THE FUTURE OF CONSCRIPTION. T HE system of conscription, which is
the bed-rock of all methods of government on the Continent, and which many observers think will last for ever, is exposed to two certainly serious dangers, besides one which is more vague. One of the two is the dislike entertained for it by the mass of the populations. Owing, in part, to the gradual lowering of the term of service, which makes effective drill more difficult, and drill-masters therefore more severe; partly to the new sense that discipline means victory ; and partly to the excessive care, not to say meanness, with which outlay on the individual soldier is controlled, life in the barracks has become for the con- scripts in all countries a kind of purgatory which they hate, even when they acknowledge in after years that it taught them a good deal. It is, in fact, a rough school even for the conscript who is popular with his instructors, and for the man who is unpopular it is a sort of hell. The Governments, who are quite sensible of the evil, try hard to correct it ; but they cannot pay enough to keep non-commissioned officers into middle life, and they think themselves obliged to make discipline irresistible ; while many officers, sure at once of non-resistance and of a perpetual supply of men, develop into tyrants. The German Emperor has just confirmed a sentence of three years' imprisonment upon an officer of the first rank in the way of social standing for actually killing a sergeant whom he considered a little too " cheeky " in his replies. Some writers deny the unpopularity of the system ; but in France, in Italy, in Germany, and in Austria, its abolition is an article of faith with all Social Democrats, who at least try to express the popular view ; and in all Continental countries except France the main im- petus to the stream of emigration is the desire to escape conscription, and the first attraction of the United States is that Military service does not exist there. If the Radical party ever dominates the Parliaments of the Continent it will, we believe, make a combined effort either to abolish conscription altogether, or so to relax its conditions that they will become insensibly transformed into something not unlike the English system of enlistment and training for the Militia; and if the Governments resort to force they may find their weapon break in their hands. We do not believe in mutiny, which always seems to the soldier a kind of irreligion ; but we do believe that passivity may be displayed on crucial occasions, the men becoming wilfully inefficient through discontent and antipathy to the special service. Let the German Emperor say what he pleases, shooting one's father or brother is not enjoy- able. The immense spread of education, and its cumula- tive effect as generation after generation becomes educated, must modify, and modify seriously, the minds of all soldiers who are not volunteers.
The second danger is so vague that we should not allude to it if it were not mentioned by so many experts. This is the danger that the huge mass of a modern army, which overtaxes all but exceptional intellects among the Generals, may prove a great source of weakness. It is a terrible business to feed, water, and supply with missiles an army of a quarter of a million of men scattered over twenty square miles, liable if beaten at one point to think itself defeated at all. A small army, highly organised, beauti- fully armed, exceedingly mobile, and with a new adroit- ness in using the skill of engineers, may prove a more flexible weapon, and as dangerous to huge masses in uniform as trained soldiers are to an armed crowd. If that should ever prove to be the case, and Generals learn to rely upon corps d'Rite alone, men must be picked, to pick the best they must be paid, and to organise a highly disciplined, paid, and comfortable Guard in the- centre of a mass of unpaid, half-drilled, and discredited conscripts would overtax the mental resources of a Wallenstein. We doubt ourselves if this danger is very great, believing that the excessive dislike of the majority of soldiers to be greatly outnumbered will keep armies large ; but we know that more competent judges than ourselves hold that it exists, and that a small army might prove itself in land warfare to be what a vessel like the 'Polyphemus' may conceivably show itself to be in a naval engagement. It may crush a superior enemy by force of build and im- pact. After all, even if there are millions on foot, a corps d'armie can only have at a definite moment a corps d'armee to meet and crush.
The third danger, though little noticed in the Press, is the most serious of all. It is quite possible that, as time goes on, a symptom already perceptible in more countries than one may become of importance in the eyes of State doctors. The Governments may learn to detest conscrip- tion. The acute civilians who rise to the top in Republics and limited Monarchies, and the Princes who are born at the top in hereditary autocracies, alike desire to rule accord- ing to their own views and perception of what is wise, and they find themselves more and more hampered by an occult power, which they know, if a struggle ever comes, will be irresistible, and which in views and objects is not identical with themselves. The huge mass of a modern conscript army develops a huge professional class which does not after its service go back into the cottages, but stays on till sixty or sixty-five, and becomes a close and highly separate caste. That caste has its own ideas as to the way a country should be governed, as to the foreign policy that should be pursued, as to the proportion of the taxes which should be expended upon the weapon it loves. It has, in fact, a body of opinions different from those of its rulers and of the country at large, and it resents any action seriously at variance with that aggregate decision. Individually most obedient, it has as a collective force impulses of dis- obedience which come to nothing mainly because, unless very strongly moved, the Governments of the Continent give way. Each Army knows how to make its opinion manifest to those who control the State, and each expects at least some attention to its views. "The Army thinks" is an expression of very serious import when it is whis- pered in Continental Cabinets, and we have a suspicion that the thought of the Army is sometimes widely different from that of those who rule, and that the latter often reflect, and sometimes inquire, whether the men and the officers are thinking exactly alike. We are all at this moment watching the process as it goes on in France, and though in the regal countries the rulers have one con- spicuous advantage, and the Army," the Great Silent One," keeps silence more rigidly, we are not sure that even autocrats are perfectly content. They have the defence of the special loyalty which each officer feels for the person of his Sovereign, but they know none the less that there is a professional opinion to which they must defer, at the risk of a great weakening of the Royal authority. There are Generals to whom they must not entrust armies, policies, especially in foreign affairs, which they must not pursue, internal reforms on which it will be better for them not to experiment. Those " influences " gall Sovereigns, who at heart believe that armies exist for them, who sometimes fret, like their Ministers, under military expenditure, and who ask themselves, with an emotion which has in it anger as well as amazement, whether the example of the French could by any possi- bility spread. If it could their own authority would be seriously curtailed, and it is not certain that it could not, especially if a King turned out a reforming civilian intent on changes which to the Army, as a profession, were .repugnant or offensive. A King with a faint impatience of militarism iii his heart will not like to see his Army grow too gigantic, and may by reducing still further the term of service diminish its size, and there- fore, in a degree, its preponderant weight in the State. He would have no resistance from his people, and even the Army might be passive, for mighty as the corporation of officers is, it could not resist both its Sovereign and its men. An immense majority of officers in Russia must have resented the abolition of serfage, but they were Powerless, for the Czar was against them and their men were serfs' sons.
We suppose the Czar's Rescript will not have much effect in this generation, for Eur)pe is racked with jealousies about the partition of the dark lands, which it is supposed involves future safety against social uprisings ; but as all Sovereigns are not soldiers, the attempt may be renewed in another form. War, being founded on human nature, will probably always continue ; but it is possible to conceive, if the Governments for various reasons were fairly willing, of making a general limitation of the conscription part of the public law of Europe. It might, for example, be reduced to its old level, or reduced to a fixed percentage on the population. That is regarded as impossible unless the English Fleet were limited too ; but England is not likely to descend on the Continent ; if she did, she has a very small Army, and when Govern- ments and peoples are in accord the impossible is apt to be found practically easy. The peoples, it should be observed, though suspicious and perhaps liable to panics, would be strongly attracted by any limitation of con- scription, and would certainly not resist strongly a Government which proposed it. To expect an immediate result would be too sanguine, but we are convinced that the system of compelling all the young to pass through barracks, and hiring tens of thousands of the educated to drill and train them, is becoming most unpopular with the multitude, and has lost something of its favour even with the rulers of great military States.
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