"Is there a German culture to-day?" asks Fuchs.[84] "We Germans are able to perfect all works of civilizing power as well as, and indeed better than, the best in other nations. Yet nothing that the heroes of labor execute goes beyond our own border." And the most extraordinary thing is that those who do not in the least deny this condition to which Germany has fallen—who, indeed, exaggerate it, and ask us with triumph to look upon the brutality of German method and German conception—ask us to go and follow Germany's example!
Most British pro-armament agitation is based upon the plea that Germany is dominated by a philosophy of force. They point to books like those of General Bernhardi, idealizing the employment of force, and then urge a policy of replying by force—and force only—which would, of course, justify in Germany the Bernhardi school, and by the reaction of opposing forces stereotype the philosophy in Europe and make it part of the general European tradition. England stands in danger of becoming Prussianized by virtue of the fact of fighting Prussianism, or rather by virtue of the fact that, instead of fighting it with the intellectual tools that won religious freedom in Europe, she insists upon confining her efforts to the tools of physical force.
Some of the acutest foreign students of English progress—men like Edmond Demolins—ascribe it to the very range of qualities which the German system is bound to crush; their aptitude for initiative, their reliance upon their own efforts, their sturdy resistance to State interference (already weakening), their impatience with bureaucracy and red tape (also weakening), all of which is wrapped up with general rebelliousness to regimentation.
Though the English base part of the defence of armaments on the plea that, economic interest apart, they desire to live their own life in their own way, to develop in their own fashion, do they not run some danger that with this mania for the imitation of German method they may Germanize England, though never a German soldier land on their soil?
Of course, it is always assumed that, though the English may adopt the French and German system of conscription, they could never fall a victim to the defects of those systems, and that the scandals which break out from time to time in France and Germany could never be duplicated by their barrack system, and that the military atmosphere of their own barracks, the training in their own army, would always be wholesome. But what do even its defenders say?
Mr. Blatchford himself says:[85]
Barrack life is bad. Barrack life will always be bad. It is never good for a lot of men to live together apart from home influences and feminine. It is not good for women to live or work in communities of women. The sexes react upon each other; each provides for the other a natural restraint, a wholesome incentive.... The barracks and the garrison town are not good for young men. The young soldier, fenced and hemmed in by a discipline unnecessarily severe, and often stupid, has at the same time an amount of license which is dangerous to all but those of strong good sense and strong will. I have seen clean, good, nice boys come into the Army and go to the devil in less than a year. I am no Puritan. I am a man of the world; but any sensible and honest man who has been in the Army will know at once that what I am saying is entirely true, and is the truth expressed with much restraint and moderation. A few hours in a barrack-room would teach a civilian more than all the soldier stories ever written. When I joined the Army I was unusually unsophisticated for a boy of twenty. I had been brought up by a mother. I had attended Sunday-school and chapel. I had lived a quiet, sheltered life, and I had an astonishing amount to learn. The language of the barrack-room shocked me, appalled me. I could not understand half I heard; I could not credit much that I saw. When I began to realize the truth, I took my courage in both hands and went about the world I had come into with open eyes. So I learnt the facts, but I must not tell them.[86]