10 DECEMBER 1870, Page 5

MR. F. HARRISON ON A NATIONAL ARMY.

AHARROW is a very useful instrument, though it neither ploughs, nor sows, nor reaps, and the English political ideologues of to-day, in their function of mental harrows, are entitled to some respect. They often break up very hard soil. Away goes Mr. Frederic Harrison, or Dr. Bridges, or Mr. Froude, or Mr. Arnold, or Mr. Carlyle, or any one of the odd group of diversities who intervene in every question, are always read and never followed, jumping along with a rhe- torical harrow behind, cutting no furrow, spreading no manure, sowing no seed, but sticking sharp little teeth in any particu- larly obvious clod, to the general facilitation of the work of the corn-grower proper. Sometimes, however, the horse is freakish, mistakes furrows for fellows, and scatters good work about in this horrible war was, that it made Englishmen doubt for the first time whether their dislike of discipline was altogether justified by experience, whether military training might not become with advantage part of the regular education of the country, whether reserves including everybody might not be better than reserves excluding everybody but the very poor. They had not got much farther than that, we fear, had not come to any definite resolution on the subject, hardly to any definite wish ; but still they were far more willing to listen to their leaders on the topic, far nearer the reception of new ideas than they had ever been before. And now, here is Mr. F. Harrison jumping along at his usual pace, and doing his best to undo the good work,— breaking up clods as usual, no doubt, but tossing over manure heaps and spoiling great furrows besides. He wants to destroy Bismarckism, and is simply destroying the possibility of re- sistance to Bismarckism. Allowing for his style, which is, of course, an idiosyncrasy, we have not read a finer rhetorical appeal for France against Germany than the one which he pub- lishes in the Fortnightly for December, or one more calculated to break up the prepossessions which lie like heavy clods over the culturable British mind. But in breaking them up, what need to do his best to make a National Army impossible ? The whole drift of the first portion of his eloquent diatribe is that Bismarckism is bad,—which we quite believe ; that it is as bad as Napoleonism,—which we should believe, if a reality could ever be quite as injurious as an imposture ; and that England should resist the development of Bismarckism through the destruction of France, by force—a theory we also might preach, if we could feel quite so sure of everything in this world as Mr. Harrison seems to do. If Prussia threatens us, then all becomes clear ; but till then, can any Premier know enough of the future to justify him in expending the lives and substance and energies of the people committed to his charge in a terrible effort to save France from the conse- quences of a war which she would have approved if it had been successful ? But even supposing that question answered in the affirmative, as under certain circumstances it might be answered, what is the use of preaching to a nation like this the duty of self-sacrifice, the grandeur of ideas, the value of loftiness of design, and at the same time preaching the impossibility of doing the only thing which would harmonize such aspirations with our national common-sense ? Is it always to be talk that we offer to the world ? 'What is the value of the sermon which tells us in one breath that "the workmen of England are loudly and distinctly calling on their rulers to save the French Republic ?" — we wish they were, but they are calling on their rulers for more wages instead—and in the next, that a " real reorganization of the Army in a national sense is out of the question," would be and ought to be resisted by insurrection, that any attempt of the kind would be a plot against English liberty ? If we understand Mr. Harrison's writings in the least, a policy feebly moral, a policy of high-toned despatches and inadequate action, is of all policies the one which he most contemns. Yet, if our policy is to be lofty and yet real, where are we to obtain the needful strength, save in a national army ? In the Fleet ? We shall dream about that fleet till we are forgotten. Is the Jlonarch to ascend the Seine, or batter down Berlin, or what ? To rescue France, or do any act whatever of that magnificent kind, we must have soldiers, and soldiers in such numbers as we cannot raise without, at all events, a national feeling that a healthy man owes part of his time as well as of his money to his country, without the training of the whole youth of the country, not into soldiers, but into men potentially capable of soldiership. If to inculcate that is to plot against liberty, then we also are among the plotters, and must submit to that heaviest of political reproaches, but we hold that the idea conveyed in those words is absolutely at variance with facts. Is Switzerland in bondage because, with a population of only 2,500,000, that is, 420,000 adult males, she keeps up a potential army of 200,000 men,—drills, that is, her whole population, and four months ago had actually 80,000 very good men in effective motion ? Are the United States enslaved because every man there is liable by law to a summons to the Militia, and one in four has fought ? Is even Prussia the less free because every Prussian is a soldier, or is it not rather true that the one strong check on the Hohenzollern, as it was on our own Tudors, is that very fact of universal soldiership. Unless we entirely misread Carlyle, Frederick with his regular army dared acts which, if done by King William, would in a week explode the throne of the Hohenzollerns. The idea that war is wicked we can under- stand, and we can even comprehend the dislike to waste time and labour on soldiership, but to say that training enslaves men is to deny the plainest facts of history.

We detest militarism quite as much as Mr. Harrison does, but we understand by it a very different thing,—the devotion of all the energy of a people that can be spared from the work of bread-winning to the creation and perfection of the caste which, being armed, may dominate at will over people who are unarmed ; which may seek in conquest a substitute for greatness, and supply by discipline the absence of popular adhesion. That is the spirit which is the bane of standing armies, which fascinates Kings, and which in the long run enfeebles the judgment of a class of men who ought to be unrivalled in Europe for general ability, the educated officers of the regular armies. But that is not the spirit which is fostered, but which is counteracted, by a train- ing of the people so general that the civilian ceases to fear the soldier merely because of his coat, and the soldier to despise tho civilian merely because of his bearing. The training of the nation is the destruction of the caste. It is the great standing army which is dangerous to liberty, not the universal education in arms,—which renders it so impossible even for Hohenzollerns to oppress as Prussians judge oppression. Does Mr. Harrison seriously believe that if every healthy lad in England, from Prince Victor downwards, were compelled from twenty to twenty-three to serve in the Militia or the Volun- teers, and there trained till, whenever Parliament willed, he could do a soldier's duty, the power of the electorate over Parliament, or of the House of Commons over all created things within the kingdom, would be diminished ? We say it would be strengthened, that the habit of discipline would only increase the cohesion of the people in resisting all attacks on liberty ; that the instinct of old officers is right, and the true danger is that the people would be too strong for their rulers.