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 Hexenkiichen. 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. Ohver would evidently have liked to
164 THE FUTURE OF MILITARISM
make Lord Roberts dictator, on the strength
of his Divinely enhghtened 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 ?
\''ery 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 iri*eat concern for what used to be
called •• the Imperial ideal." But Lord
Esher. writincr as a friend and admirer of
the late Lord Kitchener, has published an
obituary article on that distiui^uished soldier
and ^^'ar Minister the effect of which is to
m;ike the very worst of his weaknesses. The
article is intelligible only as an attempt to
sti-ike at all the other Ministers and Generals
who are supposed to have shown Lord
Kitchener insutHcient sympathy, especially
IMinisters. Lord Esher thinks tit to say
that after a Cabinet meetintr the Earl was
as " garrulous and inconsequent "" as any
front-bencher. It would be hard for any
fi-ont-bencher to outijo Lord Esher in that
direction. If there is one thing generally
certain about the late Earl, it is that he
would have liated 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 feelings
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-
cliffe 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 the 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 militarism 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 DISCIPIJNE 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
malicious 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 IVIinister 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 rephed 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, but 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 P'allen
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 7n.ust 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 telling 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 the 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 be reinforced by the sense of
mjustice ; 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 ixally
iiotJiing 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 a?iy 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 inust all alter our
views of the case, knowing that the Germans
won't ! 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 ! 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 hid ?
CONCERNING DISCIPLINE 177
" Agree, madam ? Why, that is what we
all said : we know not ' agree ' I" 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 must 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 verbalist 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 be abolished.
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 JNIr. 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 AlHes 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 own 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 undiscipHned
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 when the
w^ar is over: first, what is to be done to
guard against the enemy ; secondly, what is
to be done to restore our 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
war 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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