LORD ROBERTS'S SPEECH.
2LT a time of many political distractions Lord Roberts's masterly speech in the House of Lords on Monday might have less effect than it deserves to have, especially as it dealt only indirectly with the subject of the Amending Bill which was before the House. But though the speech was indirect in form, it really penetrated to the gravest of the problems that have been created by the policy of Home Rule. It dealt with military discipline in relation to government and society. Before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill the ordinary man never gave a thought to such a subject. It did not exist as a cause of any political anxiety. Now it is a cause of intense anxiety to all, whether they believe with Liberals that the Army has been suborned for political purposes, or whether they believe with Unionists (who on this occasion, in our judgment, are the true champions of liberty) that the Liberal Government are putting an unwarrantable strain on the Army in asking officers and men to act as automata without souls or consciences. It is a difficult subject to treat clearly in a short space, and it was the great merit of Lord Roberts's speech that it gave a perfectly clear definition of military discipline, of its nature, and of its limitations. We have never read anything on this point so good as Lord Roberts's speech. We wish that it could be put into some permanent shape for the guidance of both civilians and soldiers. It was a noble and memorable speech in which a soldier of unsurpassed experience, who has been inculcating discipline all his life, confessed that his idea, of discipline is not something that turns a free man into a slave, but something which in its essence recognizes that the disciplined man is a human being, a free agent, a person who has a right to call his soul and his conscience his own. Some rights and privileges of citizenship the soldier must of course forfeit, but there is a moral line beyond which lie a few possessions of a free man that are inalienable. How different is this conception from the theory of a Janissary Army cultivated at present by the Liberal Government and their followers! To read Lord Roberts's speech is like taking in a draught of pure cool air after breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere. For the vindication of liberty we have to turn from Radicals and Labour men (like Mr. Ward, the author of that miserable pamphlet which in effect demands an Army that will obey any commands, however brutal and immoral) to a soldier ! Well, these are strange times, but we can at all events be devoutly thankful that we have a soldier who has the clearness of thought and the nobility of feeling to give us such a reading of military duty as was heard in the House of Lords on Monday.
We cannot do better than summarize Lord Roberts's speech and ask for it the most careful attention. The fact with which he was confronted was the extraordinarily grave one that for the first time in living memory the Army had stated that in certain circumstances it would refuse to obey orders. The Liberal explanation of this fact is, of course, that the Army has been drawn into a Tory conspiracy. Lord Roberts said to those who entertain this belief :— "Lot mo assure them that nothing but ignorance of the Army, its ways of life, its occupations, its thoughts, its very atmo- sphere, could lead them to make so absurd and yet so dangerous an allegation against its integrity as to connect it in any way with a political plot. I believe that many of those who make those reckless charges are so obsessed themselves by the spirit of party politics that they are honestly unable to understand that people's thoughts and deeds can ,be actuated by any other motive. I appeal to all such to believe me when I say once again, speaking with conviction born of knowledge and experience, that the Army has no politics, takes no interest in politics, and could not be tempted to do the slightest act to suit the convenience of either one or other of our political parties. I deny absolutely that it would be possible for human ingenuity to devise a method which would deflect the officers or men of the Army from the straight path of unquestioning obedience for any purely political purpose.'
We are certain that these words are true from beginning to end, true in the most thorough and literal sense. Why, then, does the Army say that in certain circumstances it cannot obey orders ? It does so because it regards the possible shooting of men whose only desire is not to be forced from the allegiance they own into a hated allegiance to a Dublin Parliament as something utterly beyond and above ordinary politics. Only a few officers or men might be able to state a, case for disobedience that would be philosophically correct, but virtually all who were at the Curragh when the orders of the Government arrived felt by instinct that they were asked to do a thing from which their consciences revolted. They were capable of proclaiming their contingent disobedience because, thank God ! they did not take the view of civilians' rights which is taken by Prussian officers, by our Liberal Government, and by Mr. Ward and the other Labour Members who vote with. the Government.
Lord Roberts went on to define military discipline in remarkable language, which we must quote :— "I have some knowledge of military discipline, and I should like to bring home to you something of its meaning and its limitations. Discipline is an artificial bond, forged for the pur- pose of converting an unorganized collection of men into an organized body amenable to authority. It is in a sense a fetter which tends to gall the wearer and to repress his individuality when first submitted to, but which gradually becomes a source of pride and satisfaction as ho realizes the necessity for it and the cumulative strength it affords. When discipline is under- gone as cheerfully and as proudly as it is by our soldiers, when it has shown itself again and again proof against all manner of dangers and privations, and has been responsible for the prompt and faithful execution of manifold distasteful duties, there is no need to question the strength or durability of its bonds. Disci- pline may be of such well-conceived strength, as is indeed the case with our Army, that it will dominate and override human nature under almost every imaginable circumstance, but it has inherent in itself the weakness of its artificiality, and it labours under this initial disadvantage when pitted against natural instincts. So much so is this the case that if you penetrate deep enough into the depths of human nature, you will unfailingly reach in each one of us a stratum which is impervious to discipline or any other influence from without. The strongest manifestation of this truth lies in what men call conscience—an innate sense of right and wrong, which neither reason nor man-made laws can, affect."
How "man-made laws" ran up against conscience at the Curragh was an experience which none of us who lived through it is ever likely to forget. Let us take it for granted, for the moment, that the Government intended Home Rule as a policy of pacification and conciliation, a policy for the greater prosperity of Ireland ; let us also take it for granted that they regarded the Parliament Act as a genuine means of advancing the principles of democracy. They still could not be excused the duty of being merciful as well as strong. Yet by insensible stages, while their eyes were fixed on the distant stars of Conciliation and Democracy, they reached a point on the road where they would have to be guilty of the most gross and cruel repression and tyranny if they went on. They pretended, or honestly convinced themselves, as the case may be, that there was no tyranny—that they were repressing no rights. They went serenely on. The Army was the instrument with which Governments enforced their will ; they must use the Army. Then came the crash. The Army had the conscience which the Government were without. The Government were brought to their senses ; they recognized where they had been going. The Army had saved them. It was a magnificent episode in a political system which tends to drown the small voices of conscience in the sound of the grinding of many wheels. But what do Liberals feel about this inspiring event, which tells us that ultimately something will save us all from the tyranny of Cabinets exercised under whatsoever political name it. may be ? They tell us that we—we who are supposed to be conspirators in seducing the Army— will suffer for it one day. They say that some time a Unionist Government may want to use the Army in suppressing rioting during an industrial dispute, and that then they will find that the precedent of to-day will recoil upon them. The weapon will turn in their hands. The Army will refuse to fire on its fellow-citizens. Well and good ; so far from being alarmed by the prospect, we are delighted by it. For we know perfectly well that when the Army refuses to obey orders it will refuse for an extremely good reason, and for nothing less. Officers and men will never refuse to do what is necessary to keep order. When they see a man—no matter what his politics are, whether Syndicalist or "blackleg "—being pounded into a jelly they will protect him. If it is necessary to shoot in the course of preserving order, that will be a perfectly different thing from firing upon Ulstermen in order to force them under a Government of which they loathe the name. Liberals may say that they cannot see the difference. Happily the conscience of the Army will see it. It will " see the difference," in another way, if ever a tyrannical Government should try to compel strikers to return to work against their will merely because under some Com- pulsory Arbitration Act it had been decreed that they should return. The Government might have fuddled themselves into thinking that they were serving the cause of democracy, or of a Collectivist State, or whatever the fashionable form of government might then be, but if tyranny ran its head against the conscience of the Army it would find out that it had gone too far. This limitation of military discipline is a safeguard that is seldom required to act, but it is there, and it is a great fact that it is there. Mr. Asquith will not be wanting in courage, as some of his fire-breathing followers absurdly tell him, if he recognizes frankly that there is a line beyond which military discipline cannot and ought not to be depended on. Other men with as much courage as Mr. Asquith have bowed their heads to this obvious fact. James IL did when he saw that the Protestant revolt in the Army was too strong for him. The Duke of Wellington did when he tried to form an anti-Reform Government in 1832, but was warned by a cavalry regiment that it would not cut down Reformers if that should be required.
We offer our sincere congratulations to Lord Roberts on baying made an invaluable contribution to modern political discussion by his fine definition of what military discipline really is. Liberals may have forgotten the noble resistance of freedom-loving men to the tyranny of Kings and states- men, but Lord Roberts has not forgotten that the Army has stood for liberty, and he well knows that no Parlia- ment Act, nor any other law made by man, would prevent it from doing so again. The true spirit of the soldier is compatible with freedom. The Government would find it highly convenient to have a servile Army, but we venture to say that after Lord Roberts's speech there remains not the remotest chance that Army officers or men will act as slaves in opposition to their consciences.
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