IS STRATOCRACY POSSIBLE?
BY far the greatest danger to the permanent progress of Europe towards that educated civilisation which is with us all the latent ideal is the possibility of a period of stratocracy. We believe that danger to be real and great all over the Contihent, especially in countries, like France, where loyalty to the individual has ceased to exist, and loyalty to the State, the loyalty which makes official corruption of any kind seem infamous to its servants, is not yet fully born. The fact that the Army is stronger than the community, and tan, if it pleases, rule it in full security, is a new fact, and is concealed in most countries by a carefully kept up identity between the Monarch and his soldiers ; but, like all great facts, it must make its impression at last. All who possess power at length desire to exercise it, seek to make it permanent, and regard with a jealous dislike, avowed or unexpressed, all who question or resist it. The great officers of the armies possess power, they are beginning to perceive it, and they will, we feel convinced, as opportunity serves, use it to increase their own status, to guide public policy in their own direction, and after a brief interval, to conciliate the immense forces they control. They are seeking the two first ends already in France and Spain, and though the process is more hidden in the three great Empires, the number of things which Sovereigns and Parliaments can- not do, or carefully avoid doing, lest the Army should be offended, is rapidly increasing. Naturally, the first efforts of the military chiefs are directed to solidify their own power, and this they have nearly accomplished. The chain of discipline has been drawn tighter, till independence of thought, opinion, not to speak of action, has entirely disappeared, and the subordinate is expected, often, in- deed, very sharply compelled, to keep mental step with his superior, while of the conscript an obedience is de- manded which only just stops short of that exacted by the Old Man of the Mountain. It is not only in France that a Picquart is a marked man ; there is not an Army on the Continent where, unless he were a very great aristo- crat or in favour with his Sovereign, his position would be endurable. The next object of the great officers, they being for the most part devoted to their profession, is to improve the machine as a whole, and this has been done, and is being done, to an extent which, when one remem- bers the ideas of forty years ago, is positively wonderful. The cost of the Armies has been almost doubled. Year after year more guns, more cavalry, more reserves, more stores have been asked for and granted, till the managers of the Treasuries tremble for their accounts, and the mass of the people, usually favourable in all countries to lavish- ness—it is the middle class which frets at expenditure— begin to ask with menacing persistence what is to be the profit of all this outlay. The next step, not yet openly taken, though there are ugly symptoms of it in France, is to make the fortunes of the great officers correspond more nearly with their position in the State, and the next to render the lives of the non-commissioned more comfortable in salaries, in power, and in dignity among the men, a process already at work in four of the seven military States. This point once reached, there will remain only to assert that the Army is an imperiurn in imperio, exempt from criticism or civil punishment, with its own policy, its own code of honour, its own inherent right to respect—all claims already asserted in France— and nothing will be left except to formulate the position by forming a Government avowedly devoted to the mili- tary element in the State, the Government which used to be called stratocracy. Such a Government would rapidly draw to itself all the ambitious, the daring, and the esurient, and would distribute among them immense rewards, as Napoleon indeed did, though the fact was concealed from the taxpayer by the other fact that the rewards were taken from the conquered countries. Marshals became Princes, Generals nobles, and all received appanages," allowances, or tacit permissions to plunder. Free discussion, as fatal to the system, would be prohibited in all its departments except science. Commerce would be regulated with a view either to military necessities, or to the collection of vast sums without direct taxes. Industry would languish for want of hope and freedom, perhaps even from direct favouritism for agriculture, which provides alike soldiers and supplies, and all civil work would degenerate because its rewards, especially in dignity, would be over- shadowed by those of the Army. The pain would be at a discount, and each country would be a camp in which rank was indicated by uniform, the most peremptory laws would be General Orders, and the soldier, exultant, un- bound, and honoured, would tread through the land, as Bulwer Lytton sang, "like a lord through his hall." There might not in our day be actual rapine, but there would be license which it would be hard to get redressed.
Is there any probability that the final step will be taken, and military rule made supreme in any country ? We think there is actual danger now in France and Spain, a, danger which will arise in Germany, Austria, and Russia whenever the Sovereign is inefficient. The military chiefs would naturally prefer to act through a captured President with increased powers, such as they had hopes of Faure becoming, or a Sovereign who was completely in their hands, for three reasons. One is that in default of a President or Sovereign the Generals grow jealous of one another ; place themselves, as they have repeatedly done in Spain, at the head of factions ; and even declare war upon one another, as is believed to have nearly happened during the Revolution. The suspicions of the Convention as to the loyalty of its great officers were by no means without justification. The second is that the plan con- ceals from the conscripts some portion of their ascendency, and obviates the danger of any separate movement by the private soldiers. How far this danger exists it is difficult to say, all precedent being worthless in face of the new conditions of service, which render the purgatory of the private soldier so short ; but the belief that it must exist arises from the nature of things. Once aware that he was absolute master, the soldier would not go ill-fed, unpaid, and badly clothed, but would insist on having his share of the general comfort, and some control, as the Roman soldiers had, over the general policy of the State. That prospect always appals Generals, even Marshal MacMa,hon shrinking before the idea that the " chassepots might go off of themselves," and they avoid it most easily by using the civil govern- ment as a screen. And the third is the tendency, common to all Armies, to wish for a Commander-in-Chief,—a person whom they can follow, and trust, and, if necessary, obtain justice from. The notion of a ruling junta does not attract them ; they look for an individual, usually a man who they feel sure can lead them to victory, which no committee ever did. Such a man, once chosen, if he is com- petent, rapidly ceases to be a stratocrat, learns to care more for the nation than the Army, and has for his first object the subordination of all Generals who might con- test with him the great prize of empire. A Sovereign is rarely cynical enough to think of his soldiers alone, or if he does, goes to war, when a defeat may in a day alter all the conditions of power. Defeated soldiers always fall back upon civil government as a refuge, just as in the Imperial times they fell back upon the Senate.
We shall be told that we are too pessimist, and that the Armies of the Continent, though always stronger than the people, have usually loyally obeyed the civil power. That is true, no doubt, in ordinary times, and as long as the civil power is respected, whether from its conduct, its capacity, or tradition. But there have been times when the charm ceased to work, when nothing was powerful except force, and. when the Army, disliking or distrusting the civil power, or believing in itself as the worthier power, rose upon it or superseded it. It seems to us that such a time is approaching now, that in France it has almost arrived, and that in the rest of Europe the Kings, who re- present civil authority, are becoming painfully anxious as to what the Army will think. They make flattering speeches to it, they treat its chiefs with a sort of deference, and they display a jealousy about military patronage which is partly at least dictated by a fear lest any but their friends should succeed to high command. It is from fear of the Army as an independent unit that General de Galliffet has this week resumed for the Minister of War—that is, for the Republic—that power of selecting superior officers, even Colonels, which M. de Freycinet had abandoned to Mili- tary Commissions. The most perfect warning, however, is in our own history. There has been no people so little infected with militarism as the English, yet Oliver Crom- well's soldiers set up an avowed stratocracy, claimed for themselves the position of representatives of the nation, and altered the whole course of history by refusing to allow him to accept the offered crown. They may have disliked the title of King, but they knew perfectly well that their General once crowned would be representative of the English nation rather than of the soldiers who had made him King.
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