TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORDDERBY ON MILITARISM AND COMMERCE.
LORD DERBY has struck a blow at the Government, which was all the heavier for its incidental, though strictly relevant character, in the remarkable speech delivered at Huddersfield on Thursday, on the condition and prospects of English Commerce. Nothing was more striking in that speech than the profound, we might almost say excessive, sympathy with the genius of commerce,— including, of course, a corresponding antipathy to the genius of militarism,—which nearly every word of it, though coming from one of the greatest and oldest of the English nobility, displayed. "This gunpowder and glory business," as he described the foreign policy of the present Government, is certainly as contemptible as even Lord Derby could make it, nor do we demur to a single word which he said or implied that tended to place the genius of industrial enterprise at a height far above that of military feeling. No doubt, he is perfectly right in saying that commercial industry is the edu- cation of the free ; and that freedom is simply incompatible with the sort of military spirit which it is now the chief aim of the great Empires of the Continent to foster. It is quite true that militarism cannot co-exist with industry on a great scale. Indeed, Lord Derby is, we believe, quite right in his in- nuendo as to the spirit which obtains in the counsels of the high. priests of militarism. "Do you think that emperors, and grand-dukes, and archdukes, field-marshals, and tremendous personages of that sort, really want the manufacturing industries of their empires to be developed ? Do you suppose it would suit them to have to do with an intelligent, keen- witted, active, and well-to-do population, such as our northern towns in England contain ? They are not such fools. They know their business better. What they want is something quite different,—a peasantry hungry enough at home to find the ordinary life of a private soldier rather agreeable than otherwise, and submissive enough to shoot their own brothers, if ordered, without asking why." Whether the great military chiefs know it or not, that is undoubtedly the spirit which, as military chiefs, they neces- sarily come to appreciate best, and to encourage, so far as they can. Russia, Germany, and Austria would all have their armies composed of such elements as these, if they could ; and doubt- less, it is the bad military spirit which has now got the upper hand in Berlin, which reconciles Prince Bismarck to the great blow he is inflicting on German trade in his new Protective tariff, a policy adopted solely, as we believe, as a mode of supplying the Administration with funds for the army, without too much interference on the part of Parliament. We go with Lord Derby heartily so far ; but we cannot go with him in the impression he seems to convey that the proper check to this rampant militarism is commercial industry with- out any military spirit at all. On the contrary, we hold that it is the combination of a subdued and generous military spirit with industrial enterprise, which can alone check the ag- gressive and domineering military spirit that would ride rough- shod over all industrial enterprise. Nor do we believe that a brief military training for the civil population of a great industrial State, is at all a debasing element in the other- wise too loose and too selfish organisation of an industrial society. Lord Derby speaks as if such training only initiated the workers of a community "hi the vices of a camp, and sent them back, having forgotten all that it is of use to them to know." And often, no doubt, this may have been so. But it is not the necessary or the uniform effect of such training ; and where, as in Switzerland, the training is genuinely pre- cautionary and defensive, and not penetrated by that con- tagious spirit of conquest which it is so easy to catch, we believe that the result is to elevate the industrial tone itself, no less than to furnish a very valuable guarantee against the supremacy of aggressive military Powers. There is no doubt that in general the "vices of the camp," as Lord Derby says, have been most dangerous to industrial society. But then the vices of the camp have been in almost all cases the vices of a camp penetrated with the spirit of violence, and that love of plunder which goes with violence. There is no intrinsic reason why the spirit of the camp should not be one totally different in kind,—the spirit which aims at mutual help and co-operation against aggressive armies, which sacrifices some- thing of economical and commercial success for the sake of the firm discipline, the coherent strength, and the moral authority, which only those friends of commerce, peace, and freedom, who are willing to make sacrifices for liberty, can command. To our minds, nothing is more dangerous than to leave to the aggressive- camps of Europe all the better spirit of the camp,—to oppose. nothing to their worst spirit, except the loose organisation, of commerce, and that love of luxury which commerce, pursued; exclusively, is quite certain to inspire. It is true that the present Government have played into the hands of mere mili- tarism; that they have tried to infect Englishmen with the hor- rible greed of the military passion ; and therefore we unite with- Lord Derby in condemning and despising that "gunpowder- and glory business" in which they have so largely invested.. But had they used the military resources of an honestly indus- trial spirit only to protect the weak against the strong, and to liberate the oppressed from the hands of the oppressor, we- at least should have been thankful that England had remained: a military Power still, and had not given over her whole heart7 to that industrial enterprise which is most noble when it is least exclusive and monopolising. France and England should' unite in using their military resources to check the growth of. "militarism ;" but then, in order to check the growth of" mili- tarism," you must have the best side of the military temper,— the hardiness, the indifference to ease, the readiness to dare and to obey, the self-forgetfulness and the eagerness to redresa wrong, which the love of pure commercial enterprise, and of that alone, entirely fails in general to inspire. It is quite true that industrial enterprise sharpens the mind,—that it fosters independence,—that it multiplies desires. But these are. qualities which, though great in themselves, will not secure the welfare or the progress of the human race, without some- infusion of what we may call that Christian chivalry which- has marked the highest soldiership of many ages, but has rarely indeed set its stamp even on the higher commerce of to-day.
Nevertheless, taken, as Lord Derby's speech must be taken,. in relation to the bad militarism of the Continent, and the. strong tendency evinced by the present Government to foster. that bad militarism in England,—at least in relation to our Asiatic Empire,—the blow struck at it by Lord Derby is a: very beneficent blow. If it teaches us not to be ashamed of being in the main a commercial people, it will teach us just the lesson which Lord Beaconsfield has tried to induce England to forget,—with the only success that was possible to such an attempt,—the success of making us affect to be what we are not, and never ought to be, and ignore, in our new pretentiousness, all the homely qualities of which we have some reason to be proud. From aping mili- tarism, and succeeding only in a very bad imitation of it, Lord Derby recalls us to ourselves. But in "ourselves," we hope we may continue to count at least so much military spirit as may be requisite to foil some of the enterprises of our more power- ful, and, for aggressive purposes, much more formidable allies._
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