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 Melbourne told his
Cabinet, it does not matter much what
they say, but they had better say the same
thing. Mr. 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.

3



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 war pur-
poses. But, as Mr. OUver 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 35

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 HI

CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR

It is quite unnecessary to discuss here the
question whether Conscription was needed
in order to win the war. That 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 V^^AR 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 wrong, 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. 37.



CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 43

have not even the tie of a common mother-
tongue."* Mihtary 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.



4,4. 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 WAR 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 philosophic 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 inability 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 German expansion, as year
by year it took firmer hold upon the popular
imagination, produced, as might have been
expected, a desire that it might be 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 WAR 47

Therefore we must not at this point
believe what IVIr. Oliver told us on p. 40.
At p. 81 we are warned that our " tempta-
tion " is " to visualize a single, gross, over-
bearing, and opinionated type of the Teuton
species." When Mr. Ohver is on the tack
of Oneness, Germany is " she," meaning all
the things " she " says. When he is awake
to Two-ness and INIultiplicity, his previous
vision of " she " is a " temptation " which
we must eschew. In the same fashion INlr.
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 PREVENTIVE OF WAR 51

carrying on a campaign." * That is to say,
a country changing its niiHtary 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, Mr. 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. Oliver 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. OHver 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 estabUshing
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, Mr. 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, being unrequited.

The fatuity of the two last words is
notable, even in INIr. 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 o*



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 Mr. 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 TWE 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 alliances. 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 w^as 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 v^ould have been the
result, as regards international alliances ?

Will the most puzzle-headed of the
Oliverians pretend that it would have been
an alliance with France ? We have Mr.
Oliver's own reminder that at Leicester, on
November 30, 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 spoheu with the august
encouragement of the Kaiser and his Chan-
cellor.'"^ 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. ^5.



CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF WAR 61



France and Russia. Add that many people
in France were at the saine 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 xchole 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 feelings
— 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. 'Jliat is the time-honoured policy
of her Foreign Office. . . . It is aji excel-



CONSCRIPTION AS PREVENTIVE OF V\^AR 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 Mr.
Chamberlain in effective command of the
ship of State.

Of course that was not the only possi-