Reflections

(1) In the time of Clausewitz we in Britain were a nation of 18,000,000, practically self-supporting, and governed by an aristocracy. To-day we are a crowded nation of 43,000,000 dependent upon over-sea sources for three-fourths of our food, for our raw materials, for our trade, for our staying power, and we are governed by a democracy. In a modern democratic State it will only be possible to carry on the most just and unavoidable war so long as the hardships brought on the democracy by the war do not become intolerable. To prevent these hardships from thus becoming intolerable to the people, to Public Opinion, will be the task of the modern statesman during war, and this can only be done by wise prevision and timely preparation. It requires the internal organization of the Industrial State for war.

It appears to the writer that internal organization can be subdivided as follows:​—​

I. An adequate gold reserve.

II. The protection of our ships carrying raw material, food, and exports during their passage on the high seas from the places of origin to the consumers: (A) by the few available cruisers which could be spared from the fighting fleets, assisted by a thoroughly well thought out and prepared scheme of national indemnity (vide Blue Book thereon); (B) by insuring the distribution to the consumers of food and raw material, after it has arrived in the country, by preparing a thorough organization which would deal with the blocking of any of the principal ports of arrival, and by guarding the vulnerable points of our internal lines of communications to and from the shipping centres.

III. Organization of Poor Law system to bring immediate relief by selling at peace price food to those unable to pay war prices owing to (A) normal poverty (7,000,000 to 8,000,000 souls), (B) out-of-works, due to effect of war on trade.

Work and wages the State must guarantee during modern war, and before the State can guarantee these, it is absolutely necessary that it should satisfy itself that the above preparations are actually in being. This pre-supposes a more earnest study of the industrial effects of a great national war than has yet been given to the subject by our political leaders. For in the warfare of the present and future the importance of gaining and preserving Public Opinion, as pointed out by Clausewitz, cannot be over-estimated. It is as fundamentally important to safeguard our own Public Opinion as it is to attack, weaken, and gain over that of the enemy. This has not yet passed the stage of thought. But good thoughts are no better than good dreams unless they be put into action. We are waiting for the statesman to DO it. There is no great difficulty.

(2) In arousing the national spirit to the requisite height of patriotic self-denial and self-sacrifice, in elevating, preserving, and safe-guarding Public Opinion during a great national struggle, much may be hoped for from the patriotism of our Press. Only in fairness to those whose patriotism is self-originating and spontaneous, it must be made compulsory upon ALL, so that no journal may suffer loss of circulation or pecuniary injury thereby.

(3) There lies a practical task immediately to the hand of our statesmen if they will seriously set themselves to the task of improving the moral of our nation by reforming our education curriculum, on the leading principle that the moral is to the physical as three to one in life, and that therefore character-building must be its chief aim. Then they will do much towards strengthening us for war, towards carrying out Clausewitz's idea of the gaining and preserving of our Public Opinion in War.

[CHAPTER VII]
THE NATURE OF WAR

"It is necessary for us to commence with a glance at the nature of the whole, because it is particularly necessary that, in the consideration of any of the parts, the whole should be kept constantly in view. We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by Publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless numbers of duels which make up a war, we shall do so best by supposing two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to throw his adversary, and thus to render him incapable of further resistance.

"Violence arms itself with the inventions of arts and science in order to contend against violence. Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible, and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without essentially impairing its power.

"Violence, that is to say physical force, is therefore the Means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to attain this object fully the enemy must first be disarmed: and this is, correctly speaking, the real aim of hostilities in theory."[17]

Now, "philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming an adversary without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the art of war. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated, for in such dangerous things as war the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, MUST obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise." "To introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity." "We therefore repeat our proposition, that War is an act of violence which in its application knows no bounds."