SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE.
THE death of the able Prussian renegade who, under the name of Mehemet Ali, has done such good service to Turkey, has raised again the old question, which for the next twenty years will probably be one of practical importance, as to the degree of moral discredit attaching to the career of a Soldier of Fortune. There can scarcely be one more thoroughly perplexing. Of course, when, as in many cases in Turkish history, the soldier of fortune changes his faith, adopting one in which he does not believe merely to advance his own interests, there is no room for doubt, such a change being obviously a crime, varying in degree from that of the man who denies the Saviour, in whom he nevertheless believes, to that of the man who, holding all religions to be equally false or equally indifferent, deliberately professes a lower
one because it is more convenient to his career. We insert the qualification about the faith "in which he does not believe" deliberately, as we are unable to doubt that Mahommedanism has occasionally obtained sincere converts from Christianity. Such a perversion appears to many minds impossible, but it cer- tainly has happened with Christian Asiatics, as every experienced Missionary knows ; and remembering that at least two English gentlemen—Mr. Halhed being one—have been sincerely con- vinced of the essential truth of Hindooistn, and that Jewish records show many cases of conversion when to profess Judaism was to be persecuted, we could not venture to deny the sincerity of every such change of faith. And no doubt, a sincere convert to Mahommedanism is right in acting on his conviction, and right, too, in believing that to fight for Islam, as Islam, without reference to country, is a binding duty. But though the discussion is frequently complicated by that pies. tion of faith, religion is not necessarily involved in it ; and the true point is the right of a man who intends, so far as he knows, to do right, or at all events, is a man with an ordinary sense of right and wrong, to take service with an army not that of his own land.
The point is more subtle than it looks. We take it that if men were a little better, or understood their religion a little more clearly, they would agree that to fight for a cause which they dia. approve is morally indefensible. We cannot conceive the mental condition of a man who, being in the strongest sense a Christian, and intending to act up to his faith, and at the same time thoroughly intelligent, still goes forth to kill persons who, as he believes, are only struggling for the right. It would, if the truth were clearly perceived, be simply monstrous for Cromwell to kill Puritans fighting for Puritanism, or for Gari- baldi to slaughter Reds for being revolutionists, or for Mr. Liddon, if he were an officer, to shoot down rioters for defending the right to preach the Sacramentarian theory. The duty of such a man, so convinced, would be to endure any suffering, and live down any obloquy, which his refusal to retain his commission might involve. That, however, is, we freely admit, not quite the position which even strict moralists have in modern times defended. Their position, for which there is much to be said, is that an officer owes such a duty to his country and to its civilisation, which is bound up with the discipline of its Army, that be is not, if he has once taken service, to judge the merits of the quarrel, but to help in enforcing the policy on which his country has decided, and to pay his "duty" just as he would pay a tax. To ask of him to refuse is, in fact, to ask of him to encourage mutiny, a course which, except in almost im- possible cases, no one would recommend. His obligation is to live as uprightly as he can, and be as merciful as be can, but nevertheless, to do the work which his superiors order him to do, with all his energy and brain. This, we say, is the view enter- tained by most moralists and all officers of the higher type, and it is for working purposes, in a country like this and under a polity like ours, sufficiently sound. But if it is sound,— and it is certainly the lowest view of duty which will bear reflection,—then the position of an officer who takes service with the foreigner is to the last degree perplexing. He has no over-ruling claim to plead. He may be ordered to fight for a cause he entirely disapproves, and he has none of the general obligation to fight for it included in the word "patriotism," —that is, the obligation to the community amidst which Pro- vidence has placed him, and from which he has received all his life protection and help. Ile fights voluntarily for the wrong, with no moral compulsion to urge, and out of no obligation, except his aversion to be poor, or undistinguished, or it may be, ennuyi at home. He voluntarily helps the wrong cause, or rather volun- tarily disables himself from helping the right one, from no motive better than his own selfishness, or his own desire to remain in a profession the true merit of which is self-sacrifice for a cause one believes in, even to the extent of slaying or being slain. It is impossible to distinguish a man in such a position from a mere mercenary, and the soldier of fortune who is more than a mer- cenary still runs the risk of being so placed.
This is, we imagine, the cause of the instinctive distrust with which most men regard the soldier of fortune, even when his career, like, for example, that of the Duke of Berwick or Lord Keith, is, on the whole, an honourable one. Ile puts his own conscience out of his own control, and is, at all events, liable to compulsion, moral compulsion, to do acts of which he at heart entirely disapproves, and for which he cannot plead the excuse that the balance of duty, if not positive obligation, binds him to be faithful to his country. Ile may at any moment become from a self-sacrificing soldier a mere mercenary, a man who spends his strength and intellect in efforts to kill people with whom he nevertheless agrees, and whom he is in no sense bound to kill, merely because if he does not kill them he will not be paid, or he will break his career ; or to put it in the way best for him, he will be false to an obligation which, as such a contingency was always possible, he ought never to have undertaken. The soldier of fortune, in fact, runs a moral danger by which, as the world in- stinctively feels, he will be overcome. And he does not incur this danger blindly, for it is his custom, if he belongs to the higher grades, to guard against one form of it, by stipu- lating that he shall never be required to act against his own land.
Of course this argument does not apply, or applies only in an infinitely small degree, to the soldier who has only changed his country once for all. There is no reason whatever in the belief, useful as it is, that mere birthplace can constitute binding obli- gation, and indeed the belief is only partially held. Nobody thinks an Englishman born and bred in Spain bound to fight for Spain, or an Anglo-Indian bound to contend for the interests of India against those of England. If an Englishman chooses deliberately, when competent to judge, to enter the Austrian or American Serviee, we do not see why he is not entitled to con- sider Austria or the United States his patria, and to claim all the benefit of the superior obligation which the patria is assumed by most moralists to have the right of imposing. He may in such a case suppress himself for Austria as well as any other country, and may be entitled to all the credit of a true and self-sacrificing patriot, a credit deserved by many Irishmen in Austria and Spain. But that reserve does not apply to the soldier of fortune who will serve anywhere or for any cause. He may, like Dugald Dalgetty, have his own virtues, and virtues of a low order, but he must always be more or less ready to suppress his conscience for the sake of his own advancement. He must always be a self-regarding man, and not a man moved by duty, and it is the consciousness which even soldiers have of this which, as the Daily News says, stops sympathy for the soldier of fortune, even when in many respects worthy of esteem. Nobody cares bow Berwick lived and died, and even for Schomberg there is no feeling other than a cold ad- miration for his persistence and fidelity. He was probably one • of the best men of the austere type that ever lived, but he died in a quarrel that was not his, for a Sovereign with whom he had no relation, in a land in which he was an intruder.
If this is the case with a soldier of fortune who takes service in an army of the higher kind, still more is it the case with a man who, belonging to the higher civilisation, voluntarily lends the assistance of his powers of command to a people of a lower one. He may occasionally, and in exceptional instances, be justified. We could quite conceive of the late Mr. Urquhart, a fanatic Ultra- montane and earnest foe of Russia, taking service with the Turks, as we could conceive of a bitter French or Italian opponent of Great Britain taking service with Runjeet Singh. But as a rule, the com- petent officer who serves the Asiatic against the European must know that he is serving the lower against the higher cause, must be aware that he is suppressing his own best self for his own conveni- ence or pleasure. He may be an "excellent fellow," as the world goes, but be must be aware that he is rendering himself liable to orders which, whether he obeys or resists them, must be lowering to his character. He may receive an order for a massacre, for example, which, the massacre being technically an operation of war, would not strain the conscience of a native officer, but nevertheless, if obeyed, would utterly debase his own, and must choose between so debasing it, and setting an example of mutiny, treason, or discouragement in high places. This is so strongly felt in India, that the Englishman who enters Native service— except, of course, under treaty rights, which secure him from such orders—is always regarded with suspicion, as a more or less lawless man, and the objection applies in a degree to every non-European Service. Man requires, to be honest, some excuse for killing other than pay, whether it be patriotism, as in most armies, or fidelity, as in armies under a regular though foreign Government, or, as in the instance of the Garibaldini, devotion to a leader and a cause ; and when the civilisation of the State is lower than that of the soldier of fortune, no such. excuse, as a rule, can possibly exist. There is an exception, no doubt, where the soldier can civilise a force otherwise uncivilised, an exception which covers eases like those of Czar Peter's Scotch and German Generals; but the exception is rare, and the excepted- General must be prepared, when needful, to defy his master. As a rule, such service is bad, is service which he who. takes it must know, unless he is completely self-deceived, may compel him to leave the world much worse than he found it, instead of a little better. The popular instinct which condemns the mercenary, however erroneous in individual instances—for example, we do not suppose that Captain Moltke was the worse for trying to make Ottoman soldiers decent—is substantially in accord with the inherent morality of civilised men, which con- demns the cheinia who sells dangerous drugs, or the manu- facturer who sells dangerous explosives, unless perfectly certain. of the use to which they will be applied. A druggist is bound to be morally certain that the prussic acid he sells is not to be used for murder, and the soldier of fortune necessarily puts himself in a position where, however upright his intentions, he cannot be certain of his own power to enforce the distinction.
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