But the question naturally occurs to one: Why shouldn’t the working class soldiers be treated thus? Surely it is to be expected that the great majority class will get what they permit from their “superiors.”
Note how the soldier boys are snubbed and bull-dozed in the German army. Says Dr. Walsh:[[233]]
“In a trial reported Dec. 17, 1903, a lieutenant of the infantry has been convicted of 618 cases of maltreatment and 57 cases of improper treatment of soldiers under him, and a sergeant in another regiment has been convicted of 1,520 cases of maltreatment and 100 cases of improper treatment.... The men deposed were so afraid, that nobody ventured to complain.”
There is a yearly average of 7,000 desertions from the English regular army. Quite naturally. Frozen, starved and despised, the thirty-cent patriots make a break for bread and freedom from the “noble” snobbery of the aristocratic pets in control.
The record of desertions from the American Army is, for the years 1907, 1908, and 1909, respectively, 4,534, 4,525, 5,023.
(30) How is it possible to interest young men in the brutal business of war?
There are some paragraphs on this matter in the chapter following, “For Mother and the Boys.” Here the matter of military parades is suggested for consideration by “father and the boys.”
Sometimes the boys’ interest in war begins in so simple a thing as a parade. A military parade is a trap—for the working class. A writer in the New York Tribune, April 22, 1908, makes several artful suggestions as to the value of military parades in snaring young toilers into the army. He suggests:
That “parades, so far as circumstances permit, be through or near ... sections [of the city] ... where they may encourage enlistment among a ... class of prospective recruits ... instead of on Riverside Drive [where the ‘better classes’ live], to which the public has access with difficulty and which is not frequented by the class of young men to whom the National Guard appeals.... These suggestions reflect the views of many citizens ... with whom the writer has conferred.”
The writer also points out that bright-colored uniforms for the paraders have excellent effect on the imagination of the prospective recruits.