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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10629 ***
+
+BRITAIN AT BAY
+
+BY
+
+SPENSER WILKINSON
+
+
+
+New York
+
+1909
+
+
+
+TO MY CHILDREN
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. THE NATION AND THE PARTIES
+
+II. DEFEAT
+
+III. FORCE AND RIGHT
+
+IV. ARBITRATION AND DISARMAMENT
+
+V. THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR
+
+VI. THE BALANCE OF POWER
+
+VII. THE RISE OF GERMANY
+
+VIII. NATIONHOOD NEGLECTED
+
+IX. NEW CONDITIONS
+
+X. DYNAMICS--THE QUESTION OF MIGHT
+
+XI. POLICY--THE QUESTION OF RIGHT
+
+XII. THE NATION
+
+XIII. THE EFFECT OF THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR UPON LEADERSHIP
+
+XIV. THE NEEDS OF THE NAVY
+
+XV. ENGLAND'S MILITARY PROBLEM
+
+XVI. TWO SYSTEMS CONTRASTED
+
+XVII. A NATIONAL ARMY
+
+XVIII. THE COST
+
+XIX. ONE ARMY NOT TWO
+
+XX. THE TRANSITION
+
+XXI. THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED
+
+XXII. THE CHAIN OF DUTY
+
+
+
+
+Chapters XIV. to XX. have appeared as articles in the _Morning Post_
+and are by kind permission reproduced without substantial change.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+THE NATION AND THE PARTIES
+
+"I do not believe in the perfection of the British constitution as an
+instrument of war ... it is evident that there is something in your
+machinery that is wrong." These were the words of the late Marquis of
+Salisbury, speaking as Prime Minister in his place in the House of Lords
+on the 30th of January 1900. They amounted to a declaration by the
+British Government that it could not govern, for the first business of a
+Government is to be able to defend the State of which it has charge,
+that is, to carry on war. Strange to say, the people of England were
+undisturbed by so striking an admission of national failure.
+
+On the 16th of March 1909 came a new declaration from another Prime
+Minister. Mr. Asquith, on the introduction of the Navy Estimates,
+explained to the House of Commons that the Government had been surprised
+at the rate at which the new German navy was being constructed, and at
+the rapid growth of Germany's power to build battleships. But it is the
+first duty of a Government to provide for national security and to
+provide means to foresee. A Government that is surprised in a matter
+relating to war is already half defeated.
+
+The creation of the German navy is the creation of means that could be
+used to challenge Great Britain's sea power and all that depends upon
+it. There has been no such challenge these hundred years, no challenge
+so formidable as that represented by the new German fleet these three
+hundred years. It brings with it a crisis in the national life of
+England as great as has ever been known; yet this crisis finds the
+British nation divided, unready and uncertain what leadership it is to
+expect.
+
+The dominant fact, the fact that controls all others, is that from now
+onwards Great Britain has to face the stern reality of war, immediately
+by way of preparation and possibly at any moment by way of actual
+collision. England is drifting into a quarrel with Germany which, if it
+cannot be settled, involves a struggle for the mastery with the
+strongest nation that the world has yet seen--a nation that, under the
+pressure of necessity, has learnt to organise itself for war as for
+peace; that sets its best minds to direct its preparations for war;
+that has an army of four million citizens, and that is of one mind in
+the determination to make a navy that shall fear no antagonist. A
+conflict of this kind is the test of nations, not only of their strength
+but also of their righteousness or right to be. It has two aspects. It
+is first of all a quarrel and then a fight, and if we are to enter into
+it without fear of destruction we must fulfil two conditions: in the
+quarrel we must be in the right, in the fight we must win. The two
+conditions are inseparable. If there is a doubt about the justice of our
+cause we shall be divided among ourselves, and it will be impossible for
+us to put forth the strength of a united nation.
+
+Have we really a quarrel with Germany? Is she doing us any wrong? Some
+of our people seem to think so, though I find it hard to say in what the
+wrong consists. Are we doing her any wrong? Some Germans seem to think
+so, and it behoves us, if we can, to find out what the German grievance
+is.
+
+Suppose that there is a cause for quarrel, hidden at present but sooner
+or later to be revealed. What likelihood is there that we shall be able
+to make good our case in arms, and to satisfy the world and posterity
+that we deserved to win?
+
+Germany can build fleets as fast as we can, and although we have a start
+the race will not be easy for us; she has the finest school of war that
+ever existed, against which we have to set an Admiralty so much
+mistrusted that at this moment a committee of the Cabinet is inquiring
+into its efficiency.
+
+Is it not time for us to find the answer to the question raised by Lord
+Salisbury nine years ago, to ascertain what it is that interferes with
+the perfection of the British constitution as an instrument of war, and
+to set right what is wrong with our machinery?
+
+The truth is that we have ceased to be a nation; we have forgotten
+nationhood, and have become a conglomerate of classes, parties,
+factions, and sects. That is the disease. The remedy consists in
+reconstituting ourselves as a nation.
+
+What is a nation? The inhabitants of a country constituted as one body
+to secure their corporate being and well-being. The nation is all of us,
+and its government is trusteeship for us all in order to give us peace
+and security, and in order that in peace and security we may make each
+other's lives worth living by doing each the best work he can. The
+nature of a nation may be seen by distinguishing it from the other
+nations outside and from the parties within. The mark of a nation is
+sovereignty, which means, as regards other nations, the right and the
+power to make peace with them or to carry on war against them, and
+which means, as regards those within, the right and the power to command
+them.
+
+A nation is a people constituted as a State, maintaining and supporting
+a Government which is at once the embodiment of right and the wielder of
+force. If the right represented by the Government is challenged, either
+without or within, the Government asserts it by force, and in either
+case disposes, to any extent that may be required, of the property, the
+persons, and the lives of its subjects.
+
+A party, according to the classical theory of the British constitution,
+is a body of men within the State who are agreed in regarding some
+measure or some principle as so vital to the State that, in order to
+secure the adoption of the measure or the acceptance of the principle,
+they are willing to sink all differences of opinion on other matters,
+and to work together for the one purpose which they are agreed in
+regarding as fundamental.
+
+The theory of party government is based on the assumption that there
+must always be some measure or some principle in regard to which the
+citizens of the same country will differ so strongly as to subordinate
+their private convictions on other matters to their profound convictions
+in regard to the one great question. It is a theory of permanent civil
+war carried on through the forms of parliamentary debate and popular
+election, and, indeed, the two traditional parties are the political
+descendants of the two sides which in the seventeenth century were
+actually engaged in civil war. For the ordinary purposes of the domestic
+life of the country the system has its advantages, but they are coupled
+with grave drawbacks. The party system destroys the sincerity of our
+political life, and introduces a dangerous dilettantism into the
+administration of public business.
+
+A deliberative assembly like the House of Commons can reach a decision
+only by there being put from the chair a question to which the answer
+must be either Yes or No. It is evidently necessary to the sincerity of
+such decisions that the answer given by each member shall in every case
+be the expression of his conviction regarding the right answer to the
+question put. If every member in every division were to vote according
+to his own judgment and conscience upon the question put, there would be
+a perpetual circulation of members between the Ayes to the right and the
+Noes to the left. The party system prevents this. It obliges each member
+on every important occasion to vote with his leaders and to follow the
+instruction of the whips. In this way the division of opinion produced
+by some particular question or measure is, as far as possible, made
+permanent and dominant, and the freedom of thought and of deliberation
+is confined within narrow limits.
+
+Thus there creeps into the system an element of insincerity which has
+been enormously increased since the extension of the franchise and the
+consequent organisation of parties in the country. Thirty or forty years
+ago the caucus was established in all the constituencies, in each of
+which was formed a party club, association, or committee, for the
+purpose of securing at parliamentary elections the success of the party
+candidate. The association, club, or committee consists, as regards its
+active or working portion, of a very small percentage of the voters even
+of its own party, but it is affiliated to the central organisation and
+in practice it controls the choice of candidates.
+
+What is the result? That the affairs of the nation are entirely given
+over to be disputed between the two organised parties, whose leaders are
+compelled, in shaping their policy and in thinking about public affairs,
+to consider first and foremost the probable effect of what they will do
+and of what they will say upon the active members of the caucus of their
+own party in the constituencies. The frame of mind of the members of the
+caucus is that of men who regard the opposite caucus as the adversary.
+But the adversary of a nation can only be another nation.
+
+In this way the leaders of both parties, the men who fill the places
+which, in a well-organised nation, would be assigned to statesmen, are
+placed in it position in which statesmanship is almost impossible. A
+statesman would be devoted solely to the nation. He would think first,
+second, and third of the nation. Security would be his prime object, and
+upon that basis he would aim at the elevation of the characters and of
+the lives of the whole population. But our leaders cannot possibly think
+first, second, and third of the nation. They have to think at least as
+much of the next election and of the opinions of their supporters. In
+this way their attention is diverted from that observation of other
+nations which is essential for the maintenance of security. Moreover,
+they are obliged to dwell on subjects directly intelligible to and
+appreciable by the voters in the constituencies, and are thereby
+hindered from giving either the time or the attention which they would
+like to any of those problems of statesmanship which require close and
+arduous study for their solution. The wonder is in these conditions that
+they do their work so well, and maintain undiminished the reputation of
+English public men for integrity and ability.
+
+Yet what at the present moment is the principle about which parties are
+divided? Is there any measure or any principle at issue which is really
+vital to Great Britain? Is there anything in dispute between the parties
+which would not be abandoned and forgotten at the first shot fired in a
+war between England and a great continental nation? I am convinced that
+that first shot must cause the scales to fall from men's eyes; that it
+must make every one realise that our divisions are comparative trifles
+and that for years we have been wasting time over them. But if we wait
+for the shock of war to arouse us to a sense of reality and to estimate
+our party differences at their true value, it will be too late. We shall
+wring our hands in vain over our past blindness and the insight we shall
+then have obtained will avail us nothing.
+
+The party system has another consequence which will not stand scrutiny
+in the light of reality; it is dilettantism in the conduct of the
+nation's principal business. Some of the chief branches of the executive
+work of government are the provinces of special arts and sciences, each
+of which to master requires the work of a lifetime. Of such a kind are
+the art of carrying on war, whether by sea or land, the art of
+conducting foreign relations, which involves a knowledge of all the
+other great States and their policies, and the direction of the
+educational system, which cannot possibly be properly conducted except
+by an experienced educator. But the system gives the direction of each
+of these branches to one of the political leaders forming the Cabinet or
+governing committee, and the practice is to consider as disqualified
+from membership of that committee any man who has given his life either
+to war, to foreign policy, or to education. Yet by its efficiency in
+these matters the nation must stand or fall. By all means let us be
+chary of lightly making changes in the constitution or in the
+arrangements of government. But, if the security and continued existence
+of the nation are in question, must we not scrutinise our methods of
+government with a view to make sure that they accord with the necessary
+conditions of success in a national struggle for existence?
+
+I am well aware that the train of thought to which I have tried to give
+expression is unpopular, and that most people think that any
+modification of the traditional party system is impracticable. But the
+question is not whether the system is popular; it is whether it will
+enable the country to stand in the hour of trial. If the system is
+inefficient and fails to enable the nation to carry on with success the
+functions necessary for its preservation and if at the same time it is
+impracticable to change it, then nothing can avert ruin from this
+country. Yet I believe that a very large number of my countrymen are in
+fact thinking each for himself the thoughts which I am trying to
+express. They are perhaps not the active members of the caucus of either
+party, but they are men who, if they see the need, will not shrink from
+exertions or from sacrifices which they believe to be useful or
+necessary to the country. It is to them that the following pages are an
+appeal. I appeal with some confidence because what I shall try to show
+to be necessary is not so much a change of institutions as a change of
+spirit; not a new constitution but a return to a true way of looking at
+public and private life. My contention is that the future of England
+depends entirely upon the restoration of duty, of which the nation is
+the symbol, to its proper place in our lives.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+DEFEAT
+
+Great Britain is drifting unintentionally and half unconsciously into a
+war with the German Empire, a State which has a population of sixty
+millions and is better organised for war than any State has ever been in
+modern times. For such a conflict, which may come about to-morrow, and
+unless a great change takes place must come about in the near future,
+Great Britain is not prepared.
+
+The food of our people and the raw material of their industries come to
+this country by sea, and the articles here produced go by sea to their
+purchasers abroad. Every transaction carries with it a certain profit
+which makes it possible. If the exporter and the manufacturer who
+supplies him can make no profit they cannot continue their operations,
+and the men who work for them must lose their employment.
+
+Suppose Great Britain to be to-morrow at war with one or more of the
+Great Powers of Europe. All the sailing vessels and slow steamers will
+stop running lest they should be taken by hostile cruisers. The fast
+steamers will have to pay war rates of insurance and to charge extra
+freights. Steamers ready to leave foreign ports for this country will
+wait for instructions and for news. On the outbreak of war, therefore,
+this over-sea traffic must be greatly diminished in volume and carried
+on with enormously increased difficulties. The supply of food would be
+considerably reduced and the certainty of the arrival of any particular
+cargo would have disappeared. The price of food must therefore rapidly
+and greatly rise, and that alone would immediately impose very great
+hardships on the whole of the working class, of which a considerable
+part would be driven across the line which separates modern comfort from
+the starvation margin. The diminution in the supply of the raw materials
+of manufacture would be much greater and more immediate. Something like
+half the manufacturers of Great Britain must close their works for want
+of materials. But will the other half be able to carry on? Foreign
+orders they cannot possibly execute, because there can be no certainty
+of the delivery of the goods; and even if they could, the price at which
+they could deliver them with a profit would be much higher than it is in
+peace. For with a diminished supply the price of raw material must go
+up, the cost of marine insurance must be added, together with the extra
+wages necessary to enable the workmen to live with food at an enhanced
+price.
+
+Thus the effect of the greater difficulty of sea communication must be
+to destroy the margin of profit which enables the British capitalist to
+carry on his works, while the effect of all these causes taken together
+on the credit system upon which our whole domestic economy reposes will
+perhaps be understood by business men. Even if this state of things
+should last only a few months, it certainly involves the transfer to
+neutrals of all trade that is by possibility transferable. Foreign
+countries will give their orders for cotton, woollen, and iron goods to
+the United States, France, Switzerland, and Austro-Hungary, and at the
+conclusion of peace the British firms that before supplied them, if they
+have not in the meantime become bankrupt, will find that their customers
+have formed new connections.
+
+The shrinkage of credit would bring a multitude of commercial failures;
+the diminution of trade and the cessation of manufactures a great many
+more. The unemployed would be counted by the million, and would have to
+be kept at the public expense or starve.
+
+If in the midst of these misfortunes, caused by the mere fact of war,
+should come the news of defeat at sea, still more serious consequences
+must follow. After defeat at sea all regular and secure communication
+between Great Britain, her Colonies, and India comes to an end. With the
+terrible blow to Britain's reputation which defeat at sea must bring,
+what will be the position of the 100,000 British in India who for a
+century have governed a population of nearly 300,000,000? What can the
+Colonies do to help Great Britain under such conditions? For the command
+of the sea nothing, and even if each of them had a first-rate army, what
+would be the use of those armies to this country in her hour of need?
+They cannot be brought to Europe unless the British navy commands the
+sea.
+
+These are some of the material consequences of defeat. But what of its
+spiritual consequences? We have brought up our children in the pride of
+a great nation, and taught them of an Empire on which the sun never
+sets. What shall we say to them in the hour of defeat and after the
+treaty of peace imposed by the victor? They will say: "Find us work and
+we will earn our bread and in due time win back the greatness that has
+been lost." But how are they to earn their bread? In this country half
+the employers will have been ruined by the war. The other half will have
+lost heavily, and much of the wealth even of the very rich will have
+gone to keep alive the innumerable multitude of starving unemployed.
+These will be advised after the war to emigrate. To what country?
+Englishmen, after defeat, will everywhere be at a discount. Words will
+not describe, and the imagination cannot realise, the suffering of a
+defeated nation living on an island which for fifty years has not
+produced food enough for its population.
+
+The material and spiritual results of defeat can easily be recognised by
+any one who takes the trouble to think about the question, though only
+experience either at first hand or supplied by history can enable a man
+fully to grasp its terrible nature. But a word must be said on the
+social and political consequences inseparable from the wreck of a State
+whose Government has been unable to fulfil its prime function, that of
+providing security for the national life. All experience shows that in
+such cases men do not take their troubles calmly. They are filled with
+passion. Their feelings find vent in the actions to which their previous
+currents of thought tended. The working class, long accustomed by its
+leaders to regard the capitalists as a class with interests and aims
+opposed to its own, will hardly be able in the stress of unemployment
+and of famine to change its way of thinking. The mass of the workmen,
+following leaders whose judgment may not perhaps be of the soundest but
+who will undoubtedly sincerely believe that the doctrines with which
+they have grown up are true, may assail the existing social order and
+lay the blame of their misfortunes upon the class which has hitherto had
+the government of the country in its hands and has supplied the leaders
+of both political parties. The indignation which would inspire this
+movement would not be altogether without justification, for it cannot be
+denied that both political parties have for many years regarded
+preparation for war and all that belongs to it as a minor matter,
+subordinate to the really far less important questions relying upon
+which each side has sought to win sufficient votes to secure a party
+majority.
+
+Why do I discuss the hypothesis of British defeat rather than that of
+British victory? Because it is the invariable practice of the masters of
+war to consider first the disagreeable possibilities and to make
+provision for them. But also because, according to every one of the
+tests which can be applied, the probability of defeat for Great Britain
+in the present state of Europe is exceedingly great. Rarely has a State
+unready for conflict been able to stand against a nation organised for
+war. The last of a long series of examples was the war between Russia
+and Japan, in which the vast resources of a great Empire were exhausted
+in the struggle with a State so small as to seem a pigmy in comparison
+with her giant adversary. On the 10th of February 1904, the day when the
+news reached England that the Russo-Japanese war had begun, I gave as
+follows my reasons for thinking that Japan would win:--
+
+"The hypothesis of a considerable Japanese success, at any rate at
+first, is considered rather than its opposite, because Japan has at
+present all the marks of a nation likely to do great things in war. It
+is not merely that she has transformed her government and her education,
+has introduced military institutions on the German model, especially
+compulsory training and that vivifying institution, a general staff. The
+present quarrel arises from the deliberate policy of Russia, pursuing
+aims that are incompatible with every Japanese tradition and every
+Japanese hope. The whole Japanese nation has for years been burning with
+the sense of wrongs inflicted by Russia, and into this war, as into the
+preparation for it, the whole people throws itself, mind, soul, and
+body. This is the condition which produces great strategical plans and
+extreme energy in their execution. The Japanese forces are well
+organised, armed, and equipped. They are intelligently led and follow
+with intelligence.
+
+"Of Russia there is hardly evidence to show that the cause for which she
+is fighting has touched the imaginations or the feelings of more than a
+small fraction of the population. It is the war of a bureaucracy, and
+Russia may easily fail to develop either great leading, though her
+officers are instructed, or intelligent following of the leaders by the
+rank and file. But the Russian troops are brave and have always needed a
+good deal of beating."
+
+Substitute Great Britain for Russia and Germany for Japan in this
+forecast, which has been proved true, and every word holds good except
+two. We now know that Russia's policy was not deliberate; that her
+Government bungled into the war without knowing what it was doing. In
+just the same way British Governments have drifted blindly into the
+present difficult relations with Germany. Those in England who would
+push the country into a war with Germany are indeed not a bureaucracy,
+they are merely a fraction of one of the parties, and do not represent
+the mass of our people, who have no desire for such a war, and are so
+little aware of its possibility that they have never even taken the
+trouble to find out why it may come. A larger section of the other party
+is steeped in the belief that force, violence, and war are wicked in
+themselves, and ought therefore not to be thought about. It is a
+prejudice which, unless removed, may ruin this country, and there is no
+way of dissipating it except that of patient argument based upon
+observation of the world we live in. That way I shall attempt to follow
+in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+FORCE AND RIGHT
+
+"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and
+a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but
+whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
+also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy
+coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee
+to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and
+from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have
+heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and
+hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies."
+(Matt. v. 38-44).
+
+If there are any among us who adopt these words as the governing rule of
+their lives they will certainly cause no difficulty to the State in its
+military policy whatever that may be, and will find their natural places
+even in time of war to the public good. If the whole population were of
+their way of thinking and acting there would be no need to discuss war.
+An invader would not be resisted. His troops would be hospitably
+entertained and treated with affection. No opposition would be made to
+the change of Government which he would introduce, and the taxes which
+he imposed would be cheerfully paid. But there would be no State, except
+that created by the invader; and the problem of conduct for those
+living the life described would arise when the State so set up issued
+its ordinances requiring every able-bodied man to become a competent
+soldier.
+
+There are those who believe, or fancy they believe, that the words I
+have quoted involve the principle that the use of force or of violence
+between man and man, or between nation and nation, is wicked. To the man
+who thinks it right to submit to any violence or to be killed rather
+than to use violence in resistance, I have no reply to make. The world
+cannot conquer him and fear has no hold upon him. But even he can carry
+out his doctrine only to the extent of allowing himself to be
+ill-treated, as I will now convince him. Many years ago the people of
+South Lancashire were horrified by the facts reported in a trial for
+murder. In a village on the outskirts of Bolton lived a young woman,
+much liked and respected as a teacher in one of the Board schools. On
+her way home from school she was accustomed to follow a footpath through
+a lonely wood, and here one evening her body was found. She had been
+strangled by a ruffian who had thought in this lonely place to have his
+wicked will of her. She had resisted successfully and he had killed her
+in the struggle. Fortunately the murderer was caught and the facts
+ascertained from circumstantial evidence were confirmed by his
+confession. Now, the question I have to ask of the man who takes his
+stand on the passage I have quoted from the Gospel is: "What would have
+been your duty if you had been walking through that wood and come upon
+the girl struggling with the man who killed her?" This is a crucial
+instance which, I submit, utterly destroys the doctrine that the use of
+violence is in itself wrong. The right or wrong is not in the employment
+of force but simply in the purpose for which it is used. What the case
+establishes, I think, is that to use violence in resistance to violent
+wrong is not only right but necessary.
+
+The employment of force for the maintenance of right is the foundation
+of all civilised human life, for it is the fundamental function of the
+State, and apart from the State there is no civilisation, no life worth
+living. The first business of the State is to protect the community
+against violent interference from outside. This it does by requiring
+from its subjects whatever personal service and whatever sacrifice of
+property and of time may be necessary; and resistance to these demands,
+as well as to any injunctions whatever laid by the State upon its
+subjects, is unconditionally suppressed by force. The mark of the State
+is sovereignty, or the identification of force and right, and the
+measure of the perfection of the State is furnished by the completeness
+of this identification. In the present condition of English political
+thought it may be worth while to dwell for a few moments upon the
+beneficent nature of this dual action of the State.
+
+Within its jurisdiction the State maintains order and law and in this
+way makes life worth living for its subjects. Order and law are the
+necessary conditions of men's normal activities, of their industry, of
+their ownership of whatever the State allows them to possess--for
+outside of the State there is no ownership--of their leisure and of
+their freedom to enjoy it. The State is even the basis of men's
+characters, for it sets up and establishes a minimum standard of
+conduct. Certain acts are defined as unlawful and punished as crimes.
+Other acts, though not criminal, are yet so far subject to the
+disapproval of the courts that the man who does them may have to
+compensate those who suffer injury or damage in consequence of them.
+These standards have a dual origin, in legislation and precedent.
+Legislation is a formal expression of the agreement of the community
+upon the definition of crimes, and common law has been produced by the
+decisions of the courts in actions between man and man. Every case tried
+in a civil court is a conflict between two parties, a struggle for
+justice, the judgment being justice applied to the particular case. The
+growth of English law has been through an endless series of conflicts,
+and the law of to-day may be described as a line passing through a
+series of points representing an infinite number of judgments, each the
+decision of a conflict in court. For seven hundred years, with hardly an
+interruption, every judgment of a court has been sustained by the force
+of the State. The law thus produced, expressed in legislation and
+interpreted by the courts, is the foundation of all English conduct and
+character. Upon the basis thus laid there takes place a perpetual
+evolution of higher standards. In the intercourse of a settled and
+undisturbed community and of the many societies which it contains, arise
+a number of standards of behaviour which each man catches as it were by
+infection from the persons with whom he habitually associates and to
+which he is obliged to conform, because if his conduct falls below them
+his companions will have nothing to do with him. Every class of society
+has its notions of what constitutes proper conduct and constrains its
+members to carry on their lives, so far as they are open to inspection,
+according to these notions. The standards tend constantly to improve.
+Men form an ideal of behaviour by observing the conduct of the best of
+their class, and in proportion as this ideal gains acceptance, find
+themselves driven to adopt it for fear of the social ostracism which is
+the modern equivalent of excommunication. Little by little what was at
+first a rarely attained ideal becomes a part of good manners. It
+established itself as custom and finally becomes part of the law.
+
+Thus the State, in co-operation with the whole community, becomes the
+educator of its people. Standards of conduct are formed slowly in the
+best minds and exist at first merely in what Plato would have called
+"the intellectual sphere," or in what would have been called at a later
+date in Palestine the "kingdom of heaven." But the strongest impulse of
+mankind is to realise its ideals. Its fervent prayer, which once uttered
+can never cease, is "on earth as it is in heaven," and the ideals
+developed in man's spiritual life gradually take shape in laws and
+become prohibitions and injunctions backed by the forces of the State.
+
+The State, however, is not an abstraction. For English people it means
+the United Kingdom; and if an Englishman wants to realise what he owes
+to his country let him look back through its history and see how all
+that he values in the character of the men he most admires and all that
+is best in himself has gradually been created and realised through the
+ceaseless effort of his forefathers, carried on continuously from the
+time when the first Englishman crossed the North Sea until the present
+day. Other nations have their types of conduct, perhaps as good as our
+own, but Englishmen value, and rightly value, the ideals particularly
+associated with the life of their own country. Perhaps two of the
+commonest expressions convey peculiarly English views of character. We
+talk of "fair play" as the essence of just dealing between man and man.
+It is a conception we have developed from the national games. We
+describe ideal conduct as that of a gentleman. It is a condensation of
+the best part of English history, and a search for a definition of the
+function of Great Britain in the moral economy of the world will hardly
+find a better answer than that it is to stamp upon every subject of the
+King the character implied in these two expressions. Suppose the British
+State to be overthrown or to drop from its place among the great Powers
+of the world, these ideals of character would be discredited and their
+place would be taken by others.
+
+The justification of the constraint exercised by the State upon its own
+citizens is the necessity for security, the obligation of self-defence,
+which arises from the fact that outside the State there are other
+States, each endowed like itself with sovereignty, each of them
+maintaining by force its conception of right. The power of the State
+over its own subjects is thus in the last resort a consequence of the
+existence of other States. Upon the competition between them rests the
+order of the world. It is a competition extending to every sphere of
+life and in its acute form takes the shape of war, a struggle for
+existence, for the mastery or for right.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+ARBITRATION AND DISARMAMENT
+
+To some people the place of war in the economy of nations appears to be
+unsatisfactory. They think war wicked and a world where it exists out of
+joint. Accordingly they devote themselves to suggestions for the
+abolition of war and for the discovery of some substitute for it. Two
+theories are common; the first, that arbitration can in every case be a
+substitute for war, the second that the hopes of peace would be
+increased by some general agreement for disarmament.
+
+The idea of those who regard arbitration as a universal substitute for
+war appears to be that the relations between States can be put upon a
+basis resembling that of the relations between citizens in a settled and
+civilised country like our own. In Great Britain we are accustomed to a
+variety of means for settling disagreements between persons. There are
+the law courts, there are the cases in which recourse is had, with the
+sanction of the law courts, to the inquiry and decision of an
+arbitrator, and in all our sports we are accustomed to the presence of
+an umpire whose duty it is impartially to see that the rules of the
+game are observed and immediately to decide all points that might
+otherwise be doubtful.
+
+The work of an umpire who sees that the rules of the game are observed
+is based upon the consent of the players of both sides. Without that
+consent there could be no game, and the consent will be found to be
+based upon the fact that all the players are brought up with similar
+traditions and with like views of the nature of the game. Where this
+unity does not exist, difficulties constantly arise, as is notoriously
+the case in international sports. The attempt has been made, with
+constantly increasing success, to mitigate the evils of war by the
+creation of institutions in some way analogous to that of the umpire in
+a game. The Declaration of London, recently published, is an agreement
+between the principal Powers to accept a series of rules concerning
+maritime war, to be administered by an International Prize Court.
+
+The function of an arbitrator, usually to decide questions of fact and
+to assess compensation for inconvenience, most commonly the
+inconvenience occasioned to a private person by some necessary act of
+the State, also rests upon the consent of the parties, though in this
+case the consent is usually imposed upon them by the State through some
+legislative enactment or through the decision of a court. The action of
+a court of law, on the other hand, does not rest upon the consent of the
+parties. In a civil action the defendant may be and very often is
+unwilling to take any part in the proceedings. But he has no choice,
+and, whether he likes it or not, is bound by the decision of the court.
+For the court is the State acting in its judicial capacity with a view
+to insure that justice shall be done. The plaintiff alleges that the
+defendant has done him some wrong either by breach of contract or
+otherwise, and the verdict or judgment determines whether or not this is
+the case, and, if it is, what compensation is due. The judgment once
+given, the whole power of the State will be used to secure its
+execution.
+
+The business of a criminal court is the punishment of offenders whom it
+is the function of the State to discover, to bring to trial, and, when
+convicted, to punish. The prisoner's consent is not asked, and the
+judgment of the court is supported by the whole power of the State.
+
+In the international sphere there is no parallel to the action either of
+a civil or of a criminal court. Civil and criminal jurisdiction are
+attributes of sovereignty, and over two independent States there is no
+sovereign power. If, therefore, it is desired to institute between two
+States a situation analogous to that by which the subjects of a single
+Government are amenable to judicial tribunals, the proper way is to
+bring the two States under one sovereignty. This can be effected, and is
+constantly effected, by one of two methods. Either the two States
+federate and form a united State, or one of them conquers and annexes
+the other. The former process has been seen in modern times in the
+formation of the United States of America: the latter formed the
+substance of the history of civilisation during the first three
+centuries before Christ, when the Roman State successively conquered,
+annexed, and absorbed all the other then existing States surrounding the
+basin of the Mediterranean.
+
+The history of no State justifies the belief that order and justice can
+successfully be maintained merely by the action of umpires and of
+arbitrators. Every State worth the name has had to rely upon civil and
+criminal courts and upon law enforced by its authority, that is, upon a
+series of principles of right expressed in legislation and upon an
+organisation of force for the purpose of carrying those principles into
+practical effect.
+
+It appears, then, that so far from the experience of States justifying
+the view that it is wrong to employ force, the truth is that right or
+law, unless supported by force, is ineffective, that the objection in
+principle to any use of force involves anarchy, or the cessation of the
+State, and that the wish to substitute judicial tribunals for war as a
+means of settling disputes between State and State is a wish to
+amalgamate under a single Government all those States which are to
+benefit by the substitution.
+
+The reasonable attitude with regard to arbitration is to accept it
+whenever the other side will accept it. But if the adversary refuses
+arbitration and insists upon using force, what course is open to any
+State but that of resisting force by force?
+
+Arbitration has from the earliest times been preferred in most of those
+cases to which it was applicable, that is, in cases in which there was a
+basis of common view or common tradition sufficient to make agreement
+practicable. But wherever there has been a marked divergence of ideals
+or a different standard of right, there has been a tendency for each
+side to feel that to submit its conscience or its convictions of right,
+its sense of what is most sacred in life, to an outside judgment would
+involve a kind of moral suicide. In such cases every nation repudiates
+arbitration and prefers to be a martyr, in case of need, to its sense of
+justice. It is at least an open question whether the disappearance of
+this feeling would be a mark of progress or of degeneration. At any rate
+it is practically certain that the period when it will have disappeared
+cannot at present be foreseen.
+
+The abolition of war, therefore, involves the abolition of independent
+States and their amalgamation into one. There are many who have hoped
+for this ideal, expressed by Tennyson when he dreamed of
+
+"The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."
+
+That it is the ultimate destiny of mankind to be united under a single
+Government seems probable enough, but it is rash to assume that that
+result will be reached either by a process of peaceful negotiation, or
+by the spread of the imperfect methods of modern democratic government.
+The German Empire, with its population of sixty millions, educated by
+the State, disciplined by the State, relying on the State, and commanded
+by the State, is as potent in comparison with the less disciplined and
+less organised communities which surround it as was, in the third
+century before Christ, the Roman State in comparison with the disunited
+multitude of Greek cities, the commercial oligarchy of Carthage, and the
+half-civilised tribes of Gaul and Spain. Unless the other States of
+Europe can rouse themselves to a discipline as sound and to an
+organisation as subtle as those of Prussia and to the perception of a
+common purpose in the maintenance of their independence, the union of
+Europe under a single Government is more likely to be brought about by
+the conquering hand of Germany than by the extension of democratic
+institutions and of sentimental good understandings.
+
+Proposals for disarmament stand on an entirely different footing from
+proposals to agree to arbitration. The State that disarms renounces to
+the extent of its disarmament the power to protect itself. Upon what
+other power is it suggested that it should rely? In the last analysis
+the suggestion amounts to a proposal for the abolition of the State, or
+its abandonment of its claim to represent the right. Those who propose
+agreements for disarmament imagine that the suggestion if adopted would
+lead to the establishment of peace. Have they considered the natural
+history of peace as one of the phenomena of the globe which we inhabit?
+The only peace of any value is that between civilised nations. It rests
+either upon the absence of dispute between them or upon an equilibrium
+of forces. During the last few centuries there has usually been at the
+end of a great European war a great European congress which has
+regulated for the time being the matters which were in dispute, and the
+treaty thus negotiated has remained for a long time the basis of the
+relations between the Powers. It is always a compromise, but a
+compromise more or less acceptable to all parties, in which they
+acquiesce until some change either by growth or decay makes the
+conditions irksome. Then comes a moment when one or more of the States
+is dissatisfied and wishes for a change. When that has happened the
+dissatisfied State attempts to bring about the change which it desires,
+but if the forces with which its wish is likely to be opposed are very
+great it may long acquiesce in a state of things most distasteful to it.
+Let there be a change in the balance of forces and the discontented
+State will seize the opportunity, will assert itself, and if resisted
+will use its forces to overcome opposition. A proposal for disarmament
+must necessarily be based upon the assumption that there is to be no
+change in the system, that the _status quo_ is everywhere to be
+preserved. This amounts to a guarantee of the decaying and inefficient
+States against those which are growing and are more efficient. Such an
+arrangement would not tend to promote the welfare of mankind and will
+not be accepted by those nations that have confidence in their own
+future. That such a proposal should have been announced by a British
+Government is evidence not of the strength of Great Britain, not of a
+healthy condition of national life, but of inability to appreciate the
+changes which have been produced during the last century in the
+conditions of Europe and the consequent alteration in Great Britain's
+relative position among the great Powers. It was long ago remarked by
+the German historian Bernhardi that Great Britain was the first country
+in Europe to revive in the modern world the conception of the State. The
+feudal conception identified the State with the monarch. The English
+revolution of 1688 was an identification of the State with the Nation.
+But the nationalisation of the State, of which the example was set in
+1688 by Great Britain, was carried out much more thoroughly by France in
+the period that followed the revolution of 1789; and in the great
+conflict which ensued between France and the European States the
+principal continental opponents of France were compelled to follow her
+example, and, in a far greater degree than has ever happened in England,
+to nationalise the State. It is to that struggle that we must turn if we
+are to understand the present condition of Europe and the relations of
+Great Britain to the European Powers.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR
+
+The transformation of society of which the French Revolution was the
+most striking symptom produced a corresponding change in the character
+of war.
+
+By the Revolution the French people constituted itself the State, and
+the process was accompanied by so much passion and so much violence that
+it shortly involved the reconstituted nation in a quarrel with its
+neighbours the Germanic Empire and Prussia, which rapidly developed into
+a war between France and almost all the rest of Europe. The Revolution
+weakened and demoralised the French army and disorganised the navy,
+which it deprived of almost all its experienced officers. When the war
+began the regular army was supplemented by a great levy of volunteers.
+The mixed force thus formed, in spite of early successes, was unable to
+stand against the well-disciplined armies of Austria and Prussia, and as
+the war continued, while the French troops gained solidity and
+experience, their numbers had to be increased by a levy _en masse_ or a
+compulsory drafting of all the men of a certain age into the army. In
+this way the army and the nation were identified as they had never been
+in modern Europe before, and in the fifth year of the war a leader was
+found in the person of General Bonaparte, who had imbued himself with
+the principles of the art of war, as they had been expounded by the best
+strategists of the old French army, and who had thus thought out with
+unprecedented lucidity the method of conducting campaigns. His mastery
+of the art of generalship was revealed by his success in 1796, and as
+the conflict with Europe continued, he became the leader and eventually
+the master of France. Under his impulse and guidance the French army,
+superior to them in numbers, organisation, and tactical skill, crushed
+one after another the more old-fashioned and smaller armies of the great
+continental Powers, with the result that the defeated armies, under the
+influence of national resentment after disaster, attempted to reorganise
+themselves upon the French model. The new Austrian army undertook its
+revenge too soon and was defeated in 1809; but the Prussian endeavour
+continued and bore fruit, after the French disasters in Russia of 1812,
+in the national rising in which Prussia, supported by Russia and Austria
+and assisted by the British operations in the Peninsula, overthrew the
+French Empire in 1814.
+
+After the definitive peace, deferred by the hundred days, but finally
+forced upon France on the field of Waterloo, the Prussian Government
+continued to foster the school of war which it had founded in the period
+of humiliation. Prussian officers trained in that school tried to learn
+the lessons of the long period of war which they had passed through.
+What they discovered was that war between nations, as distinct from war
+between dynasties or royal houses, was a struggle for existence in which
+each adversary risked everything and in which success was to be expected
+only from the complete prostration of the enemy. In the long run, they
+said to themselves, the only defence consists in striking your adversary
+to the ground. That being the case, a nation must go into war, if war
+should become inevitable, with the maximum force which it can possibly
+produce, represented by its whole manhood of military age, thoroughly
+trained, organised, and equipped. The Prussian Government adhered to
+these ideas, to which full effect was given in 1866, when the Prussian
+army, reorganised in 1860, crushed in ten days the army of Austria, and
+in 1870 when, in a month from the first shot fired, it defeated one half
+of the French army at Gravelotte and captured the other half at Sedan.
+These events proved to all continental nations the necessity of adopting
+the system of the nation in arms and giving to their whole male
+population, up to the limits of possibility, the training and the
+organisation necessary for success in war.
+
+The principle that war is a struggle for existence, and that the only
+effective defence consists in the destruction of the adversary's force,
+received during the age of Napoleon an even more absolute demonstration
+at sea than was possible on land. Great Britain, whether she would or
+no, was drawn into the European conflict. The neglect of the army and of
+the art of war into which, during the eighteenth century, her
+Governments had for the most part fallen, made it impracticable for her
+to take the decisive part which she had played in the days of William
+III. and of Marlborough in the struggle against the French army; her
+contributions to the land war were for the most part misdirected and
+futile. Her expeditions to Dunkirk, to Holland, and to Hanover
+embarrassed rather than materially assisted the cause of her allies. But
+her navy, favourably handicapped by the breakdown, due to the
+Revolution, of the French navy, eventually produced in the person of
+Nelson a leader who, like Napoleon, had made it the business of his life
+to understand the art of war. His victories, like Napoleon's, were
+decisive, and when he fell at Trafalgar the navies of continental
+Europe, which one after another had been pressed into the service of
+France, had all been destroyed.
+
+Then were revealed the prodigious consequences of complete victory at
+sea, which were more immediate, more decisive, more far-reaching, more
+irrevocable than on land. The sea became during the continuance of the
+war the territory of Great Britain, the open highway along which her
+ships could pass, while it was closed to the ships of her adversaries.
+Across that secure sea a small army was sent to Spain to assist the
+national and heroic, though miserably organised, resistance made by the
+Spanish people against the French attempt at conquest. The British
+Government had at last found the right direction for such military force
+as it possessed. Sir John Moore's army brought Napoleon with a great
+force into the field, but it was able to retire to its own territory,
+the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had
+to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the
+Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington,
+marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the
+general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the
+strength of the force which he commanded or of that which directly
+opposed him.
+
+While France was engaged in her great continental struggle England was
+reaping, all over the world, the fruits of her naval victories. Of the
+colonies of her enemies she took as many as she wanted, though at the
+peace she returned most of them to their former owners. Of the world's
+trade she obtained something like a monopoly. The nineteenth century saw
+the British colonies grow up into so many nations and the British
+administration of India become a great empire. These developments are
+now seen to have been possible only through the security due to the fact
+that Great Britain, during the first half of the nineteenth century, had
+the only navy worth considering in the world, and that during the second
+half its strength greatly preponderated over that of any of the new
+navies which had been built or were building. No wonder that when in
+1888 the American observer, Captain Mahan, published his volume "The
+Influence of Sea Power upon History," other nations besides the British
+read from that book the lesson that victory at sea carried with it a
+prosperity, an influence, and a greatness obtainable by no other means.
+It was natural for Englishmen to draw the moral which was slumbering in
+the national consciousness that England's independence, her empire, and
+her greatness depended upon her sea power. But it was equally natural
+that other nations should draw a different moral and should ask
+themselves why this tremendous prize, the primacy of nations and the
+first place in the world, should for ever belong to the inhabitants of
+a small island, a mere appendage to the continent of Europe.
+
+This question we must try to answer. But before entering upon that
+inquiry I will ask the reader to note the great lesson of the age of
+Napoleon and of Nelson. It produced a change in the character of war,
+which enlarged itself from a mere dispute between Governments and became
+a struggle between nations. The instrument used was no longer a small
+standing army, but the able-bodied male population in arms. Great
+Britain indeed still retained her standing army, but for the time she
+threw her resources without stint into her navy and its success was
+decisive.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+THE BALANCE OF POWER
+
+We have seen what a splendid prize was the result of British victory at
+sea, supplemented by British assistance to other Powers on land, a
+century ago. We have now to ask ourselves first of all how it came about
+that Great Britain was able to win it, and afterwards whether it was
+awarded once for all or was merely a challenge cup to be held only so
+long as there should be no competitor.
+
+The answer to the first question is a matter of history. England was
+peculiarly favoured by fortune or by fate in the great struggles through
+which, during a period of three hundred years, she asserted and
+increased her superiority at sea until a century ago it became
+supremacy. She rarely had to fight alone. Her first adversary was Spain.
+In the conflict with Spain she had the assistance of the Dutch
+Provinces. When the Dutch were strong enough to become her maritime
+rivals she had for a time the co-operation of France. Then came a long
+period during which France was her antagonist. At the beginning of this
+epoch William III. accepted the British crown in order to be able to use
+the strength of England to defend his native country, Holland. His work
+was taken up by Marlborough, whose first great victory was won in
+co-operation with the Imperial commander, Prince Eugene. From that time
+on, each of the principal wars was a European war in which France was
+fighting both by sea and land, her armies being engaged against
+continental foes, while Great Britain could devote her energies almost
+exclusively to her navy. In the Seven Years' War it was the Prussian
+army which won the victories on land, while small British forces were
+enabled by the help of the navy to win an Empire from France in Canada,
+and to lay the foundations of the British Empire in India. In the war of
+American Independence, Great Britain for once stood alone, but this was
+the one conflict which contributed little or nothing towards
+establishing the ascendency of the British navy. Great Britain failed of
+her object because that ascendency was incomplete. Then came the wars of
+the French Revolution and Empire in which the British navy was the
+partner of the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Spanish armies.
+
+These are the facts which we have to explain. We have to find out how it
+was that so many continental nations, whether they liked it or not,
+found themselves, in fighting their own battles, helping to bring about
+the British predominance at sea. It must be remembered that land warfare
+involves much heavier sacrifices of life than warfare at sea, and that
+though Great Britain no doubt spent great sums of money not merely in
+maintaining her navy but also in subsidising her allies, she could well
+afford to do so because the prosperity of her over-sea trade, due to her
+naval success, made her the richest country in Europe. The other nations
+that were her allies might not unnaturally feel that they had toiled and
+that Great Britain had gathered the increase. What is the explanation of
+a co-operation of which in the long run it might seem that one partner
+has had the principal benefit?
+
+If two nations carry on a serious war on the same side, it may be
+assumed that each of them is fighting for some cause which it holds to
+be vital, and that some sort of common interest binds the allies
+together. The most vital interest of any nation is its own independence,
+and while that is in question it conceives of its struggle as one of
+self-defence. The explanation of Great Britain's having had allies in
+the past may therefore be that the independence of Great Britain was
+threatened by the same danger which threatened the independence of other
+Powers. This theory is made more probable by the fact that England's
+great struggles--that of Queen Elizabeth against Spain, that of William
+III. and Marlborough against Louis XIV., and of Pitt against
+Napoleon--were, each one of them, against an adversary whose power was
+so great as to overshadow the Continent and to threaten it with an
+ascendency which, had it not been checked, might have developed into a
+universal monarchy. It seems, therefore, that in the main England, in
+defending her own interests, was consciously or unconsciously the
+champion of the independence of nations against the predominance of any
+one of their number. The effect of Great Britain's self-defence was to
+facilitate the self-defence of other nations, and thus to preserve to
+Europe its character of a community of independent States as opposed to
+that which it might have acquired, if there had been no England, of a
+single Empire, governed from a single capital.
+
+This is, however, only half of the answer we want. It explains to some
+extent why England could find other nations co-operating with her, and
+reveals the general nature of the cause which they maintained in common.
+But let us remember the distinction between a quarrel in which the main
+thing is to be in the right, and a fight in which the main thing is to
+win. The explanation just sketched is a justification of England's
+policy, an attempt to show that in the main she had right on her side.
+That is only part of the reason why she had allies. The other part is
+that she was strong and could help them.
+
+She had three modes of action. She used her navy to destroy the hostile
+navy or navies and to obtain control of the seaways. Then she used that
+control partly to destroy the seaborne trade of her enemies, and partly
+to send armies across the sea to attack her enemies' armies. It was
+because she could employ these three modes of warfare, and because two
+of them were not available for other Powers, that her influence on the
+course of events was so great.
+
+The question of moral justification is more or less speculative. I have
+treated it here on a hypothesis which is not new, though since I
+propounded it many years ago it has met with little adverse criticism.
+But the question of force is one of hard fact; it is fundamental. If
+England had not been able to win her battles at sea and to help her
+allies by her war against trade and by her ubiquitous if small armies,
+there would have been no need for hypotheses by which to justify or
+explain her policy; she would have long ago lost all importance and all
+interest except to antiquarians. Our object is to find out how she may
+now justify her existence, and enough has been said to make it clear
+that if she is to do that she must not only have a cause good enough to
+gain the sympathy of other Powers, but force enough to give them
+confidence in what she can do to help herself and them.
+
+We are now ready to examine the second question, whether or no Great
+Britain's position, won a century ago, is liable to challenge.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+THE RISE OF GERMANY
+
+The great event of the nineteenth century in the history of Europe is
+the union of Germany into a Federal State. The secret of Prussia's
+success in accomplishing that union and in leading the federation so
+created, has been the organisation of the national energies by a
+far-seeing Government, a process begun as a means of self-defence
+against the French domination of the period between 1806 and 1812. The
+Prussian statesmen of those days were not content merely to reorganise
+the army on the basis of universal service. They organised the whole
+nation. They swept away an ancient system of land tenure in order to
+make the peasants free and prosperous. They established a system of
+public education far in advance of anything possessed by any other
+nation. They especially devoted themselves to fostering industry,
+manufacture, and commerce. The result of this systematic direction of
+the national energies by a Government of experts, continuously supported
+by the patient and methodical diligence of the people, has been a
+constant and remarkable advance of the national prosperity, a wonderful
+development of the national resources, and an enormous addition to the
+national strength. For the last forty years it has been the settled
+policy of the German Government that her organised military forces
+should be strong enough in case of need to confront two enemies at once,
+one on either frontier. Feeling themselves thus stronger than any other
+European state, the Germans have watched with admiration the growth of
+the British Colonies and of British trade. It is natural that they
+should think that Germany too might expect to have colonies and a great
+maritime trade. But wherever in the world German travellers have gone,
+wherever German traders have settled, wherever the German Government has
+thought of working for a site for a colony, everywhere they have met
+British influence, British trade, the British flag.
+
+In this way has been brought home to them as to no other people the
+tremendous influence of sea-power. Their historians have recalled to
+them the successive attempts which have been made in past times by
+German States to create a navy and to obtain colonies, attempts which to
+our own people are quite unknown, because they never, except in the case
+of the Hanseatic League, attained to such importance as to figure in the
+general history of Europe. In the period between 1815 and 1870, when
+the desire for national unity was expressed by a host of German writers,
+there were not wanting pleas for the creation of a German navy. Several
+attempts were made in those days to construct either a Prussian or a
+German fleet; but the time was not ripe and these attempts came to
+nothing. The constitution of the Empire, promulgated in 1871, embodied
+the principle that there should be a German navy, of which the Emperor
+should be commander-in-chief, and to the creation of that navy the most
+assiduous labour has been devoted. The plan pursued was in the first
+instance to train a body of officers who should thoroughly understand
+the sea and maritime warfare, and for this purpose the few ships which
+were first built were sent on long voyages by way of training the crews
+and of giving the officers that self-reliance and initiative which were
+thought to be the characteristic mark of the officers of the British
+navy. In due time was founded the naval college of Kiel, designed on a
+large scale to be a great school of naval thought and of naval war. The
+history of maritime wars was diligently studied, _especially_ of
+course the history of the British navy. The professors and lecturers
+made it their business to explore the workings of Nelson's mind just as
+German military professors had made themselves pupils of Napoleon. And
+not until a clear and consistent theory of naval war had been elaborated
+and made the common property of all the officers of the navy was the
+attempt made to expand the fleet to a scale thought to be proportionate
+to the position of Germany among the nations. When it was at length
+determined that that constructive effort should be made, the plan was
+thought out and embodied in a law regulating the construction for a
+number of years of a fleet of predetermined size and composition to be
+used for a purpose defined in the law itself. The object was to have a
+fleet of sufficient strength and of suitable formation to be able to
+hold its own in case of need even against the greatest maritime Power.
+In other words, Germany thought that if her prosperity continued and her
+superiority in organisation over other continental nations continued to
+increase, she might find England's policy backed by England's naval
+power an obstacle in the way of her natural ambition. After all, no one
+can be surprised if the Germans think Germany as well entitled as _any
+other_ State to cherish the ambition of being the first nation in the
+world.
+
+It has for a century been the rational practice of the German Government
+that its chief strategist should at all times keep ready designs for
+operations in case of war against any reasonably possible adversary.
+Such a set of designs would naturally include a plan of operation for
+the case of a conflict with Great Britain, and no doubt, every time
+that plan of operations was re-examined and revised, light would be
+thrown upon the difficulties of a struggle with a great maritime Power
+and upon the means by which those difficulties might be overcome. The
+British navy is so strong that, unless it were mismanaged, the German
+navy ought to have no chance of overcoming it. Yet Germany cannot but be
+anxious, in case of war, to protect herself against the consequences of
+maritime blockade, and of the effort of a superior British navy to close
+the sea to German merchantmen. Accordingly, the law which regulates the
+naval shipbuilding of the German Empire lays down in its preamble
+that--"Germany must possess a battle-fleet so strong that a war with her
+would, even for the greatest naval Power, be accompanied with such
+dangers as would render that Power's position doubtful." In other words,
+a war with Great Britain must find the German navy too strong for the
+British navy to be able to confine it to its harbours, and to maintain,
+in spite of it, complete command of the seas which border the German
+coast. As German strategists continuously accept the doctrine that the
+first object of a fleet in war is the destruction of the enemy's fleet
+with a view to the consequent command of the sea, the German Navy Act is
+equivalent to the declaration of an intention in case of conflict to
+challenge the British navy for the mastery. This is the answer to the
+question asked at the beginning of the last chapter, whether the command
+of the sea is a permanent prize or a challenge cup. Germany at any rate
+regards it as a challenge cup, and has resolved to be qualified, if
+occasion should arise, to make trial of her capacity to win it.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+NATIONHOOD NEGLECTED
+
+What has been the effect upon Great Britain of the rise of Germany? Is
+there any cause of quarrel between the two peoples and the two States?
+That Germany has given herself a strong military organisation is no
+crime. On the contrary, she was obliged to do it, she could not have
+existed without it. The foundations of her army were laid when she was
+suffering all the agonies of conquest and oppression. Only by a
+tremendous effort, at the cost of sacrifices to which England's
+experience offers no analogy, was she able to free herself from the
+over-lordship of Napoleon. King William I. expanded and reorganised his
+army because he had passed through the bitter humiliation of seeing his
+country impotent and humbled by a combination of Austria and Russia.
+Whether Bismarck's diplomacy was less honourable than that of the
+adversaries with whom he had to deal is a question to which different
+answers may be given. But in a large view of history it is irrelevant,
+for beyond all doubt the settlements effected through the war of 1866
+and 1870 were sound settlements and left the German nation and Europe
+in a healthier condition than that which preceded them. The unity of
+Germany was won by the blood of her people, who were and are rightly
+resolved to remain strong enough and ready to defend it, come what may.
+It is not for Englishmen, who have talked for twenty years of a
+Two-Power standard for their navy, to reproach Germany for maintaining
+her army at a similar standard. Had she not done so the peace of Europe
+would not have been preserved, nor is it possible on any ground of right
+or justice to cavil at Germany's purpose to be able in case of need to
+defend herself at sea. The German Admiral Rosendahl, discussing the
+British and German navies and the proposals for disarmament, wrote in
+the _Deutsche Revue_ for June 1909:--
+
+"If England claims and thinks permanently necessary for her an absolute
+supremacy at sea that is her affair, and no sensible man will reproach
+her for it; but it is quite a different thing for a Great Power like the
+German Empire, by an international treaty supposed to be binding for all
+time, expressly to recognise and accept this in principle. Assuredly we
+do not wish to enter into a building competition with England on a
+footing of equality.... But a political agreement on the basis of the
+unconditional superiority of the British Fleet would be equivalent to
+an abandonment of our national dignity, and though we do not, speaking
+broadly, wish to dispute England's predominance at sea, yet we do mean
+in case of war to be or to become the masters on our own coasts."
+
+There is not a word in this passage which can give just cause of offence
+to England or to Englishmen.
+
+That there has been and still is a good deal of mutual ill-feeling both
+in Germany and in England cannot be denied. Rivalry between nations is
+always accompanied by feeling which is all the stronger when it is
+instinctive and therefore, though not unintelligible, apt to be
+irrational. But what in this case is really at the bottom of it? There
+have no doubt been a number of matters that have been discussed between
+the two Governments, and though they have for the most part been
+settled, the manner in which they have been raised and pressed by German
+Governments has caused them to be regarded by British Ministers, and to
+a less extent by the British people, as sources of annoyance, as so many
+diplomatic "pin-pricks." The manners of German diplomacy are not suave.
+Suavity is no more part of the Bismarckian tradition than exactitude.
+But after all, the manners of the diplomatists of any country are a
+matter rather for the nation whose honour they concern than for the
+nations to which they have given offence. They only partially account
+for the deep feeling which has grown up between Great Britain and
+Germany.
+
+The truth is that England is disturbed by the rise of Germany, which her
+people, in spite of abundant warnings, did not foresee and have not
+appreciated until the moment when they find themselves outstripped in
+the race by a people whom they have been accustomed to regard with
+something of the superiority with which the prosperous and polished
+dweller in a capital looks upon his country cousin from the farm.
+
+Fifty years ago Germany in English estimation did not count. The name
+was no more than a geographical expression. Great Britain was the one
+great Power. She alone had colonies and India. She as good as
+monopolised the world's shipping and the world's trade. As compared with
+other countries she was immeasurably rich and prosperous. Her population
+during the long peace, interrupted only by the Crimean War and the
+Indian Mutiny, had multiplied beyond men's wildest dreams. Her
+manufacturers were amassing fortunes, her industry had no rival. The
+Victorian age was thought of as the beginning of a wonderful new era, in
+which, among the nations, England was first and the rest nowhere. The
+temporary effort of the French to create a modern navy disturbed the
+sense of security which existed and gave rise to the Volunteer movement,
+which was felt to be a marvellous display of patriotism.
+
+There were attempts to show that British self-complacency was not
+altogether justified. The warnings of those who looked below the surface
+were read and admired. Few writers were more popular than Carlyle,
+Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold. But all three held aloof from the current of
+public life which flowed in the traditional party channels. There was no
+effort to revive the conception of the nation as the organised state to
+which every citizen is bound, the source and centre of all men's duties.
+Accordingly every man devoted himself to his own affairs, of which the
+first was to make money and the second to enjoy life; those who were
+rich enough finding their amusement in Parliament, which was regarded as
+the most interesting club in London, and in its debates, of which the
+charm, for those who take part in them, lies in the fact that for
+success not knowledge of a subject, but fluency, readiness, and wit are
+required.
+
+The great events taking place in the world, the wars in Bohemia, in
+France, and in Turkey, added a certain, interest to English life because
+they furnished to the newspapers matter more exciting than any novelist
+could produce, and in this way gratified the taste for sensation which
+had been acquired both by rich and poor. That these events meant
+anything in particular to the British nation was not likely to be
+realised while that nation was, in fact, non-existent, and had resolved
+itself into forty million individuals, each of them living for his own
+ends, slightly enlarged to include his family, his literary or
+scientific society, perhaps his cricket club, and on Sunday morning his
+church or chapel. There was also a widespread interest in "politics," by
+which was meant the particular fads cherished by one's own caucus to the
+exclusion of the nation's affairs, it being more or less understood that
+the army, the navy, and foreign policy were not to be made political
+questions.
+
+While forty million English people have thus been spending their lives
+self-centred, content to make their living, to enjoy life, and to behave
+kindly to their fellows, there has grown up in Germany a nation, a
+people of sixty millions, who believe that they belong together, that
+their country has the first call on them, whose children go to school
+because the Government that represents the nation bids them, who go for
+two years to the army or the navy to learn war, because they know that
+if the nation has to fight it can do so only by their fighting for it.
+Their Government thinks it is its business to be always improving the
+organisation of its sixty millions for security, for knowledge, for
+instruction, for agriculture, for industry, for navigation. Thus after
+forty years of common effort for a common good Germany finds itself the
+first nation in Europe, more than holding its own in every department of
+life, and eagerly surveying the world in search of opportunities.
+
+The Englishman, while he has been living his own life and, as I think,
+improving in many respects, has at the same time been admiring the
+British Empire, and discovering with pride that a number of new nations
+have grown up in distant places, formed of people whose fathers or
+grandfathers emigrated from Great Britain. He remembers from his school
+lessons or reads in the newspapers of the greatness of England in past
+centuries, and naturally feels that with such a past and with so great
+an Empire existing to-day, his country should be a very great Power. But
+as he discovers what the actual performance of Germany is, and becomes
+acquainted with the results of her efforts in science, education, trade,
+and industry, and the way in which the influence of the German
+Government predominates in the affairs of Europe, he is puzzled and
+indignant, and feels that in some way Great Britain has been surpassed
+and outdone.
+
+The state of the world which he thought existed, in which England was
+the first nation and the rest nowhere, has completely changed while he
+has been attending to his private business, his "politics," and his
+cricket, and he finds the true state of the world to be that, while in
+industry England has hard work to hold her own against her chief rival,
+she has already been passed in education and in science, that her army,
+good as it is, is so small as scarcely to count, and that even her navy
+cannot keep its place without a great and unexpected effort.
+
+Yet fifty years ago England had on her side all the advantages but one.
+She was forgetting nationhood while Germany was reviving it. The British
+people, instead of organising themselves as one body, the nation, have
+organised themselves into two bodies, the two "political" parties.
+England's one chance lies in recovering the unity that has been lost,
+which she must do by restoring the nation to its due place in men's
+hearts and lives. To find out how that is to be done we must once more
+look at Europe and at England's relations to Europe.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+NEW CONDITIONS
+
+It has been seen how, as a result of the struggle with Napoleon,
+England, from 1805 onwards, was the only sea power remaining in Europe,
+and indeed, with the exception of the United States, the only sea power
+in the world. One of the results was that she had for many years the
+monopoly of the whole ocean, not merely for the purposes of war, but
+also for the purposes of trade. The British mercantile marine continued
+through the greater part of the nineteenth century to increase its
+preponderance over all others, and this remarkable, and probably quite
+exceptional, growth was greatly favoured by the Civil War in America,
+during which the mercantile marine of the United States received from
+the action of the Confederate cruisers a damage from which it has never
+recovered.
+
+In the years immediately following 1805, Great Britain in self-defence,
+or as a means of continuing the war against France, in regard to which
+her resources for operations on land were limited, had recourse to the
+operations of blockade, by which the sea was closed, as far as possible,
+to enemy merchantmen while Great Britain prohibited neutral ships from
+carrying enemy goods. Napoleon replied by the attempt to exclude British
+goods from the Continent altogether, and indeed the pressure produced by
+Great Britain's blockades compelled Napoleon further to extend his
+domination on the Continent. Thus the other continental States found
+themselves between the devil and the deep sea. They had to submit to the
+domination of Napoleon on land and to the complete ascendency of Great
+Britain on the waters which surrounded their coasts. The British claims
+to supremacy at sea were unanimously resented by all the continental
+States, which all suffered from them, but in all cases the national
+resentment against French invasion or French occupation of territory was
+greater than the resentment against the invisible pressure exercised by
+the British navy. In the wars of liberation, though Great Britain was
+the welcome ally of all the States that were fighting against France,
+the pressure of British sea power was none the less disagreeable and, in
+the years of peace which followed, the British monopoly of sea power, of
+sea-carriage, of manufacturing industry, and of international trade were
+equally disliked by almost all the nations of Europe. Protective duties
+were regarded as the means of fostering national industries and of
+sheltering them against the overpowering competition of British
+manufactures. The British claim to the dominion of the sea was regarded
+as unfounded in right, and was in principle as strongly denounced as had
+been the territorial domination of France. The mistress of the seas was
+regarded as a tyrant, whom it would be desirable, if it were possible,
+to depose, and there were many who thought that as the result of a
+conflict in which the final success had been gained by the co-operation
+of a number of States acting together, the gains of Great Britain which,
+as time went on, were seen to be growing into a world-wide empire, had
+been out of proportion to the services she had rendered to the common
+cause.
+
+Meantime during the century which has elapsed since the last great war,
+there has been a complete change in the conditions of intercourse
+between nations at sea and of maritime warfare. It has come about
+gradually, almost imperceptibly, so that it could hardly be appreciated
+before the close of the nineteenth century. But it is vital to Great
+Britain that her people should understand the nature of the
+transformation.
+
+The first thing to be observed is that the British monopoly of shipping
+and of oversea trade has disappeared. Great Britain still has by far the
+largest mercantile marine and by far the greatest share in the world's
+sea traffic, but she no longer stands alone. Germany, the United States,
+France, Norway, Italy, and Japan all have great fleets of merchant
+ships and do an enormous, some of them a rapidly increasing, seaborne
+trade. A large number of the principal States import the raw material of
+manufacture and carry on import and export on a large scale. The railway
+system connects all the great manufacturing centres, even those which
+lie far inland, with the great ports to and from which the lines of
+steamers ply. The industrial life of every nation is more than ever
+dependent upon its communications with and by the sea, and every nation
+has become more sensitive than ever to any disturbance of its maritime
+trade. The preponderance of the British navy is therefore a subject of
+anxiety in every State which regards as possible a conflict of its own
+interests with those of Great Britain. This is one of the reasons why
+continental States have during the last quarter of a century been
+disposed to increase their fleets and their naval expenditure.
+
+In the Declaration of Paris, renewed and extended by the Declaration of
+London, the maritime States have agreed that in any future war enemy
+goods in a neutral ship are to be safe from capture unless the ship is
+running a blockade, which must be effective. Whether Great Britain was
+well or ill advised in accepting this rule is a question which it is now
+useless to discuss, for the decision cannot be recalled, and the rule
+must be regarded as established beyond controversy. Its effect is
+greatly to diminish the pressure which a victorious navy can bring to
+bear upon a hostile State. It deprives Great Britain of one of the most
+potent weapons which she employed in the last great war. To-day it would
+be impracticable even for a victorious navy to cut off a continental
+State from seaborne traffic. The ports of that State might be blockaded
+and its merchant ships would be liable to capture, but the victorious
+navy could not interfere with the traffic carried by neutral ships to
+neutral ports. Accordingly, Great Britain could not now, even in the
+event of naval victory being hers, exercise upon an enemy the pressure
+which she formerly exercised through the medium of the neutral States.
+Any continental State, even if its coasts were effectively blockaded,
+could still, with increased difficulty, obtain supplies both of raw
+material and of food by the land routes through the territory of its
+neutral neighbours. But Great Britain herself, as an insular State,
+would not, in case of naval defeat, have this advantage. A decisive
+defeat of the British navy might be followed by an attempt on the part
+of the enemy to blockade the coasts of Great Britain, though that would
+no doubt be difficult, for a very large force would be required to
+maintain an effective blockade of the whole coast-line.
+
+It is conceivable that an enemy might attempt in spite of the
+Declaration of London to treat as contraband food destined for the
+civil population and this course ought to be anticipated, but in the
+military weakness of Great Britain an enemy whose navy had gained the
+upper hand would almost certainly prefer to undertake the speedier
+process of bringing the war to an end by landing an army in Great
+Britain. A landing on a coast so extensive as that of this island can
+with difficulty be prevented by forces on land, because troops cannot be
+moved as quickly as ships.
+
+The war in the Far East has shown how strong such an army might be, and
+how great a military effort would be needed to crush it. The proper way
+to render an island secure, is by a navy strong enough to obtain in war
+the control of the surrounding sea, and a navy unable to perform that
+function cannot be regarded as a guarantee of security.
+
+The immediate effects of naval victory can hardly ever again be so
+far-reaching as they were a century ago in the epoch of masts and sails.
+At that time there were no foreign navies, except in European waters,
+and in the Atlantic waters of the United States. When, therefore, the
+British navy had crushed its European adversaries, its ships could act
+without serious opposition upon any sea and any coast in the world.
+To-day, the radius of action of a victorious fleet is restricted by the
+necessity of a supply of coal, and therefore by the secure possession
+of coaling-stations at suitable intervals along any route by which the
+fleet proposes to move, or by the goodwill of neutrals in permitting it
+to coal at their depots. To-day, moreover, there are navies established
+even in distant seas. In the Pacific, for example, are the fleets of
+Japan and of the United States, and these, in their home waters, will
+probably be too strong to be opposed by European navies acting at a vast
+distance from their bases.
+
+It seems likely, therefore, that neither Great Britain nor any other
+State will in future enjoy that monopoly of sea power which was granted
+to Great Britain by the circumstances of her victories in the last great
+war. What I have called the great prize has in fact ceased to exist, and
+even if an adversary were to challenge the British navy, the reward of
+his success would not be a naval supremacy of anything like the kind or
+extent which peculiar conditions made it possible for Great Britain to
+enjoy during the nineteenth century. It would be a supremacy limited and
+reduced by the existence of the new navies that have sprung up.
+
+From these considerations a very important conclusion must be drawn. In
+the first place, enough victory at sea is in case of war as
+indispensable to Great Britain as ever, for it remains the fundamental
+condition of her security, yet its results can hardly in future be as
+great as they were in the past, and in particular it may perhaps not
+again enable her to exert upon continental States the same effective
+pressure which it formerly rendered possible.
+
+In order, therefore, to bring pressure upon a continental adversary,
+Great Britain is more than ever in need of the co-operation of a
+continental ally. A navy alone cannot produce the effect which it once
+did upon the course of a land war, and its success will not suffice to
+give confidence to the ally. Nothing but an army able to take its part
+in a continental struggle will, in modern conditions, suffice to make
+Great Britain the effective ally of a continental State, and in the
+absence of such an army Great Britain will continue to be, as she is
+to-day, without continental allies.
+
+A second conclusion is that our people, while straining every nerve in
+peace to ensure to their navy the best chances of victory in war, must
+carefully avoid the conception of a dominion of the sea, although, in
+fact, such a dominion actually existed during a great part of the
+nineteenth century. The new conditions which have grown up during the
+past thirty years have made this ideal as much a thing of the past as
+the mediæval conception of a Roman Empire in Europe to whose titular
+head all kings were subordinate.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+DYNAMICS--THE QUESTION OF MIGHT
+
+If there is a chance of a conflict in which Great Britain is to be
+engaged, her people must take thought in time how they may have on their
+side both right and might. It is hard to see how otherwise they can
+expect the contest to be decided in their favour.
+
+As I have said before, in the quarrel you must be in the right and in
+the fight you must win. The quarrel is the domain of policy, the fight
+that of strategy or dynamics. Policy and strategy are in reality
+inextricably interwoven one with another, for right and might resemble,
+more than is commonly supposed, two aspects of the same thing. But it is
+convenient in the attempt to understand any complicated subject to
+examine its aspects separately.
+
+I propose, therefore, in considering the present situation of Great
+Britain and her relations to the rest of the world, to treat first of
+the question of force, to assume that a quarrel may arise, and to
+ascertain what are the conditions in which Great Britain can expect to
+win, and then to enter into the question of right, in order to find out
+what light can be thrown upon the necessary aims and methods of British
+policy by the conclusions which will have been reached as to the use of
+force.
+
+The nationalisation of States, which is the fundamental fact of modern
+history, affects both policy and strategy. If the State is a nation, the
+population associated as one body, then the force which it can use in
+case of conflict represents the sum of the energies of the whole
+population, and this force cannot and will not be used except as the
+expression of the will of the whole population. The policy of such a
+State means its collective will, the consciousness of its whole
+population of a purpose, mission, or duty which it must fulfil, with
+which it is identified, and which, therefore, it cannot abandon. Only in
+case this national purpose meets with resistance will a people organised
+as a State enter into a quarrel, and if such a quarrel has to be fought
+out the nation's resources will be expended upon it without limitation.
+
+The chief fact in regard to the present condition of Europe appears to
+be the very great excess in the military strength of Germany over that
+of any other Power. It is due in part to the large population of the
+German Empire, and in part to the splendid national organisation which
+has been given to it. It cannot be asserted either that Germany was not
+entitled to become united, or that she was not entitled to organise
+herself as efficiently as possible both for peace and for war. But the
+result is that Germany has a preponderance as great if not greater than
+that of Spain in the time of Philip II., or of France either under Louis
+XIV. or under Napoleon. Every nation, no doubt, has a right to make
+itself as strong as it can, and to exercise as much influence as it can
+on the affairs of the world. To do these things is the mission and
+business of a nation. But the question arises, what are the limits to
+the power of a single nation? The answer appears to be that the only
+limits are those set by the power of other nations. This is the theory
+of the balance of power of which the object is to preserve to Europe its
+character of a community of independent States rather than that of a
+single empire in which one State predominates.
+
+Without attributing to Germany any wrong purpose or any design of
+injustice it must be evident that her very great strength must give her
+in case of dispute, always possible between independent States, a
+corresponding advantage against any other Power whose views or whose
+intentions should not coincide with hers. It is the obvious possibility
+of such dispute that makes it incumbent upon Great Britain to prepare
+herself in case of disagreement to enter into a discussion with Germany
+upon equal terms.
+
+Only upon such preparation can Great Britain base the hope either of
+averting a quarrel with Germany, or in case a quarrel should arise and
+cannot be made up by mutual agreement, of settling it by the arbitrament
+of war upon terms accordant with the British conception of right. Great
+Britain therefore must give herself a national organisation for war and
+must make preparation for war the nation's first business until a
+reasonable security has been attained.
+
+The question is, what weapons are now available for Great Britain in
+case of a disagreement with Germany leading to conflict? In the old
+wars, as we have seen, she had three modes of action. She used her navy
+to obtain control of the sea-ways, and then she used that control partly
+to destroy the sea-borne trade of her enemies, and partly to send armies
+across the sea to attack her enemies' armies. By the combination of
+these three modes of operation she was strong enough to give valuable
+help to other Powers, and therefore she had allies whose assistance was
+as useful to her as hers to them. To-day, as we have seen, the same
+conditions no longer exist. The British navy may indeed hope to obtain
+control of the sea-ways, but the law of maritime war, as it has been
+settled by the Declarations of Paris and of London, makes it
+impracticable for Great Britain to use a naval victory, even if she wins
+it, in such a way as to be able commercially to throttle a hostile
+Power, while the British military forces available for employment on the
+Continent are so small as hardly to count in the balance. The result is
+that Great Britain's power of action against a possible enemy is greatly
+reduced, partly in consequence of changes in the laws of war, but
+perhaps still more in consequence of the fact that while other Powers
+are organised for war as nations, England in regard to war is still in
+the condition of the eighteenth century, relying upon a small standing
+army, a purely professional navy, and a large half-trained force, called
+Territorial, neither ready for war nor available outside the United
+Kingdom.
+
+There is a school of politicians who imagine that Great Britain's
+weakness can be supplemented from other parts of the British Empire.
+That is an idea which ought not to be received without the most careful
+examination and in my judgment must, except within narrow limits, be
+rejected.
+
+In a war between Great Britain and a continental State or combination
+the assistance which Great Britain could possibly receive from the
+King's dominions beyond the sea is necessarily limited. Such a war must
+in the first place be a naval contest, towards which the most that the
+colonies can contribute consists in such additions to Great Britain's
+naval strength as they may have given during the preceding period of
+peace. What taken together they may do in this way would no doubt make
+an appreciable difference in the balance of forces between the two
+contending navies; but in the actual struggle the colonies would be
+little more than spectators, except in so far as their ports would offer
+a certain number of secure bases for the cruisers upon which Great
+Britain must rely for the protection of her sea-borne trade. Even if all
+the colonies possessed first-rate armies, the help which those armies
+could give would not be equal to that obtainable from a single European
+ally. For a war against a European adversary Great Britain must rely
+upon her own resources, and upon such assistance as she might obtain if
+it were felt by other Powers on the Continent not only that the cause in
+which she was fighting was vital to them and therefore called for their
+co-operation, but also that in the struggle Great Britain's assistance
+would be likely to turn the scale in their favour.
+
+Can we expect that history will repeat itself, and that once more in
+case of conflict Great Britain will have the assistance of continental
+allies? That depends chiefly on their faith in her power to help them.
+One condition of such an alliance undoubtedly exists--the desire of
+other nations for it. The predominance of Germany on the Continent
+rests like a nightmare upon more than one of the other States. It is
+increased by the alliance of Austria, another great military empire--an
+empire, moreover, not without a fine naval tradition, and, as is proved
+by the recent announcement of the intention of the Austrian Government
+to build four "Dreadnoughts," resolved to revive that tradition.
+
+Against the combination of Germany and Austria, Russia, which has hardly
+begun to recover from the prostration of her defeat by Japan, is
+helpless; while France, with a population much smaller than that of
+Germany, can hardly look forward to a renewal single-handed of the
+struggle which ended for her so disastrously forty years ago. The
+position of Italy is more doubtful, for the sympathies of her people are
+not attracted by Austria; they look with anxiety upon the Austrian
+policy of expansion towards the Aegean and along the shore of the
+Adriatic. The estrangement from France which followed upon the French
+occupation of Tunis appears to have passed away, and it seems possible
+that if there were a chance of success Italy might be glad to emancipate
+herself from German and Austrian influence. But even if Germany's policy
+were such that Russia, France, and Italy were each and all of them
+desirous to oppose it, and to assert a will and a policy of their own
+distinct from that of the German Government, it is very doubtful whether
+their strength is sufficient to justify them in an armed conflict,
+especially as their hypothetical adversaries have a central position
+with all its advantages. From a military point of view the strength of
+the central position consists in the power which it gives to its holder
+to keep one opponent in check with a part of his forces while he throws
+the bulk of them into a decisive blow against another.
+
+This is the situation of to-day on the Continent of Europe. It cannot be
+changed unless there is thrown into the scale of the possible opponents
+of German policy a weight or a force that would restore the equality of
+the two parties. The British navy, however perfect it may be assumed to
+be, does not in itself constitute such a force. Nor could the British
+army on its present footing restore the balance. A small standing army
+able to give its allies assistance, officially estimated at a strength
+of 160,000 men, will not suffice to turn the scale in a conflict in
+which the troops available for each of the great Powers are counted no
+longer by the hundred thousand but by the million. But if Great Britain
+were so organised that she could utilise for the purpose of war the
+whole of her national resources, if she had in addition to the navy
+indispensable for her security an army equal in efficiency to the best
+that can be found in Europe and in numbers to that maintained by Italy,
+which though the fifth Power on the Continent is most nearly her equal
+in territory and population, the equilibrium could be restored, and
+either the peace of Europe would be maintained, or in case of fresh
+conflict there would be a reasonable prospect of the recurrence of what
+has happened in the past, the maintenance, against a threatened
+domination, of the independence of the European States.
+
+The position here set forth is grave enough to demand the close
+attention of the British nation, for it means that England might at any
+time be called upon to enter into a contest, likely enough to take the
+form of a struggle for existence, against the greatest military empire
+in the world, supported by another military empire which is itself in
+the front rank of great Powers, while the other European States would be
+looking on comparatively helpless.
+
+But this is by no means a full statement of the case. The other Powers
+might not find it possible to maintain an attitude of neutrality. It is
+much more probable that they would have to choose between one side and
+the other; and that if they do not consider Great Britain strong enough
+to help them they may find it their interest, and indeed may be
+compelled, to take the side of Great Britain's adversaries. In that case
+Great Britain would have to carry on a struggle for existence against
+the combined forces of the Continent.
+
+That even in this extreme form the contest would be hopeless, I for one
+am unwilling to admit. If Great Britain were organised for war and able
+to throw her whole energies into it, she might be so strong that her
+overthrow even by united Europe would by no means be a foregone
+conclusion. But the determined preparation which would make her ready
+for the extreme contingency is the best and perhaps the only means of
+preventing its occurrence.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+POLICY--THE QUESTION OF RIGHT
+
+I have now given reasons for my belief that in case of conflict Great
+Britain, owing to her lack of organisation for war, would be in a
+position of some peril. She has not created for herself the means of
+making good by force a cause with which she may be identified but which
+may be disputed, and her weakness renders it improbable that she would
+have allies. There remains the second question whether, in the absence
+of might, she would at least have right on her side. That depends upon
+the nature of the quarrel. A good cause ought to unite her own people,
+and only in behalf of a good cause could she expect other nations to be
+on her side. From this point of view must be considered the relations
+between Great Britain and Germany, and in the first place the aims of
+German policy.
+
+A nation of which the army consists of four million able-bodied citizens
+does not go to war lightly. The German ideal, since the foundation of
+the Empire, has been rather that held up for Great Britain by Lord
+Rosebery in the words:
+
+"Peace secured, not by humiliation, but by preponderance."
+
+The first object after the defeat of France in 1870 was security, and
+this was sought not merely by strengthening the army and improving its
+training but also by obtaining the alliance of neighbouring Powers. In
+the first period the attempt was made to keep on good terms, not only
+with Austria, but with Russia. When in 1876 disturbances began in the
+Balkan Peninsula, Germany, while giving Austria her support, exerted
+herself to prevent a breach between Austria and Russia, and after the
+Russo-Turkish war acted as mediator between Russia on one side and
+Austria and Great Britain on the other, so that without a fresh war the
+European treaty of Berlin was substituted for the Russo-Turkish Treaty
+of San Stefano.
+
+After 1878 Russia became estranged from Germany, whereupon Germany, in
+1879, made a defensive alliance with Austria, to which at a later date
+Italy became a party. This triple alliance served for a quarter of a
+century to maintain the peace against the danger of a Franco-Russian
+combination until the defeat of Russia in Manchuria and consequent
+collapse of Russia's military power removed that danger.
+
+Shortly before this event the British agreement with the French
+Government had been negotiated by Lord Lansdowne. The French were very
+anxious to bring Morocco into the sphere of French influence, and to
+this the British Government saw no objection, but in the preamble to the
+agreement, as well as in its text, by way of declaration that Great
+Britain had no objection to this portion of the policy of France, words
+were used which might seem to imply that Great Britain had some special
+rights in regard to Morocco.
+
+The second article of the Declaration of April 8, 1904, contains the
+following clause:
+
+"The Government of the French Republic declare that they have no
+intention of altering the political status of Morocco. His Britannic
+Majesty's Government, for their part, recognise that it appertains to
+France, more particularly as a Power whose dominions are conterminous
+for a great distance with Morocco, to preserve order in that country,
+and to provide assistance for the purpose of all administrative,
+economic, financial, and military reforms which it may require."
+
+This clause seems to be open to the interpretation that Great Britain
+assumes a right to determine what nation of Europe is best entitled to
+exercise a protectorate over Morocco. That would involve some British
+superiority over other Powers, or at any rate that Great Britain had a
+special right over Morocco, a sort of suzerainty of which she could
+dispose at will. Germany disliked both this claim and the idea that
+France was to obtain special influence in Morocco. She was herself
+anxious for oversea possessions and spheres of influence, and appears to
+have thought that if Morocco was to become a European protectorate she
+ought to have a voice in any settlement. The terms in which the English
+consent to the French design was expressed were construed by the
+German's as involving, on the part of Great Britain, just that kind of
+supremacy in regard to oversea affairs which they had for so many years
+been learning to dislike. At any rate, when the moment convenient to her
+came, Germany put her veto upon the arrangements which had been made and
+required that they should be submitted to a European Conference. France
+was not prepared to renew the struggle for existence over Morocco, while
+Germany appeared not unwilling to assert her will even by force.
+Accordingly Germany had her way.
+
+The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary again
+afforded an opportunity for the exercise of Germany's preponderance. In
+1878 the Treaty of Berlin had authorised Austria-Hungary to occupy and
+administer the two provinces without limitation of time, and Bosnia and
+Herzegovina have since then practically been Austrian provinces, for the
+male population has been subject to compulsory service in the Austrian
+army and the soldiers have taken the oath of allegiance to the Emperor.
+It is not clear that any of the great Powers had other than a formal
+objection to the annexation, the objection, namely, that it was not
+consistent with the letter of the Treaty of Berlin. The British
+Government pointed out that, by international agreement to which
+Austria-Hungary is a party, a European Treaty is not to be modified
+without the consent of all the signatory Powers, and that this consent
+had not been asked by Austria-Hungary. The British view was endorsed
+both by France and Russia, and these three Powers were in favour of a
+European Conference for the purpose of revising the clause of the Treaty
+of Berlin, and apparently also of giving some concessions to Servia and
+Montenegro, the two small States which, for reasons altogether
+disconnected with the formal aspect of the case, resented the
+annexation. Neither of the Western Powers had any such interest in the
+matter as to make it in the least probable that they would in any case
+be prepared to support their view by force, while Austria, by mobilising
+her army, showed that she was ready to do so, and there was no doubt
+that she was assured, in case of need, of Germany's support. The Russian
+Minister of Foreign Affairs publicly explained to his countrymen that
+Russia was not in a condition to carry on a war. Accordingly in the
+moment of crisis the Russian Government withdrew its opposition to
+Austro-Hungarian policy, and thus once more was revealed the effect upon
+a political decision of the military strength, readiness, and
+determination of the two central Powers.
+
+A good deal of feeling was aroused, at any rate in Great Britain, by the
+disclosure in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in the
+earlier case of Morocco, of Germany's policy, and in the later
+negotiation of her determination to support Austria-Hungary by force.
+Yet he would be a rash man who, on now looking back, would assert that
+in either case a British Government would have been justified in armed
+opposition to Germany's policy.
+
+The bearing of Germany and Austria-Hungary in these negotiations, ending
+as they did at the time when the debate on the Navy Estimates disclosed
+to the British public the serious nature of the competition in naval
+shipbuilding between Germany and Great Britain, was to a large class in
+this country a startling revelation of the too easily forgotten fact
+that a nation does not get its way by asking for it, but by being able
+and ready to assert its will by force of arms in case of need. There is
+no reason to believe that the German Government has any intention to
+enter into a war except for the maintenance of rights or interests held
+to be vital for Germany, but it is always possible that Germany may hold
+vital some right or interest which another nation may be not quite ready
+to admit. In that case it behoves the other nation very carefully to
+scrutinise the German claims and its own way of regarding them, and to
+be quite sure, before entering into a dispute, that its own views are
+right and Germany's views wrong, as well as that it has the means, in
+case of conflict, of carrying on with success a war against the German
+Empire.
+
+If then England is to enter into a quarrel with Germany or any other
+State, let her people take care that it arises from no obscure issue
+about which they may disagree among themselves, but from some palpable
+wrong done by the other Power, some wrong which calls upon them to
+resist it with all their might.
+
+The case alleged against Germany is that she is too strong, so strong in
+herself that no Power in Europe can stand up against her, and so sure of
+the assistance of her ally, Austria, to say nothing of the other ally,
+Italy, that there is at this moment no combination that will venture to
+oppose the Triple Alliance. In other words, Germany is thought to have
+acquired an ascendency in Europe which she may at any moment attempt to
+convert into supremacy. Great Britain is thought of, at any rate by her
+own people, as the traditional opponent of any such supremacy on the
+Continent, so that if she were strong enough it might be her function to
+be the chief antagonist of a German ascendency or supremacy, though the
+doubt whether she is strong enough prevents her from fulfilling this
+role.
+
+But there is another side to the case. The opinion has long been
+expressed by German writers and is very widespread in Germany that it is
+Great Britain that claims an ascendency or supremacy, and that Germany
+in opposing that supremacy is making herself the champion of the
+European cause of the independence of States. This German idea was
+plainly expressed twenty-five years ago by the German historian Wilhelm
+Müller, who wrote in a review of the year 1884: "England was the
+opponent of all the maritime Powers of Europe. She had for decades
+assumed at sea the same dictatorial attitude as France had maintained
+upon land under Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. The years 1870-1871 broke the
+French spell; the year 1884 has shown England that the times of her
+maritime imperialism also are over, and that if she does not renounce it
+of her own free will, an 1870 will come for the English spell too. It is
+true, England need not fear any single maritime Power, but only a
+coalition of them all; and hitherto she has done all she can to call up
+such a coalition." The language which Englishmen naturally use in
+discussing their country's naval strength might seem to lend itself to
+the German interpretation. For example, on the 10th March 1908, the
+Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, expressing an opinion in which he thought
+both parties concurred, said: "We must maintain the unassailable
+supremacy of this country at sea." Here, at any rate, is the word
+"supremacy" at which the Germans take umbrage, and which our own people
+regard as objectionable if applied to the position of any Power on the
+Continent.
+
+I will not repeat here the analysis which I published many years ago of
+the dealings between the German and British Governments during the
+period when German colonial enterprise was beginning; nor the
+demonstration that in those negotiations the British Government acted
+with perfect fairness, but was grossly misrepresented to the German
+public. The important thing for the people of Great Britain to
+understand to-day is not the inner diplomatic history of that and
+subsequent periods, but the impression which is current in Germany with
+regard to the whole of these transactions.
+
+The Germans think that Great Britain lays claim to a special position in
+regard to the ocean, in the nature of a suzerainty over the waters of
+the globe, and over those of its coasts which are not the possessions
+of some strong civilised Power. What they have perceived in the last
+quarter of a century has been that, somehow or other, they care not how,
+whenever there has been a German attempt in the way of what is called
+colonial expansion, it has led to friction with Great Britain.
+Accordingly they have the impression that Great Britain is opposed to
+any such German expansion, and in this way, as they are anxious for
+dominions beyond the sea and for the spread of their trade into every
+quarter of the globe, they have come to regard Great Britain as the
+adversary. This German feeling found vent during the South African War,
+and the expressions at that time freely used in the German newspapers,
+as well as by German writers whose works were less ephemeral, could not
+but deeply offend the national consciousness, to any nothing of the
+pride of the people of this country. In this way the sympathy which used
+to exist between the two peoples has been lost and they have come to
+regard each other with suspicion, which has not been without its effect
+on the relations between the two Governments and upon the course of
+European diplomacy. This is the origin of the rivalry, and it is to the
+resentment which has been diligently cultivated in Germany against the
+supposed British claim to supremacy at sea that is attributable the
+great popularity among the people of Germany of the movement in favour
+of the expansion of the German navy. Since 1884 the people of Germany
+have been taught to regard with suspicion every item of British policy,
+and naturally enough this auspicious attitude has found its counterpart
+among the people of this country. The result has been that the
+agreements by which England has disposed of a number of disagreements
+with France and with Russia have been regarded in Germany as inspired by
+the wish to prepare a coalition against that country, and, in view of
+the past history of Great Britain, this interpretation can hardly be
+pronounced unnatural.
+
+Any cause for which Great Britain would fight ought to be intelligible
+to other nations, first of all to those of Europe, but also to the
+nations outside of Europe, at any rate to the United States and Japan,
+for if we were fighting for something in regard to which there was no
+sympathy with us, or which led other nations to sympathise with our
+adversary, we should be hampered by grave misgivings and might find
+ourselves alone in a hostile world.
+
+Accordingly it cannot be sound policy for Great Britain to assert for
+herself a supremacy or ascendency of the kind which is resented, not
+only by Germany, but by every other continental State, and indeed by
+every maritime State in the world. It ought to be made clear to all the
+world that in fact, whatever may have been the language used in English
+discussions, Great Britain makes no claim to suzerainty over the sea, or
+over territories bordering on the sea, not forming parts of the British
+Empire; that, while she is determined to maintain a navy that can in
+case of war secure the "command" of the sea against her enemies, she
+regards the sea, in peace, and in war except for her enemies, as the
+common property of all nations, the open road forming the great highway
+of mankind.
+
+We have but to reflect on the past to perceive that the idea of a
+dominion of the sea must necessarily unite other nations against us.
+What in the sixteenth century was the nature of the dispute between
+England and Spain? The British popular consciousness to-day remembers
+two causes, of which one was religious antagonism, and the other the
+claim set up by Spain and rejected by England to a monopoly of America,
+carrying with it an exclusive right to navigation in the Western
+Atlantic and to a monopoly of the trade of the Spanish dominions beyond
+the sea. That is a chapter of history which at the present time deserves
+a place in the meditations of Englishmen.
+
+I may now try to condense into a single view the general survey of the
+conditions of Europe which I have attempted from the two points of view
+of strategy and of policy, of force and of right. Germany has such a
+preponderance of military force that no continental State can stand up
+against her. There is, therefore, on the Continent no nation independent
+of German influence or pressure. Great Britain, so long as she maintains
+the superiority of her navy over that of Germany or over those of
+Germany and her allies, is not amenable to constraint by Germany, but
+her military weakness prevents her exerting any appreciable counter
+pressure upon Germany.
+
+The moment the German navy has become strong enough to confront that of
+Great Britain without risk of destruction, British influence in Europe
+will be at an end, and the Continent will have to follow the direction
+given by German policy. That is a consummation to be desired neither in
+the interest of the development of the European nations nor in that of
+Great Britain. It means the prevalence of one national ideal instead of
+the growth side by side of a number of types. It means also the
+exclusion of British ideals from European life.
+
+Great Britain has in the past been a powerful contributor to the free
+development of the European nations, and therefore to the preservation
+in Europe of variety of national growth. I believe that she is now
+called upon to renew that service. The method open to her lies in such
+action as may relieve the other European States from the overwhelming
+pressure which, in case of the disappearance of England from the
+European community, would be put upon them by Germany. It seems probable
+that in default of right action she will be compelled to maintain her
+national ideals against Europe united under German guidance. The action
+required consists on the one hand in the perfecting of the British navy,
+and on the other of the military organisation of the British people on
+the principle, already explained, of the nationalisation of war.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+THE NATION
+
+The conclusion to which a review of England's position and of the state
+of Europe points, is that while there is no visible cause of quarrel
+between Great Britain and Germany, yet there is between them a rivalry
+such as is inevitable between a State that has long held something like
+the first place in the world and a State that feels entitled in virtue
+of the number of its people, their character and training, their work
+and their corporate organisation, to aspire to the first place. The
+German nation by the mere fact of its growth challenges England for the
+primacy. It could not be otherwise. But the challenge is no wrong done
+to England, and the idea that it ought to be resented is unworthy of
+British traditions. It must be cheerfully accepted. If the Germans are
+better men than we are they deserve to take our place. If we mean to
+hold our own we must set about it in the right way--by proving ourselves
+better than the Germans.
+
+There ought to be no question of quarrel or of war. Men can be rivals
+without being enemies. It is the first lesson that an English boy
+learns at school. Quarrels arise, as a rule, from misunderstandings or
+from faults of temper, and England ought to avoid the frame of mind
+which would render her liable to take offence at trifles, while her
+policy ought to be simple enough to escape being misunderstood.
+
+In a competition between two nations the qualification for success is to
+be the better nation. Germany's advantage is that her people have been
+learning for a whole century to subordinate their individual wishes and
+welfare to that of the nation, while the people of Great Britain have
+been steeped in individualism until the consciousness of national
+existence, of a common purpose and a common duty, has all but faded
+away. What has to be done is to restore the nation to its right place in
+men's minds, and so to organise it that, like a trained athlete, it will
+be capable of hard and prolonged effort.
+
+By the nation I mean the United Kingdom, the commonwealth of Great
+Britain and Ireland, and I distinguish it from the Empire which is a
+federation of several nations. The nation thus defined has work to do,
+duties to perform as one nation among many, and the way out of the
+present difficulties will be found by attending to these duties.
+
+In the first place comes Britain's work in Europe, which to describe
+has been the purpose of the preceding chapters. It cannot be right for
+Britain, after the share she has taken in securing for Europe the
+freedom that distinguishes a series of independent States existing side
+by side from a single centralised Empire, to turn her back upon the
+Continent and to suppose that she exists only for the sake of her own
+colonies and India. On the contrary it is only by playing her part in
+Europe that she can hope to carry through the organisation of her own
+Empire which she has in view. Her function as a European State is to
+make her voice heard in the council of the European nations, so that no
+one State can dictate the decisions to be reached. In order to do that
+she must be strong enough to be able to say Aye and No without fear, and
+to give effective help in case of need to those other States which may
+in a decision vote on the same side with her.
+
+In her attitude towards the Powers of Europe and in her dealings with
+them Great Britain is the representative of the daughter nations and
+dependencies that form her Empire, and her self-defence in Europe is the
+defence of the whole Empire, at any rate against possible assaults from
+any European Power. At the same time she is necessarily the centre and
+the head of her own Empire. She must take the lead in its organisation
+and in the direction of its policy. If she is to fulfil these duties,
+on the one hand to Europe and on the other to the daughter nations and
+India, she must herself be organised on the principle of duty. An
+England divided against herself, absorbed in the disputes of factions
+and unconscious of a purpose, can neither lead nor defend her Empire,
+can play her proper part neither in Europe nor in the world.
+
+The great work to be done at home, corresponding to the ultimate purpose
+of national life, is that she should bring up her people to a higher
+standard of human excellence, to a finer type than others. There are
+English types well recognised. Fifty years ago the standard of British
+workmanship was the acknowledged mark of excellence in the industrial
+world, while it has been pointed out in an earlier chapter that the
+English standards, of character displayed in conduct, described in one
+aspect by the word "gentleman," and in another by the expression
+"fair-play," form the best part of the nation's inheritance. It is the
+business of any British education worth thinking of to stamp these
+hall-marks of character upon all her people.
+
+Nothing reveals in a more amazing light the extent to which in this
+country the true meaning of our being a nation has been forgotten than
+the use that has been made in recent years of the term "national
+education." The leaders of both parties have discussed the subject as
+though any system of schools maintained at the public expense formed a
+system of national education. But the diffusion of instruction is not
+education, and the fact that it is carried on at the public expense does
+not make it national. Education is training the child for his life to
+come, and his life's value consists in the work which he will do.
+National education means bringing up every boy and girl to do his or her
+part of the nation's work. A child who is going to do nothing will be of
+no use to his country, and a bringing up that leaves him prepared to do
+nothing is not an education but a perversion. A British national
+education ought to make every man a good workman, every man a gentleman,
+every man a servant of his country.
+
+My contention, then, is that this British nation has to perform certain
+specific tasks, and that in order to be able to do her work she must
+insist that her people--every man, woman, and child--exist not for
+themselves but for her. This is the principle of duty. It gives a
+standard of personal value, for evidently a man's use to his country
+consists in what he does for it, not in what he gets or has for himself,
+which, from the national point of view, is of no account except so far
+as it either enables him to carry on the work for which he is best
+suited or can be applied for the nation's benefit.
+
+How then in practice can the principle of duty be brought into our
+national and our individual life? I think that the right way is that we
+should join in doing those things which are evidently needed, and should
+postpone other things about the necessity of which there may be
+disagreement. I shall devote the rest of this volume to considering how
+the nation is to prepare itself for the first duty laid upon it, that of
+assuring its security and so making good its position as a member of the
+European community. But before pursuing that inquiry I must reiterate
+once more the principle which it is my main purpose to set before my
+countrymen.
+
+The conception of the Nation is the clue to the solution of all the
+problems with which the people of Great Britain are confronted. They are
+those of foreign and imperial policy, of defence national and imperial,
+of education and of social life.
+
+Foreign and imperial policy include all affairs external to Great
+Britain, the relations of Great Britain to Europe, to India, to the
+Colonies, and to the Powers of Asia and America. In all these external
+affairs the question to be asked is, what is Britain's duty?
+
+It is by the test of duty that Great Britain's attitude towards Germany
+should be tried. In what event would it be necessary and right to call
+on every British citizen to turn out and fight, ready to shed his blood
+and ready to shoot down enemies? Evidently only in case of some great
+and manifest wrong undertaken by Germany. As I am aware of no such wrong
+actually attempted, I think a conflict unnecessary. It is true I began
+by pointing out the danger of drifting into a war with the German
+Empire, but I wish to do what I can to prevent it, and to show that by
+right action the risk will be diminished.
+
+The greatest risk is due to fear--fear in this country of what Germany
+may do, fear in Germany of what Great Britain may do. Fear is a bad
+adviser. There are Englishmen who seem to think that as Germany is
+strengthening her navy it would be wise to attack her while the British
+navy is superior in numerical force. This suggestion must be frankly
+discussed and dealt with.
+
+A war is a trial of strength. To begin it does not add to your force.
+Suppose for the sake of the argument that a war between England and
+Germany were "inevitable"--which is equivalent to the supposition that
+one of the two Governments is bound to wrong the other--one of the two
+Governments must take the initiative. You take the initiative when you
+are the Power that wants something, in which case you naturally exert
+yourself to obtain it, while the adversary who merely says No to your
+request, acts only in resistance. England wants nothing from Germany, so
+that she is not called upon for an initiative. But the initiative, or
+offensive, requires the stronger force, its object being to render the
+other side powerless for resistance to its will. The defensive admits of
+a smaller force. A conflict between England and Germany must be
+primarily a naval war, and Germany's naval forces are considerably
+weaker than those of England. England has no political reason for the
+initiative; Germany is debarred from it by the inferiority of her navy.
+If, therefore, Germany wants anything from England, she must wait to
+take the initiative until she has forces strong enough for the
+offensive. But her forces, though not strong enough for the offensive,
+may be strong enough for the defensive. If, therefore, England should
+take the initiative, she would in so doing give away the one advantage
+she has. It may be Germany's interest to have a prompt decision. It can
+hardly be her interest to attack before she is ready. But if she really
+wanted to pick a quarrel and get some advantage, it would exactly serve
+her purpose to be attacked at once, as that would give her the benefit
+of the defensive. The English "Jingoes," then, are false guides, bad
+strategists, and worse, statesmen.
+
+Not only in the affairs of Europe, but in those of India, Egypt, and
+the Colonies, and in all dealings with Asia, Africa, and America the
+line of British policy will be the line of the British nation's duty.
+
+If Britain is to follow this line two conditions must be fulfilled. She
+must have a leader to show the way and her people must walk in it with
+confidence.
+
+The mark of a leader is the single eye. But the traditional system gives
+the lead of the nation to the leader of one party chosen for his success
+in leading that party. He can never have a single eye; he serves two
+masters. His party requires him to keep it in office, regarding the
+Opposition as the enemy. But his country requires him to guide a united
+nation in the fulfilment of its mission in Europe and a united Empire in
+the fulfilment of its mission in the world. A statesman who is to lead
+the nation and the Empire must keep his eyes on Europe and on the world.
+A party leader who is to defeat the other party must keep his eyes on
+the other party. No man can at the same time be looking out of the
+window and watching an opponent inside the house, and the traditional
+system puts the Prime Minister in a painful dilemma. Either he never
+looks out of the window at all or he tries to look two ways at once.
+Party men seem to believe that if a Prime Minister were to look across
+the sea instead of across the floor of the House of Commons his
+Government would be upset. That may be the case so long as men ignore
+the nation and so long as they acquiesce in the treasonable doctrine
+that it is the business of the Opposition to oppose. But a statesman who
+would take courage to lead the nation might perhaps find the Opposition
+powerless against him.
+
+The counterpart of leadership is following. A Government that shows the
+line of Britain's duty must be able to utilise the whole energies of her
+people for its performance. A duty laid upon the nation implies a duty
+laid upon every man to do his share of the nation's work, to assist the
+Government by obedient service, the best of which he is capable. It
+means a people trained every man to his task.
+
+A nation should be like a team in which every man has his place, his
+work to do, his mission or duty. There is no room in it either for the
+idler who consumes but renders no service, or for the unskilled man who
+bungles a task to which he has not been trained. A nation may be
+compared to a living creature. Consider the way in which nature
+organises all things that live and grow. In the structure of a living
+thing every part has its function, its work to do. There are no
+superfluous organs, and if any fails to do its work the creature
+sickens and perhaps dies.
+
+Take the idea of the nation as I have tried to convey it and apply it as
+a measure or test to our customary way of thinking both of public
+affairs and of our own lives. Does it not reveal that we attach too much
+importance to having and to possessions--our own and other people's--and
+too little importance to doing, to service? When we ask what a man is
+worth, we think of what he owns. But the words ought to make us think of
+what he is fit for and of what service he renders to the nation. The
+only value of what a man has springs from what he does with it.
+
+The idea of the nation leads to the right way of looking at these
+matters, because it constrains every man to put himself and all that he
+has at the service of the community. Thus it is the opposite of
+socialism, which merely turns upside down the current worship of
+ownership, and which thinks "having" so supremely important that it
+would put "not having" in its place. The only cry I will adopt is
+"England for ever," which means that we are here, every one of us, with
+all that we have and all that we can do, as members of a nation that
+must either serve the world or perish.
+
+But the idea of the nation carries us a long way further than I have yet
+shown. It bids us all try at the peril of England's fall to get the
+best Government we can to lead us. We need a man to preside over the
+nation's counsels, to settle the line of Britain's duty in Europe and in
+her own Empire, and of her duty to her own people, to the millions who
+are growing up ill fed, ill housed and ill trained, and yet who are part
+of the sovereign people. We need to give him as councillors men that are
+masters of the tasks in which for the nation to fail means its ruin, the
+tasks of which I have enumerated those that are vital. Do we give him a
+master of the history of the other nations to guide the nation's
+dealings with them? Do we give him a master of war to educate admirals
+and generals? Do we give him a master of the sciences to direct the
+pursuit of knowledge, and a master of character-building to supervise
+the bringing up of boys and girls to be types of a noble life? It would
+serve the nation's turn to have such men. They are among us, and to find
+them we should only have to look for them. It would be no harder than to
+pick apples off a tree. But we never dream of looking for them. We have
+a wonderful plan of choosing our leaders, the plan which we call an
+election. Five hundred men assemble in a hall and listen to a speech
+from a partisan, while five hundred others in a hall in the next street
+are cheering a second partisan who declaims against the first. There is
+no test of either speaker, except that he must be rich enough to pay
+the expenses of an "election." The voters do not even listen to both
+partisans in order to judge between them. Thus we choose our members of
+Parliament. Our Government is a committee of some twenty of them. Its
+first business is to keep its authority against the other party, of
+which in turn the chief function is to make out that everything the
+Government does is wrong. This is the only recognised plan for leading
+the nation.
+
+You may be shocked as you read this by the plainness of my words, but
+you know them to be true, though you suppose that to insist on the facts
+is "impracticable" because you fancy that there is no way out of the
+marvellously absurd arrangements that exist. But there is a way out,
+though it is no royal road. It is this. Get the meaning of the nation
+into your own head and then make a present to England of your party
+creed. Ask yourself what is the one thing most needed now, and the one
+thing most needed for the future. You will answer, because you know it
+to be true, that the one thing most needed now is to get the navy right.
+
+The one thing most needed for the future is to put the idea of the
+nation and the will to help England into every man's soul. That cannot
+be done by writing or by talking, but only by setting every man while
+he is young to do something for his country. There is one way of
+bringing that about. It is by making every citizen a soldier in a
+national army. The man who has learned to serve his country has learned
+to love it. He is the true citizen, and of such a nation is composed.
+Great Britain needs a statesman to lead her and a policy at home and
+abroad. But such a policy must not be sought and cannot be found upon
+party lines. The statesman who is to expound it to his countrymen and
+represent it to the world must be the leader not of one party but of
+both. In short, a statesman must be a nation leader, and the first
+condition of his existence is that there should be a nation for him to
+lead.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+THE EFFECT OF THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR UPON LEADERSHIP
+
+The argument of the preceding chapters points to the conclusion that if
+Great Britain is to maintain her position as a great Power, probably
+even if she is to maintain her independence, and certainly if she is to
+retain the administration of India and the leadership of the nations
+that have grown out of her colonies, her statesmen and her people must
+combine to do three things:--
+
+1. To adopt a policy having due relation to the condition and needs of
+the European Continent.
+
+2. To make the British navy the best possible instrument of naval
+warfare.
+
+3. To make the British army strong enough to be able to turn the scales
+in a continental war.
+
+What are for the navy and for the army the essentials of victory? If
+there had never been any wars, no one would know what was essential to
+victory. People would have their notions, no doubt, but these notions
+would be guesses and could not be verified until the advent of a war,
+which might bring with it a good deal of disappointment to the people
+who had guessed wrong. But there have already been wars enough to afford
+ample material for deductions as to the causes and conditions of
+success. I propose to take the two best examples that can be found, one
+for war at sea and the other for war on land, in order to show exactly
+the way in which victory is attained.
+
+By victory, of course, I mean crushing the enemy. In a battle in which
+neither side is crippled, and after which the fleets part to renew the
+struggle after a short interval, one side or the other may consider that
+it has had the honours of the day. It may have lost fewer ships than the
+enemy, or have taken more. It may have been able and willing to continue
+the fight, though the enemy drew off, and its commander may be promoted
+or decorated for having maintained the credit of his country or of the
+service to which he belongs. But such a battle is not victory either in
+a political or a strategical sense. It does not lead to the
+accomplishment of the purpose of the war, which is to dictate conditions
+of peace. That result can be obtained only by crushing the enemy's force
+and so making him powerless to renew the contest.
+
+A general view of the wars of the eighteenth century between Great
+Britain and France shows that, broadly speaking, there was no decision
+until the end of the period. The nearest approach to it was when Hawke
+destroyed the French fleet in Quiberon Bay. But this was hardly a
+stand-up fight. The French fleet was running away, and Hawke's
+achievement was that, in spite of the difficulties of weather on an
+extremely dangerous coast, he was able to consummate its destruction.
+The real decision was the work of Nelson, and its principal cause was
+Nelson himself.
+
+The British navy had discovered in its conflicts with the Dutch during
+the seventeenth century that the object of naval warfare was the command
+of the sea, which must be won by breaking the enemy's force in battle.
+This was also perfectly understood by the Dutch admirals, and in those
+wars was begun the development of the art of fighting battles with
+sailing vessels. A formation, the line of battle, in which one ship
+sails in the track of the ship before her, was found to be appropriate
+to the weapon used, the broadside of artillery; and a type of ship
+suitable to this formation, the line-of-battle ship, established itself.
+These were the elements with which the British and French navies entered
+into their long eighteenth century struggle. The French, however, had
+not grasped the principle that the object of naval warfare was to obtain
+the command of the sea. They did not consciously and primarily aim, as
+did their British rivals, at the destruction of the enemy's fleet. They
+were more concerned with the preservation of their own fleet than with
+the destruction of the enemy's, and were ready rather to accept battle
+than to bring it about. The British admirals were eager for battle, but
+had a difficulty in finding out how a decisive blow could be struck. The
+orthodox and accepted doctrine of the British navy was that the British
+fleet should be brought alongside the enemy's fleet, the two lines of
+battleships being parallel to one another, so that each ship in the
+British fleet should engage a corresponding ship in the French fleet. It
+was a manoeuvre difficult of execution, because, in order to approach
+the French, the British must in the first place turn each of their ships
+at right angles to the line or obliquely to it, and then, when they were
+near enough to fire, must turn again to the left (or right) in order to
+restore the line formation. And during this period of approach and
+turning they must be exposed to the broadsides of the French without
+being able to make full use of their own broadsides. Moreover, it was
+next to impossible in this way to bring up the whole line together.
+Besides being difficult, the manoeuvre had no promise of success. For if
+two fleets of equal numbers are in this way matched ship against ship,
+neither side has any advantage except what may be derived from the
+superior skill of its gunners. So long as these conditions prevailed,
+no great decisive victory of the kind for which we are seeking was
+gained. It was during this period that Nelson received such training as
+the navy could give him, and added to it the necessary finishing touch
+by never-ceasing effort to find out for himself the way in which he
+could strike a decisive blow. His daring was always deliberate, never
+rash, and this is the right frame of mind for a commander. "You may be
+assured," he writes to Lord Hood, March 11, 1794, "I shall undertake
+nothing but what I have moral certainty of succeeding in."
+
+His fierce determination to get at the ultimate secrets of his trade led
+him to use every means that would help him to think out his problem, and
+among these means was reading. In 1780 appeared Clerk's "Essay on Naval
+Tactics." Clerk pointed out the weakness of the method of fighting in
+two parallel lines and suggested and discussed a number of plans by
+which one fleet with the bulk of its force could attack and destroy a
+portion of the other. This was the problem to which Nelson gave his
+mind--how to attack a part with the whole. On the 19th of August 1796 he
+writes to the Duke of Clarence:--
+
+"We are now 22 sail of the line, the combined fleet will be above 35
+sail of the line.... I will venture my life Sir John Jervis defeats
+them; I do not mean by a regular battle but by the skill of our
+Admiral, and the activity and spirit of our officers and seamen. This
+country is the most favourable possible for skill with an inferior
+fleet; for the winds are so variable that some one time in the 24 hours
+you must be able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other will
+be becalmed, or have a contrary wind."
+
+His opportunity came in 1798, when in the battle of the Nile he crushed
+the French Mediterranean Fleet. In a letter to Lord Howe, written
+January 8, 1799, he described his plan in a sentence:--
+
+"By attacking the enemy's van and centre, the wind blowing directly
+along their line, I was enabled to throw what force I pleased on a few
+ships."
+
+We know that Nelson's method of fighting had for months before the
+battle been his constant preoccupation, and that he had lost no
+opportunity of explaining his ideas to his captains. Here are the words
+of Captain Berry's narrative:--
+
+"It had been his practice during the whole of the cruise, whenever the
+weather and circumstances would permit, to have his captains on board
+the Vanguard, where he would fully develop to them his own ideas of the
+different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to
+execute upon falling in with the enemy, whatever their position or
+situation might be, by day or by night. There was no possible position
+in which they might be found that he did not take into his calculation,
+and for the most advantageous attack on which he had not digested and
+arranged the best possible disposition of the force which he commanded."
+
+The great final victory of Trafalgar was prepared in the same way, and
+the various memoranda written in the period before the battle have
+revealed to recent investigation the unwearying care which Nelson
+devoted to finding out how best to concentrate his force upon that
+portion of the enemy's fleet which it would be most difficult for the
+enemy to support with the remainder.
+
+Nelson's great merit, his personal contribution to his country's
+influence, lay first and foremost in his having by intellectual effort
+solved the tactical problem set to commanders by the conditions of the
+naval weapon of his day, the fleet of line-of-battle ships; and
+secondly, in his being possessed and inspired by the true strategical
+doctrine that the prime object of naval warfare is the destruction of
+the enemy's fleet, and therefore that the decisive point in the theatre
+of war is the point where the enemy's fleet can be found. It was the
+conviction with which he held this principle that enabled him in
+circumstances of the greatest difficulty to divine where to go to find
+the enemy's fleet; which in 1798 led him persistently up and down the
+Mediterranean till he had discovered the French squadron anchored at
+Aboukir; which in 1805 took him from the Mediterranean to the West
+Indies, and from the West Indies back to the Channel.
+
+So much for Nelson's share of the work. But Nelson could neither have
+educated himself nor made full use of his education if the navy of his
+day had not been inspired with the will to fight and to conquer, with
+the discipline that springs from that will, and had not obtained through
+long experience of war the high degree of skill in seamanship and in
+gunnery which made it the instrument its great commander required. These
+conditions of the navy in turn were products of the national spirit and
+of the will of the Government and people of Great Britain to devote to
+the navy as much money, as many men, and as vigorous support as might be
+necessary to realise the national purpose.
+
+The efforts of this nature made by the country were neither perfect nor
+complete. The Governments made mistakes, the Admiralty left much to be
+desired both in organisation and in personnel. But the will was there.
+The best proof of the national determination is to be found in the best
+hated of all the institutions of that time, the press-gang, a brutal and
+narrow-minded form of asserting the principle that a citizen's duty is
+to fight for his country. That the principle should take such a shape
+is decisive evidence no doubt that society was badly organised, and that
+education, intellectual and moral, was on a low level, but also, and
+this is the vital matter, that the nation well understood the nature of
+the struggle in which it was engaged and was firmly resolved not only to
+fight but to conquer.
+
+The causes of the success of the French armies in the period between
+1792 and 1809 were precisely analogous to those which have been analysed
+in the case of the British navy. The basis was the national will,
+expressed in the volunteers and the levy _en masse_. Upon this was
+superimposed the skill acquired by the army in several years of
+incessant war, and the formal cause of the victories was Napoleon's
+insight into the art of command. The research of recent years has
+revealed the origin of Napoleon's mastery of the method of directing an
+army. He became an officer in 1785, at the age of sixteen. In 1793, as a
+young captain of artillery, he directed with remarkable insight and
+determination the operations by which the allied fleet was driven from
+Toulon. In 1794 he inspired and conducted, though still a subordinate, a
+series of successful operations in the Maritime Alps. In 1796, as
+commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, he astonished Europe by the
+most brilliant campaign on record. For these achievements he had
+prepared himself by assiduous study. As a young officer of artillery he
+received the best professional training then to be had in Europe, while
+at the same time, by wide and careful reading, he gave himself a general
+education. At some period before 1796, probably before 1794, he had read
+and thoroughly digested the remarkable treatise on the principles of
+mountain war which had been left in manuscript by General Bourcet, an
+officer who during the campaigns of half a century had assisted as
+Quartermaster-General a number of the best Generals of France.
+Napoleon's phenomenal power of concentration had enabled him to
+assimilate Bourcet's doctrine, which in his clear and vigorous mind took
+new and more perfect shape, so that from the beginning his operations
+are conducted on a system which may be described as that of Bourcet
+raised to a higher power.
+
+The "Nelson touch" was acquired by the Admiral through years of effort
+to think out, to its last conclusion, a problem the nature of which had
+never been adequately grasped by his professional predecessors and
+comrades, though it seems probable that he owed to Clerk the hint which
+led him to the solution which he found. Napoleon was more fortunate in
+inheriting a strategical doctrine which he had but to appreciate to
+expand and to apply. The success of both men is due to the habit of mind
+which clings tenaciously to the subject under investigation until it is
+completely cleared up. Each of them became, as a result of his thinking,
+the embodiment of a theory or system of the employment of force, the one
+on sea and the other on land; and such an embodiment is absolutely
+necessary for a nation in pursuit of victory.
+
+It seems natural to say that if England wants victory on sea or land,
+she must provide herself with a Nelson or a Napoleon. The statement is
+quite true, but it requires to be rightly interpreted. If it means that
+a nation must always choose a great man to command its navy or its army
+it is an impossible maxim, because a great man cannot be recognised
+until his power has been revealed in some kind of work. Moreover, to say
+that Nelson and Napoleon won victories because they were great men is to
+invert the order of nature and of truth. They are recognised as great
+men because of the mastery of their business which they manifested in
+action. That mastery was due primarily to knowledge. Wordsworth hit the
+mark when, in answer to the question "Who is the Happy Warrior?" he
+replied that it was he--
+
+"Who with a natural instinct to discern
+What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn."
+
+The quality that made them both so valuable was that they knew the best
+that was known and thought in regard to the art of war. This is the
+quality which a nation must secure in those whom it entrusts with the
+design and the conduct of the operations of its fleets and its armies.
+
+There is a method for securing this, not by any means a new one, and not
+originally, as is commonly supposed, a German invention. It consists in
+providing the army and the navy with a General Staff or Department for
+the study, design, and direction of operations. In such a department
+Bourcet, Napoleon's master, spent the best years of his life. In such a
+department Moltke was trained; over such a department he presided. Its
+characteristic is that it has one function, that of the study, design,
+and direction of the movements in fighting of a fleet or an army, and
+that it has nothing whatever to do with the maintenance of an army, or
+with its recruiting, discipline, or peace administration. Its functions
+in peace are intellectual and educational, and in war it becomes the
+channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a
+department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a
+department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the
+speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the
+British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics
+and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson
+and Napoleon prepared their great achievements. His business is to be
+designing campaigns, to make up his mind at what point or points, in
+case of war, he will assemble his fleets or his armies for the first
+move, and what the nature of that move shall be. The second move it is
+impossible for him to pre-arrange because it depends upon the result of
+the first. He will determine the second move when the time comes. In
+order that his work should be as well done as possible, care is taken
+that the Chief of the Staff shall have nothing else to do. Not he but
+another officer superintends the raising, organising, and disciplining
+of the forces. Thus he becomes the embodiment of a theory or system of
+operations, and with that theory or system he inspires as far as
+possible all the admirals or generals and other officers who will have
+to carry out his designs.
+
+In the British system the Chief of the General Staff is the principal
+military member of the Board which administers the army. Accordingly,
+only a fraction of his time can be given to thinking out the problems of
+strategy and tactics. At the Admiralty the principal naval member of the
+Board is made responsible not only for the distribution and movements of
+ships--a definition which includes the whole domain of strategy and
+tactics--but also for the fighting and sea-going efficiency of the
+fleet, its organisation and mobilisation, a definition so wide that it
+includes the greater part of the administration of the navy, especially
+as the same officer is held responsible for advice on all large
+questions of naval policy and maritime warfare, as well as for the
+control of the naval ordnance department. Thus in each case the very
+constitution of the office entrusted with the design of operations
+prevents the officer at its head from concentrating himself upon that
+vital duty. The result is that the intellectual life both of the army
+and of the navy lags far behind that of their German rivals, and
+therefore that there is every chance of both of them being beaten, not
+for lack of courage or hard work, but by being opposed to an adversary
+whose thinking has been better done by reason of the greater
+concentration of energy devoted to it.
+
+The first reform needed, at any rate in the navy, is a definition of the
+functions of the First Sea Lord which will confine his sphere to the
+distribution and movement of ships and the strategical and tactical
+training of officers, so as to compel him to become the embodiment or
+personification of the best possible theory or system of naval warfare.
+That definition adopted and enforced, there is no need to lay down
+regulations giving the strategist control over his colleagues who
+administer _matériel_ and _personnel_; they will of themselves always be
+anxious to hear his views as to the methods of fighting, and will be
+only too glad to build ships with a view to their being used in
+accordance with his design of victory. But until there is at the
+Admiralty department devoted to designing victory and to nothing else,
+what possible guarantee can there be that ships will be built, or the
+navy administered and organised in accordance with any design likely to
+lead to victory?
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+THE NEEDS OF THE NAVY
+
+The doubt which, since the Prime Minister's statement on the
+introduction of the Navy Estimates, has disturbed the public mind, is
+concerned almost exclusively with the number of modern battleships in
+the Royal Navy. The one object which the nation ought to have in view is
+victory in the next war, and the question never to be forgotten is, what
+is essential to victory? While it is probably true that if the disparity
+of numbers be too great a smaller fleet can hardly engage a larger one
+with any prospect of success, it is possible to exaggerate the
+importance both of numbers and of the size of ships.
+
+The most decisive victories at sea which are on record were those of
+Tsusima, of Trafalgar, and of the Nile. At Tsusima the numbers and size
+of the Japanese Fleet were not such as, before the battle, to give
+foreign observers grounds for expecting a decisive victory by the
+Japanese. It was on the superior intellectual and moral qualities of the
+Japanese that those who expected them to win based their hopes, and this
+view was justified by the event. At the battle of Trafalgar the British
+Fleet numbered twenty-seven, the Franco-Spanish Fleet numbered
+thirty-three; at the battle of the Nile the numbers were equal--thirteen
+on each side. These figures seem to me sufficiently to prove that
+superior numbers are not in battle the indispensable condition of
+victory. They certainly prove that the numerically inferior fleet may
+very well win.
+
+Writers on the art of war distinguish between tactics, the art of
+winning a battle, and strategy, the art of designing and conducting the
+whole of the operations which constitute a campaign, of bringing about
+battles in conditions favourable to one's own side and of making the
+best use of such victories as may be won for contributing to the general
+purpose of the war, which is dictating peace on one's own terms.
+
+The decision of the questions, how many fleets to send out, what is to
+be the strength and composition of each of them, and what the objectives
+assigned to their several commanders is a strategical decision. It is a
+function of the strategist at the Board of Admiralty, but the question
+how to handle any one of these fleets in the presence of the enemy so as
+either to avoid or to bring about an action and so as to win the battle,
+if a battle be desirable, is a question for the admiral commanding the
+particular fleet.
+
+Evidently the master art, because it dominates the whole war, is that
+of strategy, and for that reason it must have a seat at the Admiralty
+Board.
+
+As is well known, a large number of naval officers have for several
+years past been troubled with doubts as to the strategical competence
+displayed by the Board or Boards of Admiralty since 1904. The Board of
+Admiralty has also been criticised for other reasons, into some of which
+it is not necessary to enter, but it is desirable to state precisely the
+considerations which tend to show that important decisions made by the
+Admiralty have not been based upon sound strategical principles, and
+are, indeed, incompatible with them.
+
+When four or five years ago it was decided to transfer the centre of
+gravity of the navy, as represented by fleets in commission, from the
+Mediterranean to the Atlantic coasts of Europe, that was a sound
+decision. But when the principal fleet in commission in home waters was
+reduced in order to facilitate the creation of a so-called Home Fleet,
+made up of a number of ships stationed at different ports, and manned
+for the most part by nucleus crews, the Admiralty announced this measure
+in a very remarkable circular. The change clearly involved a reduction
+of the number of men at sea, and also a reduction in the number of ships
+which would be immediately available under war conditions. It was
+further evident that the chief result of this measure would be a
+reduction of expenditure, yet the circular boldly stated that the object
+of the measure was to increase the power and readiness of the navy for
+instant war.
+
+In any case, the decision announced revealed an ignorance of one of the
+fundamental conditions of naval warfare, which differentiates it
+completely from operations on land. A ship in commission carries on
+board everything that is necessary for a fight. She can be made ready
+for battle in a few minutes on the order to clear for action. No other
+mobilisation is necessary for a fleet in commission, and if a war should
+break out suddenly, as wars normally always do break out, whichever side
+is able at once with its fleets already in commission to strike the
+first blow has the incalculable advantage of the initiative.
+
+A fleet divided between several ports and not fully manned is not a
+fleet in commission; it is not ready, and its assembly as a fleet
+depends on a contingency, which there is no means of guaranteeing, that
+the enemy shall not be able to prevent its assembly by moving a fleet
+immediately to a point at sea from which it would be able to oppose by
+force the union of the constituent parts of the divided and unready
+fleet.
+
+Later official descriptions of the Home Fleet explained that it was part
+of the Admiralty design that this fleet should offer the first
+resistance to an enemy. The most careful examination of these
+descriptions leaves no room for doubt that the idea of the Admiralty was
+that one of its fleets should, in case of war, form a sort of
+advance-guard to the rest of the navy. But it is a fundamental truth
+that in naval war an advance-guard is absurd and impossible. In the
+operations of armies, an advance-guard is both necessary and useful. Its
+function is to delay the enemy's army until such time as the
+commander-in-chief shall have assembled his own forces, which may be, to
+some extent, scattered on the march. This delay is always possible on
+land, because the troops can make use of the ground, that is, of the
+positions which it affords favourable for defence, and because by means
+of those positions a small force can for a long time hold in check the
+advance of a very much larger one. But at sea there are no positions
+except those formed by narrow straits, estuaries, and shoals, where land
+and sea are more or less mixed up. The open sea is a uniform surface
+offering no advantage whatever to either side. There is nothing in naval
+warfare resembling the defence of a position on land, and the whole
+difference between offence and defence at sea consists in the will of
+one side to bring on an action and that of the other side to avoid or
+postpone it.
+
+At sea a small force which endeavours by fighting to delay the movement
+of a large force exposes itself to destruction without any corresponding
+gain of time. Accordingly, at sea, there is no analogy to the action of
+an advance-guard, and the mere fact that such an idea should find its
+way into the official accounts of the Admiralty's views regarding the
+opening move of a possible war must discredit the strategy of the
+Admiralty in the judgment of all who have paid any attention to the
+nature of naval war.
+
+The second requisite for victory, that is, for winning a battle against
+a hostile fleet, is tactical superiority, or, as Nelson put it: "The
+skill of our admirals and the activity and spirit of our officers and
+seamen." The only way to obtain this is through the perpetual practice
+of the admirals commanding fleets. An admiral, in order to make himself
+a first-rate tactician, must not merely have deeply studied and pondered
+the subject, but must spend as much time as possible in exercising, as a
+whole, the fleet which he commands, in order not only by experimental
+manoeuvres thoroughly to satisfy himself as to the formation and mode of
+attack which will be best suited to any conceivable circumstance in
+which he may find himself, but also to inculcate his ideas into his
+subordinates; to inspire them with his own knowledge, and to give them
+that training in working together which, in all those kinds of
+activities which require large numbers of men to work together, whether
+on the cricket field, at football, in an army, or in a navy, constitutes
+the advantage of a practised over a scratch team.
+
+If the practice is to make the fleet ready for war, it must be carried
+out with the fleet in its war composition. All the different elements,
+battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft, and the rest, must be fully
+represented, otherwise the admiral would be practising in peace with a
+different instrument from that with which he would need to operate in
+war.
+
+The importance of this perpetual training ought to be self-evident. It
+may be well to remind the reader that it has also been historically
+proved. The great advantage which the British possessed over the French
+navy in the Wars of the Revolution and the Empire was that the British
+fleets were always at sea, whereas the French fleets, for years
+blockaded in their ports, were deficient in that practice which, in the
+naval as in all other professions, makes perfect. One of the complaints
+against the present Board of Admiralty is that it has not encouraged the
+training and exercise of fleets as complete units.
+
+Another point, in regard to which the recent practice of the Admiralty
+is regarded with very grave doubts, not only by many naval officers,
+but also by many of those who, without being naval officers, take a
+serious interest in the navy, is that of naval construction. For several
+years the Admiralty neglected to build torpedo craft of the quality and
+in the quantity necessary for the most probable contingencies of war,
+while, at the same time, large sums of money were spent in building
+armoured cruisers, vessels of a fighting power so great that an admiral
+would hesitate to detach them from his fleet, lest he should be
+needlessly weakened on the day of battle, yet not strong enough safely
+to replace the battleships in the fighting line. The result has been
+that the admirals in command of fleets have for some time been anxiously
+asking to be better supplied with scouts or vessels of great speed, but
+not of such fighting power that they could not be spared at a distance
+from the fleet even on the eve of an action. These two defects in the
+shipbuilding policy of the Admiralty make it probable that for some
+years past the navy has not been constructed in accord with any fully
+thought-out design of operations; in other words, that the great object
+"victory" has been forgotten by the supreme authority.
+
+The doubt whether victory has been borne in mind is confirmed by what is
+known of the design of the original _Dreadnought_. A battleship ought to
+be constructed for battle, that is, for the purpose of destroying the
+enemy's fleet, for which purpose it will never be used alone, but in
+conjunction with a number of ships like itself forming the weapon of an
+admiral in command. A battleship requires three qualities, in the
+following order of importance:--
+
+First, offensive power. A fleet exists in order to destroy the enemy,
+but it has no prospect of performing that function if its power of
+destruction is less than its enemy's. The chief weapon to-day, as in the
+past, is artillery. Accordingly the first requisite of a fleet, as
+regards its material qualities, those produced by the constructor, is
+the capacity to pour on to the enemy's fleet a heavier rain of
+projectiles than he can return.
+
+The second quality is the power of movement. The advantage of superior
+speed in a fleet--for the superior speed of an individual ship is of
+little importance--is that so long as it is preserved it enables the
+admiral, within limits, to accept or decline battle according to his own
+judgment. This is a great strategical advantage. It may in some
+conditions enable an inferior fleet to postpone an action which might be
+disastrous until it has effected a junction with another fleet belonging
+to its own side.
+
+The third quality is that the ships of a fleet should be strong enough
+to offer to the enemy's projectiles a sufficient resistance to make it
+improbable that they can be sunk before having inflicted their fair
+share of damage on the adversary.
+
+There is always a difficulty in combining these qualities in a given
+ship, because as a ship weighs the quantity of water which she
+displaces, a ship of any given size has its weight given, and the
+designer cannot exceed that limit of weight. He must divide it between
+guns with their ammunition, engines with their coal, and armour. Every
+ton given to armour diminishes the tonnage possible for guns and
+engines, and, given a minimum for armour, every extra ton given to
+engines and coal reduces the possible weight of guns and ammunition. In
+the _Dreadnought_ a very great effort was made to obtain a considerable
+extra speed over that of all other battleships. This extra speed was
+defended on the ground that it would enable a fleet of _Dreadnoughts_ to
+fight a battle at long range, and with a view to such battle the
+_Dreadnought_ was provided only with guns of the heaviest calibre and
+deprived of those guns of medium calibre with which earlier battleships
+were well provided. The theories thus embodied in the new class of ships
+were both of them doubtful, and even dangerous. In the first place, it
+is in the highest degree injurious to the spirit and courage of the crew
+to have a ship which they know will be at a disadvantage if brought into
+close proximity with the enemy. Their great object ought to be to get as
+near to the enemy as possible. The hypothesis that more damage will be
+done by an armament exclusively of the largest guns is in the opinion
+of many of the best judges likely to be refuted. There is some reason to
+believe that a given tonnage, if devoted to guns of medium calibre,
+would yield a very much greater total damage to an enemy's ship than if
+devoted to a smaller number of guns of heavy calibre and firing much
+less rapidly.
+
+There is, moreover, a widespread belief among naval officers of the
+highest repute, among whom may be named the author of the "Influence of
+Sea Power upon History," than whom no one has thought more profoundly on
+the subject of naval war, that it is bad economy to concentrate in a few
+very large ships the power which might be more conveniently and
+effectively employed if distributed in a great number of ships of more
+moderate size.
+
+Surely, so long as naval opinion is divided about the tactical and
+strategical wisdom of a new type of battleship, it is rash to continue
+building battleships exclusively of that type, and it would be more
+reasonable to make an attempt to have naval opinion sifted and
+clarified, and thus to have a secure basis for a shipbuilding programme,
+than to hurry on an enormous expenditure upon what may after all prove
+to have been a series of doubtful experiments.
+
+All the questions above discussed seem to me to be more important than
+that of mere numbers of ships. Numbers are, however, of great
+importance in their proper place and for the proper reasons. The policy
+adopted and carried out by the British navy, at any rate during the
+latter half of the war against the French Empire, was based on a known
+superiority of force. The British fleet set out by blockading all the
+French fleets, that is, by taking stations near to the great French
+harbours and there observing those harbours, so that no French fleet
+should escape without being attacked. If this is to be the policy of the
+British navy in future it will require a preponderance of force of every
+kind over that of the enemy, and that preponderant force will have to be
+fully employed from the very first day of the war. In other words, it
+must be kept in commission during peace. But, in addition, it is always
+desirable to have a reserve of strength to meet the possibility that the
+opening of a war or one of its early subsequent stages may bring into
+action some additional unexpected adversary. There are thus two reasons
+that make for a fleet of great numerical strength. The first, that only
+great superiority renders possible the strategy known as blockade, or,
+as I have ventured to call it, of "shadowing" the whole of the enemy's
+forces. The second, that only great numerical strength renders it
+possible to provide a reserve against unexpected contingencies.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+ENGLAND'S MILITARY PROBLEM
+
+After the close of the South African war, two Royal Commissions were
+appointed. One of them, known as the War Commission, was in a general
+way to inquire into and report upon the lessons of the war. This mission
+it could fulfil only very imperfectly, because its members felt
+precluded from discussing the policy in which the war had its origin and
+incapable of reviewing the military conduct of the operations. This was
+very like reviewing the play of "Hamlet" without reference to the
+characters and actions either of Hamlet or of the King, for the
+mainsprings which determine the course, character, and issue of any war
+are the policy out of which it arises and the conduct of the military
+operations. The main fact which impressed itself on the members of the
+War Commission was that the forces employed on the British side had been
+very much larger than had been expected at the beginning of the war, and
+the moral which they drew was contained in the one sentence of their
+report which has remained in the public mind, to the effect that the
+Government ought to make provision for the expansion of the army beyond
+the limit of the regular forces of the Crown.
+
+About the same time another Commission, under the chairmanship of the
+Duke of Norfolk, was appointed to inquire and report whether any, and,
+if any, what changes were required in order to secure that the Militia
+and Volunteer forces should be maintained in a condition of military
+efficiency and at an adequate strength. The Norfolk Commission
+recommended certain changes which it thought would lead to a great
+improvement in the efficiency of both forces, while permitting them to
+maintain the requisite numerical strength. With regard to the Volunteer
+force, the report said:--
+
+"The governing condition is that the Volunteer, whether an officer,
+non-commissioned officer, or private, earns his own living, and that if
+demands are made upon him which are inconsistent with his doing so he
+must cease to be a Volunteer. No regulations can be carried out which
+are incompatible with the civil employment of the Volunteers, who are
+for the most part in permanent situations. Moreover, whatever may be the
+goodwill and patriotism of employers, they cannot allow the Volunteers
+they may employ more than a certain period of absence. Their power to
+permit their workmen to attend camp or other exercises is controlled by
+the competition which exists in their trade. Those who permit Volunteers
+in their service to take holidays longer than are customary in their
+trade and district, are making in the public interest a sacrifice which
+some of them think excessive."
+
+The report further laid stress on the cardinal principle that no
+Volunteer, whatever his rank, should be put to expense on account of his
+service. Subject to this governing condition and to this cardinal
+principle, the Commission made recommendations from which it expected a
+marked improvement and the gradual attainment of a standard much in
+advance of anything which until then had been reached.
+
+Most of these recommendations have been adopted, with modifications, in
+the arrangements which have since been made for the Volunteers under the
+new name "The Territorial Force."
+
+The Norfolk Commission felt no great confidence in the instructions
+given it by the Government on the subject of the standard of efficiency
+and of numerical strength. Accordingly the Commission added to its
+report the statement:--
+
+"We cannot assert that, even if the measures
+recommended were fully carried out, these forces
+would be equal to the task of defeating a modern
+continental army in the United Kingdom."
+
+The Commission's chief doubt was whether, under the conditions
+inseparable at any rate from the volunteer system, any scheme of
+training would give to forces officered largely by men who are not
+professional soldiers the cohesion of armies that exact a progressive
+two-years' course from their soldiers and rely, except for expanding the
+subaltern ranks on mobilisation, upon professional leaders. The
+Commission then considered "Measures which may provide a Home Defence
+Army equal to the task of defeating an invader." They were unable to
+recommend the adoption of the Swiss system, partly because the initial
+training was not, in their judgment, sufficient for the purpose, and
+partly because they held that the modern method of extending the
+training to all classes, while shortening its duration, involves the
+employment of instructors of the highest possible qualifications. The
+Commission concluded by reporting that a Home Defence Army capable, in
+the absence of the whole or the greater portion of the regular forces,
+of protecting this country against invasion can be raised and maintained
+only on the principle that it is the duty of every citizen of military
+age and sound physique to be trained for the national defence and to
+take part in it should emergency arise.
+
+The Norfolk Commission gave expression to two different views without
+attempting to reconcile them. On the one hand it laid down the main
+lines along which the improvement of the militia and volunteers was to
+be sought, and on the other hand it pointed out the advantages of the
+principle that it is the citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and
+to fight in case of need. To go beyond this and to attempt either to
+reconcile the two currents of thought or to decide between them, was
+impossible for a Commission appointed to deal with only a fraction of
+the problem of national defence. The two sets of views, however,
+continue to exist side by side, and the nation yet has to do what the
+Norfolk Commission by its nature was debarred from doing. The
+Government, represented in this matter by Mr. Haldane, is still in the
+position of relying upon an improved militia and volunteer force. The
+National Service League, on the other hand, advocates the principle of
+the citizen's duty, though it couples with it a specific programme
+borrowed from the Swiss system, the adoption of which was deprecated in
+the Commission's Report. The public is somewhat puzzled by the
+appearance of opposition between what are thought of as two schools, and
+indeed Mr. Haldane in his speech introducing the Army Estimates on March
+4, 1909, described the territorial force as a safeguard against
+universal service.
+
+The time has perhaps come when the attempt should be made to find a
+point of view from which the two schools of thought can be seen in due
+perspective, and from which, therefore, a definite solution of the
+military problem may be reached.
+
+By what principle must our choice between the two systems be determined?
+By the purpose in hand. The sole ultimate use of an army is to win the
+nation's battles, and if one system promises to fulfil that purpose
+while the other system does not, we cannot hesitate.
+
+Great Britain requires an army as one of the instruments of success in a
+modern British war, and we have therefore to ascertain, in general, the
+nature of a modern war, and in particular the character of such wars as
+Great Britain may have to wage.
+
+The distinguishing feature of the conflict between two modern great
+States is that it is a struggle for existence, or, at any rate, a
+wrestle to a fall. The mark of the modern State is that it is identified
+with the population which it comprises, and to such a State the name
+"nation" properly belongs. The French Revolution nationalised the State
+and in consequence nationalised war, and every modern continental State
+has so organized itself with a view to war that its army is equivalent
+to the nation in arms.
+
+The peculiar character of a British war is due to the insular character
+of the British State. A conflict with a great continental Power must
+begin with a naval struggle, which will be carried on with the utmost
+energy until one side or the other has established its predominance on
+the sea. If in this struggle the British navy is successful, the effect
+which can be produced on a continental State by the victorious navy will
+not be sufficient to cause the enemy to accept peace upon British
+conditions. For that purpose, it will be necessary to invade the enemy's
+territory and to put upon him the constraint of military defeat, and
+Great Britain therefore requires an army strong enough either to effect
+this operation or to encourage continental allies to join with it in
+making the attempt.
+
+In any British war, therefore, which is to be waged with prospect of
+success, Great Britain's battles must be fought and won on the enemy's
+territory and against an army raised and maintained on the modern
+national principle.
+
+This is the decisive consideration affecting British military policy.
+
+In case of the defeat of the British navy a continental enemy would,
+undoubtedly, attempt the invasion and at least the temporary conquest of
+Great Britain. The army required to defeat him in the United Kingdom
+would need to have the same strength and the same qualities as would be
+required to defeat him in his own territory, though, if the invasion had
+been preceded by naval defeat, it is very doubtful whether any military
+success in the United Kingdom would enable Great Britain to continue
+her resistance with much hope of ultimate success.
+
+For these reasons I cannot believe that Great Britain's needs are met by
+the possession of any force the employment of which is, by the
+conditions of its service, limited to fighting in the United Kingdom. A
+British army, to be of any use, must be ready to go and win its
+country's battles in the theatre of war in which its country requires
+victories. That theatre of war will never be the United Kingdom unless
+and until the navy has failed to perform its task, in which case it will
+probably be too late to win battles in time to avert the national
+overthrow which must be the enemy's aim.
+
+There are, however, certain subsidiary services for which any British
+military system must make provision.
+
+These are:--
+
+(1) Sufficient garrisons must be maintained during peace in India, in
+Egypt, for some time to come in South Africa, and in certain naval
+stations beyond the seas, viz., Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, Hong Kong,
+Singapore, Mauritius, West Africa, Bermuda, and Jamaica. It is generally
+agreed that the principle of compulsory service cannot be applied for
+the maintenance of these garrisons, which must be composed of
+professional paid soldiers.
+
+(2) Experience shows that a widespread Empire, like the British,
+requires from time to time expeditions for the maintenance of order on
+its borders against half civilised or savage tribes. This function was
+described in an essay on "Imperial Defence," published by Sir Charles
+Dilke and the present writer in 1892 as "Imperial Police."
+
+It would not be fair, for the purpose of one of these small expeditions,
+arbitrarily to call upon a fraction of a force maintained on the
+principle of compulsion. Accordingly any system must provide a special
+paid reserve for the purpose of furnishing the men required for such an
+expedition.
+
+An army able to strike a serious blow against a continental enemy in his
+own territory would evidently be equally able to defeat an invading army
+if the necessity should arise. Accordingly the military question for
+Great Britain resolves itself into the provision of an army able to
+carry on serious operations against a European enemy, together with the
+maintenance of such professional forces as are indispensable for the
+garrisons of India, Egypt, and the over-sea stations enumerated above
+and for small wars.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+TWO SYSTEMS CONTRASTED
+
+I proceed to describe a typical army of the national kind, and to show
+how the system of such an army could be applied in the case of Great
+Britain.
+
+The system of universal service has been established longer in Germany
+than in any other State, and can best be explained by an account of its
+working in that country. In Germany every man becomes liable to military
+service on his seventeenth birthday, and remains liable until he is
+turned forty-five. The German army, therefore, theoretically includes
+all German citizens between the ages of seventeen and forty-five, but
+the liability is not enforced before the age of twenty nor after the age
+of thirty-nine, except in case of some supreme emergency. Young men
+under twenty, and men between thirty-nine and forty-five, belong to the
+Landsturm. They are subjected to no training, and would not be called
+upon to fight except in the last extremity. Every year all the young men
+who have reached their twentieth birthday are mustered and classified.
+Those who are not found strong enough for military service are divided
+into three grades, of which one is dismissed as unfit; a second is
+excused from training and enrolled in the Landsturm; while a third,
+whose physical defects are minor and perhaps temporary, is told off to a
+supplementary reserve, of which some members receive a short training.
+Of those selected as fit for service a few thousand are told off to the
+navy, the remainder pass into the army and join the colours.
+
+The soldiers thus obtained serve in the ranks of the army for two years
+if assigned to the infantry, field artillery, or engineers, and for
+three years if assigned to the cavalry or horse artillery. At the
+expiration of the two or three years they pass into the reserve of the
+standing army, in which they remain until the age of twenty-seven, that
+is, for five years in the case of the infantry and engineers, and for
+four years in the case of the cavalry and horse artillery. At
+twenty-seven all alike cease to belong to the standing army, and pass
+into the Landwehr, to which they continue to belong to the age of
+thirty-nine. The necessity to serve for at least two years with the
+colours is modified in the case of young men who have reached a certain
+standard of education, and who engage to clothe, feed, equip, and in the
+mounted arms to mount themselves. These men are called "one year
+volunteers," and are allowed to pass into the reserve of the standing
+army at the expiration of one year with the colours.
+
+In the year 1906, 511,000 young men were mustered, and of these 275,000
+were passed into the standing army, 55,000 of them being one year
+volunteers. The men in any year so passed into the army form an annual
+class, and the standing army at any time is made up, in the infantry, of
+two annual classes, and in the cavalry and horse artillery of three
+annual classes. In case of war, the army of first line would be made up
+by adding to the two or three annual classes already with the colours
+the four or five annual classes forming the reserve, that is, altogether
+seven annual classes. Each of these classes would number, when it first
+passed into the army, about 275,000; but as each class must lose every
+year a certain number of men by death, by diseases which cause physical
+incapacity from service, and by emigration, the total army of first line
+must fall short of the total of seven times 275,000. It may probably be
+taken at a million and a half. In the second line come the twelve annual
+classes of Landwehr, which will together furnish about the same numbers
+as the standing army.
+
+Behind the Landwehr comes the supplementary reserve, and behind that
+again the Landsturm, comprising the men who have been trained and are
+between the ages of thirty-nine and forty-five, the young men under
+twenty, and all those who, from physical weakness, have been entirely
+exempted from training.
+
+During their two or three years with the colours the men receive an
+allowance or pay of twopence halfpenny a day. Their service is not a
+contract but a public duty, and while performing it they are clothed,
+lodged, and fed by the State. When passed into the reserve they resume
+their normal civil occupation, except that for a year or two they are
+called up for a few weeks' training and manoeuvres during the autumn.
+
+In this way all German citizens, so far as they are physically fit, with
+a few exceptions, such as the only son and support of a widow, receive a
+thorough training as soldiers, and Germany relies in case of war
+entirely and only upon her citizens thus turned into soldiers.
+
+The training is carried out by officers and non-commissioned officers,
+who together are the military schoolmasters of the nation, and, like
+other proficient schoolmasters, are paid for their services by which
+they live. Broadly speaking, there are in Germany no professional
+soldiers except the officers and non-commissioned officers, from whom a
+high standard of capacity as instructors and trainers during peace and
+as leaders in war is demanded and obtained.
+
+The high degree of military proficiency which the German army has
+acquired is due to the excellence of the training given by the officers
+and to the thoroughness with which, during a course of two or three
+years, that training can be imparted. The great numbers which can be put
+into the field are due to the practice of passing the whole male
+population, so far as it is physically qualified, through this training,
+so that the army in war represents the whole of the best manhood of the
+country between the ages of twenty and forty.
+
+The total of three millions which has been given above is that which was
+mentioned by Prince Bismarck in a speech to the Reichstag in 1887. The
+increase of population since that date has considerably augmented the
+figures for the present time, and the corresponding total to-day
+slightly exceeds four millions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The results of the British system are shown in the following table,
+which gives, from the Army Estimates, the numbers of the various
+constituents of the British army on the 1st of January 1909. There were
+at that date in the United Kingdom:---
+
+Regular forces ........................  123,250
+Army reserve ..........................  134,110
+Special reserves ......................   67,780
+Militia ...............................    9,158
+Territorial force .....................  209,977
+Officers' training corps ..............      416
+                                         ________
+
+     Total in the United Kingdom ......  544,691
+
+In Egypt and the Colonies:--
+
+Regular forces ........................   45,002
+
+The British troops in India are paid for by the Indian Government and do
+not appear in the British Army Estimates. Of the force maintained in the
+United Kingdom, it will be observed that it falls, roughly, into three
+categories.
+
+In the first place come the first-rate troops which may be presumed to
+have had a thorough training for war. This class embraces only the
+regulars and the army reserve, which together slightly exceed a quarter
+of a million. In the second class come the 68,000 of the special
+reserve, which, in so far as they have enjoyed the six months' training
+laid down in the recent reorganisation, could on a sanguine estimate be
+classified as second-class troops, though in view of the fact that their
+officers are not professional and are for the most part very slightly
+trained, that classification would be exceedingly sanguine. Next comes
+the territorial force with a maximum annual training of a fortnight in
+camp, preceded by ten to twenty lessons and officered by men whose
+professional training, though it far exceeds that of the rank and file,
+falls yet very much short of that given to the professional officers of
+a first-rate continental army. The territorial force, by its
+constitution, is not available to fight England's battles except in the
+United Kingdom, where they can never be fought except in the event of a
+defeat of the navy.
+
+This heterogeneous tripartite army is exceedingly expensive, its cost
+during the current year being, according to the Estimates, very little
+less than 29 millions, the cost of the personnel being 23-1/2 millions,
+that of _matériel_ being 4 millions, and that of administration 1/2
+millions.
+
+The British regular army cannot multiply soldiers as does the German
+army. It receives about 37,000 recruits a year. But it sends away to
+India and the Colonies about 23,000 each year and seldom receives them
+back before their eight years' colour service are over, when they pass
+into the first-class reserve. There pass into the reserve about 24,000
+men a year, and as the normal term of reserve service is four years, its
+normal strength is about 96,000 men.
+
+As the regular army contains only professional soldiers, who look, at
+any rate for a period of eight years, to soldiering as a living, and are
+prepared for six or seven years abroad, there is a limit to the supply
+of recruits, who are usually under nineteen years of age, and to whom
+the pay of a shilling a day is an attraction. Older men with prospects
+of regular work expect wages much higher than that, and therefore do not
+enlist except when in difficulties.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+A NATIONAL ARMY
+
+I propose to show that a well-trained homogeneous army of great
+numerical strength can be obtained on the principle of universal service
+at no greater cost than the present mixed force. The essentials of a
+scheme, based upon training the best manhood of the nation, are: first,
+that to be trained is a matter of duty not of pay; secondly, that every
+trained man is bound, as a matter of duty, to serve with the army in a
+national war; thirdly, that the training must be long enough to be
+thorough, but no longer; fourthly, that the instructors shall be the
+best possible, which implies that they must be paid professional
+officers and non-commissioned officers.
+
+I take the age at which the training should begin at the end of the
+twentieth year, in order that, in case of war, the men in the ranks may
+be the equals in strength and endurance of the men in the ranks of any
+opposing army. The number of men who reach the age of twenty every year
+in the United Kingdom exceeds 400,000. Continental experience shows that
+less than half of these would be rejected as not strong enough. The
+annual class would therefore be about 200,000.
+
+The principle of duty applies of course to the navy as well as to the
+army, and any man going to the navy will be exempt from army training.
+But it is doubtful whether the navy can be effectively manned on a
+system of very short service such as is inevitable for a national army.
+The present personnel of the navy is maintained by so small a yearly
+contingent of recruits that it will be covered by the excess of the
+annual class over the figure here assumed of 200,000. The actual number
+of men reaching the age of twenty is more than 400,000, and the probable
+number out of 400,000 who will be physically fit for service is at least
+213,000.
+
+I assume that for the infantry and field artillery a year's training
+would, with good instruction, be sufficient, and that even better and
+more lasting results would be produced if the last two months of the
+year were replaced by a fortnight of field manoeuvres in each of the
+four summers following the first year. For the cavalry and horse
+artillery I believe that the training should be prolonged for a second
+year.
+
+The liability to rejoin the colours, in case of a national war, should
+continue to the end of the 27th year, and be followed by a period of
+liability in the second line, Landwehr or Territorial Army.
+
+The first thing to be observed is the numerical strength of the army
+thus raised and trained.
+
+If we assume that any body of men loses each year, from death,
+disablement, and emigration, five per cent. of its number, the annual
+classes would be as follows:--
+
+1st year, age 20-21        200,000    (At the end of the
+2nd  "     "  21-22        170,000     first year 20,000
+3rd  "     "  23-24        161,300     are to go abroad
+4th  "     "  24-25        153,425     as explained below)
+5th  "     "  25-26        145,754
+6th  "     "  26-27        138,467
+                          --------
+  Total on mobilisation    968,946
+                          ========
+
+This gives an army of close upon a million men in first line in addition
+to the British forces in India, Egypt, and the colonial stations.
+
+If from the age of 27 to that of 31 the men were in the Landwehr, that
+force would be composed of four annual classes as follows:--
+
+ 7th year, age 27-28       131,544
+ 8th   "    "  28-29       124,967
+ 9th   "    "  29-30       118,719
+10th   "    "  30-31       112,784
+                          --------
+  Total of Landwehr        488,014
+                          ========
+
+There is no need to consider the further strength that would be
+available if the liability were prolonged to the age of 39, as it is in
+Germany.
+
+The liability thus enforced upon all men of sound physique is to fight
+in a national war, a conflict involving for England a struggle for
+existence. But that does not and ought not to involve serving in the
+garrison of Egypt or of India during peace, nor being called upon to
+take part in one of the small wars waged for the purpose of policing the
+Empire or its borders. These functions must be performed by
+professional, i.e. paid soldiers.
+
+The British army has 76,000 men in India and 45,000 in Egypt, South
+Africa, and certain colonial stations. These forces are maintained by
+drafts from the regular army at home, the drafts amounting in 1908 to
+12,000 for India and 11,000 for the Colonies.
+
+Out of every annual class of 200,000 young men there will be a number
+who, after a year's training, will find soldiering to their taste, and
+will wish to continue it. These should be given the option of engaging
+for a term of eight years in the British forces in India, Egypt, or the
+Colonies. There they would receive pay and have prospects of promotion
+to be non-commissioned officers, sergeants, warrant officers or
+commissioned officers, and of renewing their engagement if they wished
+either for service abroad or as instructors in the army at home. These
+men would leave for India, Egypt, or a colony at the end of their first
+year. I assume that 20,000 would be required, because eight annual
+classes of that strength, diminishing at the rate of five per cent. per
+annum, give a total of 122,545, and the eight annual classes would
+therefore suffice to maintain the 121,000 now in India, Egypt, and the
+Colonies. Provision is thus made for the maintenance of the forces in
+India, Egypt, and the Colonies.
+
+There must also be provision for the small wars to which the Empire is
+liable. This would be made by engaging every year 20,000 who had
+finished their first year's training to serve for pay, say 1s. a day,
+for a period say of six months, of the second year, and afterwards to
+join for five years the present first-class reserve at 6d. a day, with
+liability for small wars and expeditions. At the end of the five years
+these men would merge in the general unpaid reserve of the army. They
+might during their second year's training be formed into a special corps
+devoting most of the time to field manoeuvres, in which supplementary or
+reserve officers could receive special instruction.
+
+It would be necessary also to keep with the colours for some months
+after the first year's training a number of garrison artillery and
+engineers to provide for the security of fortresses during the period
+between the time of sending home one annual class and the preliminary
+lessons of the next. These men would be paid. I allow 10,000 men for
+this purpose, and these, with the 20,000 prolonging their training for
+the paid reserve, and with the mounted troops undergoing the second
+year's training, would give during the winter months a garrison strength
+at home of 50,000 men.
+
+The mobilised army of a million men would require a great number of
+extra officers, who should be men of the type of volunteer officers
+selected for good education and specially trained, after their first
+year's service, in order to qualify them as officers. Similar provision
+must be made for supplementary non-commissioned officers.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+THE COST
+
+It will probably be admitted that an army raised and trained on the plan
+here set forth would be far superior in war to the heterogeneous body
+which figures in the Army Estimates at a total strength of 540,000
+regulars, militia, and volunteers. Its cost would in no case be more
+than that of the existing forces, and would probably be considerably
+less. This is the point which requires to be proved.
+
+The 17th Appendix to the Army Estimates is a statement of the cost of
+the British army, arranged under the four headings of:--
+
+
+1. Cost of personnel of regular army and
+   army reserve                                 £18,279,234
+
+2. Cost of special reserves and territorial
+   forces                                         5,149,843
+
+3. Cost of armaments, works, stores, &c.          3,949,463
+
+4. Cost of staff and administration               1,414,360
+                                                ___________
+       Making a total of                        £28,792,900
+                                                ===========
+
+In the above table nearly a million is set down for the cost of certain
+labour establishments and of certain instructional establishments,
+which may for the present purpose be neglected. Leaving them out, the
+present cost of the personnel of the Regular Army, apart from staff, is,
+£15,942,802. For this cost are maintained officers, non-commissioned
+officers and men, numbering altogether 170,000.
+
+The lowest pay given is that of 1s. a day to infantry privates, the
+privates of the other arms receiving somewhat higher and the
+non-commissioned officers very much higher rates of pay.
+
+If compulsory service were introduced into Great Britain, pay would
+become unnecessary for the private soldier; but he ought to be and would
+be given a daily allowance of pocket-money, which probably ought not to
+exceed fourpence. The mounted troops would be paid at the rate of 1s. a
+day during their second year's service.
+
+Assuming then that the private soldier received fourpence a day instead
+of 1s. a day, and that the officers and non-commissioned officers were
+paid as at present, the cost of the army would be reduced by an amount
+corresponding to 8d. a day for 148,980 privates. That amount is
+£1,812,590, the deduction of which would reduce the total cost to
+£14,137,212. At the same rate an army of 200,000 privates and
+
+20,000 non-commissioned officers and men would
+cost    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    . £18,295,215
+
+   Second year of 20,000 mounted
+       troops at £60 a year each .    .    .   1,200,000
+
+   Add to this cost of first-class Reserve
+       of 96,000 at £10 7s. 6d.
+       each  .    .    .    .    .    .    .     997,600
+
+   Cost of 30,000 men for six months'
+       extra training at the rate of
+       £60 a year each .    .    .    .    .     900,000
+
+   Cost of extra training for supplementary
+       officers and non-commissioned
+       officers   .    .    .    .    .    .     500,000
+                                             -----------
+                                             £21,892,815
+   Add to this the cost of the troops
+       maintained in the Colonies and
+       Egypt so far as charged to
+       British Estimates    .    .    .    .  £3,401,704
+                                             -----------
+            Total personnel      .    .    . £25,294,519
+
+   Matériel (allowing for additional
+       outlay due to larger numbers)  .    .   4,500,000
+
+   Staff and administration      .    .    .   1,500,000
+                                            ------------
+         Total Cost of Army at Home
+             and in the Colonies      .    . £31,294,519
+
+This is slightly in excess of the present cost of the personnel of the
+Army, but, whereas the present charge only provides for the
+heterogeneous force already described of 589,000 men, the charges here
+explained provide for a short-service homogeneous army of one million
+and a half, as well as for the 45,000 troops permanently maintained in
+Egypt and the Colonies.
+
+The estimate just given is, however, extravagant. The British system has
+innumerable different rates of pay and extra allowances of all kinds,
+and is so full of anomalies that it is bound to be costly.
+Unfortunately, the Army Estimates are so put together that it is
+difficult to draw from them any exact inferences as to the actual annual
+cost of a private soldier beyond his pay.
+
+The average annual cost, effective and non-effective, of an officer in
+the cavalry, artillery, engineers, and infantry is £473, this sum
+covering all the arrangements for pensions and retiring allowances.
+
+I propose in the following calculations to assume the average cost of an
+officer to be £500 a year, a sum which would make it possible for the
+average combatant officer to be somewhat better paid than he is at
+present.
+
+The normal pay of a sergeant in the infantry of the line is 2s. 4d. a
+day, or £42, 11s. 8d. a year. The Army Estimates do not give the cost of
+a private soldier, but the statement is made that the average annual
+cost per head of 150,000 warrant officers, non-commissioned officers,
+and men is £63, 6s. 7d. The warrant officers and non-commissioned
+officers appear to be much more expensive than the private, and as the
+minimum pay of a private is £18, 5s., the balance, £45, 1s. 7d., is
+probably much more than the cost of housing, clothing, feeding, and
+equipping the private, whose food, the most expensive item, certainly
+does not cost a shilling a day or £18 a year.
+
+I assume that the cost of maintaining a private soldier is covered by
+£36 a year, while his allowance of 4d. a day amounts to £6, 1s. 4d. In
+order to cover the extra allowances which may be made to corporals,
+buglers, and trumpeters, I assume the average cost of the rank and file
+to be £45 a year. I also assume that the average cost of a sergeant does
+not exceed £100 a year, which allows from £40 to £50 for his pay and the
+balance for his housing, clothing, equipment, and food. I add provisions
+for pensions for sergeants after twenty-five years' service.
+
+These figures lead to the following estimate:--
+
+7000 officers at £500                          £3,500,000
+
+14,000 sergeants at £100                        1,400,000
+
+Pension after twenty-five years for sergeants,
+    £52 a year                                    396,864
+
+(An annual class of 14,000, decreasing
+    annually by 2-1/2 per cent., would consist,
+    after twenty-five years, of 7632)
+                                             ------------
+        Carry forward                          £5,296,864
+
+        Brought forward      .     .     .     £5,296,864
+
+200,000 privates at £45 a year     .     .      9,000,000
+
+2nd year of 20,000 mounted troops (cavalry
+    and horse artillery at £60 a year each)     1,200,000
+
+Six months' extra training for 30,000 men
+    with pay (total rate per man £60 a year)
+    (20,000 for paid reserve and 10,000
+    fortress troops)   .     .     .     .        900,000
+
+First-class reserve    .     .     .     .        997,600
+
+Training supplementary officers and sergeants     500,000
+                                             ------------
+                                              £17,894,464
+
+Colonial troops  .     .     .     .     .      3,500,000
+
+    Total personnel    .     .     .     .    £21,394,464
+                                             ------------
+
+_Matériel_, allowing for additional cost due
+    to larger numbers  .     .     .     .      4,500,000
+
+Staff and administration     .     .     .      1,500,000
+                                             ------------
+
+Total cost of army at home and in the
+    Colonies     .     .     .     .     .    £27,394,464
+                                             ============
+
+The figures here given will, it is hoped, speak for themselves. They
+are, if anything, too high rather than too low. The number of officers
+is calculated on the basis of the present war establishments, which give
+5625 officers for 160,500 of the other ranks. It does not include those
+in Egypt and the Colonies. The cost of the officers is taken at a higher
+average rate than that of British officers of the combatant arms under
+the present system, and, both for sergeants and for privates, ample
+allowance appears to me to be made even on the basis of their present
+cost.
+
+When it is considered that Germany maintains with the colours a force of
+600,000 men at a cost of £29,000,000, that France maintains 550,000 for
+£27,000,000, and that Italy maintains 221,000 for £7,500,000, it cannot
+be admitted that Great Britain would be unable to maintain 220,000
+officers and men at an annual cost of £17,500,000, and the probability
+is that with effective administration this cost could be considerably
+reduced.
+
+It may at first sight seem that the logical course would have been to
+assume two years' service in the infantry and three years' service in
+the mounted arms, in accord with the German practice, but there are
+several reasons that appear to me to make such a proposal unnecessary.
+In the first place, Great Britain's principal weapon must always be her
+navy, while Germany's principal weapon will always be her army, which
+guarantees the integrity of her three frontiers and also guards her
+against invasion from oversea. Germany's navy comes only in the second
+place in any scheme for a German war, while in any scheme for a British
+war the navy must come in the first place and the army in the second.
+
+The German practice for many years was to retain the bulk of the men for
+three years with the colours. It was believed by the older generation of
+soldiers that any reduction of this period would compromise that
+cohesion of the troops which is the characteristic mark of a
+disciplined army. But the views of the younger men prevailed and the
+period has been reduced by a third. The reduction of time has, however,
+placed a heavier responsibility upon the body of professional
+instructors.
+
+The actual practice of the British army proves that a recruit can be
+fully trained and be made fit in every way to take his place in his
+company by a six months' training, but in my opinion that is not
+sufficient preparation for war. The recruit when thoroughly taught
+requires a certain amount of experience in field operations or
+manoeuvres. This he would obtain during the summer immediately following
+upon the recruit training; for the three months of summer, or of summer
+and autumn, ought to be devoted almost entirely to field exercises and
+manoeuvres. If the soldier is then called out for manoeuvres for a
+fortnight in each of four subsequent years, or for a month in each of
+two subsequent years, I believe that the lessons he has learned of
+operations in the field will thereby be refreshed, renewed, and
+digested, so as to give him sufficient experience and sufficient
+confidence in himself, in his officers, and in the system to qualify him
+for war at any moment during the next five or six years. The additional
+three months' manoeuvre training, beyond the mere recruit training,
+appears to me indispensable for an army that is to be able to take the
+field with effect. But that this period should suffice, and that the
+whole training should be given in nine or ten months of one year,
+followed by annual periods of manoeuvre, involves the employment of the
+best methods by a body of officers steeped in the spirit of modern
+tactics and inspired by a general staff of the first order.
+
+The question what is the shortest period that will suffice to produce
+cohesion belongs to educational psychology. How long does it take to
+form habits? How many repetitions of a lesson will bring a man into the
+condition in which he responds automatically to certain calls upon him,
+as does a swimmer dropped into the water, a reporter in forming his
+shorthand words, or a cyclist guiding and balancing his machine? In each
+case two processes are necessary. There is first the series of
+progressive lessons in which the movements are learned and mastered
+until the pupil can begin practice. Then follows a period of practice
+more or less prolonged, without which the lessons learned do not become
+part of the man's nature; he retains the uncertainty of a beginner. The
+recruit course of the British army is of four months. A first practice
+period of six months followed by fresh practice periods of a month each
+in two subsequent years or by four practice periods of a fortnight each
+in four successive years are in the proposals here sketched assumed to
+be sufficient. If they were proved inadequate I believe the right plan
+of supplementing them would be rather by adding to the number and
+duration of the manoeuvre practices of the subsequent years than by
+prolonging the first period of continuous training.
+
+The following table shows the cost of two years' service calculated on
+the same bases as have been assumed above. Two years' service would mean
+an army with the colours not of 200,000 but of 390,000 men. This would
+require double the number of officers and sergeants, and the annual
+estimates for personnel would be £34,000,000, and the total Army
+Estimates £41,000,000. There would also be a very great extra
+expenditure upon barracks.
+
+
+Estimate of Annual Cost for Two Years' Service.
+
+13,650 officers at £500 a year              £6,825,000
+
+27,300 sergeants at £100                     2,730,000
+
+Pension for sergeants' annual class
+  of 27,300, decreasing by 2-1/2 per
+  cent., gives after twenty-five years
+  £12,403; at £52 a year pension
+  is                                           644,956
+
+390,000 privates at £45 a year              17,550,000
+
+Third year mounted troops, 20,000
+  at £60                                     1,200,000
+
+First-class reserve                            997,000
+
+Training supplementary officers and
+  sergeants                                    500,000
+                                            ----------
+    Carry forward                          £30,446,956
+
+    Brought forward                        £30,446,956
+
+Colonial troops                              3,500,000
+                                            ----------
+        Total personnel                    £33,946,956
+
+_Matériel_, allowing for extra
+  numbers                                    5,000,000
+
+Staff and administration, allowing
+  for extra numbers                          2,000,000
+                                           -----------
+                                           £40,946,956
+                                           ===========
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+ONE ARMY NOT TWO
+
+The training provided in the scheme which I have outlined could be
+facilitated at comparatively small cost by the adoption of certain
+preparatory instruction to be given partly in the schools, and partly to
+young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty.
+
+It has never appeared to me desirable to add to the school curriculum
+any military subjects whatever, and I am convinced that no greater
+mistake could be made, seeing that schoolmasters are universally agreed
+that the curriculum is already overloaded and requires to be lightened,
+and that the best preparation that the school can give for making a boy
+likely to be a good soldier when grown up, is to develop his
+intelligence and physique as far as the conditions of school life admit.
+But if all school children were drilled in the evolutions of infantry in
+close order, the evolutions being always precisely the same as those
+practised in the army, the army would receive its men already drilled,
+and would not need to spend much time in recapitulating these
+practices, which make no appreciable demand upon the time of school
+children.
+
+Again, there seems to be no doubt that boys between the ages of
+seventeen and twenty can very well be taught to handle a rifle, and the
+time required for such instruction and practice is so small that it
+would in no way affect or interfere with the ordinary occupations of the
+boys, whatever their class in life.
+
+Every school of every grade ought, as a part of its ordinary geography
+lessons, to teach the pupils to understand, to read, and to use the
+ordnance maps of Great Britain, and that this should be the case has
+already been recognised by the Board of Education. A soldier who can
+read such a map has thereby acquired a knowledge and a habit which are
+of the greatest value to him, both in manoeuvres and in the field.
+
+The best physical preparation which the schools can give their pupils
+for the military life, as well as for any other life, is a well-directed
+course of gymnastics and the habits of activity, order, initiative, and
+discipline derived from the practice of the national games.
+
+A national army is a school in which the young men of a nation are
+educated by a body of specially trained teachers, the officers. The
+education given for war consists in a special training of the will and
+of the intelligence. In order that it should be effective, the teachers
+or trainers must not merely be masters of the theory and practice of war
+and of its operations, but also proficient in the art of education. This
+conception of the officers' function fixes their true place in the
+State. Their duties require for their proper performance the best heads
+as well as the best-schooled wills that can be found, and impose upon
+them a laborious life. There can be no good teacher who is not also a
+student, and a national army requires from its officers a high standard
+not only of character, but of intelligence and knowledge. It should
+offer a career to the best talent. A national army must therefore
+attract the picked men of the universities to become officers. The
+attraction, to such men consists, chiefly, in their faith in the value
+of the work to be done, and, to a less degree, in the prospect of an
+assured living. Adequate, though not necessarily high, pay must be
+given, and there must be a probability of advancement in the career
+proportionate to the devotion and talents given to the work. But their
+work must be relied upon by the nation, otherwise they cannot throw
+their energies into it with full conviction.
+
+This is the reason why, if there is to be a national army, it must be
+the only regular army and the nation must rely upon nothing else. To
+keep a voluntary paid standing army side by side with a national army
+raised upon the principle of universal duty is neither morally nor
+economically sound. Either the nation will rely upon its school or it
+will not. If the school is good enough to serve the nation's turn, a
+second school on a different basis is needless; if a second school were
+required, that would mean that the first could not be trusted.
+
+There can be no doubt that in a national school of war the professional
+officers must be the instructors, otherwise the nation will not rely
+upon the young men trained. The 200,000 passed through the school every
+year will be the nation's best. Therefore, so soon as the system has
+been at work long enough to produce a force as large as the present
+total, that is, after the third year, there will be no need to keep up
+the establishment of 138,000 paid privates, the special reserve, or the
+now existing territorial force. There will be one homogeneous army, of
+which a small annual contingent will, after each year's training, be
+enlisted for paid service in India, Egypt, and the oversea stations, and
+a second small contingent, with extra training, will pass into the paid
+reserve for service in small oversea expeditions.
+
+The professional officers and sergeants will, of course, be
+interchangeable between the national army at home and its professional
+branches in India, Egypt, and the oversea stations, and the cadres of
+the battalions, batteries, and squadrons stationed outside the United
+Kingdom can from time to time be relieved by the cadres of the
+battalions' from the training army at home. This relief of battalions is
+made practicable by the national system. One of the first consequences
+of the new mode of recruiting will be that all recruits will be taken on
+the same given date, probably the 1st of January in each year, and, as
+this will apply as well to the men who re-engage to serve abroad as to
+all others, so soon as the system is in full working order, the men of
+any battalion abroad will belong to annual classes, and the engagement
+of each class will terminate on the same day.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+THE TRANSITION
+
+I have now explained the nature and working of a national army, and
+shown the kind of strength it will give and the probable maximum cost
+which it will involve when adopted.
+
+The chief difficulty attendant upon its adoption lies in the period of
+transition from the old order to the new. If Great Britain is to keep
+her place and do her duty in the world the change must be made; but the
+question arises, how is the gulf between one and the other to be
+bridged? War comes like a thief in the night, and it must not catch this
+country unready.
+
+The complete readiness which the new system, when in full swing, will
+produce, cannot be obtained immediately. All that can be done in the
+transition period is to see that the number and quality of men available
+for mobilisation shall be at least as high as it is under the existing
+system. It may be worth while to explain how this result can be secured.
+
+Let us assume that the Act authorising the new system is passed during a
+year, which may be called '00, and that it is to come into force on the
+1st January of the year '01. The Act would probably exempt from its
+operations the men at the date of its passing already serving in any of
+the existing forces, including the territorial army, and the discussion
+on the Bill would, no doubt, have the effect of filling the territorial
+army up to the limit of its establishment, 315,000 men.
+
+On the 31st December '00 the available troops would therefore be:--
+
+Regulars in the United Kingdom (present
+  figure)                                           138,000
+
+Special reserve                                      67,000
+
+Army reserve (probably diminished from present
+  strength)                                         120,000
+
+Territorial force                                   315,000
+                                                   --------
+Total                                               640,000
+                                                   ========
+
+From the 1st January '01 recruiting on present conditions for all these
+forces would cease.
+
+The regular army of                                 138,000
+  would lose drafts to India and the
+    Colonies                           23,000
+  and would have lost during '00
+    by waste at 5 per cent              6,900
+                                      -------
+                                                     29,000
+This would leave:                                   -------
+  regular army under old conditions                 108,100
+
+  and leave room for recruits under new conditions   91,900
+                                                    =======
+
+The total available for mobilisation during the year '01 would
+therefore be:--
+
+Regulars                                             200,000
+
+Paid reserves (the present first-class reserve.
+  I assume an arbitrary figure below the
+  actual one)                                        120,000
+
+Special reserve (I assume a large waste and
+  a loss from men whose time has expired)             50,000
+
+Territorial force                       315,000
+  Less 5 per cent                        15,700
+                                        -------
+                                                     299,250
+                                                     -------
+                                                     669,250
+
+On the 1st January '02 the regular army would be:--
+
+Old engagement                108,000
+  Less waste                    5,400
+Indian and Colonial reliefs    23,000
+                              -------              79,600
+
+Recruits under new system                         120,400
+
+Mounted troops serving second year                 20,000
+                                                 --------
+Total of regulars                                 220,000
+
+New reserve                        91,900
+  Less 5 per cent.                  4,580
+                                  -------
+                                   87,320          87,000
+
+Paid reserve                                      120,000
+
+Special reserve, reduced by lapse of engagements   40,000
+                                                 --------
+Total liable for national war                     467,000
+
+Add--Territorial force, reduced by 5 per cent
+  waste (14,962), and lapse of (78,750)
+  engagements                                     205,538
+                                                 --------
+                                                  672,538
+                                                 ========
+
+In the year '03 there would be:--
+
+Old regulars, 79,600; less 5 per cent. waste,
+  3,950; less drafts for abroad, 23,000--
+  leaves 52,050, say                                 50,000
+
+Regulars, recruits under new conditions             150,000
+
+Mounted troops serving second year                   20,000
+
+New reserve                                         197,331
+
+Paid reserve                                        120,000
+
+Special reserve                                      30,000
+                                                  ---------
+    Total liable for national war                   567,334
+
+    Territorial force                               116,512
+                                                  ---------
+                                                    683,846
+                                                  =========
+
+In the year '04 there would be:--
+
+Old regulars                            50,000
+  Less 5 per cent.                       2,500
+                                       -------
+                                        47,500
+
+  Less drafts                           23,000
+                                       -------       24,500
+
+New regulars                                        175,500
+
+Mounted troops, second year                          20,000
+                                                  ---------
+                                                    220,000
+
+New reserve                                         329,000
+
+Paid reserve                                        120,000
+
+Special reserve may now be dropped                ---------
+Total liable for national war                       669,000
+
+Territorial force                       116,512
+  Less 5 per cent.                        5,825
+                                       --------
+                                        110,687
+  Less                                   78,750
+                                       --------      31,937
+                                                   --------
+                                                    700,937
+                                                   ========
+
+At the end of '04 the territorial force would come to an end and in '05
+there would be:--
+
+(Old regulars, 24,000, after waste just enough
+  for drafts.)
+
+New regulars                                      200,000
+
+Mounted troops, second year                        20,000
+
+New reserve                          478,000
+  Less to paid reserve                20,000
+                                    --------      458,000
+
+Paid reserve                                      120,000
+                                                 --------
+Total, all liable for national war                798,000
+                                                 ========
+
+In these tables I have taken the drafts for India and the Colonies from
+the old regulars. But they can just as well be taken from the new
+regulars. If need be the old regulars could, before the fourth year, be
+passed into the paid reserve, and the full contingent of 200,000 one
+year's men taken.
+
+The men of the special reserve and territorial force would on the
+termination of their engagements pass into the second line reserve or
+Landwehr until the age of thirty-one or thirty-two.
+
+It will be seen that during the years of transition additional expense
+must be incurred, as, until the change has been completed, some portion
+of the existing forces must be maintained side by side with the new
+national army. It is partly in order to facilitate the operations of the
+transition period that I have assumed a large addition to the number of
+officers. There will also be additional expense caused by the increase
+of barrack accommodation needed when the establishment is raised from
+138,000 privates to 200,000, but this additional accommodation will not
+be so great as it might at first sight appear, because it is reasonable
+to suppose that those young men who wish it, and whose parents wish it,
+will be allowed to live at home instead of in barracks, provided they
+regularly attend all drills, parades, and classes.
+
+It has been necessary, in discussing the British military system, to
+consider the arrangements for providing the garrisons of India, Egypt,
+and certain oversea stations during peace, and to make provision for
+small wars or imperial police; but I may point out that the system by
+which provision is made out of the resources of the United Kingdom alone
+for these two military requirements of the Empire, is, in the present
+conditions of the Empire, an anomaly. The new nations which have grown
+up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are anxious, above all things,
+to give reality to the bond between them and the mother country. Their
+desire is to render imperial service, and the proper way of giving them
+the opportunity to do so is to call upon them to take their part in
+maintaining the garrisons in India and Egypt and in the work of imperial
+police. How they should do it, it is for them to decide and arrange, but
+for Englishmen at home to doubt for a moment either their will or their
+capacity to take their proper share of the burden is to show an unworthy
+doubt of the sincerity of the daughter nations and of their attachment
+to the mother country and the Empire.
+
+If Great Britain should be compelled to enter upon a struggle for
+existence with one of the great European powers, the part which Canada,
+Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa could play in that struggle is
+limited and specific. For the conflict would, in the first instance,
+take the form of a naval war. To this the King's dominions beyond the
+seas can do little more than assist during peace by their contributions,
+either of ships, men, or money, in strengthening the British navy. But
+during the actual course of such a war, while it is doubtful whether
+either Canada, Australia, or New Zealand could render much material help
+in a European struggle, they could undoubtedly greatly contribute to the
+security of India and Egypt by the despatch of contingents of their own
+troops to reinforce the British garrisons maintained in those countries.
+This appears to me to be the direction to which their attention should
+turn, not only because it is the most effective way in which they can
+promote the stability of the Empire, but also because it is the way
+along which they will most speedily reach a full appreciation of the
+nature of the Empire and its purpose in the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED
+
+I have now sketched the outlines of a national military system
+applicable to the case of Great Britain. It remains to show why such a
+system is necessary.
+
+There are three main points in respect of each of which a choice has to
+be made. They are the motive which induces men to become soldiers, the
+time devoted to military education, and the nature of the liability to
+serve in war. The distinction which strikes the popular imagination is
+that between voluntary and compulsory service. But it covers another
+distinction hardly less important--that between paid and unpaid
+soldiers. The volunteers between 1860 and 1878, or 1880, when pay began
+to be introduced for attendance in camps, gave their time and their
+attention with no external inducement whatever. They had no pay of any
+kind, and there was no constraint to induce them to join, or, having,
+joined, to continue in their corps. The regular soldier, on the other
+hand, makes a contract with the State. He agrees in return for his pay,
+clothes, board and lodging to give his whole time for a specific number
+of years to the soldier's life.
+
+The principle of a contract for pay is necessary in the case of a
+professional force maintained abroad for purposes of imperial police;
+but it is not possible on that principle to raise or maintain a national
+army.
+
+The principle of voluntary unpaid service appears to have a deeper moral
+foundation than that of service by a contract of hiring. But if the time
+required is greater than is consistent with the men's giving a full
+day's work to their industrial occupations the unpaid nature of the
+service cannot be maintained, and the men must be paid for their time.
+The merit of the man's free gift of himself is thereby obscured.
+
+Wherein does that merit consist? If there is no merit in a man's making
+himself a soldier without other reward than that which consists in the
+education he receives, then the voluntary system has no special value.
+But if there is a merit, it must consist in the man's conferring a
+benefit upon, or rendering a service to, his country. In other words,
+the excellence of the unpaid voluntary system consists in its being an
+acceptance by those who serve under it of a duty towards the State. The
+performance of that duty raises their citizenship to a higher plane. If
+that is the case it must be desirable, in the interest both of the State
+and of its citizens, that every citizen capable of the duty should
+perform it. But that is the principle upon which the national system is
+based. The national system is therefore an extension of the spirit of
+the volunteer or unpaid voluntary system.
+
+The terms compulsory service and universal service are neither of them
+strictly accurate. There is no means of making every adult male, without
+exception, a soldier, because not every boy that grows up has the
+necessary physical qualification. Nor does the word compulsion give a
+true picture. It suggests that, as a rule, men would not accept the duty
+if they could evade it, which is not the case. The number of men who
+have been volunteers since 1860 shows that the duty is widely accepted.
+Indeed, in a country of which the government is democratic, a duty
+cannot be imposed by law upon all citizens except with the concurrence
+of the majority. But a duty recognised by the majority and prescribed by
+law will commend itself as necessary and right to all but a very few. If
+a popular vote were to be taken on the question whether or not it is
+every citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of
+a national war, it is hardly conceivable that the principle would fail
+to be affirmed by an overwhelming majority.
+
+The points as to which opinions are divided are the time and method of
+training and the nature of the liability to serve in war.
+
+There are, roughly speaking, three schemes of training to be
+considered--first, the old volunteer plan of weekly evening drills, with
+an annual camp training; secondly, the militia plan of three months'
+recruit training followed by a month's camp training in several
+subsequent years; and, lastly, the continental plan of a continuous
+training for one or more years followed by one or more periods of annual
+manoeuvres. The choice between these three methods is the crucial point
+of the whole discussion. It must be determined by the standard of
+excellence rendered necessary by the needs of the State. The evidence
+given to the Norfolk Commission convinced that body that neither the
+first nor the second plan will produce troops fit to meet on equal terms
+those of a good modern army. Professional officers are practically
+unanimous in preferring the third method.
+
+The liability of the trained citizen to serve in war during his year in
+the ranks and his years as a first-class reservist must be determined by
+the military needs of the country. I have given the reasons why I
+believe the need to be for an army that can strike a blow in a
+continental war.
+
+I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a
+citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I
+have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system,
+because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an
+army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the
+efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the
+educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have
+convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for,
+cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor
+even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which
+animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to
+be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers,
+continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with
+insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the
+country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the
+conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of
+volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and
+it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient
+for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that
+another nation can produce.
+
+Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on
+their fifty years' work in vain. They have, little by little, educated
+the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have
+diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier,
+and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his
+country's cause is a part of every citizen's duty, for which he must be
+prepared by training.
+
+The adoption of this principle will have further results. So soon as
+every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of
+both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an
+intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority.
+The citizen's interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect. He
+will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his
+fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration
+of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of
+England.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+THE CHAIN OF DUTY
+
+The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing
+to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different
+threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which
+will be of some use to us.
+
+We began by agreeing that the people of this country have not made
+entirely satisfactory arrangements for a competitive struggle, at any
+rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such
+conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political
+arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy
+between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign
+state.
+
+We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of
+any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to
+obtain victory. We discussed the theories which lead some of our
+countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war,
+and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by
+trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements
+for disarmament. We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these
+theories.
+
+Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great
+struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance
+of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in
+the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in
+conflict all the resources of its land and its people. In the last war
+Great Britain's national weapon was her navy, which she has for
+centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe.
+The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly
+of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century. The great
+event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that
+makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power,
+resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which
+England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to
+think eternal.
+
+Great Britain, in the security due to her victories at sea, was able to
+develop her colonies into nations, and her East India Company into an
+Empire. But that same security caused her to forget her nationalism,
+with the result that now her security itself is imperilled. During this
+period, when the conception of the nation was in abeyance, some of the
+conditions of sea power have been modified, with the result that the
+British monopoly is at an end, while the possibility of a similar
+monopoly has probably disappeared, so that the British navy, even if
+successful, could not now be used, as it was a hundred years ago, as a
+means of entirely destroying the trade of an adversary. Accordingly, if
+in a future war Britain is to find a continental ally, she must be able
+to offer him the assistance, not merely of naval victory, but also of a
+strong army. Moreover, during the epoch in which Great Britain has
+turned her back upon Europe the balance of power has been upset, and
+there is no power and no combination able to stand up against Germany as
+the head of the Triple Alliance. This is a position of great danger for
+England, because it is an open question whether in the absence of a
+strong British army any group of Powers, even in alliance with England,
+could afford to take up a quarrel against the combination of the central
+States. It thus appears that Great Britain, by neglecting the conditions
+of her existence as a nation, has lost the strength in virtue of which,
+at previous crises in European history, she was the successful champion
+of that independence of States which, in the present stage of human
+development, is the substance of freedom.
+
+Our consideration of the question of might showed that if Great Britain
+is to be strong enough to meet her responsibilities her people must
+nationalise themselves, while our reflections on the question of right
+showed that only from such nationalisation is a sound policy to be
+expected. In short, only in so far as her people have the unity of
+spirit and of will that mark a nation can Great Britain be either strong
+or just. The idea of the nation implies a work to be done by the British
+State, which has to be on the watch against challenge from a continental
+rival to Great Britain's right to the headship of her empire, and which
+at the same time has to give to that empire the direction without which
+it cannot remain united. Great Britain cannot do the work thus imposed
+upon her by her position and her history unless she has the co-operation
+of all her people. Thus the conception of the nation reveals itself in
+the twofold shape of duties laid upon England and of duties consequently
+laid upon every Englishman. It means that England must either decline
+and fall or do a certain work in the world which is impossible for her
+unless she constrains all her people to devote themselves to her
+service. It thus appears that England and her people can expect no
+future worth having except on the principle of duty made the mainspring
+both of public and of private life.
+
+We attempted to apply the principles involved in the word nation to the
+obvious and urgent needs of the British State at the present time.
+
+Victory at sea being indispensable for Great Britain in case of
+conflict, we inquired into the conditions of victory, and found in the
+parallel instances of Nelson and Napoleon that both by sea and land the
+result of the nationalisation of war is to produce a leader who is the
+personification of a theory or system of operations. The history of the
+rise of the German nation shows how the effort to make a nation produced
+the necessary statesman, Bismarck. Nationalisation creates the right
+leadership--that of the man who is master of his work.
+
+Reviewing the needs of the naval administration, we saw that what is
+wanted at the present time is rather proper organisation at the
+Admiralty than an increase in mere material strength; while turning to
+the army, we discovered that the only system on which can be produced
+the army that Great Britain requires is that which makes every
+able-bodied citizen a soldier.
+
+To make the citizen a soldier is to give him that sense of duty to the
+country and that consciousness of doing it, which, if spread through the
+whole population, will convert it into what is required--a nation.
+Therefore to reform the army according to some such plan as has been
+here proposed is the first step in that national revival which is the
+one thing needful for England, and if that step be taken the rest will
+follow of itself. Nationalisation will bring leadership, which in the
+political sphere becomes statesmanship, and the right kind of
+education, to give which is the highest ultimate function of national
+existence.
+
+I have tried in these pages to develop an idea which has haunted me for
+many years. I think if the reader would extend to it even for a short
+time the hospitality of his mind he might be willing to make it his
+constant companion. For it seems to me to show the way towards the
+solution of other problems than those which have here been directly
+discussed. I cannot but believe that if we could all accustom ourselves
+to make some sacrifices for the sake of England, if only by giving a few
+minutes every day to thinking about her and by trying to convince
+ourselves that those who are not of our party are yet perhaps animated
+by the same love of their country as we ourselves, we might realise that
+the question of duty is answered more easily by performance than by
+speculation. I suspect that the relations between the political parties,
+between capital and labour, between master and servant, between rich and
+poor, between class and class would become simpler and better if
+Englishmen were to come to see how natural it is that they should spend
+their lives for England.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Britain at Bay, by Spenser Wilkinson
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10629 ***