OUR SOLDIERS.
At home the great manoeuvres in Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire, in which no less than fifty thousand men have been engaged, have focussed attention upon our soldiers. A most striking testimony to their value as citizens, and good citizens, is to be found in the letters which Mr. Robert Blatchford, the Socialist, is contributing to the Daily Mail. Mr. Blatchford has just come back from the German Army manoeuvres, but he finds that the British infantry soldier has nothing to fear in comparison with the German, except in the matter of numbers. In fact, his con- clusion is very much like that of the Duke of Wellington. Just before Waterloo, the Duke, who was riding with Creevey, pointed to a British soldier going up the steps of a church at Brussels with the remark :—" It all depends upon that article. If there were enough of him I should have no doubts." It is very satisfactory to find Mr. Blatchford, in spite of his Socialistic views—views which often tend to make their holders pessimistic as to existing conditions— declaring that our soldiers are so well trained and bear so good. a character. As his own Army experiences (he was once a soldier) were thirty years old, he did. not know beforehand that our men were sober and intelligent and took a pride in their work. He had only deduced that from their bearing and appearance. Ho found, however, his deductions backed. by a military friend of his, who assured him that the men "are all I judged. them to be, and that they have the confidence and respect of their officers and of the civilians with whom they have come into contact,"—a verdict with which all who know the Army at first hand, and not merely by report or by guesswork, will heartily agree. Mr. Blatchford adds a very picturesque illustration :- " The change in our soldiers since I had the honour to serve may be emphasised by a comparison. All Londoners know the difference between the London cabman and the London chauffeur. There is the same difference between the soldiers of the 'seventies and the soldiers now engaged in tha manceuvres. The new men are steadier, better educated, keener, brighter, and younger. The London cabby was in many ways lovable ; so was the hard- drinking, hard-swearing, hard-fighting old soldier. But education is bettor than ignorance, and drink is no use to men who have hard. or serious work to do. The younger generation, civilians as well as soldiers, drink less and think more The men here are fine, straight-limbed, well-set, clear-eyed fellows. I venture to say there is no better material extant. No pains should be spared with them. They are worth all that can be done for them."
Such testimony is worth having, and is specially interesting as coming from one who himself has served in the ranks. And here we may notice a curious fact in regard to the British Army which is immensely to its credit. In three generations three of the most prominent Radicals—we had almost said revolution- aries—of their day were Cobbett, Bradlaugh, and now Mr. Blatchford. All three began their lives as private soldiers. It might have been supposed that men with their views would. have denounced the Army as a place of tyranny, class oppression, social degradation, and so forth. Not a bit of it. All three after they had left the Army never failed to speak well of it and of the way in which the men were treated by the officers. Mr. Blatch- ford is perhaps the most enthusiastic of the three, but the other two on several occasions gave testimony to the value of Army service, and• to the way in which men who respected themselves could. maintain and improve their self-respect while serving their country in arms. We doubt whether any Continental country could show such a record.
We ourselves have this week a special reason for con- sidering the question of the soldier's service to the State. A striking review of the reprint of the Spectator articles entitled " A New Way of Life " appears in the current issue of the British. Friend, the organ of the Quakers. The writer, Mr. Grubb, a member of the Society of Friends, who perhaps not unnaturally is perturbed. by the Spectator point of view, entitles his review " A Pagan Way of Life." We have no desire to enter into controversy with him, though we wish to acknowledge the friendly and courteous things which he says about the book while he condemns it. To review a review is seldom profitable. We do desire, however, to protest against his declaration that what we recommend is a pagan way of life, and to challenge his assertion that our view is essen- tially un-Christian. He declares that neither the word " Christ " nor " Christianity " occurs in the book, and that the writer " has simply ignored. Jesus Christ and His ethical teaching in attempting to set forth the way of life." We should have thought that the general tone and temper of the Spectator would. have protected us from an attack of this kind. Since, however, it has not done so, and since a, critic for whom we have no small respect evidently sincerely believes our attitude to be un-Christian, we feel compelled. to say a word or two on this point. If in the " New Way of Life" articles we did. not introduce the question of Christianity and the use of arms directly, it was only because our conviction was so strong and settled on the point that it appeared to us wholly unnecessary. Our Lord never denied the right or the duty of national defence; and our Puritan forefathers, from Cromwell to Milton, had good warrant for urging men to bear arms in the defence of their liberties, their homes, and their country, and for hold; g that the best fighter might also be the best Christian. We cannot on the present occasion enter in detail into the subject of Christianity and national defence. We may point out, however, one or two salient facts. To begin with, our Lord's teachi g was, and was meant tobe, universal. He desired to found a spiritual, not a national, kingdom. But to say this is not to say that He condemned the idea of nationality, and thought that a man had no duty to perform to his country. The Jews were an intensely patriotic and intensely combative people, and therefore it was necessary for Christ to insist very strongly that He was not asking them to rise in revolt in order to found a Hebrew State. " My kingdom is not of this world ; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." But though the -victories of Christianity were to be victories of the Spirit, and though men's hearts and wills were to be changed, Christ never taught that men might not defend themselves from attack or take up the sword to right a wrong. When He told men to " render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's " He meant that His Disciples might live in the world and do good in the world which they found round them, and were not to take up an anarchic position towards social institutions. No doubt many texts recommending and enjoining peace and submission may be quoted from the Gospel, but if Christ meant to condemn all use of arms, all employment of force, surely He would have said something different from what He did say to the soldiers who are so constantly mentioned in the Gospel. It is worthy of note that these soldiers are always well spoken of. Had they been men practising a detestable trade, a trade to be condemned at all costs, would. not Christ have treated them as, say, He treated the money-changers in the Temple ? He told the young man of great possessions to sell all he had and give to the poor. He did not tell the soldiers that they were men of blood and sin, and that their first duty was to abandon their evil occupation.
Again, had His attitude been the Quaker attitude towards all physical force, would He have said to His Disciples in His last instructions : " He that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip : and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one " ? Further, if Christ had held the Quaker view, must He not, when He spake of Himself as fulfilling the old law, have distinguished in this particular ? The old Jewish law was a fighting law. The Lord God was " the Lord of Hosts," and no duty was more imperative on the Hebrew than that of national defence. If Christ had meant to change all that, would He not have said so, and made it clear that here the new dispensation differed fundamentally from the old? Though Christ preached the brotherhood of man and peace and goodwill, and bade men banish hatred from their hearts, He did not mean to put the good man at the mercy of the evil, or to give the power of the sword to the transgressor. Again, He did not regard the sacrifice of a in.-En's life, like our modern humanitarians, as the greatest possible evil, an evil to be avoided at all costs. If He had, would He have said : " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend " ? If a man should lay down his life for his friend, why is it so great a crime for him to lay down his life for his country ? That Christ would have condemned evil wars, wars of aggression and plunder or of mere ambition, who can doubt ? That He would not have condemned wars in which a nation makes a conscience of what it does, wars of self-defence or wars to right some great wrong or to prevent some great evil, is to our mind unquestionable.
But though we say this, we do not wish for one moment to condemn those who hold the Quaker view. Let them hold it by all means, but let them not claim to possess a monopoly of Christian truth. Let them remember that men who are as good Christians as they are have in all ages and from the noblest and best motives deliberately rejected the Quaker interpretation. A striking example to prove how absurd is the notion that the duty of national defence cannot be entertained by a Christian is to be found in a sermon entitled " The Soldier's Honour," which Thomas Adams, the Puritan divine of whose work we wrote a fort- night ago, preached " to the worthy company of gentlemen that exercise in the artillery garden of London,"—i.e., the Honourable Artillery Company. We trust that we shall not be thought guilty of self-commendation if we say that this sermon and the preface with which it is published read almost exactly like our articles on " A New Way of Life," except that the thoughts are as much nobler and more spiritual as the English is infinitely stronger and more vivid. The introduction begins with the stirring words : " We are all soldiers as wo are Christians You bear both spiritual arms against the enemies of your salvation and material arms against the enemies of your country." We cannot on the present occasion give any detailed quotations from Adams's sermon. Next week, however, we hope- to return to this most poignant and moving apology for patriotism and the military duty, Whether the Spectator or Mr. Grubb is the better inter- preter of the Christian standpoint cannot, -of course, be proved either by his assertion or by ours. We must leave it to a higher arbitrament. What we can do and what we must do is to bid him remember that our -view is as conscientiously held as his. He has no right not merely to " un-Church," but to " un-Christianise," those who dis- agree with him. That is hardly the way of the Christian. It partakes far too much of the spiritual arrogance of the pagan.
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