EDUCATED PAWNS.
THERE does seem at first sight a real paradox in the apparent evidence yielded by the wonderful behaviour of the Prussian armies of 1866 and 1870, that the more carefully you educate people, the better pawns they make, even for purposes where they are only placed as traps for the enemy to take and slaughter. Read almost any part of Dr. Russell's marvellous picture of the frightful battle before Sedan, and then ask yourself bow it is that educated men can be persuaded to be the mere pieces played by players in whose plans and designs they have, and can have, no sort of share. Take this, for instance :— " Never can I forget the sort of agony with which I witnessed those who came out on the plateau, raising their heads and looking around for an enemy, while, hidden from view, a thick blue band of French infantry was awaiting them, and a brigade of cavalry was ready on their flank below. I did not know that Floing was filled with advancing columns. There was but a wide-extending, loose array of skirmishers, like a flock of rooks on the plateau. Now the men in front began to fire at the heads over the bank lined by the French. This drew such a flash of musketry as tumbled over some and staggered the others ; but their comrades came scrambling up from the rear, when suddenly the first block of horse in the hollow shook itself up, and the line, in beautiful order, rushed up the slope. The Prussians were caught en flagrant &lit. Those nearest the ridge slipped over into the declivitous ground, those in advance, running in vain, were swept away. But the impetu- osity of the charge could not be stayed. Men and horses came tumbling down into the road, where they were disposed of by the Prussians in the gardens, while the troopers on the left of the line who swept down the lane, were almost exterminated by the infantry in the village."
That is a mere picture, in detail, of almost every operation of war. Here we see first the Prussians, and then the French, used, and necessarily used, by their Generals, as mere pawns to execute operations of which they themselves could not know the drift or the wisdom, and of which even their Generale at best could but know it very imperfectly and conjecturally, —being so often wrong that an educated man, reflecting on the probability that a false move is being made, and his life staked on that false move, may well be supposed to be a little injured by that distinct knowledge for the work he is expected to -do. Suppose every man could view his particular duty in a great battle beforehand, as he would view it when looking back on it with the eye of a military critic after the event? Suppose the French troops could have only half seen what Dr. Russell so clearly discerned in his review, the utter futility and hopelessness of many -of the tasks expected of them, could they have been trusted to -obey orders at all ? Now, of course, the supposition is impossible ; you cannot foresee the blunders which you can review ; and the ninety-nine out of every hundred who have no notion of the whole battle-field, cannot even criticize the plans of those who have :studied all its relative parts. But the supposition is worth making because it is in this direction that all thorough education of the pawns of the great military game tends. Educated soldiers will -think more about the military policy than uneducated ; will be -apter in discerning that their lives are being thrown away 'to no purpose ; will necessarily feel distrust sooner, when they seem about to be lavished on desperate attempts by leaders who have often failed already ; will, in any case, feel a much more vivid inward doubt whether there be any wise purpose in the operation they are told to carry out, unless they have reason to trust their leaders, for they will have much less of .a mere blind habit of trusting them. And one would certainly feel some confidence in asserting that all this sort of rationalizing in the minds of troops will be of a paralyzing kind, unless they have a full right to put perfect faith in the ability of their leaders. And this is precisely the point where the Prussian experiment is -so unsatisfactory. They have had the amplest reason, the fullest intellectual grounds for thorough confidence in their leaders,—for 'feeling sure that even when they are sent out to certain destruc- tion, it is not to no end, but rather to the very end for which they are willing to sacrifice their lives. With such a leader as Von Moltke, and such lieutenants as he has had the skill to choose, the -experiment of an educated army has hardly been fairly tried. The more intelligent the soldier, the more reason he has had to put • implicit confidence in the mind of the strategist who regulates his movements. Intelligence has therefore gone in aid of discipline, 'has been a binding and not a loosing force. But is it not perfectly -clear that if the Prussian armies had been very indifferently, instead -of most wisely led, the intelligence of the troops might have been . a decomposing power, instead of a new cement of their discipline ? Can educated men in other walks of life be led by blunderers without losing all discipline? Is it not matter of common remark that, in the case of political parties, a high average of intelligence is a -cause of disorganization unless the leader be of rare capacity? Would even a watch endowed with freedom go right if it were conscious of marking the time for an owner who had made up his mind to dash it to pieces as soon as the hand pointed to a given hour? The more conscious intelligence you put into a machine the less can you expect it to be blindly subservient to those who handle it, if they do not show the power to handle it well.
The usual answer to this is that in all armies those who are best -educated, —the officers,—show least signs of being demoralized by their power to criticize the action of their commanders. The ignorant men are much more inclined to mutiny against unsuc-
• ,cessful leaders than the better-taught officers, who must have a much clearer insight into the blunders made. There is no doubt great weight in this answer, but hardly as much as is usually supposed. Education does doubtless bring home clearly to the -officer the paramount importance of discipline ; he knows that with the best discipline there may be much danger, but that with- out it there can be nothing but ruin. And that conviction, so far as it goes, will be brought home to the mind of the educated private, no less than to that of the educated subaltern. But then there is an immense difference in the importance of the consideration to the mind of an officer and to the mind of a private. An officer has everything to lose by the dissolution of discipline ; all his chances of promotion and success in life depend on it. Again, he is responsible for all under his authority, and responsibility for others is a powerful moral astringent in itself. Both self-interest therefore, and that higher sense of duty to others and of the self-respect which depends on the due performance of that duty, are powerful agents in keeping the officers true to the discipline of an army, even though it be badly and blunderingly led. Neither of these forces
acts with anything like equal force on the private soldier,—especi- ally the private soldier who is not a professional soldier, but only a trained citizen called from peaceful labours to defend his country. His whole career and hopes in life need not by any means be identi- fied with the good behaviour of himself and his comrades under bad leadership. Nor has he any of that sobering sense of respon- sibility for others which acts so powerfully on the mind of the officers. There is clearly much more danger that clear intelli- gence would act as a new decomposing force on the rank and file of an army badly led, than on the officers of such an army. Suppose the Prussians led as the French have been led, without any coherent plan, without common foresight as regards arms, commissariat, or reserves,—suppose them to have endured as many disasters from causes as easily intelligible to every intelli- gent soldier's mind, and would they not have fallen into moral disorganization even sooner than the French under like circum- stances? Would not their intelligence have been as powerful a decomposing force in that case, as it has been, under their actual leadership, a powerful moral cement ?
To some extent, we believe that it would. There is, no doubt, this to be said on the other side, that every additional step gained in true education renders the mind more sensitive to the shame of disorganization, and tends therefore to make panic or disorgani- zation in itself so hateful, and death so infinitely preferable to disgrace, that a rout of an educated army, even if hopelessly out- numbered and out-generalled, would probably be much rarer than similar routs of uneducated armies. The hatred of anarchy, almost for itself, and without reference to its evil results, is one of the first•fruits of education. Goethe relates how the anarchy of dismay exhibited on the breaking-out of a fire—we think in Frank- fort—during his youth so distressed him, that quite as much from the disgust for helpless disorder, as from humanity, he organized on the spot, and as a volunteer, the means of extinguishing it. There is, we believe, the same sort of feeling in every educated man, which, though it may not be combined with euottgh presence of mind to originate organization in the moment of danger, will steadily resist disorganization even at any coat. But this only goes to show that educated armies badly led will be less liable to panic and routs than uneducated armies. That we believe. But will they not be more liable to that deliberate distrust of their leaders which will amount to the exercise of a potent moral force on the conduct of the campaign, and render it impossible to get them to act under leaders whom they think incapable ? Will not the laws against mutiny almost necessarily be modified whenever you get such an army as the Prussian Army,—or, as is very possible, one much higher in the scale of culture,—under the lead of incap- able officers ? We confess we cannot believe in thoroughly educated pawns. The more intelligence spreads among the ranks of the European armies, the more will it be an essential to disci- pline and implicit obedience such as we have seen in the Prussian ranks, that the leaders who control their movements should have the full trust of their troops. When they have it, no ignorant trust will match for a moment the confidence of men who know what a leader should be, and believe iu him to, the bottom of their hearts. But when they have it not, the machinery which moves the army will, in all probability, prove more unmanageable in the case of educated than in that of completely ignorant armies. The troops themselves will be on the qui vine for every sign of intelli- gence or want of intelligence in their leaders. There will be a spirit of criticism in the ranks almost impossible to ignore, and which will vitally affect the plans of the generals, who will no longer be able to think of their men just as they might of their guns,—as movable destructive machines. We feel confident that educated armies, which as yet we have only seen manipulated by strong heads, will show us another aspect, so soon as they happen to be tried under incompetent guidance. The machine itself will be found to be possessed of spontaneous tendencies to this or that policy which it will be hardly possible to overrule. Most flexible of all potent agencies when it is wielded by men capable of excit- ing implicit trust, it will be the least pliant and manageable of such agencies in the hands of those who, whether justly or other- wise, have acquired the reputation of military bunglers. If the Emperor, in the condition of mental confusion he has recently shown, could have had supreme command of the Prussian host, would he have continued to wield much authority in it? We do not believe it. Von Moltke would more easily have made a delicate and successful weapon of the disorganized French ranks, than the Emperor, with- out the help of a Von Blumenthal, or a Steinmetz, or a Gliben, of the splendidly organized Prussian host. Intelligent pawns insist on having even more intelligent players. .
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