OUR NATIONAL ARMY. (A RHAPSODY!)
1 Adam Street, Ade4thi, 11th August 1856. Sra—It seems quite a clear ease, that till the human race all grow wiser, it is essential to freedom that those who dislike fighting and its concomitant brutalities and other evils must yet learn to fight, and be ready to fight, as those who are prompted by ferocity and injustice. But who are to be the fighters for freedom—the whole nation, or a selected part of the nation ? In short, is the mass of the nation to be kept at ordinary labours and luxuries while a small part of .the nation is kept apart from them as a fighting de- partment ? are we to have soldiers, or militia ? The hero of Kars praises the bravery of the Turks, and is lost in admiration of the Russian chivalry. This would almost seem to imply that he considers fighting a normal condi- tion of nobility. Then was the bygone Czar a great public benefactor in giving cause for the exercise of this • nobility : but for the Czar, we should probably have had no fighting. We must not neglect our army, says the hero of Kars. Quite right ; but shall the unit of our army be a soldier, or a citizen ? A very grave.ques- lion that ! The term " soldier" does not imply high qualities, but simply a pay-fighter—a creation of the solidus or shilling—a mere Swiss condot- tiere—a man hired to hear and to obey, to know and heed no laws but the law martial, which is the will of the commander for the time being. Not of this staple will a truly brave nation permit its army to be composed, for in a short time the army would be the tool of the general, and the general the despotic ruler of the nation, if the army were large enough. An Old Bailey lawyer once addressed a witness captain as " Mr. Soldier." " Sir, I am an officer," was the reply ; implying something of degradation in the term soldier. " Well, then, Mr. Officer and no soldier," went on the legal bully. But the officer's instinct was right ; the mere soldier was a mere slave or hireling. That our soldiers are not really slaves, but something quite other and better and higher than slaves, is due to the inherent man- hood that is in them, in spite of the system. Practice in the use of arms should be more than a profession—it should be a grace, an accomplishment, as disgraceful to be without as to be ignorant of reading and writing. In former days, every gentleman was bound to know the arta of "riding, fencing, gunnery" ; and nothing would be easier than to make such accomplishments a part of the school education of all boys, gentle and simple--natural gymnastics. Such training in early youth would make any boy a competent miles or militiaman in after life—would make the whole male population of the country, the staple of a national army without going through the processes of the awkward squad." Such an education, alternating gymnastics and military exercise with the me- chanical arts and handicrafts, would produce the elite of warriors,- and from amongst their numbers should be elected or selected the most skilful—those of the beat natural aptitude—to form the normal standard of the army ; the men and their officers being as highly paid as the most skilful mechanics and foremen in engineering factories. These men thould be encouraged to invent if possessing inventive faculties, and should be highly rewarded for inventions. They should understand that nothing is ever perfect, but that all things are or ought to be in a constant state of progression. They should understand the structure of their own weapons, be competent to cast, forge, and bore artillery, to make and mend small-arms, to forge, tem- per, and grind their cutlery or stabbing weapons ; they should understand the chemistry of war in ease, and know in what directions to look for the posse. They should understand the practical arts of building tents, and huts, and barracks, and forts, and bomb-proofs ; they should learn mining in quarries, and earthworks in railways ; should know how to lay down rail- ways rapidly, whether for permanence or moveable ; should understand locomotive and portable engines at least as well as farm-labourers, and should be able to convert the engine to all the uses of steam, sawing,. chopping, lifting, and pumping ; should know how to make the engine- serve as a cooking apparatus, and carry the food all over the camp on tem- porary rails, and hurl supplies of shot and shell along the trenches. But with all these things they should alai) be good handicraftsmen, doing
by mere force and skill of hand as does a hunter in the far West. possessing the capacity to use and avail themselves of all the applications of civilized life, they should be capable also of all the natural skill and dex- terity of savage life. They should make and mend their own clothes, feed and lull their own meat, cut, dry, and press their own hay, prepare their own bedding of leaves, straw, heather, and all other appropriate matters furnished by nature. They should, moreover, be married men or single at their own option, without asking permission of their officers, and with stated times of leave to visit their families ; citizens, in short, acquainted
with the civil laws of the community and respecting them, being as much citizens as though not part of the army, and being provided for when super- annuated, at the cost of the nation, with as MUCs care in their respective ranks as though they belonged to the civil service.
Each single man thus trained and cultivated would be worth in point of efficiency as much as six ordinary men taken from the plough-tail. Such men would not be riotous, would not be mutinous, or drunkards ; occupa- tion would keep them in a state of happiness. And the general mass of the community thus trained from boyhood would multiply the manhood capital of the community manifold. They would be capable of earning higher wages and more freely contributing to the state ; and as warriors they would not in mere bravado waste their lives ; they would expend them freely but not wastefully, economizing them as a material of war, and using them only for valuable results. To incapacitate the foes of justice with the least possible loss to themselves by putting intellect into their strife would be their aim and object, as the high police of the world, the emphatic men of the human race.
Untrained to the late war, with natural instincts all uncultivated, the-
English army, by sheer indomitable valour,—" noblest English, with blood fetched from fathers of war-proof,"—aristocracy, gentry, and commonalty
alike, taught the world that their ancient race had not degenerated in the nineteenth century. There was many a " Redan Massey "—young Corio- lani—in that noble host, planting pale fear in their opponents hearts, and teaching them the lesson, if thus our boys do on a foreign soil, what will be- the men on their own soil ?—that healthy earth from which they spring up, Antleus-like, to wither despotism in their nervy arms. It has been imputed to our aristocracy that they have a secret liking for despotism ; a leaning to absolute power, if not in the one in the few—leaders with a chief, bidding the mass to obey without question. I doubt if this be so. If it be, it is a suicidal policy. The freedom of England it is that with other things has raised her up to her palmy position of wealth and, power, and that has so immeasurably extended the sphere of aristocratic enjoyment, of aristocratic influence. While the blood of aristocratic Spain
has died out, while the old French nobility has been swept out, the English race has remained, ever recruited from the healthy brains and muscles of the ranks representing with more or leas average the indigenous growth of the nation. The poorest born, provided it be not a poverty of nature, may become a baron of the realm ; and man cannot achieve more in the boasted American Union, even where he happens to possess the soundest mind in the soundest body.
Come he of what blood he may, the brave and noble-hearted Windham is a veritable manly man, the true stuff of which warriors in the high sense are made ; chivalrous, modest, and unassuming, giving full credit to others while conscious of his own well-deserving. It stirs the blood to read the ac- count of the Norfolk meeting. That too is "what we call talking" as well as the Spartan brevity of Sir Harry Jones to the French Marshal. And to think that such men are but "representative men" of the great mass of English race, ready to die if need be, but, moreover, well able to live, for the welfare of England, is a cause for national rejoicing. And the officers who la- boured under national reproaches for falling short of their full duty while serv- ing their apprenticeship in the field may well bear the thought of that in the magnificent result. Our army we may well be proud of as destined hence- forth to take the lead in the world's chivalry, never to wage war in an un- just cause, but ever to distinguish true glory from the sham. The nation, albeit, is not well pleased with its position. It is not satisfied with the aspect of the nations around it. It does not recognize in the exist- ing government its true leaders. It recognizes in them too much of sym- pathy for the despotic principles of the world in arrest of progress. They appear to dread change as a human evil, forgetting that change is the great principle of nature ; and instead of seeking to modify change for useful pur- poses, they endeavour only to stop it. Yet no truth can be more cer- tain than that the development of England depends largely on other nations keeping peace with her, and the despotic powers that keep down freedom throughout Europe, also check English welfare. There is a saying of Jeremy Bentham s, " Only by making the ruling few uneasy can the oppressed many hope for a particle of redress." Whether the ruling few be hereditary or parvenue, aristocracy or mob, a Spanish Queen, or Neapolitan King, or Red Socialist—if such people there be—all good men and true are bound in duty to keep them uneasy, and prevent them from impeding progress. There is an international as well as a na- tional duty. We do not permit human brutes to maltreat horses and dogs, inasmuch as it tends to degrade humanity to permit any species of cruelty, and in the cause of humanity we have a right to say to the Nea- politan King and the Austrian Emperor, you shall not torture human beings.
If your subjects permit you to make bad laws, you may kill them in the
exercise of such laws, butyou shall not torture them, or we will punish you under the general laws of humanity, just as under an act of Parliament we punish human brutes who torture animals. Not for mere self-defence are our fleets and armies destined. They are the police of the world whose duty it is to extinguish barbarism. We fight not to set up or pull down
governments, but to prevent cruelty and achieve intellectual freedom. Oar future army must be something more than conquerors—the body-guard of humane legislation, providing for all humanity its fullest growth and de- velopment.
"Rhapsody !" some may say to all this. But so they may say to the Christian religion, comparing its normal standard with the unchristian practices of many of its professors. Unless we set up a high standard of excellence, we shall fall as far short of the possible, as, even with the beacon before -us, we must ever in our imperfect condition fall short of the desirable.
Previous page
