THE NEW GERMAN MILITARY BILL.
THERE is, we repeat, but a remote chance that the new German Military Bill will be rejected by Parliament. There will be serious conflicts as to the best means of meeting the new financial demand, which it is now officially admitted will amount to £3,200,000 a year for an un- limited period, conflicts which will be sharper, because the Government is evidently on this point a little undecided. It would like to get the money out of beer and tobacco, which are luxuries, and therefore can be adjusted to means, but it desires upon this point to pay some deference to popular feeling, which may be more hurt by the dear- ness of an enjoyment than by taxes which will press more 'heavily on the springs of prosperity. The whole of the extra demand is, however, less than twopence a week from each of the 9,500,000 families in the Empire—we take five to the family—and although that will be severely felt by a people who are generally poor, and already taxed so heavily, the money can be found in some fashion, and it will be found for the same reason that the new drafts of men will be voted with comparatively slight demur. The Government, to begin with, having resolved on such a serious step as the reorganisation of their grand fighting-machine, would adhere to their decision in spite of defeat ; would, for in- stance, dissolve and redissolve Parliament ; would throw the whole weight of the vast bureaucracy into the scale at the elections, and would treat all opponents as enemies to the safety of the Fatherland. Even the Radicals will hardly run such a risk; the Conservatives feel themselves out of place when resisting the Court ; and the Centre, as we explained before, is only bargaining for concessions probably already arranged. The Catholic leaders cannot bear the imputation that their creed impairs, or destroys, their patriotism. Moreover, the constituents of all alike are pleased with the reduction of three years' service to two, with the abolition of the Ersatz Reserve, now worked as a system of partial exemptions, and with the feeling that, at last, they see the end of it. There can be no more Mili- tary Bills authorising larger drafts, for the simple reason that, under the present Bill, every able-bodied man of the proper age is placed at the disposal of the State. More- over, the figures are crushing. No nation ever absolutely trusts its neighbours, even when they are allies ; and the Germans have an even exaggerated idea of Austria's ill- luck in war. They think, therefore, and are bound to think, how it would be with them if the Hapsburgs were as rapidly defeated by Russia as they were by Germany in 1866, and the prospect is a most unpleasant one. The French and Russians together will, by-and-by, have eight and a half millions of trained soldiers, excluding Russia's Asiatic army—who, in case of need, could be called upon to do• actual fighting in the mobilised ranks. Germany has not so many arm-bearing males in her whole dominion, and must therefore bring up the number of her trained men to the highest point consistent with her population,—that is, to 4,500,000. Of course, France and Russia could neither mobilise nor feed such masses all at once ; but if the Great War were a long one, they could draw upon them by degrees to the last man ; and, in Marshal von Moltke's opinion, the next war will be long. The German population, which under- stands soldiership, and is permanently afraid of being crushed by "Cossack hordes," will not seriously resist the order to increase the peace army by 84,000 men, and nothing but determined popular resistance could induce the Government to give way. The scene presented by the three military Powers requires some thinking out, and we confess that when it is thought out, it appears to justify some of the pessimist views put forward by the advocates of the Peace Societies. Even if we exclude Italy for the moment, as a Power which will not, or cannot, make any extreme demand on her strength, the great fighting Powers are seeking to secure more than twelve millions of trained men at their disposal, whom, so far as finance, supplies, and the number of officers will allow, they can mobilise by decree, that is, in practice, whom they could mobilise in the event of severe defeat by a half-million at a time. In other words, if the war were for a time as indecisive as the great German strategist obviously expected, and if the Governments or peoples were thoroughly roused and obstinate, which, in the absence of cataclysmal victories, might easily happen, war might continue until it visibly affected the strength of the population. If, at the same time, battles were unusually bloody, a whole generatiou of young men might be swept away in two years, or subjected to serious loss of strength from wounds, disease, and protracted exposure, all aggra- vated by the fact that no sufficient supply of surgeons could possibly be procured to attend such masses. And there is much reason to expect bloodiness as a characteristic of the next campaigns. During the twenty-one years of peace, the improvements in all three armies in artillery, in rifles, and in skill in using them, have been enormous. The German rifles are equal to the French, and the French officers in Dahomey report the efficacy of the Lebel rifle as perfectly amazing. The speed of firing—the practical speed, we mean—has been at least doubled ; while the new bullets " rend " the objects they strike—that is, they either kill or inflict what surgeons call "serious," that is, totally dis- abling, wounds. The Dahomeyans, who are very brave, fell before these rifles in great heaps, even when their White antagonists were comparatively limited in numbers, and in a European campaign every effort will be made to keep the numbers equal. The destruction, therefore, may be terrible, great enough to affect the immediate future of a nation, which, though it may not miss 50,000 men lost in a battle, would miss most grievously a million of men killed or disabled in a war, all of one generation, and all within the ages most relied on to keep up the popu- lation. This is not, be it remembered, our view. We should not venture to predict a slow, indecisive, con- suming war, which is opposed to all recent precedent ; but Marshal von Moltke was the coolest of judges, and he de- liberately and publicly stated that he foresaw a war of two or even three campaigns. His genius, we must remember, will be absent ; there is no proof of any Napoleon existing in either of the three armies ; and the stakes will be so awfully heavy that not only the populace, but even the gravest politicians, may be in favour of going on. The prospect is a gloomy one if war breaks out, and it is possible to take too optimist a view even of that contingency. It is perfectly true that the ruling men of Europe do not desire war, that they are, to speak plainly, afraid of the absence of all limits on its liabilities. It might extinguish a nation, or, like the Thirty Years' War, throw it percep- tibly back for a hundred years. The securities taken by the victors, if there were victors, might overthrow the dynasties or the forms of government under which such catastrophes had been possible. The rulers, therefore, will not provoke war ; and until their honour is engaged, the initiative remains very much in their hands. But then, recollect, we must interpret " honour " as a Continental officer interprets it, and not as an Englishman of the middle-class understands it. Refusing a challenge, if the challenge is perceived by his army, is a most difficult thing to a Continental Sovereign or President. He does not care to live shamed in the eyes of fellow-soldiers. Again, two of the peoples will not provoke war deliber- ately. They have to bear all its dangers, and reap few of its gains, and they are by no means increasingly inclined to become food for powder. Still, that is not certainly true of the Russians ; and every people, including the Germans and ourselves, are liable to furious accesses of panic, during which they regard even voluntary war as better than the war which they fancy or believe will be forced on them. Finally, we must allow for accident, which has produced many wars, and may produce the great one, some petty State perhaps making a move which compels the great States to take sides, and go a step too far in diplomatic threatenings. There is no reason visible for apprehending such an occur- rence; but if it should happen, war might be declared all over the Continent, on a sudden, to secure the full advan- tage of early mobilisation, and once declared, there is no guarantee for its speedy end. Indeed, if that were sincerely believed in by the strategists, upon whom rulers rely, the enormous preparations now being so unwillingly made, might be in part dispensed with. They will not be of full utility unless the next war is to be protracted— that is, protracted according to modern experience—for their main effect is to increase to the furthest possible extent the reserves of trained men from which crippled armies may be again refilled,
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