THE OPTIMIST VIEW OF WAR.
WE cannot get really interested in the dispute between Mr. Labouchere and the great African hunter, Mr. Selous, on the question whether the invaders of Matabeleland did or did-not commit brutalities. A priori, they were not likely to be excessively brutal, for they were all Colonists, and rmost, a them intended to settle, for a time at all events, in the land they conquered. So far as we can judge;,moreover, the evidence on which Mr. Labouchere relies is obviously worthless ; while Mr. Selous himself is s man whose, testimony ought of itself to out- weigh that !of ; a dozen witnesses, his reputation for unusual ..;truthfulness being fully established in the rather exacting -local- opinion. Nevertheless, we do not doubts that. !if Mr. Labouchere will spend enough energy and /money. in the search, he will find evidence of occasional' brutalities committed in the campaign, and of some ;unnecessary. killings, though not of de- liberate ..or 'protracted, cruelty. The first curse of war is the "brutality it breeds. Every army, whether levied, by the:. conscription of law, or the equally irreaistibls.: conscription of want, has always con- tained, and, always:.will, contain, a proportion of daring ruffians whei.,under ithe excitement of the contest, get, as they ,say, ".blood in the eyes," and become capable, under provocation, of any act of bloodthirsty oppression. GoodAlenerals, who Anew how opposed this spirit of lawlessness ia. toy discipline, do their utmost to keep it down, if -necessary by severe punishment ; and in " good " regimentss which means regiments well commanded, a healthy opinion- grows up which holds savages in check ; but • they always exist, and, opportunity given, will reveal themselves.– The.vniter remembers to this hour a story he heard. at. the last storm of Rangoon in 1852, which exactly illustrates this temper. General Godwin, a most humane, man, waa exceedingly anxious that the Talines, or • Peguans. proper, who were known to be secretly favourable tq the British, should not be molested, and issued strict orders on, the subject, which it was the easier to obey because the race wore a kind of chignon.at the back of their heads. Nevertheless, as the soldiers Were fighting their way up the broad stairs of the Great Pagoda, a soldier quite needlessly killed a Tahoe,i who was sitting out of the way in one of the vast bays or recesses off.the stairs. " What made you do that, you scoundrel 2", shouted an officer who saw the incident ; ".you saw the,inan was a Taline." "What the hell, Sir, was he so fat for ? " was the soldier's reply as he plunged again into the shot. There is a proportion of such ruffians in every army, who, in the moment of action, cannot be fully restrained ; and we no more believe in sinless war than in a war in which no wounded are left untended by doctors. It is not a question of white wars or black wars ; the evil is a concomitant of all wars. Black wars are the worst, because pride of race is instinctive and incurable, and the higher race rages with a sense of insult at its suffering from. the lower ; but horrors occurred in the German invasion and in Sherman's march to Richmond, though, in both cases, the men were better than ordinary soldiers. All that can be done is to reduce the evil to the lowest proportions, to punish any transgression when that is possible, which is not always the case, the soldiers shielding brave comrades even when they are ruffians ; and above all to avoid the monstrous and impolitic order " no quarter," which soldiers always take as a release from the dictates of humanity. The tone improves with every war, and we hope yet to see the soldiers apply the informal bat effective barrack discipline which punishes cowardice, theft, and some other offences, to cruelty even in the field ; but at the end there will remain a. certain amount of unpunishable brutality. Bad men whose bones may be broken or their eyes knocked out at any moment, get into an evil temper, and the method of composing an army of good men only is undiscovered and undiscoverable. No campaign will bear the microscope, and the effort to apply one to the Matabele invasion is nothing but an effort specially to discredit a force which, by the best testimony from the spot, behaved especially well.
We have little more hope of the extinction of war, or of the burden now so terrible,—of military preparation. It is as certain that nations will quarrel as that individuals will ; it is most improbable that when the quarrel is vital they will submit to arbitration ; and when the quarrel has once attained that height, there is no substitute for war even conceivable by the mind. War might be stopped in the rest of the world by the five European Powers agreeing to give judgment in every case of dispute, and to enforce that judgment collectively ; but even that nearly impracticable system—impracticable because the Supreme Tribunal could hardly punish either the United States or China if either chose to resist to the death—would be power- less to avert war if the five Powers quarrelled, as they are now doing, amongst themselves. Nor are we sure that if war could be prevented, the long years of bickering, Loycotting. and brutality, such as have for twenty-three years divided Germany and France, would be so acceptable a substitute, or would tend in any solid way to make mankind either happier or more noble. It is far easier to reduce war to a. minimum than to extinguish it, and there is fair reason to hope that this is being done. The progress of military science, and indeed of all science, has shortened wars, has arrested the old pillage of provinces, and has rendered the coercion, which means the oppression, of peaceful citizens much less necessary. No army will starve while the citizen has food; but good commissariat arrangements have stopped that horrible plunder of necessaries which, even in the wars at the beginning of this century, made invasion worse than pestilence, and converted regular troops into ravening mobs of brigands. There has come a severe check, too, to all war. Nothing strikes the observer as more wonderful than the fact that the whole Continent, armed to the teeth and full of national hatreds, should remain at peace, the nations being positively cowed by the magnitude of the risks they have brought upon themselves. That situation is supposed to be temporary, but it may last a. long while, more especially if its excessive cost can in any way be alleviated. That, however, is most difficult, even if not impossible. M. Jules Simon's suggestion, an agree- ment to adopt one year's service as a universal rule, would effect the end ; but it is premature and will not be adopted. Fifty years hence, when the popular education of the masses has done its work, and civilised men can learn discipline in twelve months, it may be accepted ; but the world is not ready yet. The Russians, Italians of the South, Austrians, and men of the Balkans, could not be turned into soldiers in the time, and their rulers could not consent to inefficient armies. They need force too much also to hold society together during the strange experimental period on which all Europe is obviously entering, and through which it will blunder and plunge towards a new and, let us hope, a happier distribution of the rewards of labour. We hope more from changes in- troduced by military chiefs themselves than from any inter• national agreement. It is just possible that relief may be found from the burden of preparation in a new reading of the word " mobilisation," or, in other words, that a comparatively small but intensely mobile army, with a population behind it drilled on the Swiss system, or on an improved version of our own volunteer system, might be found as effective as the present enormous and rather unwieldy masses. This is an idea which has occurred to many Generals, and if every country were unassailable except on one side it would be visibly true, the small army being always able to secure the country time for the levee en masse. As it is, the idea is less hopeful ; but it may be worked out yet, and then the nations, fully armed and able to bear their burdens, but reluctant to run the great risk, may watch each other in peace for a generation or two. It is not a prospect to excite grave men to much cheerfulness, but it is as good a one as the reasonable will entertain. Of course if the world suddenly grows wiser things may go better than we dream, but of that vast change what are the reasonable chances ? Will the masses fifty years hence be better educated than the few are now ; and are the few wise upon this question of war ? We see no evidence of it, rather, we may say, we see strong evidence against it; for Parliaments contain the pick of the people, and are certainly as aggressive, as nervous, and as anxious for extravagant preparation as the masses behind them. Secret voting in the Parliaments would increase, not decrease, the military and naval burdens on the people, which are resisted from below, not from above. There may, in short, be slow improvement ; but war will remain the ultima ratio of the civilised peoples ; the preparation for war, though possibly reduced in weight, will still be the heaviest burden in any State ; and war itself, though shortened by science and regulated by opinion, will still -develop occasional scenes of atrocious and unnecessary brutality.
Previous page
