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XX
THE TRANSITION
I have now explained the nature and working of a national army, and shown the kind of strength it will give and the probable maximum cost which it will involve when adopted.
The chief difficulty attendant upon its adoption lies in the period of transition from the old order to the new. If Great Britain is to keep her place and do her duty in the world the change must be made; but the question arises, how is the gulf between one and the other to be bridged? War comes like a thief in the night, and it must not catch this country unready.
The complete readiness which the new system, when in full swing, will produce, cannot be obtained immediately. All that can be done in the transition period is to see that the number and quality of men available for mobilisation shall be at least as high as it is under the existing system. It may be worth while to explain how this result can be secured.
Let us assume that the Act authorising the new system is passed during a year, which may be called '00, and that it is to come into force on the 1st January of the year '01. The Act would probably exempt from its operations the men at the date of its passing already serving in any of the existing forces, including the territorial army, and the discussion on the Bill would, no doubt, have the effect of filling the territorial army up to the limit of its establishment, 315,000 men.
On the 31st December '00 the available troops would therefore be:—
From the 1st January '01 recruiting on present conditions for all these forces would cease.
The total available for mobilisation during the year '01 would therefore be:—
On the 1st January '02 the regular army would be:—
In the year '03 there would be:—
In the year '04 there would be:—
At the end of '04 the territorial force would come to an end and in '05 there would be:—
In these tables I have taken the drafts for India and the Colonies from the old regulars. But they can just as well be taken from the new regulars. If need be the old regulars could, before the fourth year, be passed into the paid reserve, and the full contingent of 200,000 one year's men taken.
The men of the special reserve and territorial force would on the termination of their engagements pass into the second line reserve or Landwehr until the age of thirty-one or thirty-two.
It will be seen that during the years of transition additional expense must be incurred, as, until the change has been completed, some portion of the existing forces must be maintained side by side with the new national army. It is partly in order to facilitate the operations of the transition period that I have assumed a large addition to the number of officers. There will also be additional expense caused by the increase of barrack accommodation needed when the establishment is raised from 138,000 privates to 200,000, but this additional accommodation will not be so great as it might at first sight appear, because it is reasonable to suppose that those young men who wish it, and whose parents wish it, will be allowed to live at home instead of in barracks, provided they regularly attend all drills, parades, and classes.
It has been necessary, in discussing the British military system, to consider the arrangements for providing the garrisons of India, Egypt, and certain oversea stations during peace, and to make provision for small wars or imperial police; but I may point out that the system by which provision is made out of the resources of the United Kingdom alone for these two military requirements of the Empire, is, in the present conditions of the Empire, an anomaly. The new nations which have grown up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are anxious, above all things, to give reality to the bond between them and the mother country. Their desire is to render imperial service, and the proper way of giving them the opportunity to do so is to call upon them to take their part in maintaining the garrisons in India and Egypt and in the work of imperial police. How they should do it, it is for them to decide and arrange, but for Englishmen at home to doubt for a moment either their will or their capacity to take their proper share of the burden is to show an unworthy doubt of the sincerity of the daughter nations and of their attachment to the mother country and the Empire.
If Great Britain should be compelled to enter upon a struggle for existence with one of the great European powers, the part which Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa could play in that struggle is limited and specific. For the conflict would, in the first instance, take the form of a naval war. To this the King's dominions beyond the seas can do little more than assist during peace by their contributions, either of ships, men, or money, in strengthening the British navy. But during the actual course of such a war, while it is doubtful whether either Canada, Australia, or New Zealand could render much material help in a European struggle, they could undoubtedly greatly contribute to the security of India and Egypt by the despatch of contingents of their own troops to reinforce the British garrisons maintained in those countries. This appears to me to be the direction to which their attention should turn, not only because it is the most effective way in which they can promote the stability of the Empire, but also because it is the way along which they will most speedily reach a full appreciation of the nature of the Empire and its purpose in the world.
XXI
THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED
I have now sketched the outlines of a national military system applicable to the case of Great Britain. It remains to show why such a system is necessary.
There are three main points in respect of each of which a choice has to be made. They are the motive which induces men to become soldiers, the time devoted to military education, and the nature of the liability to serve in war. The distinction which strikes the popular imagination is that between voluntary and compulsory service. But it covers another distinction hardly less important—that between paid and unpaid soldiers. The volunteers between 1860 and 1878, or 1880, when pay began to be introduced for attendance in camps, gave their time and their attention with no external inducement whatever. They had no pay of any kind, and there was no constraint to induce them to join, or, having, joined, to continue in their corps. The regular soldier, on the other hand, makes a contract with the State. He agrees in return for his pay, clothes, board and lodging to give his whole time for a specific number of years to the soldier's life.
The principle of a contract for pay is necessary in the case of a professional force maintained abroad for purposes of imperial police; but it is not possible on that principle to raise or maintain a national army.
The principle of voluntary unpaid service appears to have a deeper moral foundation than that of service by a contract of hiring. But if the time required is greater than is consistent with the men's giving a full day's work to their industrial occupations the unpaid nature of the service cannot be maintained, and the men must be paid for their time. The merit of the man's free gift of himself is thereby obscured.
Wherein does that merit consist? If there is no merit in a man's making himself a soldier without other reward than that which consists in the education he receives, then the voluntary system has no special value. But if there is a merit, it must consist in the man's conferring a benefit upon, or rendering a service to, his country. In other words, the excellence of the unpaid voluntary system consists in its being an acceptance by those who serve under it of a duty towards the State. The performance of that duty raises their citizenship to a higher plane. If that is the case it must be desirable, in the interest both of the State and of its citizens, that every citizen capable of the duty should perform it. But that is the principle upon which the national system is based. The national system is therefore an extension of the spirit of the volunteer or unpaid voluntary system.
The terms compulsory service and universal service are neither of them strictly accurate. There is no means of making every adult male, without exception, a soldier, because not every boy that grows up has the necessary physical qualification. Nor does the word compulsion give a true picture. It suggests that, as a rule, men would not accept the duty if they could evade it, which is not the case. The number of men who have been volunteers since 1860 shows that the duty is widely accepted. Indeed, in a country of which the government is democratic, a duty cannot be imposed by law upon all citizens except with the concurrence of the majority. But a duty recognised by the majority and prescribed by law will commend itself as necessary and right to all but a very few. If a popular vote were to be taken on the question whether or not it is every citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of a national war, it is hardly conceivable that the principle would fail to be affirmed by an overwhelming majority.
The points as to which opinions are divided are the time and method of training and the nature of the liability to serve in war.
There are, roughly speaking, three schemes of training to be considered—first, the old volunteer plan of weekly evening drills, with an annual camp training; secondly, the militia plan of three months' recruit training followed by a month's camp training in several subsequent years; and, lastly, the continental plan of a continuous training for one or more years followed by one or more periods of annual manoeuvres. The choice between these three methods is the crucial point of the whole discussion. It must be determined by the standard of excellence rendered necessary by the needs of the State. The evidence given to the Norfolk Commission convinced that body that neither the first nor the second plan will produce troops fit to meet on equal terms those of a good modern army. Professional officers are practically unanimous in preferring the third method.
The liability of the trained citizen to serve in war during his year in the ranks and his years as a first-class reservist must be determined by the military needs of the country. I have given the reasons why I believe the need to be for an army that can strike a blow in a continental war.
I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system, because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for, cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers, continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that another nation can produce.
Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on their fifty years' work in vain. They have, little by little, educated the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier, and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his country's cause is a part of every citizen's duty, for which he must be prepared by training.
The adoption of this principle will have further results. So soon as every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority. The citizen's interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect. He will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of England.
XXII
THE CHAIN OF DUTY
The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which will be of some use to us.
We began by agreeing that the people of this country have not made entirely satisfactory arrangements for a competitive struggle, at any rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign state.
We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to obtain victory. We discussed the theories which lead some of our countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war, and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements for disarmament. We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these theories.
Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in conflict all the resources of its land and its people. In the last war Great Britain's national weapon was her navy, which she has for centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe. The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century. The great event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power, resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to think eternal.
Great Britain, in the security due to her victories at sea, was able to develop her colonies into nations, and her East India Company into an Empire. But that same security caused her to forget her nationalism, with the result that now her security itself is imperilled. During this period, when the conception of the nation was in abeyance, some of the conditions of sea power have been modified, with the result that the British monopoly is at an end, while the possibility of a similar monopoly has probably disappeared, so that the British navy, even if successful, could not now be used, as it was a hundred years ago, as a means of entirely destroying the trade of an adversary. Accordingly, if in a future war Britain is to find a continental ally, she must be able to offer him the assistance, not merely of naval victory, but also of a strong army. Moreover, during the epoch in which Great Britain has turned her back upon Europe the balance of power has been upset, and there is no power and no combination able to stand up against Germany as the head of the Triple Alliance. This is a position of great danger for England, because it is an open question whether in the absence of a strong British army any group of Powers, even in alliance with England, could afford to take up a quarrel against the combination of the central States. It thus appears that Great Britain, by neglecting the conditions of her existence as a nation, has lost the strength in virtue of which, at previous crises in European history, she was the successful champion of that independence of States which, in the present stage of human development, is the substance of freedom.
Our consideration of the question of might showed that if Great Britain is to be strong enough to meet her responsibilities her people must nationalise themselves, while our reflections on the question of right showed that only from such nationalisation is a sound policy to be expected. In short, only in so far as her people have the unity of spirit and of will that mark a nation can Great Britain be either strong or just. The idea of the nation implies a work to be done by the British State, which has to be on the watch against challenge from a continental rival to Great Britain's right to the headship of her empire, and which at the same time has to give to that empire the direction without which it cannot remain united. Great Britain cannot do the work thus imposed upon her by her position and her history unless she has the co-operation of all her people. Thus the conception of the nation reveals itself in the twofold shape of duties laid upon England and of duties consequently laid upon every Englishman. It means that England must either decline and fall or do a certain work in the world which is impossible for her unless she constrains all her people to devote themselves to her service. It thus appears that England and her people can expect no future worth having except on the principle of duty made the mainspring both of public and of private life.
We attempted to apply the principles involved in the word nation to the obvious and urgent needs of the British State at the present time.
Victory at sea being indispensable for Great Britain in case of conflict, we inquired into the conditions of victory, and found in the parallel instances of Nelson and Napoleon that both by sea and land the result of the nationalisation of war is to produce a leader who is the personification of a theory or system of operations. The history of the rise of the German nation shows how the effort to make a nation produced the necessary statesman, Bismarck. Nationalisation creates the right leadership—that of the man who is master of his work.
Reviewing the needs of the naval administration, we saw that what is wanted at the present time is rather proper organisation at the Admiralty than an increase in mere material strength; while turning to the army, we discovered that the only system on which can be produced the army that Great Britain requires is that which makes every able-bodied citizen a soldier.
To make the citizen a soldier is to give him that sense of duty to the country and that consciousness of doing it, which, if spread through the whole population, will convert it into what is required—a nation. Therefore to reform the army according to some such plan as has been here proposed is the first step in that national revival which is the one thing needful for England, and if that step be taken the rest will follow of itself. Nationalisation will bring leadership, which in the political sphere becomes statesmanship, and the right kind of education, to give which is the highest ultimate function of national existence.
I have tried in these pages to develop an idea which has haunted me for many years. I think if the reader would extend to it even for a short time the hospitality of his mind he might be willing to make it his constant companion. For it seems to me to show the way towards the solution of other problems than those which have here been directly discussed. I cannot but believe that if we could all accustom ourselves to make some sacrifices for the sake of England, if only by giving a few minutes every day to thinking about her and by trying to convince ourselves that those who are not of our party are yet perhaps animated by the same love of their country as we ourselves, we might realise that the question of duty is answered more easily by performance than by speculation. I suspect that the relations between the political parties, between capital and labour, between master and servant, between rich and poor, between class and class would become simpler and better if Englishmen were to come to see how natural it is that they should spend their lives for England.
