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. 136.
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 133
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
1S4 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
liis 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 137
regiments reached the preposterous figure
of five shilHngs a day for privates. Men
serving with our army as motor drivers — in
comparative safety — receive something hke
six shilhngs or seven and sixpence a day.*
FeeKng thus about the preposterousness
of good pay even in war-time for labour
and for Hfe, Mr. OHver naturally does not
contemplate paying men for life or laboui-
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 militarism. For if ours
is a mercenary army, so is their own, in so
far as the officers and non-commissioned
officers are concerned." But 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 139
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
tlieir 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 PSYCHOl.OGY 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 JNlr. 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 Ua
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 liad
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 theii^
" instinct," their 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
who 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 were 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
NorthcliiFe 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 Kultur 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-
k lichen thinks of such exploits. He is con-
cerned chiefly to assure us that in the
Hexenkiichen view we have as a nation " a
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MILITARISM 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 League, 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-
kiichen, 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 MUJTARISM 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," 11)10, 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-
bihties 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
hi 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 industriahsm 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 mind 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 JMr. OUver,
" 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 VIII
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