yet 
 we are told that there need never be any 
 war if we have a conscript army and are 
 alwa3'^s ready to fight. If this is true as 
 between Britain and Germany, it must be 
 equally true as between any other two or 
 more countries. Neither Russia nor France, 
 neither Italy nor Spain, need fear war if only 
 they keep armed to the eyes, on Mr. Oliver's 
 principles. 
 
 It will perhaps be suggested that the 
 small States, however fully armed, can 
 never be safe from aggression. What, then, 
 is the prescription for them? Apparently 
 Mr. Oliver holds that they should be safe- 
 guarded by larger States ; though there is 
 something suspicious about his assent to the 
 doctrine of Lord Roberts that riches in- 
 sufficiently defended are " provocative." At 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 75 
 
 least he professes to desire to maintain 
 things as they were. We have, he insists, 
 a preponderant interest in the Balance of 
 Power in Europe ; and British preparedness, 
 he equally insists, is the great security 
 against European war. Then, the smaller 
 States have only to do their best and trust 
 to the protection of the larger States. Thus, 
 all round, the theory maintains that universal 
 Conscription will secure universal peace. 
 
 We have now to try to conceive the state 
 of mind of men who count upon the main- 
 tenance of perpetual peace by perpetual 
 armaments on the largest scale that the 
 world has yet seen. Generation after gener- 
 ation, century after century, the flower of 
 the manhood of the world is to be zealously 
 trained to war, and is never to fight. Every 
 device for defence and attack, every possi- 
 bility in munitions, in destructive mvention, 
 
76 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 is to be anxiously developed in perpetuity, 
 and is never to be employed. The aero- 
 planes are to be multiplied by the thousand, 
 and the battleships and submarines by the 
 hundred ; the new types are perpetually to 
 supersede the old, in order that the military 
 power of each State may remain " efficient"; 
 the study of the art of war is to be sleep- 
 lessly pursued ; new guns are always to be 
 on trial ; twenty or more millions of men 
 are always to be in active training through- 
 out Europe, under skilled officers ; and none 
 of them is ever to kill or be killed. And 
 this universal training of the manhood of 
 the world for a function that is never to be 
 exercised is to constitute a perpetual school 
 of character, discipline, patriotism, and all 
 the manly virtues — such an education of the 
 human race, in short, as will be worth the 
 billions it will annually cost. 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 77 
 
 The men who grind out this moonshine 
 are in the habit of labelHng as sentimental- 
 ists the professed pacifists who avow the 
 hope of attaining perpetual peace by 
 other paths ; and doubtless many pacifists 
 are sentimentalists. But it is inconceivable 
 that any of them have ever attained to such 
 hallucination as is thus solemnly formulated 
 by the Oliverians. Sentimentalism consists 
 in the trick or habit of keeping a sentiment 
 between yourself and realities, thus manu- 
 facturing self-illusion. Few of us, probably, 
 wholly escape it ; and it is the part of average 
 wisdom to be on guard against it. Where 
 the pacifist is apt to fail is in letting the 
 radiance of his ideal blind him to the strength 
 of the contrary forces of the contrary ideal. 
 In war-time he is apt to lose his sense of 
 actuality still more completely. But at least 
 the typical or the average pacifist hopes to 
 
78 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 attain peace by cultivating political sanity 
 in that direction. He hopes so to convince 
 men of the moral and material evils of war 
 as to persuade them to set up a machinery 
 of arbitration and international law which 
 can settle all national quarrels ; and often 
 he proposes to back that legal machinery 
 with international force enough to give effect 
 to its findings. He may or may not be over- 
 optimistic, but he is proceeding on compara- 
 tively rational lines. He in eiFect maintains 
 that, when all or most men really want to 
 preserve the peace, they will make peace- 
 like arrangements. But the Oliverians, 
 claiming also to be lovers of peace and 
 haters of war, solemnly propose to attain 
 universal peace by eternal and strenuous 
 preparation everywhere, at enormous cost, 
 for the war that is never to take place. 
 Sentimentalism seems too mild a name 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 79 
 
 for such solemn lunacy ; but perhaps senti- 
 mentalism is the right diagnosis after all. 
 What has happened is the total exclusion of 
 critical reason from a propaganda which be- 
 gins by avowing its reliance upon instinct 
 plus supernatural revelation, but seeks all 
 the while to use terms of persuasion, which 
 belong to the procedure of reason. The 
 difficulty is to decide whether all the men 
 who thus ecstatically propound the crassest 
 absurdity are speaking with their tongues in 
 their cheeks or have real faith in the folly 
 they propound. It is very hard to decide. 
 Some are probably dishonest ; many, surely, 
 are sincere. General Gough, we are told, 
 profoundly hated war, and would have liked 
 to go through life as a soldier without ever 
 fighting ; yet no one doubts his fighting 
 faculty. Whether he would have thought 
 this war avoidable if it had occurred under 
 
80 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 the auspices of his own poUtieal party is an 
 interesting topic for speculation. All that 
 is clear is that men with the militarist bias 
 are capable of a dividedness of soul which 
 points to the primitive and tells of a total 
 failure to think out the problems of actual 
 life. Mr. Oliver's failure in that kind is 
 something stupendous, if he is sincere. And 
 if he is sincere his failure is inevitable, for 
 his mind is on that view simply divided 
 against itself — a Two-ness constantly col- 
 lapsing into Multiplicity, and parading all 
 the while as a One-ness of Instinct. 
 
 But as against his organized absurdity, it 
 is necessary to point out the certainties of 
 things. Universal militarism simply cannot 
 promote peace, because supreme fitness 
 for war inevitably promotes the spirit of 
 war. It might have been supposed that 
 this much was made clear by the modern 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 81 
 
 evolution of Germany. Mr. Oliver, whose 
 admiration for the German fighting machine 
 and the German devotion to Conscription 
 shines through all his polemic, nevertheless 
 declares that in the pursuit of their ideal 
 the Germans have become the enemies of the 
 human race. " The phantasmagoria of the 
 German nightmare " is his phrase for the 
 German state of mind after Bismarck.^ 
 *' Self-confidence and ambition were the 
 original stuff — the warp and the weft — of 
 which the German dream was made ; but 
 these admirable and healthy qualities rapidly 
 underwent a morbid deterioration. Ambi- 
 tion degenerated into groundless suspicion, 
 and self-confidence into arrogance." Yes ; 
 and why ? It admittedly was not through 
 unpreparedness. Were not the suspicion 
 and the arrogance the due outcome of the 
 religion of preparedness ? 
 
 * P. 9Q. 6 
 
82 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 People who are concerned to put instinct 
 under the check of reason, and are not con- 
 scious of acting daily under Divine revelation, 
 are bound to face that problem and think it 
 out. All are agreed that German arrogance 
 and aggressiveness grew up in the atmo- 
 sphere of supreme preparedness, and that 
 nowhere else in the contemporary w^orld 
 have they so flourished. The Oliverians 
 exhort us to attain to the same supreme 
 preparedness, and so create the same atmo- 
 sphere. And how, pray, are we to escape 
 the malady which that atmosphere is seen 
 to generate ? The Oliverians not only do 
 not answer the question : they do not even 
 see it. Their simple assumption is that, 
 when all States are as consummately pre- 
 pared as were the Germans, nobody will be 
 arrogant, and nobody morbidly suspicious ; 
 though they also affirm that in all nations 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 83 
 
 the potentialities of the war spirit are infinite 
 and incalculable. 
 
 We are dealing with a propaganda in 
 which folly worthy of children is formulated 
 with the malice of passion-ruled men. The 
 plain historical truth about the development 
 of modern Europe since 1850 is that ever- 
 widening militarism has generated alike 
 ambition and suspicion up to the point of 
 universal explosion in the most terrific war 
 of all history. Bismarckism grew up side by 
 side with the French Caesarism of the Third 
 Empire, and the folly of Napoleon III. gave 
 Bismarckism its supreme opportunity. A 
 regenerating France found itself, after defeat, 
 menaced again and again by German inso- 
 lence, after letting itself be tempted by 
 Bismarck into flouting Italy ; and a Triple 
 Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, 
 long confronted the Dual Alliance forced 
 
84 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 upon France and Russia. Always there 
 was more and more " preparedness " ; and 
 finally the war flashes out when Britain was 
 better prepared for defence than ever before 
 in her history. And Mr. Oliver melliflu- 
 ously explains that if we had only been 
 much more prepared there need never have 
 been any war at all. Conscription through 
 nine-tenths of Europe makes potentially for 
 pure peace ; but lack of Conscription in the 
 remaining tenth makes a World War. 
 
 Americans will please note the corollary 
 All the world, we are often told, is now 
 interdependent ; and if all Europe in future 
 sticks to Conscription, and yet contrives to 
 get up a war, it will be solely their fault — 
 and China's. When China and the United 
 States raise their conscript armies of twenty 
 millions apiece, with guns and Zeppelins 
 and aeroplanes and submarines and battle- 
 
CHIMERA OF ARMIES WITHOUT WAR 85 
 
 ships in proportion — then there can be no 
 war, and mankind will go on zealously 
 training to the uttermost for the war that 
 will never come, "preparing" till the Happy 
 Day of Judgment, when Lord Roberts and 
 Providence will look down beatifically upon 
 a perfect world, which will nevertheless pass 
 away, in fulfilment of the Providential 
 scheme. 
 
 One thing seems to be certain. If perfect 
 peace is to be the outcome of a general 
 attainment of wisdom, it is not likely to 
 come in our time. There is still folly 
 enough in England, at least, to promise 
 plenty of trouble for the future. The 
 German madness will long have English- 
 men to keep it in countenance. And it 
 will not be an easy task for the saner people 
 to keep the upper hand. But one thing 
 perhaps is already clear. Mr. Oliver, going 
 
86 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 about his congenial task of mischief- making, 
 repeatedly tells us that it is a fatal course to 
 tell the people half-truths. That being so, 
 it is presumably still more fatal to give 
 them a minus quantity. And that, as we 
 have seen and shall see further, is the total 
 effect of Mr. Oliver's propaganda. 
 
THE DREAM OF MILITARISM 
 WITHOUT DISTRUST 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DREAM OF MILITARISM WITHOUT 
 DISTRUST 
 
 Mr. Oijver and his friends will probably 
 meet the foregoing criticism — if they think 
 it worth while to argue against the wrong 
 instinct — by pointing out that Britons are 
 incapable of degenerating in any atmosphere 
 as the Germans have done. Such confidence 
 seems hardly compatible with Mr. Oliver's 
 keen sense of the unworthiness of all his 
 political opponents ; but it happens to be 
 implicit in his case. In this happy land, he 
 feels, self-confidence and ambition can never 
 degenerate into arrogance and morbid dis- 
 trust — not even with Mr. Kipling to play 
 
 89 
 
90 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Poet Laureate. One of the quaintest ex- 
 hibitions of that essential ignorance of mih- 
 tarism which inspires so many lay militarists 
 is Mr. Oliver's warm vituperation of spying. 
 Thus he delivers himself: 
 
 Spying has always been practised since 
 the beginning of time ; but it has rarely 
 been conducted in such a manner as to 
 produce general uneasiness, or any sensible 
 restraint upon private relations. Logically, 
 it would be unfair to condemn recent 
 German enterprises in this direction, seeing 
 that she has only extended an accepted 
 nuisance on to a much vaster scale. But 
 here again logic is a misleading guide. 
 There is something in the very scale of 
 German espionage which has changed the 
 nature of this institution. It has grown 
 into a huge organized industry for the de- 
 bauching of vain, weak, and greedy natures ; 
 for training such men — for the most part of 
 it — into German agents. The result of 
 Teutonic thoroughness in this instance is a 
 domestic intrusion which is odious, as well 
 as a national menace which cannot be dis- 
 regarded. Many of these hostile agencies 
 
MILITARISM WITHOUT DISTRUST 91 
 
 may surely be termed treacherous, seeing 
 that they have aimed, under the guise of 
 friendly intercourse, at forwarding schemes 
 of invasion and conquest.^ 
 
 Then we have one of Mr. Oliver's feline 
 tirades against the *' vulgar, purse-proud 
 fellows" who, having chanced to meet the 
 Kaiser, have thenceforth regarded it as their 
 mission in life to promote friendship between 
 Germany and Britain. This seems rather 
 hard on Mr. Chamberlain, who tried so 
 courageously to set up an Anglo -German 
 alliance, on the Kaiser's urging. For this 
 sort of thing, as Mr. Oliver assures us, we 
 must blame ourselves. But it is different, 
 he explains, 
 
 when we come to the wholesale corruption 
 of friendly nations. . . . The whole of this 
 procedure has been justified in advance and 
 adv^ocated in detail by Bernhardi and the 
 [German professorial] priesthood. ... If 
 
 * P. 141. 
 
92 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 we may use such an old-fashioned term, it 
 appears to us to be wrong. 
 
 If methods such as these are henceforth 
 to be practised by the world in general, 
 must not all international communion be- 
 come impossible as much in time of peace 
 as during a war ? Indeed, must not human 
 existence itself become intolerable ? Friend- 
 liness, hospitality, courtesies of every sort, 
 between men and women of one country 
 and those of another, must cease absolutely, 
 if the world should become a convert to 
 these German doctrines. Travel must cease; 
 for no one likes to be stripped naked and 
 searched at every frontier. Trade and 
 financial operations must also be restricted, 
 one would imagine, to such an extent that 
 ultimately they will wither and die. 
 
 To that pathetic allocution what can we 
 say but, Vous Vavez voulu, George Dandin? 
 Our idealist, with his Janus-mind, is bent on 
 having universal militarism on the German 
 scale — doubtless with German tariffs to 
 boot — yet without any spying, and therefore 
 without any searching at frontiers. No 
 
MILITARISM WITHOUT DISTRUST 93 
 
 extremity of simpletonism seems impossible 
 to Mr. Oliver in his pacifist mood ; and as 
 he is avowedly impenetrable to logic, there 
 is nothing for it but to put in the witness-box 
 against him his esteemed German friend, 
 the Freiherr von Hexenkiichen, whom he 
 manipulates from time to time in a way 
 that sometimes recalls Carlyle (whose 
 " gilded farthings of style " Mr. Oliver so 
 loves to mint), sometimes (not often) Arnold, 
 and sometimes the terrier at the gramophone 
 listening to " his master's voice." Thus 
 writes the Freiherr, in a despatch dropped by 
 Zeppelin, in successful evasion of the Censor, 
 but, as usual, in the wrong back-garden : 
 
 " Can you learn nothing, my dear Oliver, 
 from my disinterested efforts to enlighten 
 you ? After I have so painfully hammered 
 it into you that the national Will to Power 
 is the Will to Conquer, can you not realize 
 that the Will to Conquer means the will to 
 
94 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 use the means necessary for conquest ? You 
 have confessed that your nation has been 
 guilty of self-righteous boastings about its 
 voluntary military system. Do you really 
 suppose that you make amends for these 
 by new self-righteous boastings about 
 the unorganized character of your Spy 
 system ? Posing as a militarist after the 
 German model, you in effect profess to 
 believe that the purpose of a National Army 
 is mere self-defence. I do not wish to be 
 rude, but you compel me to point out that 
 you do not believe anything of the kind : at 
 least you also profess a totally different 
 belief. You and your National Service 
 League have all along used this formula * for 
 national defence,' while you had up your 
 sleeve the other formula that a defensive force 
 which will not cross the frontier * is only a 
 laughing-stock '! None of your opponents, 
 I believe, has ever prevaricated to your 
 people like that. I confess it is hard to 
 make out what are the real beliefs of any 
 man who seriously asserts that the universal 
 establishment of efficient armaments will 
 mean the universal decision that they are 
 never to be used. It is only in England, I 
 believe, that that sort of insanity can find 
 its way into print ; and I despair of 
 
MILITARISM WITHOUT DISTRUST 95 
 
 adequately indicating my estimate of it. 
 What on earth do you suppose miUtary 
 efficiency to mean ? 
 
 ** But on the question of defence and 
 offence it is perhaps possible to bring the 
 truth home to you, at least with the aid of 
 the miracle which you say Providence per- 
 formed for Lord Roberts. If you can 
 assimilate any military ideas at all, as dis- 
 tinguished from patriotic sentiments, you 
 must be aware that Lord Roberts, like 
 every other competent soldier, accepted the 
 German doctrine that offence is the true 
 defence. It is indeed only by way of figure 
 of speech that I call that the German 
 doctrine. It is the doctrine of all soldiers. 
 Do you suppose that, if Lord Roberts had 
 been in the command of the British and 
 French forces when this war broke out, he 
 would have planned to stay on the defensive 
 in Flanders instead of invading Germany ? 
 
 " I cannot deem you such an insane 
 visionary. You yourself have avowed the 
 contrary, as 1 have just pointed out. You 
 are well aware that, just as the German staff 
 always contemplated a rapid advance into 
 France in any war, the British and French 
 staffs desired as soon as possible to get into 
 German territory. But you actually do 
 
96 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 seem to believe that they would take no pains 
 in advance to find how the land lay, humanly 
 speaking ; that the French did no spying 
 in Alsace ; and that a British staff would 
 never under any circumstances try to 
 corrupt Germans who might help them to 
 victory. Again, I can only explain your 
 folly by supposing that you actually believe 
 the end and aim and the due effect of military 
 preparation by everybody is the cessation of 
 war in perpetuity. But if you believe that, 
 no European soldier does. Professional 
 soldiers know that an efficient Spy system 
 is the necessary consummation of an efficient 
 army, turning the army's effort to the best 
 possible account. 
 
 *'You show (I regret to have to say) 
 extreme ignorance in asserting that a highly 
 developed Spy system is a recent invention 
 of Germany. In antiquity, certainly, there 
 was no corresponding development, because 
 under ancient conditions it was not possible. 
 But Frederick had a strong Spy system, 
 and Napoleon had a still stronger. Both 
 employed many secret agents in foreign 
 countries. Bismarck and Von Roon simply 
 organized that branch as they organized all 
 others ; and the invasion of France in 1870 
 was prepared by a splendid Spying organi- 
 
MILITARISM WITHOUT DISTRUST 97 
 
 zation, worthy of the German genius for 
 war. If Britain and France had no com- 
 parable organization, that was simply part 
 of their general unpreparedness. But your 
 attempt to discredit the great German 
 nation because it developed equally all the 
 necessary elements of military preparedness 
 outgoes in Pharisaism all the other asper- 
 sions that your contemptible nation has cast 
 upon us. Your great Lord Roberts, who 
 as you confess was incapable of Pharisaical 
 criticism, not only did not, but never would, 
 pretend that modern armaments can be 
 efficiently used without Spying. If you 
 seriously believe that your Navy Depart- 
 ment never tried to find out our naval 
 strength and dispositions, you can have paid 
 small attention to your own newspapers. 
 That your Spy system is poor compared 
 with ours I freely admit. But when your 
 nation (should it survive the present war) 
 attains the preparedness to which you aspire, 
 you will discover that your professional 
 soldiers will insist upon efficiency in this 
 as in other departments, knowing as they 
 will that otherwise their staff would go into 
 action partially blind. And depend upon it 
 they will not run your army on the principle 
 that it is never to be used. 
 
98 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 " In short, my poor Oliver, your amateur 
 rhetoric about Spying is only an illustration 
 of the general absurdity of your rose-water 
 militarism. You remain, as you began, a 
 sentimentalist. You cherish a dream of 
 friendly and cordial intercourse with the 
 nations against which you are to be armed 
 to the teeth. It is perfectly true that we 
 Germans officially professed benevolent feel- 
 ings towards the rest of the civilized world 
 while we were scientifically spying upon 
 them. But that was a plain necessity of 
 the circumstances. Had we proclaimed our 
 designs we could not have done much 
 Spying. Now that the great explosion has 
 come, you have your choice between sub- 
 mitting to the just ascendancy of Germany 
 (which has earned that right by its un- 
 paralleled devotion to the national cause, 
 its sacrifice of evei^ything to Power), and 
 accepting our ideal to the extent of imposing 
 the same sacrifice on yourselves. 
 
 " You agree with me as to everything bar 
 Spying. Mein lieher Oliver, we Germans 
 have imposed poison gas upon warfare ; and 
 we propose to impose the Spy system upon 
 the life of peace. We are determined to 
 beat you at any cost. If we cannot defeat 
 you in the field, we will drive you to despair 
 
MILITARISM WITHOUT DISTRUST 99 
 
 afterwards. You announce that life will 
 become insupportable if universal Conscrip- 
 tion is to be followed by universal Spying. 
 Well, you confess that we have driven you 
 to Conscription ; and we mean to drive you 
 to a Spy system that will make your life 
 a burden to you. You see the penalty of 
 resisting German aspirations. But do not 
 flatter yourself that you will have the chance 
 of planning a universal militarism without 
 Spies. We have not yet shot our last bolt. 
 It is true that some of our doctors ran away 
 from the typhus germ in a prisoners' camp. 
 But we may yet contrive to employ the 
 typhus germ as we have employed poison 
 gas. Our mighty and magnificent Zeppelins 
 may — but I will not write what I know your 
 Censorship will not allow you to print. I 
 will write but one word more — T-r-remble !" 
 
 Thus the amiable Freiherr, who is about 
 as delirious on his own lines as Mr. Oliver 
 on his. But he is at least coherent in his 
 militarism. And what has Mr. Oliver to 
 say in reply to his Guide, Philosopher, and 
 Friend ? 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 
 
 One can see why Mr. Oliver and his faction 
 quite spontaneously clutch anew at the 
 doctrine that universal Conscription will 
 make an end of war, whether or not they 
 believed it before. The notion that this 
 terrific struggle with organized militarism 
 is to be followed by still more consummately 
 organized militarism all round, with the 
 prospect of a still more tremendous struggle 
 later on, is so desolating to the human soul 
 that even the sentimental militarist recoils 
 from it. He declines, of course, to assent 
 categorically to the postulate that for the 
 Allies the moral objective of the present 
 
 103 
 
104 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 war. is. "to put down militarism." Mr. 
 Oliver decorously avers that " there are few 
 of us who do not wish that this aim may be 
 crowned with success ; but," he adds, " miU- 
 tarism is a tough weed to kill, and some- 
 thing more than the mere mowing of it 
 down by some outside scythesman will be 
 necessary, one imagines, in order to get rid 
 of it." That is to say, the destruction of 
 the military power of Germany will not 
 alone achieve the end. This happens to be 
 quite true so far as it goes ; though to say 
 this much and no more is to bring the 
 proposition within the category of the half- 
 truths which Mr. Oliver affects to condemn. 
 But as it happens he has, as usual, achieved 
 a falsity. For it is not true that he and his 
 friends really desire to see militarism put 
 down by this war. They want, and they 
 expect, a continuance of militarism. What 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 105 
 
 is true is that for the time being they do 
 not look forward with any complacency to 
 another war. 
 
 Now, if Europe should at the close of the 
 present war, with Germany beaten, simply 
 settle down to the old state of things, " only 
 more so," preparing armaments on a vaster 
 scale than ever, and fatuously clinging to 
 the Militarist - Pacifist chimera that the 
 bigger the armaments the greater is the 
 security that they will not be used, it will 
 not merely not have '* put down miUtarism," 
 it will have endowed it with new life. Any- 
 one who has any sane ''instinct," to say 
 nothing of power of reflection, must see 
 that the only way to get rid of the incubus 
 of militarism, and consequently of the 
 menace of war, is carefully to reverse, with 
 a new plan and purpose, the course that 
 things international have taken in the past 
 
106 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 hundred years. As the progress towards 
 maximum mihtarism has meant simply 
 progress through a series of wars to the 
 most devastating of all wars, the course to 
 safety must be through a progressive 
 curtailment of militarism with a safeguard- 
 ing machinery which contemplates the possi- 
 bility of a war to stop a war. And that 
 machinery will have in the first instance to 
 be set up by the present Alliance of the 
 Eight Nations, into w^hich will be welcomed 
 every Neutral that is willing to enter. 
 
 The first problem, obviously, is to guard 
 against the future criminal designs of the 
 Central Powers, even after they are 
 thoroughly defeated. Without marking 
 time by discussing "Terms of Peace" in 
 the middle of the war, we may take it as 
 common ground that they will include pro- 
 visions for the curtailment of the Germanic 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 107 
 
 machinery for war. And it would be folly 
 to believe that any such curtailment would 
 long be recognized by the Central Powers 
 unless they knew that there was a machinery 
 to put down any new policy of " prepared- 
 ness." The mad dog of Europe must be 
 kept on the chain for many a day. 
 
 But the very policy of provision against 
 new German menace implies a reduction of 
 armaments on the part of the Allies. Even 
 Mr. Oliver recognizes that it is *' folly " to 
 do more than keep armaments abreast of 
 the "national endeavour."* And the 
 '* national endeavour," for all nations who 
 want peace, must just be to keep the peace. 
 " Armaments," writes Mr. Oliver, " are mere 
 waste of money unless they conform to 
 policy ;" t and again we can agree with 
 him. When he adds in his rotatory manner 
 
 * P. 225. t P. 233. 
 
108 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 that " policy in the last resort must depend 
 on armaments," he is of course thinking of 
 the policy he proposed before the war, in 
 terms of his doctrine that a great British 
 army was the way to secure peace for 
 Europe. But for Britain to follow up a 
 pre-war military Budget of £80,000,000 with 
 a post-war military Budget of £200,000,000 
 or more is a kind of folly to which Mr. 
 Oliver will certainly not persuade the British 
 people if they and their Allies win the 
 war ; and the present argument assumes 
 that the war will not end save on that 
 footing. 
 
 It is significant of the amount of political 
 judgment behind the Oliverian crusade that 
 never once in " Ordeal by Battle " is there 
 an attempt to face the problem of what is 
 possible in the way of armaments to a nation 
 loaded withaNationalDebtof £3,000,000,000 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 109 
 
 or more. Finance never enters into Mr. 
 Oliver's calculations. He apparently believes 
 that France, whose debt will perhaps be still 
 greater than ours, counts on maintaining her 
 pre-war military system by way of future 
 *' security." The end of the World War, 
 in his forecast, appears to be simply a 
 renewal of the old state of armed m security, 
 with Britain in up to the neck, financially 
 and otherwise. He writes, indeed, that we 
 need Conscription in order to " impose terms 
 of lasting peace " ; but if he be asked what 
 he means by lasting peace, he will be com- 
 pelled by his own book to answer that it is 
 a peace safeguarded by a British conscript 
 army. He does not even profess to con- 
 template the possibility of imposing any 
 limit upon future German militarism ; and 
 one can see why. To postulate such a 
 limitation would be to postulate a corre- 
 
110 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 spending limit to the military burdens of the 
 Allies, and that would be contrary to the 
 " main purpose " of his book. 
 
 That our Allies will insist upon a chaining 
 of German militarism after the war is toler- 
 ably certain. T/iey will not consent to con- 
 template a repetition of the present war as 
 soon as Germany can recuperate ; and they 
 will not in that event propose to carry the 
 same load of militarism as before. And if 
 we in this country should then propose to 
 remain at once a first-rate military Power 
 and the supreme naval Power, that Alliance 
 of which Mr. Oliver recognizes the necessity 
 will be in a parlous state. The outcome of 
 the World War cannot conceivably be the 
 emergence of a new pre-eminent military 
 State, able to terrorize Europe, and there- 
 fore likely sooner or later to do so. As 
 Mr. Oliver, for other purposes, contends, 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 111 
 
 policy depends upon armaments. Germany's 
 did, with a vengeance. 
 
 Those who consent to reckon with finance 
 will farther be able to recognize, what the 
 Oliverian school have never had a glimpse 
 of, that for any Power to seek to maintain 
 the highest status at once on land and sea 
 is simply the surest road to national bank- 
 ruptcy. No Power that has ever tried it in 
 modern times has escaped collapse. Spain 
 tried it under Philip II., and so broke the 
 power of Spain for ever ; France tried it under 
 Louis XIV. and under Napoleon, in both 
 cases with ruinous results ; and Germany, 
 before the war, was in such financial straits 
 from this very cause that the strain counted 
 for much in her precipitation of the land 
 war, which she hoped would not involve a 
 sea-war with Britain. Even as the second 
 naval Power in Europe, bent at the same 
 
112 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 time on maintaining supremacy on land, 
 she had so waterlogged her whole financial 
 system that at last the mercantile and 
 financial classes, long averse to new warlike 
 ventures, were fain to acquiesce in the dead- 
 liest venture of all, in the hope that by 
 extorted indemnities they might rectify 
 their balance-sheets. And Mr. Ohver and 
 his upper-class mob would have us set out 
 on the same road to ruin. 
 
 What self-preservation imperatively for- 
 bids is equally forbidden by every rational 
 consideration of international politics. What 
 the Allies must seek for in and after their 
 Peace Settlement is the securing of the con- 
 fidence of all the Neutrals in Europe. Every 
 non-belligerent State is profoundly interested 
 in the securing of peace for all. Coercion 
 there must not and cannot be ; but if Hol- 
 land and Norway and Sweden and Switzer- 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 113 
 
 land and Spain and Greece and Roumania 
 will enter into a common pact with the 
 Allies for the maintenance of the peace of 
 Europe by a machinery of arbitration which 
 shall veto all aggression, they will secure 
 their own safety no less than that of the 
 rest of the w^orld. Let all the Allies bind 
 themselves not only to make no aggression 
 upon any Allied or Neutral Power, but to 
 join in resisting any aggression upon any one 
 of them, and not only will the spectre of war 
 be laid, but the solid incubus of militarism 
 will be enormously lightened for all. An 
 Allied force sufficient to repress future 
 German militarism can be maintained at a 
 tenth of the cost represented by the present 
 systems of Conscription ; and the safety of 
 Britain will be secured, even as regards her 
 sea-borne food-supply, not by establishing in 
 peace a conscript army which will be no 
 
 8 
 
114 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 less a menace to Neutrals than a ruinous 
 burden to herself, but by a European con- 
 cert which could and would crush on land 
 any new German attempt to assail her 
 by sea. 
 
 If some such arrangement as this be not 
 made, if a Europe exhausted by war is 
 again to assume the burdens of militarism 
 on the old scale, European civilization will 
 simply be at the beginning of the end. 
 Even with the strictest economy of labour 
 power, not for twenty years can the belliger- 
 ent Powers recover from the drain that this 
 war has made upon them. To turn vast 
 masses of labour power to the old treadmill 
 of preparedness would be a madness which 
 even Germany might not care to contem- 
 plate, even if she were left at liberty to try 
 it. But for the Allies to leave her such 
 freedom would be folly ; and having bound 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 115 
 
 her down, they cannot be guilty of the folly 
 of maintaining forces far in excess of what 
 is needed to enforce, if need be, the bond. 
 To rebuild their shattered world they have 
 need of all their mental and material 
 resources for generations to come. At the 
 best, nothing that men now adult can attain 
 to will make adequate amends for the in- 
 ferno that German militarism has brought 
 upon the belligerents. The fighting Powers 
 have lost in sheer manhood, in sacrificed life, 
 in slain faculty, something beyond all com- 
 putation. Posterity maii one day be able 
 to say, when the hideous scars of the living 
 generation have passed away, that the war 
 was worth its awful cost to humanity. But 
 that will never be if the old militarism is to 
 subsist. And to prevent that, it is the task 
 of all good men to see to it that our Fools do 
 not have their way. 
 
116 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 That the nature of the situation is begin- 
 ning to be reaUzed among men of affairs is 
 made even surprisingly clear while these 
 lines are being written. Two years ago few 
 people would have counted on finding Lord 
 Cromer among the first to realize the danger 
 of a persistence in militarism in Europe 
 after the present war. But just after the 
 foregoing pages had been penned, there 
 appeared in a newspaper not suspected of 
 anti-militarism this paragraph : 
 
 That something in the nature of a general 
 disarmament should take place after the 
 war is not merely desirable ; it is absolutely 
 necessary in order to permit of the financial 
 recuperation of the world. — Lord Cromer, 
 
 In the same newspaper it is announced 
 that three members of the French Chamber 
 have tabled the proposal that after the war 
 all French boys shall be subjected to a 
 Spartan military training from the age of 
 
THE WAY OUT OF MILITARISM 117 
 
 twelve onwards. We are thus reminded that 
 absolute unwisdom is not a specialty of the 
 British or even of the German people. But 
 common sense, on the other hand, is not 
 scarce in France ; and it is among the few 
 certainties of the future that after this war 
 the French people will neither lower the 
 standard of education for their youth nor 
 waste in militarism their sorely depleted 
 substance. The course proposed is simply 
 impossible for France. It could be ration- 
 ally contemplated only by men who expect 
 France to be defeated ; and the sufficient 
 answer is to ask the schemers in question 
 whether that is their expectation. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
 MILITARISM 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MHJTARISM 
 
 It hardly needed Mr. Oliver's express state- 
 ment to reveal to us that he is conscious of 
 knowing the truth by instinct ; and though 
 he somewhat obscures the issue by claiming 
 revelation, we shall best understand him by 
 taking him at his first word. He is spon- 
 taneously sure that it is the whole truth 
 that his instinct yields him ; and he has 
 copious backing. As some society ladies 
 put it, ** all the nice people " believe in per- 
 manent Conscription ; and Mr. Oliver has 
 given deep satisfaction by his profound 
 theorem that it is instinct that counts. 
 Using our instinct in turn, with a little 
 critical reflection, the rest of us recognize 
 
 12] 
 
125^ THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 in him the mouthpiece of the people who 
 cannot think. 
 
 In his chapters on "PoHtical Lawyers," 
 Mr. OHver informs us that "the country 
 gentlemen and the men of business " are 
 ** two classes of humanity who are constantly 
 in touch with, and drawing strength from, 
 our mother-earth of hard fact."* Neverthe- 
 less they ** fought out their differences 
 during two generations," being somehow at 
 sixes and sevens in respect of their contact 
 with the mother-earth of actuality ; and 
 the country gentlemen would seem to have 
 been all along pretty completely in the 
 wrong. To-day they have joined hands 
 with those men of business who have put 
 them in the way of making money, and who 
 conform to their simple ideals ; and, of 
 course, they are more sure than ever that 
 
 P. 200. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM US 
 
 their instincts are the right ones. Some 
 generations ago, Carlyle, who seems to stand 
 fairly high in Mr. OHver's esteem, pro- 
 nounced their chief function to be that of 
 preserving game, and their hne of pohtical 
 faculty to be that which the function in 
 question tended to evolve. To-day their 
 practice and their qualifications are not 
 greatly different, and they are naturally 
 loyal to Mr. Oliver, as he to them. 
 
 Towards lawyers, on the other hand, Mr. 
 Oliver is very severe ; not that the class in 
 general is recalcitrant to his ideals, but 
 because Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane and 
 Sir John Simon are lawyers, and they have 
 not played his game. Perhaps his most 
 general ground of political hostility to 
 lawyers, whom he pronounces " the worst 
 enemies of representative institutions,"* is 
 
 * P. 201 
 
124 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 that they fight shy of claiming to settle 
 debated questions by instinct. They have 
 undergone some amount of mental dis- 
 cipline ; and Mr. Oliver's tastes do not lie in 
 that direction. It is to be feared that this 
 is also his reason for contemning what he 
 calls "priesthoods," by which he does not 
 mean the Anglican clergy, but Dissenters, 
 Catholics, and professors. *' Clericalism," 
 he somewhat imprudently announces, **is 
 the enemy " ; but he explains that this is so 
 '* whether the priesthood be that of Rome 
 or John Calvin, of economic professors 
 expounding Adam Smith in the interests of 
 Manchester, or history professors improving 
 upon Treitschke in the interests of the 
 Hohenzollern dynasty."* So that the 
 Church of England is all right, being in fact, 
 of all Churches, the least given to dialectic. 
 * P. 136. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 125 
 
 The professors, obviously the most danger- 
 ous people, having some training in the 
 business of thinking, are Mr. OHver's chief 
 aversion. " If any country is so foohsh as to 
 follow such guides, there is a probability of 
 mischief in national, still more in inter- 
 national, affairs. For they are as innocent 
 as the lawyers themselves of any know- 
 ledge of the real insides of things." That is 
 only to be obtained by instinct and the 
 intervention of Providence. 
 
 It will be seen that Mr. Oliver's habit of 
 trading on his personal dislikes, joined with 
 his constitutional puzzle-headedness, puts 
 him rather at odds with the intelligence of 
 his country. In his chapter on "Personal 
 Responsibility," in which he reveals to us 
 the causation of the war on the German side, 
 he explains that the " men of learning and 
 letters, professors of every variety — a class 
 
1^ THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 which has been christened *the Pedant- 
 ocracy' by unfriendly critics — may be all 
 struck off the charge-sheet."* True, ** their 
 responsibility is no light one, and it will be 
 dealt with later " ; but ** they are innocent 
 at all events of complicity in this particular 
 exploit of fire-raising." Later the matter 
 does not become much clearer. In this 
 chapter: "This is a people's war surely 
 enough, but just as surely the [German] 
 people had no hand in bringing it about." 
 Later we learn that : " German distrust of 
 England was based upon the surest of all 
 foundations — upon her own fixed and 
 envious determination to overthrow our 
 Empire and rob us of our property."! The 
 people would seem to be a constituent part 
 of " her " ; and tw^o pages farther on we 
 have it that " to regard it as a Kaiser's war 
 
 * P. 44. t P. 71. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 1«7 
 
 or a bureaucrat's war is merely to deceive 
 ourselves. It is a people's war if ever 
 there was one." And so we puzzle along 
 to the revelation of " the Two - ness of 
 things." 
 
 Finally, however, Mr. Oliver gets in at 
 the German professors, avowing that he is 
 "tempted to personify the whole corpora- 
 tion of German pedants " under Emerson's 
 phrase of ** little Sir." Having thus and 
 otherwise castigated them, he ascribes to 
 them collectively the formula, *' God has 
 ordained war." Seeing that that long- 
 established doctrine was at times adum- 
 brated by Lord Roberts, this seems impru- 
 dent, as is the further postulate that '* the 
 making of war is the Lord's own business, 
 and not the * little Sir's.' It is the Lord's, 
 as vengeance is, and earthquakes, floods, 
 and droughts ; not an office to be under- 
 
128 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 taken by mortals."* It is to be feared that 
 even the AngUcan clergy will be perturbed 
 by the proposition that the Lord is the true 
 and only originator of the war: for that is 
 what Mr. Oliver's theological digression 
 amounts to ; unless he means to suggest 
 that earthquakes are within human compe- 
 tence. It might have been better to leave 
 the professors alone, if they are thus finally 
 to be relieved of responsibility ; and the later 
 fling at all the professors on the planet does 
 not exactly mend matters. Whether Mr. 
 Oliver loathes the German professors be- 
 cause he loathes the English, or vice versa, 
 is a problem which none but he can solve. 
 
 As regards the problem of the Divine 
 ordination of war, Mr. Oliver might get 
 into trouble with part of his public if its 
 mental cast were not as bifrontal as his own. 
 
 * Pp. 176-178. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 129 
 
 There seem to be few propositions which it will 
 not accept in one mood or other. Recently 
 Mr. Hughes has informed us that " before 
 the war we were sinking into the abyss of 
 degeneration with accelerating speed." That 
 being so, the war has saved us, and the Ger- 
 mans are the workers of our salvation. But 
 a large section of the public applaud the 
 announcement, and go on denouncing the 
 Germans as earnestly, if not as eloquently, 
 as Mr. Hughes, who is probably quite un- 
 conscious of having given the Germans 
 credit for anything. And if Mr. Oliver 
 were boldly to come round, as Lord Roberts 
 at least once did, to the creed that " God 
 has ordained war," it would probably do him 
 no harm with the country gentlemen, or 
 even with the average of the Anglican 
 clergy, who, like him, are given to con- 
 demning dogmatic blasphemy on the 
 
 9 
 
130 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 part of others, and practising it on their 
 own. 
 
 But of course it would be a Httle difficult 
 even for Mr. Oliver to combine the doctrine 
 of the Divine ordination of war with the 
 doctrine that all war will be prevented by 
 large armies, if only they are large enough. 
 A dilemma of blasphemies seems to face 
 him fixedly ; and, even apart from blas- 
 phemy, it is uncomfortable to have your 
 contradictions within view at one moment. 
 Mr. Oliver's method is to keep them a little 
 apart ; and it would be unjust to say that 
 he is wholly unskilful in making the best of 
 both sides of a contradiction, given an 
 audience not disposed to analysis. As he 
 says, the world is "illogical, and needs 
 humouring ; " * to which we may assent, 
 with a query as to why Mr. Oliver should 
 * P. 1S6. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 131 
 
 count it a weakness in the world to be 
 illogical, after his scathing attack on logic. 
 
 At all events he does a good deal of 
 humouring. The sections of his book are 
 playfully prefaced with extracts from " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress," with the effect of assur- 
 ing the general reader that the author is a 
 good Christian. Then the country gentle- 
 men are won by squirts of venom at Mr. 
 Asquith and Lord Haldane ; and nobody 
 outside the Bar demurs to flings at the law- 
 yers. Even the freethinkers are catered for 
 in passing, by the before- cited proclamation 
 that " Clericahsm is the enemy," though it 
 is somewhat watered down by the furtive 
 elimination of the Church of England. 
 
 But Mr. Oliver's great stroke is his device 
 of gratifying the moneyed classes by sug- 
 gesting that payment of members of Parlia- 
 ment is a proof of the corruption of Liberal 
 
132 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 and Labour politicians in general, they 
 having carried this measure after insisting 
 that the House of Lords should have no 
 control over finance. Here we are getting 
 fairly close to the centres of militarist 
 psychology. That " democratic " politicians 
 are mainly concerned to fill their own 
 pockets, and that the House of Lords 
 ought to have its powers extended rather 
 than curtailed, are two main items in the 
 simple philosophy of the " nice people." A 
 century or two ago even the country gen- 
 tlemen realized that for the Upper Chamber 
 to possess control of finance as well as veto- 
 power on legislation would be to make an 
 end of all pretence of *' balance of power " 
 between the two Chambers. In our day the 
 country gentlemen, trained to practicality 
 by fox-hunting, had come to believe that 
 their party, while in Opposition, could actually 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 138 
 
 add control over finance to the veto-power. 
 Discomfited in that attempt, they are 
 naturally infuriated by the institution of 
 payment of members of Parliament, which 
 so endangers the other institution of the 
 representation of wealth and status. 
 
 In the view of Mr. Oliver and his country 
 gentlemen, the possession of wealth inherited 
 or acquired by marriage is in itself a cer- 
 tificate of political superiority. That view 
 constantly came out in the discussions on 
 Payment of Members. It was not argued 
 that it was merely expedient to have men 
 of wealth in Parliament instead of men 
 dependent on salary for their services. The 
 assumption was that the kind of member 
 supplied by younger sons of rich men, 
 country gentlemen, retired officers, retired 
 men of business, or men of business able 
 to leave their business partly to others, had 
 
134 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 in themselves natural qualifications in virtue 
 of their wealth ; and it was visibly held by 
 the men whose unearned wealth was either 
 inherited or acquired by marriage that their 
 qualifications and political merits are the 
 highest of all. The reversion to the ancient 
 practice of public payment, being designed 
 to widen the area of choice and secure truer 
 representation for the mass of the people, is 
 anathema to the " nice people," who feel 
 that their wealth is in itself a merit, out- 
 weighing all forms of capacity. 
 
 Such people are naturally on the side 
 of universal militarism. It makes, in their 
 opinion, for the proper subordination of the 
 masses ; and they have fairly good grounds 
 for the opinion. They have seen the German 
 Socialists in the mass, with a forlorn handful 
 of exceptions, act as the docile tools of 
 the military machine ; massacring unarmed 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 135 
 
 Belgians ; inviting Belgian Socialists to 
 submit and leave the future to those of 
 Germany ; helping to wreck Europe in the 
 name of Germandom ; and turning to black 
 shame all their previous propaganda of the 
 international fraternity of Labour. Naturally 
 our moneyed militarists hope to bring about 
 a similar " discipline " among the workers in 
 this country, who are so apt to be trouble- 
 some in insisting on their rights and 
 needs. Of course the financial instinct of 
 the moneyed Tory class responds to the 
 suggestion that organized militarism will 
 mean, not war, but the prevention of war. 
 They see that war on a large scale inter- 
 feres with their comforts and their incomes. 
 What they want is the subordination of the 
 workers without the costs and discomforts 
 of war. 
 
 As for the cost of Conscription, even with- 
 
136 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 out war, they are naturally determined to 
 ** have no nonsense " about proper payment. 
 It is the worker's plain duty to be trained 
 to defend his country, and the upper classes 
 will proudly share it with him. If the work- 
 man's surrender of three of the best years of 
 his life to drill is a confiscation of his labour 
 power, which is his sole capital, while for the 
 rich man's son there is no sacrifice at all, 
 why, that cannot be helped. There must 
 be no attempt to rectify the situation by 
 paying for defence as we unfortunately have 
 to pay for labour. Mr. Oliver is quite 
 explicit on this point : 
 
 The pay of the French private soldier is, 
 I understand, about a sou, a halfpenny. In 
 his eyes the British soldier in the next trench, 
 who receives from a shilling to eighteenpence 
 a day — and in the case of married men a 
 separation allowance as well — must appear 
 as a kind of millionaire. During the South 
 African War the pay of certain volunteer 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 13T 
 
 regiments reached the preposterous figure 
 of five shillings a day for privates. Slen 
 serving w^ith our army as motor drivers — in 
 comparative safety — receive something like 
 six shillings or seven and sixpence a day.* 
 
 Feeling thus about the preposterousness 
 of good pay even in war-time for labour 
 and for life, Mr. Oliver naturally does not 
 contemplate paying men for life or labour 
 when they are in training for simple ** pre- 
 paredness." His conscript army is to be a 
 cheap one. On the other hand, he asks us 
 to think what the Germans were saying 
 about us when we employed only a *' hired " 
 army, which they called " mercenary." It 
 is interesting to note how much weight Mr. 
 Oliver attaches to the opinion of the nation 
 which did its best to murder Belgium by 
 way of gaining a military advantage over 
 France. Its ethic seems to appeal to him. 
 
 * P. 389, note. 
 
138 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 It is true that he plucks up courage to reply 
 that the German charge is " the other kind 
 of cant — the cant of mihtarism. For if ours 
 is a mercenary army, so is their own, in so 
 far as the officers and non-commissioned 
 officers are concerned." But he saves the 
 situation by finding that the British nation 
 " are the true mercenaries ; because we pay 
 others to do for us what other nations do 
 for themselves." * And Mr. Oliver hopes 
 to prove that he and his backers are not 
 mercenary by taking care that soldiers in 
 the field and conscripts in camp are paid as 
 little as possible. For the purpose of his 
 argument they become part of '' us " ; and 
 they clearly must not talk or think of good 
 pay for themselves, because that would be 
 like members of Parliament voting for the 
 Payment of Members. It is their duty to 
 
 * Pp. 388, 389. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 1S9 
 
 leave the present distribution of incomes 
 substantially unchanged. To keep things 
 pleasant and fraternal all round, there must 
 be a large rich and idle class, with plenty 
 of country gentlemen at leisure for fox- 
 hunting. 
 
 Unluckily for Mr. Oliver, working folk 
 are in contact with "the mother-earth of 
 hard fact " in a way in which he and his 
 country gentlemen never have been. They 
 realize that, if they are collectively to defend 
 their country as they produce the wealth of 
 their country, they are entitled to decent 
 subsistence on both counts. They know 
 very well that the officers will be more or 
 less well paid. It is perfectly true that 
 down to the other day many British officers 
 were not paid at a rate sufficient to meet 
 the standard of living they were expected 
 to maintain. But that situation was, first 
 
140 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 and last, the fault of the class to which they 
 mainly belonged. The country gentlemen 
 were in old days the great upholders of 
 purchased commissions, and they have 
 always stood in the way of promotion from 
 the ranks. So long as the officers of the 
 moneyed class insisted on a luxurious 
 standard of living at mess, they made pro- 
 motion from the ranks nearly impracticable ; 
 and while that was so it was idle to ask the 
 nation to pay its officers on the scale called 
 for by the rich officers' mess. 
 
 It was the rich officers who stood in the 
 way of the others. Brave fighters they 
 were, beyond all controversy ; and most of 
 them have laid down their lives in this 
 war, thus ending all recrimination. But 
 whatever army we maintain after this war, 
 it ought not to be the army dreamt of by 
 the country gentlemen. A conscript army 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 141 
 
 on the French scale of pay will not be 
 accepted by the British workers. They 
 have their instincts, like Mr. Oliver. They 
 even have an intuition that the next genera- 
 tion of the German workers will not consent 
 to help to wreck Europe at the behest of 
 the German country gentlemen, the bureau- 
 cracy, the plutocracy, and the " pedanto- 
 cracy," all making play with " the cant of 
 militarism." They are still more sure that 
 the French workers will not consent to have 
 their sons trained as Spartan warriors from 
 the age of twelve onwards. They know 
 that national comfort means national pro- 
 duction, national labour, not the wholesale 
 turning of labour to unproductive " pre- 
 paredness." In point of economic "horse- 
 sense " they are far ahead of Mr. Oliver and 
 the country gentlemen. 
 
 They know, besides, that nothing can 
 
142 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 make permanent Conscription really equit- 
 able, even with decent pay. It means that 
 the man physically defective is never called 
 upon to risk his life ; that the risking of life 
 will always be a matter of age ; that the 
 man of a given age is called upon to give 
 up his business, great or small, with some 
 small guarantee of his immediate liabilities, 
 while the man next door, happening to be 
 a year older, stays at home, safe. The 
 ''mercenary" system, so called, they know 
 to be a progressive attempt at a rational 
 method of national defence. Year by year, 
 of late, it has been improved by raising the 
 pay and the standard of comfort of the 
 soldier ; and the immediate ideal was to 
 make it sufficiently attractive to be recruit- 
 able without difficulty. The navy has 
 always been on the same footing ; and 
 when, a number of years ago, there was 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 143 
 
 difficulty about recruiting that, the difficulty 
 was solved by increasing the pay and the 
 attractions. 
 
 Even the militarists had the sense to 
 acquiesce in that. But they have never had 
 the sense to care above all things for getting 
 a good army. What they always want is 
 just a big one. Never was this more ap- 
 parent than in the outcry against the ** con- 
 scientious objector." After a year of scur- 
 rilities against the so-called ** slacker " — a 
 label applied by blatant journalists indis- 
 criminately to all of military age who were 
 at home, though they were known to include 
 tens of thousands of brave men who had 
 offered themselves and been rejected, and 
 thousands more who were toiling in their 
 country's service — the militarists began 
 screaming anew against the small minority 
 of visionary extremists who either refused 
 
144 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 to serve in a military capacity or refused 
 to do anything that would even indirectly 
 " help war," though all the while they were 
 helping war in their own despite by paying 
 war taxes, or war postage, or war prices for 
 tea and sugar. With difficulty would the 
 other extremists consent to exempting 
 Quakers who were loyally willing to help 
 in ambulance work, pleading their religious 
 scruples against killing. Scruples not 
 grounded on supernaturalist beliefs the 
 militarists would not listen to at all. 
 
 The ruling principle had become simple 
 fury against all recalcitrants. Unable to 
 see — refusing to see — that the profoundly 
 unwilling soldier is a bad soldier, a danger 
 rather than a help, the militarists positively 
 thirsted to have him in the trenches as' soon 
 as possible, hoping he might there " stop a 
 bullet." It was not a matter of getting 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 145 
 
 good soldiers, it was one of punishing any- 
 how the recalcitrants for acting on thei?^ 
 " instinct," theii' belief in Divine light. 
 Divine light was for Lord Roberts, not for 
 poor laymen, whose only duty was to do as 
 they were ordered. And while the War 
 Office has honourably set its face against 
 the brutalities inflicted on some objectors by 
 ill-disciplined officers, the Tory militarists in 
 the House of Commons openly rejoice in 
 them, and try to shout down all questioners 
 w^ho raise the subject. That is the true 
 militarist temper, the temper of too many 
 of Mr. Oliver's country gentlemen. And it 
 is the temper which, if this country w^ere to 
 become systematically militarist, would in- 
 fallibly develop in this country all the foul 
 characteristics of the militarism of Germany. 
 Mr. Oliver, in his patriotic vein, expatiates 
 on the vulgarity of a recruiting system under 
 
 10 
 
146 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 which lads who were in trouble were 
 wheedled by recruiting sergeants into en- 
 listing. This was one of the things which 
 drove the mere pacifists of Mr. Oliver's 
 contempt into scheming earnestly for a 
 system of international peace. But the 
 militarist pacifist will never move a finger 
 for peace save by his own preposterous plan ; 
 and never from him came the suggestion 
 that army pay should be still further in- 
 creased to make recruiting easy. 
 
 Equally eloquent is Mr. Oliver on the 
 vulgarity of the official recruiting posters 
 during the first eighteen months of the war. 
 Many of us have suffered from the blatancy 
 of the official advertiser, who seems to be 
 the incarnation of the ordinary sky-line 
 advertiser of commerce, and who has so 
 often seemed to misconceive the difference 
 between the commercial and the national 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 147 
 
 mode of appeal. His patriotism has been 
 unchallengeable, but his judgment less so. 
 It seems to be one of the penalties we have 
 to pay for a commercial system in which 
 advertising plays a main part. But it was 
 not dislike of vulgarity that moved the 
 NorthclifFe Press to refuse to insert non- flam- 
 boyant official advertisements for recruits. It 
 was the kind of patriotism which consists in 
 being determined at any cost to have your 
 own way. Advertising yourself is not one 
 of the vulgarities to which Lord NorthclifFe 
 objects. 
 
 Vulgarity in State procedure is indeed a 
 trying phenomenon. But there are worse 
 things than vulgarity in an imperfectly 
 cultured nation ; and German Kultiir and 
 German militarism, in addition to fostering 
 on the vastest scale the vulgarity of daily 
 boasting, have sufficiently exemplified the 
 
148 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 worse things for all time. Mr. Oliver gives 
 unstinted praise to Germany for her mili- 
 tarism, which he finds so honourable in 
 contrast to the British system of paying 
 soldiers at a comparatively decent rate. 
 But the German ideal has materialized in 
 the infernal machine which hewed Belgium 
 as a carcass for hounds ; the system under 
 which Nurse Cavell was slain at the hands 
 of officers and gentlemen ; while the Turkish 
 ally, with German official endorsement, 
 slaughtered half the population of Armenia, 
 young and old. It is some comfort to 
 reflect that our vulgarity has at least saved 
 us from the possibility of such deeds and 
 such alliances as these. Mr. Oliver does 
 not tell us what the Freiherr von Hexen- 
 kiichen thinks of such exploits. He is con- 
 cerned chiefly to assure us that in the 
 Hexenklichen view we have as a nation " a 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MHJTARISM 149 
 
 bad conscience." And yet even Mr. Oliver 
 must feel that it is a little better than the 
 rival conscience, so notably evolved by a 
 century of Conscription. 
 
 On the whole, however, Mr. Oliver is a 
 dubious authority on matters of conscience. 
 The National Service I^eague, of which he 
 is the zealous coadjutor, has all along recom- 
 mended its plan by assuring the British 
 people that that plan was framed solely for 
 national defence. All the while the moving 
 spirits held a view of international policy in 
 which " national defence " meant a decisive 
 power in the affairs of the Continent. The 
 rest of us knew as well as they that national 
 defence may involve the sending of an army 
 abroad. In this war it obviously did so from 
 the first, and the Expeditionary Force had 
 been honestly created to meet that con- 
 tingency. But the heads of the National 
 
150 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 Service League knew perfectly well, when 
 conducting their propaganda, that the mass 
 of the people understood by national defence 
 the resistance of invasion, and they all the 
 while expressly proposed to guarantee the 
 conscript, if he wished, against having to go 
 abroad. And now their coadjutor sublimely 
 lectures us on the folly of telling the 
 people half-truths, and informs us that, 
 in the opinion of the Freiherr von Hexen- 
 klichen, we as a nation have a bad con- 
 science. 
 
 Doubtless all national consciences are 
 open to improvement ; but, as aforesaid, 
 ours has escaped some of the deadlier forms 
 of demoralization. The British people a 
 century ago were just as capable as the 
 German — perhaps more so — of an ideal of 
 national defence which meant arrogant 
 aggression. It was the long drain and 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MH.ITARISM 151 
 
 strain of the Napoleonic wars that withheld 
 them from developing their former possi- 
 bilities. But there have been plenty of 
 British publicists, poets, and prosists, who 
 in our own time have ministered to the 
 instinct of " supremacy." Only a few years 
 ago, Lord Cromer, who had not then been 
 educated by the World War, ostensibly 
 vindicated the Imperialism of ancient Rome 
 by contending that all the steps by which it 
 progressively ate out its own heart and 
 wrecked the entire civilization of the ancient 
 world were in turn measures of national 
 defence. "^ If this could be argued by a 
 statesman who actually realized that Roman 
 Imperialism had meant the wrecking of 
 civilization for a thousand years, what would 
 have been the historical philosophy of British 
 militarists who, getting their own way, 
 * '^ Ancient and Modern Imperialism," 1910, pp. 19^ 20. 
 
152 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 neither knew nor cared to know the lessons 
 of history ? 
 
 One source of illusion as to modern possi- 
 bilities under militarism lies in the peaceful 
 achievements of German Kultur. Not only 
 in industrialism, but in all the applications 
 of science, modern Germany had admittedly 
 made great strides. This development, which 
 in the main took place in spite of militarism, 
 is by many regarded as a by-product thereof. 
 It is supposed to have been promoted by the 
 "discipline" and "organization" which mili- 
 tarism involves. In reality it is the industrial 
 analogue of the culture-evolution of non- 
 industrial antiquity. Modern militarism is 
 perforce favourable to industrialism because 
 it needs great revenues, and relies absolutely 
 on scientific processes for its munitions. It 
 is pure delusion to suppose, as Mr. Oliver 
 apparently does, that the German workman 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 153 
 
 has been improved by military training. He 
 not only does not work better than the 
 American workman : he does not work 
 better than the British workman. Neither 
 German resources in the way of iron ore, 
 nor German scientific economy in industry 
 — the two real sources of German industrial 
 progress — is a product of military experience. 
 On the other hand, the enthusiastic accep- 
 tance of the war — invasion of Belgium and 
 all — by the German people, is plain evidence 
 of the effect of militarism on the niind of a 
 nation. It is no answer to say that France 
 has not been so demoralized. France was 
 consciously arming for defence against a 
 growing menace, with no dream of aggres- 
 sion, no purpose of being the supreme factor 
 in European politics. The question is. What 
 is the effect of a militarism cultivated in a 
 spirit of domination, and using national 
 
154 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 defence as a name for a policy of aggression ? 
 Britain, supreme at sea, was not tempted to 
 aggression ; because her food- supply is mainly 
 imported, and mercantile prosperity depends 
 largely on good-will. But a Britain with an 
 army which (were that possible) made her 
 the supreme factor in the politics of Western 
 Europe would be in a very different case. 
 
 It is part of the cant of racialism to 
 assume that nations are what they are in 
 respect of an original bias, innate in national 
 character. A few years ago, and for genera- 
 tions past, it had been the English custom 
 to glorify the whole Teutonic stock. It is 
 British institutions, not hereditary British 
 character, that have caused the difference 
 between German and British political de- 
 velopments. Militarism in Germany has 
 tarred all mental life with its brush. Yet a 
 few years ago amateurs ' in philosophy in 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 155 
 
 this country were extolling the ethical 
 philosophy of Professor Eucken — Eucken, 
 who has been one of the loudest of the 
 German literati in his vindication of the 
 war at every step : breach of treaty ; mas- 
 sacre of a people that stood neutral ; syste- 
 matic murder of non-combatants. If good 
 people in this country had such affinities 
 with him in his ethical philosophy — which 
 is of the " instinctive " type — they were 
 capable, in his circumstances, of his moral 
 development. According to Mr. Oliver, 
 " the modern spirit of Germany is material- 
 ism in the crudest form — the undistracted 
 pursuit of wealth, and of power as a means 
 to wealth."'^ What, then, does he think 
 would be evoked by adding German mili- 
 tarism to British commercialism ? Spiritual- 
 ism ? As valid as Eucken's ? 
 
 * P. 183. 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 
 
CHAPTER VIll 
 
 CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 
 
 It is far more true than Mr. Oliver can 
 know that nations in general are in need of 
 discipline. The truth simply cannot be 
 known by men who worship their instincts, 
 and see the type and mainspring of all 
 discipline in that of an army. Yet from the 
 age of Achilles (or of Homer) onwards, men 
 have been faced by the paradox that the 
 typical discipline tends to be the generator 
 of indiscipline. It is not merely that all 
 armies tend to army factions. In the Boer 
 War there were three in the British army ; 
 and quiet officers commented that their 
 feuds were " beyond belief." Since then we 
 
 159 
 
160 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 have seen British Admirals fighting out their 
 personal feuds in the Press — a spectacle 
 happily unknown in the Great War, but 
 one that ought to be impossible in time of 
 peace. The trouble is that so many fighting 
 men know no other discipline than that of 
 the graded subordination of the fighting 
 machine. 
 
 What we most lack, and most need to 
 cultivate, is the spirit of discipline in all 
 things, the temper of self-repression, adapta- 
 tion, adjustment of means to ends, quiet 
 compromise, tolerant collaboration — above 
 all, intellectual comprehension. And these 
 things are possible only through discipline 
 of the mind — an inward process, not to be 
 generated by drill or by exercise of the 
 function of drilling, still less by a vehement 
 conviction that everybody ought to be 
 drilled. Army discipline secures necessary 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 161 
 
 order for the army's purposes ; and when 
 the nation's fate is at stake, all men civically 
 worth their salt accept it whole-heartedly. 
 Only the egoists of the inner light, whose 
 proper course would be to found elsewhere 
 a community of their own, decline to help to 
 prevent a pirate community from bludgeon- 
 ing others. And, as we have seen, they are 
 logically kept in countenance by the All- 
 Drillers, who teach that only instinct counts, 
 and that the right guidance for action comes 
 by miracle from Providence. Were the 
 Tolstoyans in the majority, the nation in 
 this conflict would as such be destroyed. 
 But in peace-time their indiscipline is a less 
 disruptive force than the indiscipline of those 
 who yearn to see them shot. 
 
 Indiscipline, as we have seen, stamps Mr. 
 Oliver's book. Faults of style, as he assures 
 us, are small matters ; but he has avowedly 
 
 11 
 
162 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 digressed through half his book from his 
 main purpose. And the digression is inspired 
 by his craving to attack in war-time the 
 large mass of his fellow-countrymen who 
 did not agree with his policy before the war, 
 but whom he yet frequently professes to 
 regard as an insignificant minority. It is 
 obvious that he hates them a great deal 
 more than he does the German incendiaries 
 whom he typifies in Hexenklichen. That 
 he has undergone no discipline in logical 
 thinking is sufficiently apparent, apart from 
 his puerile way of speaking about logic. 
 After making the perfectly nugatory postu- 
 late that right views depend upon right 
 instinct, he discursively goes about to con- 
 vince his readers that the course he proposes 
 is absolutely necessary in terms of national 
 safety, and that any other course will be 
 ruinous. No man capable of sound reason- 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 163 
 
 ing would thus have prefaced a process of 
 argument with a declaration that argument 
 does not matter. 
 
 In issuing the cheap edition of his book 
 after the establishment of War Conscrip- 
 tion, he has simply given fuller rein to his 
 animosities. The arraignment of all the 
 statesmen who rejected as impossible his 
 scheme of Peace Conscription is his supreme 
 purpose and inspiration. In such minds, 
 patriotism can subsist only as a form of 
 faction. The very principle of subordina- 
 tion which they parade would justify the 
 forcible suppression of their propaganda, 
 and their personal punishment ; and what 
 saves them is precisely that national aver- 
 sion from State control of life which has 
 been preserved by the voluntary system 
 which they denounce. 
 
 Mr. Oliver would evidently have liked to 
 
164 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 make Lord Roberts dictator, on the strength 
 of his Divinely enlightened instinct; and Lord 
 Esher apparently had a similar feeling about 
 Earl Kitchener, though, like Mr. Oliver, 
 he avows that his hero had no faculty for 
 reasoning. Or shall we say because instead 
 of though ? One thing is certain : there would 
 be small scope for criticism if the militarists 
 were in political power. 
 
 It may well be that, given the permanent 
 establishment of Conscription, Mr. Oliver 
 and his backers would not care greatly about 
 the suppression of any other sort of attack 
 upon the Government in war-time ; but 
 what right have they to expect other people 
 to show a better sense of discipline than 
 they do ? 
 
 Very remarkable is the prevalence of the 
 spirit of indiscipline among the men who 
 specially affect military interests. Lord 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 165 
 
 Esher is known as an amiable gentleman 
 with a great concern for what used to be 
 called " the Imperial ideal." But Lord 
 Esher, writing as a friend and admirer of 
 the late Lord Kitchener, has published an 
 obituary article on that distinguished soldier 
 and War Minister the effect of which is to 
 make the very worst of his weaknesses. The 
 article is intelligible only as an attempt to 
 strike at all the other Ministers and Generals 
 who are supposed to have shown Lord 
 Kitchener insufficient sympathy, especially 
 Ministers. Lord Esher thinks fit to say 
 that after a Cabinet meeting the Earl was 
 as " garrulous and inconsequent " as any 
 front-bencher. It would be hard for any 
 front-bencher to outgo Lord Esher in that 
 direction. If there is one thing generally 
 certain about the late Earl, it is that he 
 would have hated to think of his country- 
 
166 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 men being told that he had tears in his eyes 
 
 when he recounted to a friend his feehngs 
 
 about the unsympathetic attitude of anyone 
 
 towards him. That he would have shown 
 
 any such feeling in speaking of the clamour 
 
 of the NorthclifFe Press for his dismissal is 
 
 not to be credited. It was not the North- 
 
 chfFe Press, then, that Lord Esher desired 
 
 to strike at ; he pronounces, in fact, that it 
 
 attacked Lord Kitchener "not without 
 
 justice." But if anybody had published 
 
 stories about tears in the eyes of officers 
 
 who felt they had been unkindly treated by 
 
 Lord Kitchener, it may be doubted whether 
 
 Lord Esher would have applauded. 
 
 Broadly speaking, it is from the militarists 
 on the one hand and the Tolstoyans on the 
 other that the chief displays of indiscipline 
 have come. Both stand for egoism, calling 
 it inner light. From first to last the Con- 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 167 
 
 scriptionist Press has been turbulent, un- 
 dignified, and unscrupulous. It was that 
 section of the Press which, carrying on an 
 iniquitous campaign against Lord Haldane, 
 blatantly demanded Lord Kitchener's ap- 
 pointment, without waiting to ascertain 
 whether tlie Government had not decided 
 upon it. It was the same Press that screamed 
 for his dismissal on a charge which there is 
 good reason to believe was false — that of 
 refusal to fulfil the demands from the front 
 for high explosives. And the agitation 
 proceeded upon the textually absurd asser- 
 tion that certain successes would have been 
 secured had the army been in immediate 
 possession of an " unlimited " supply of high 
 explosives — a thing never attained or attain- 
 able by any army. 
 
 It used to be charged against Frenchmen 
 that upon the occurrence of any serious 
 
168 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 reverse they began to fulminate charges of 
 treason. No such hysteria is chargeable 
 upon Frenchmen in the mass in the course 
 of the present war ; but if foreign nations 
 were to form their opinion of British char- 
 acter from the outcries of our lay amateurs 
 of mihtarism within the past two years, they 
 would have grounds to offer for the view 
 that the British are the most hysterical of 
 all the belligerents. Happily, the bulk of 
 the nation gives no grounds for any such 
 estimate. It is noteworthy that the resist- 
 ance to Army Conscription in the House of 
 Commons was on the whole conducted with 
 moderation and dignity, and that the resist- 
 ing minority vote was finally only about a 
 tenth of the majority. Since then we have 
 had the spectacle of the capitalist protest in 
 the House of Commons against the arrange- 
 ment by which the "controlled " firms making 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 169 
 
 munitions are put upon an equality with all 
 other firms as to the tax on excess profits. 
 The protesters were to a man supporters of 
 Conscription. But whereas the conscription 
 of life had been assented to, on the ground 
 of the nation's emergency, by many who 
 disliked it, the conscription of mere profits 
 was bitterly resented and denounced by the 
 Conscriptionist capitalists ; and the vote of 
 the protesting minority was nearly one-half 
 of the majority vote which supported the 
 Government. They talked of the " unfair- 
 ness " of conscription of excess profits, as if 
 conscription of men could ever be made 
 theoretically fair. It was a deplorable dis- 
 play of egoism and indiscipline, and it will 
 not be forgotten by the mass of the nation. 
 
 What constitutes the strength of Britain 
 in this war is precisely that general spirit of 
 discipline which has been created by ages 
 
170 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 of self-government. The great mass are 
 steadfast and unclamorous. It is the noisy 
 minority who discredit the nation — the 
 people who are always clamouring, vapour- 
 ing, and advertising. Even the workers who 
 dreaded the consequences of the suspension 
 of their trade rules have made no such 
 factious fight in Parliament as has been put 
 up by the capitalists for their excess profits. 
 But people who have had no such provoca- 
 tion to clamour, people who suffer no such 
 physical strain as tells upon the toilers, have 
 shown themselves strangely incapable of 
 holding their tongues. In view of the 
 mahcious note of their manifold clamour, 
 the virulence of their countless aspersions, 
 the contrary output of the would-be peace- 
 makers is decent, if not edifying. But that, 
 too, stands largely for undisciplined thinking, 
 for the emotional need to talk when talking 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 171 
 
 is idle. No more than militarists can pacifists 
 reach wisdom by giving free play to instinct. 
 The feverish insistence on arranging the 
 Terms of Peace long before the end of the 
 war is in sight — a propaganda likened by 
 the Prime Minister to the twittering of 
 birds in a tempest — goes on by way of 
 relieving the feelings of the propagandists, 
 not of helping or influencing the situation. 
 The last thing to be learned by many well- 
 meaning men is that at certain times nothing 
 is vainer than to seek to quiet strife by pro- 
 claiming that there are faults on both sides. 
 If it be replied that that is what is being 
 done in these pages, the answer is that one 
 of the sides now addressed is pronounced 
 the better-tempered, and credited with 
 being able to listen to reason. The charge 
 is that those concerned do not realize the 
 nature of their own case, and go on exhort- 
 
172 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 ing men to change their hearts for goodness' 
 sake when the very exposition tells that they 
 will not. 
 
 Among the best-qualified ingeminators of 
 Peace is Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson, whose 
 work on " The European Anarchy " goes 
 over much of the ground not uninstructively. 
 But Mr. Dickinson's book as a whole is dis- 
 tressingly inconclusive. He seems to think 
 it a philosophic proceeding to argue through 
 chapter after chapter that no Power is to 
 blame for this war, byt that either all Powers 
 alike are to blame, or that the blame is to 
 be laid on the phantom shoulders of ** the 
 European Anarchy," which he gravely ar- 
 raigns as " the real culprit." Why he stops 
 there it is hard to guess. The older and 
 more sacrosanct formula of " Our Fallen 
 Nature " would have been quite as much to 
 the purpose — nay, more so ; and if Mr. 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 173 
 
 Dickinson demurs on scientific grounds to 
 that, he might make play with Nature, or 
 Evolution, or, still better. Existence. Mr. 
 Dickinson is philosopher enough to see, if 
 he would, that on his present principle no- 
 body is ever to blame for anything, since 
 everything and everybody grows out of 
 antecedents. He has no business, on his 
 own showing, to blame the givers of blame. 
 His method in politics is that of the people 
 who put the responsibility for all crime on 
 Society, as if an abstraction were more 
 rationally to be blamed than a personality. 
 In point of fact Mr. Dickinson vacillates 
 between blaming " the Anarchy " — a nega- 
 tive or privative abstraction this time — and 
 affirming " the responsibility of all the 
 Powers alike for the European anarchy," 
 this while incidentally avowing, as needs 
 must, "the responsibility of Germany for 
 
174 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 the outbreak of the war." At what, then, 
 are we driving ? If the burglar informs us 
 that his procedure is the outcome of an 
 imperfect state of society, are we any 
 forwarder ? We, too, suffer from the im- 
 perfect state of society, and we still have to 
 protect ourselves from the burglar. We do 
 it nowadays with comparative moderation, 
 abstaining from the use of torture and 
 mutilation. If what Mr. Dickinson wants 
 is that we should apply the same principle 
 in dealing with Germany, the answer is that 
 Peace Terms nowadays do not involve new 
 massacres. Nobody proposes to treat the 
 Kaiser as his officers and gentlemen treated 
 Nurse Cavell. 
 
 Mr. Dickinson comes to the point when 
 he assures us (p. 149) that "we must give 
 up, in all nations, this habit of dwelling on 
 the unique and peculiar wickedness of the 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 175 
 
 enemy." And he has just been telHng us 
 that the Germans will certainly never give 
 up the habit ! It is impossible to be more 
 explicit : 
 
 There is hardly a German who does not 
 believe that the war was made by Russia and 
 by England ; that Germany is the innocent 
 victim ; that all right is on her side, and all 
 wrong on that of tlie Allies. If\ indeed, she 
 were beaten, and treated as her '* punishers " 
 desire, this belief would be strengthened, not 
 weakened. In every German heart would 
 abide, deep and strong, the sense of an 
 iniquitous triumph of what they believe to 
 be wrong over right, and of a duty to 
 redress that iniquity. Outraged national 
 pride would he reinforced by the sense of 
 injustice ; and the next war, the war of 
 revenge, would be prepared for, not only by 
 every consideration of interest and of passion, 
 but by every cogency of righteousness. The 
 fact that the Germans are mistaken in their 
 view of the origin of the war has really 
 nothing to do with the case. It is not the 
 truth, it is what men believe to be the 
 truth, that influences their action. And I 
 do not think any study of despatches is 
 
176 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 going to alter the German view of the 
 facts (pp. 146, 147). 
 
 It is impossible, even for Mr. Oliver, to 
 be more incoherent. Nothing is going to 
 alter the German view of the case. So be 
 it. At the same time we must all alter our 
 views of the case, knowing that the Germans 
 won't I They, convinced that they are in- 
 nocent victims, will be sure to want revenge 
 if they are beaten. Therefore we are to be 
 very good to them, because otherwise they 
 would want their revenge 1 Mr. Dickinson's 
 final state of mind is simple vertigo. The 
 philosophy of brute force, he avows, " has 
 been expressed with peculiar frankness and 
 brutality by the Germans. But most honest 
 and candid men, I believe, will agree that 
 this is the way they, too, have been accustomed 
 to think of international affairs'' (p. 150). 
 In the name of reason, why the but ? 
 
CONCERNIxNG DISCIPLINE 177 
 
 " Agree, madam ? Why, that is what we 
 all said : we know not ' agree ' 1" And if 
 the Germans admittedly have been accus- 
 tomed thus to think of international affairs, 
 what, once more, is Mr. Dickinson driving 
 at ? This generation, he confesses, will not 
 change its mind. Is it too great a strain, 
 then, for the academic mind to realize that 
 what really imtst be done is to treat Germany, 
 so far as may be, on the principles on which 
 we treat the burglar ? 
 
 Mr. Dickinson really ought to be above 
 the fallacy of the quibble about *' punish- 
 ment." It is the verbahst fallacy of the 
 people who, desiring to reform our penal 
 system, argue that there must be no "punish- 
 ment," as if that word itself could beabohshed. 
 Whatever system withholds from the burglar 
 liberty to continue his course is for him 
 punishment : the word is neither here nor 
 
 12 
 
178 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 there. Does Mr. Dickinson really suppose 
 that, if a defeated Germany is compelled to 
 make good the devastation she has inflicted, 
 '* the Germans " will not feel that they are 
 ** punished " ? Does he seriously propose 
 anything less ? He will not dispute, pre- 
 sumably, that a victorious Germany would 
 certainly have annexed much, if not all, of 
 the territory she now holds. Are we, then, 
 to say that no territory should be taken 
 from Germany because Germans would feel 
 that to be an iniquitous '' punishment " ? 
 Has he not told us that they will regard the 
 triumph of the Allies in any case as ''an 
 iniquitous triumph of wrong over right " ? 
 And are we, then, to arrange our safeguard- 
 ing measures in the insane hope of pacify- 
 ing admittedly aggressive enemies who 
 confessedly will not be pacified ? And 
 what is the use, upon these premisses, of 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 179 
 
 telling us that we all must change our 
 hearts ? 
 
 This propaganda, too, roots in hysteria. 
 Mr. Dickinson had to relieve his strained 
 feelings somehow ; and he is so far from 
 concealing his nervous condition that he is 
 at pains to declare his sincerity, as if that 
 were any more in dispute than the sincerity 
 of Mr. Oliver, or as if it mattered. From a 
 professed philosopher, in war-time, we have 
 a haphazard broaching of the philosophic 
 problem of Determinism, but not for the 
 sake of philosophy, which gets scant con- 
 sideration. The odd thing is that Mr. 
 Dickinson, apparently by reason of a 
 need to contradict the other people, is much 
 more concerned to be internationally sym- 
 pathetic than he was in time of peace. 
 Once he produced a book on " Revolution 
 and Reaction in Modern France.** There 
 
180 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 was not much sympathy about that : hard 
 analysis was all that was offered to the 
 alien in his troubles, which were not set 
 at the door of any abstraction, but repre- 
 sented as his ow^n sins. It is only when 
 Germany lets loose the war of wars that 
 Mr. Dickinson is concerned to lay a nation's 
 crime on the shoulders of everybody else. 
 It would be misleading to ascribe to him 
 what Spencer called the Bias of Anti- 
 Patriotism ; but a bias he has, and it is not 
 what somebody called '*the fatal bias to 
 justice." A variant bias is exhibited by 
 Mr. Shaw, who had to have a view — or 
 views — of his own on the war, and found 
 one of them by hilariously proclaiming that 
 the working class was doing very well by it 
 all, wealth being better distributed than 
 ever before. Thus can a Socialist pipe to 
 the Dance of Death. 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 181 
 
 In the face of this medley of undisciplined 
 voices it would seem as if the nation's fate, 
 after all, lay in the hands of the practical 
 politician, so decried by the inspired Mr. 
 Oliver, and so distrusted by the judicious 
 Lord Esher. He at least knows a few 
 fundamental truths not disclosed to those 
 earnest publicists. As, for instance, that 
 the One-Man Rule they hanker after, if set 
 up, would mean very short shrift for their 
 respective factions after a brief trial. But 
 that is not a real issue ; it is a question 
 mooted by garrulity and the spirit of in- 
 consequence. The real issues are those 
 which will present themselves w^hen the 
 war is over : first, what is to be done to 
 guard against the enemy ; secondly, what is 
 to be done to restore oin- own strained social 
 fabric. 
 
 The practical politician is buttonholed 
 
182 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 on two sides by typical extremists : the 
 zealots, who propose to divide the world 
 into two hostile trading groups, carrying 
 on an eternal economic war when the bodily 
 w^ar is ended ; and the counter-zealots, who 
 insist that Germany must at once be made 
 a member of the League of Nations to 
 secure peace. It is sobering to have to 
 realize that the former species is incom- 
 parably the more numerous — that is to say, 
 that the spirit of hate is overwhelmingly 
 stronger than the spirit of fraternity. But 
 for that very reason this particular mani- 
 festation of the spirit of fraternity is a 
 perfectly idle extravagance, an indulgence 
 in intellectual indiscipline which can only 
 foster new exorbitance on the other side. 
 If on the side of the Allies there is a wide- 
 spread disposition to make an end even of 
 trade with the enemy, how is the enemy 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 183 
 
 likely to relate to a system of international 
 machinery for the preservation of peace ? 
 There is far more malice on that side than 
 there has ever been on this, and that malice 
 will be at its height when the war ends 
 adversely to the Central Powers. To pro- 
 pose, then, to make them component parts 
 of a machinery of which the fundamental 
 purpose is to keep them in check is to be 
 merely fantastic, to insist on tabling an im- 
 possible theory of action for theory's sake. 
 And to exclaim that any other arrangement 
 will be useless is merely to say that all steps 
 towards an ideal are useless if the ideal be 
 not immediately consummated. 
 
 If it be merely affirmed that the peace of 
 the world will never be absolutely secure 
 until all the nations are committed to it, 
 there is no dispute. Absolute security in per- 
 petuity on the day after Armageddon is a 
 
184 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM 
 
 midsummer night's dream. Man cannot pass 
 at one step from the worst to the best, from 
 pandemonium to perpetual peace. And the 
 nations upon whom has been forced a 
 stupendous war cannot immediately pass to 
 a state of trustful co-operation with the 
 nations which forced it. Given a complete 
 revolution in German polity, some such 
 co-operation might be contemplated ; but 
 who relies upon that? Sane men cannot 
 be sure of German sanity, in the ordinary 
 way of evolution, for a generation hence. 
 
 The task of the practical politician, then, 
 will be on the one hand to take sober safe- 
 guarding measures in alliance against the 
 beaten foe, avoiding all measures aiming at 
 superfluous injury, and on the other hand to 
 conserve and rebuild actively the drained 
 resources of the State. Every arm withheld 
 from productive labour that can be turned 
 
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 185 
 
 thereto is but an addition to the immense 
 load of debt that has been laid upon every- 
 one of the Allies, an obstacle to the recovery 
 of national well-being. A Peace with univer- 
 sal Conscription would be but a hopeless 
 resumption of the way of life that brought 
 about the war — an admission that the war 
 has been but a vast failure all round. A 
 Peace with universal armaments on a scale 
 of new monstrosity would mean the con- 
 summated failure of civilization, the deliber- 
 ate choice of the Way of Death. It can- 
 not be. 
 
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