An army which starts by playing the popular role of benefactor, or liberator, will end very speedily by becoming the instrument of a military despotism. We need look no farther back than Cromwell and his major-generals for an example. We have been in the habit of regarding such contingencies as remote and mediaeval; none the less we had all but started on this fatal course in the spring and summer of last year. We were then saved, not by the wisdom of statesmen—for these only increased the danger by the spectacle which they afforded of timidity, temper, and equivocation—but solely by the present war which, though it has brought us many horrors, has averted, for a time at least, what is infinitely the worst of all.
SERVICE AND SUFFRAGE
The conclusion is plain. A democracy which asserts the right of manhood suffrage, while denying the duty of manhood service, is living in a fool's paradise.
A democracy which does not fully identify itself with its army, which does not treat its army with honour and as an equal, but which treats it, on the contrary, as ill-bred and ill-tempered people treat their servants—with a mixture, that is, of fault-finding and condescension—is following a very perilous path.
An army which does not receive the treatment it deserves, and which at the same time is ordered by the politicians to perform services which, upon occasions, it may hold to be inconsistent with its honour, is a danger to the state.
A democracy which, having refused to train itself for its own defence, thinks nevertheless that it can safely raise the issue of 'the Army versus the People,' is mad.
[[1]] This was the German period of training for infantry. The National Service League proposal was four months.
[[2]] The pay of the French private soldier is, I understand, about a sou—a halfpenny—a day. In his 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 regiments reached the preposterous figure of five shillings a day for privates. Men serving with our army as motor drivers—in comparative safety—receive something like six shillings or seven and sixpence a day.