The German emperor attributes the decline in the military organization to the negligence of his military staff, but its true cause is the German educational system. The steady augmentation of the rolls of military delinquents is the measure of the growth of German intelligence. The ease with which Germany conquered France flattered the vanity of the educated German, but it did not prevent him from emigrating to America. To the cultured mind the army that wins the contest in which no principle is involved is as odious as the army that loses. To the cultured mind all standing armies are odious, because they are an embodied assumption of the barbarism of man, and a denial of the efficacy of reason. The great stream of German emigration attests the superiority of German culture. The educated German declines to learn the art of shooting the emperor’s enemies, but he knows that Germany is, in fact, governed by its standing army—by muskets—and he quits the country.
Thus the chief power of Germany becomes her chief weakness. A system of education which has made her the first nation in Europe produces wide-spread discontent among her people, because she is governed by obsolete ideas. Nor can the loss in virile force suffered by Germany, through emigration, be made good by a counter movement of immigrants from the less favored countries of Europe. The economic condition of Germany—her freedom from debt and her comparatively low rate of taxation—invite such a movement. But the European policy of international hate, created and perpetuated by standing armies, forbids Germany to recoup her losses of men to America, through corresponding gains of men from the overtaxed populations of neighboring countries. The grinning skeletons of a hundred battles in which the rival nationalities of Europe have been pitted against one another, rise to challenge the social intermingling of peoples separated for centuries by the arts of diplomacy, traditions of blood and flames, and the serried ranks of standing armies.
The disposition of Germans to emigrate irritates the emperor and his prime-minister. The loss of numbers might be borne, for notwithstanding the steady outward flow of emigrants there is a slight increase of population in Germany. But it is the quality of the exodus that annoys the emperor and his chancellor. The German emigrants are strong men and women—strong mentally and physically. All the weaklings, all the paupers, all the imbeciles, the aged, and the infirm remain, only the young and vigorous go. Those who go have been taught at the expense of the State to love the emperor and hate his enemies, but they do neither. The German system of education, from the point of view of rulers by divine right, is, hence, a conspicuous failure. It makes better men but poorer subjects. The more thoroughly the man is educated the more valuable he is to himself and to the community, but the less valuable to his king. His growth in intelligence is the measure of his decline in reverence for rulers by divine right, and the standing armies by which they are alone supported. This is the cause of German emigration, and its effect is to weaken the German Empire. Germany is not so strong as she was when her armies swept over France; she declines in power each year, through the loss of men—the sole support of a State.[E29] They flee from her standing army to the United States, a republic with only a handful of soldiers.
The system of education established to increase the power of Prussia in Europe has accomplished its purpose. But it has done much more—something never thought of by its founders. It has produced a wide-spread feeling of intelligent discontent; and discontent is an inarticulate cry for reform. The cultured German scorns the standing army, refuses to serve in it, protests against its longer existence, and demands more and better education for his children. His protest is unheeded, and he quits the country. But the demand for higher education is not, cannot be, disregarded. Intelligence is contagious; it infects with a thirst for knowledge all with whom it comes in contact. Education is the arch-revolutionist whose onward march is irresistible. Soon a riper culture will make the German Protestants more courageous and more imperative in their demands, and they will remain in the country to enforce them. Education made Germany the first military power in Europe; but education could not have been put to a more ignoble service. The desire of intelligent Germans is that Germany shall become the first industrial power in Europe, and this desire can be realized by the disbandment of her standing army.
This review of the situation in Europe shows that it is practicable for her to restore, at once, to productive employments three millions of men—the flower of her population—now not only idle, but a public charge. It shows, also, that it is practicable for Europe to place, at once, at the disposal of her educators $700,000,000 per annum instead of $70,000,000 per annum, as at present. The corollary of these two propositions is a third, namely, that it is practicable for Europe to extinguish her national debts in fifty-four years. It follows that the regular armies of Europe alone stand in the way of universal education, and of universal industrial prosperity.
Standing armies everywhere within the lines of advanced civilization must soon disappear before the march of education.[89] Social questions cannot much longer be settled by emigration. The world’s virgin soil is being rapidly appropriated. When the surface of the whole earth shall have become occupied, barbarisms of every nature will be intolerable. Man must then be highly civilized, and the only highly civilizing influence is education. The age of force is passing away; the age of science and art—the age of industrial development—has begun, and standing armies are as abnormal in Europe now as slavery was in the United States twenty-five years ago.[90]
[89] “This nation to-day is in profound peace with the world; but in my judgment it has before it a great duty, which will not only make that profound peace permanent, but shall set such an example as will absolutely abolish war on this continent, and by a great example and a lofty moral precedent shall ultimately abolish it in other continents. I am justified in saying that every one of the seventeen independent Powers of North and South America is not only willing but ready—is not only ready but eager—to enter into a solemn compact in a congress that may be called in the name of peace, to agree that if, unhappily, differences shall arise—as differences will arise between men and nations—they shall be settled upon the peaceful and Christian basis of arbitration.
“And, as I have often said before, I am glad to repeat, in this great centre of civilization and power, that in my judgment no national spectacle, no international spectacle, no continental spectacle, could be more grand than that the republics of the Western world should meet together and solemnly agree that neither the soil of North nor that of South America shall be hereafter stained by brothers’ blood.”—Extract from the Speech of Hon. James G. Blaine at the Delmonico Dinner, October 29, 1884.
[90] “It is only slowly, and after having been long in contact with society, that man becomes more indulgent towards others and more severe towards himself.”—“Suicide: an Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics,” p. 226. By Henry Morselli, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882.
Standing armies are the instruments of tyranny; they are the last analysis of selfishness, the incarnation of depravity; for they do not reason—they strike. It is worthy of note that the standing armies of Europe are coeval with the revival of learning, and the revival of learning was a revival of the Greco-Roman subjective educational methods. The logical effect of those methods was the promotion of selfishness, and the standing armies conserved the selfish designs of the rulers of the newly-formed States. It is hence not a mere coincidence that standing armies and the revival of learning through subjective processes of thought are of common origin. The Machiavellian philosophy of cruelty, duplicity, and contempt of man sprung logically from egoism, and as logically led to the formation of standing armies—bodies of armed men, trained, under compulsion, to kill, burn, and destroy.