THE FUTURE
OF MILITARISM



ROLAND



THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM



THE FUTURE OF
MILITARISM

AN EXAMINATION OF F. SCOTT
OLIVER'S "ORDEAL BY BATTLE"



BY

ROLAND



LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE, W.C.



First published in 1916.



{All rights reserved.)



CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

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



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, the

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. Ohver, 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
J^eto. 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



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 whether
a British army can ever be led anywhere.
The Oliverian principle is that in war-time
it is dulce ct 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.
JMr. 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 Polish 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 enhsted 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 INIr. 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. JNIr. 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. Ohver's doctrine that
the State has a right to call for unquestion-
ing obedience from all its citizens. For JNIr.
Ohver, l'et<ii, ccd moi. Silence and obedi-



14 THE FUl'URE 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. Oliver 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 w^e realize that Mr. 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
deeat 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 !" 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, lie clutched at the formula
of a Patriot Party, which was to supersede
all iothers — as if "party" did not mean

2



18 THE FUTURE OF MILFrARISM

*' section." The device which failed Boling-
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. OUver'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



22 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM

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 23

been written to establish the Need for
National Service."

Now, partly because so many men of Mr.
Oliver's way of thinking would not work
oyally 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 lor 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 I^ord 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-



26 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 veil, and enabled him to
see the truthr *

Z)e 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. Ohver 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 him 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. Ohver 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 intelleetual
standpoint, the reasons which satisfied
German statesmen with regard to Britain's
neutrality were overwhelming. . . . None
the less, the judgment of the Kaiser and his
Ministers was not only bad, but inecccusably
had. 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 mit 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 political 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. OHver, not content with
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.



WHY MR. OLIVER WROTE 33

Oliver is an emotionalist devoid of logic and
avowedly enlightened by miracle (which in
his case would certainly seem to be neces-