Britain at Bay

I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system, because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for, cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers, continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that another nation can produce.

Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on their fifty years' work in vain. They have, little by little, educated the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier, and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his country's cause is a part of every citizen's duty, for which he must be prepared by training.

The adoption of this principle will have further results. So soon as every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority. The citizen's interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect. He will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of England.

XXII

THE CHAIN OF DUTY

The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which will be of some use to us.

We began by agreeing that the people of this country have not made entirely satisfactory arrangements for a competitive struggle, at any rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign state.

We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to obtain victory. We discussed the theories which lead some of our countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war, and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements for disarmament. We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these theories.

Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in conflict all the resources of its land and its people. In the last war Great Britain's national weapon was her navy, which she has for centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe. The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century. The great event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power, resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to think eternal.

Great Britain, in the security due to her victories at sea, was able to develop her colonies into nations, and her East India Company into an Empire. But that same security caused her to forget her nationalism, with the result that now her security itself is imperilled. During this period, when the conception of the nation was in abeyance, some of the conditions of sea power have been modified, with the result that the British monopoly is at an end, while the possibility of a similar monopoly has probably disappeared, so that the British navy, even if successful, could not now be used, as it was a hundred years ago, as a means of entirely destroying the trade of an adversary. Accordingly, if in a future war Britain is to find a continental ally, she must be able to offer him the assistance, not merely of naval victory, but also of a strong army. Moreover, during the epoch in which Great Britain has turned her back upon Europe the balance of power has been upset, and there is no power and no combination able to stand up against Germany as the head of the Triple Alliance. This is a position of great danger for England, because it is an open question whether in the absence of a strong British army any group of Powers, even in alliance with England, could afford to take up a quarrel against the combination of the central States. It thus appears that Great Britain, by neglecting the conditions of her existence as a nation, has lost the strength in virtue of which, at previous crises in European history, she was the successful champion of that independence of States which, in the present stage of human development, is the substance of freedom.

Our consideration of the question of might showed that if Great Britain is to be strong enough to meet her responsibilities her people must nationalise themselves, while our reflections on the question of right showed that only from such nationalisation is a sound policy to be expected. In short, only in so far as her people have the unity of spirit and of will that mark a nation can Great Britain be either strong or just. The idea of the nation implies a work to be done by the British State, which has to be on the watch against challenge from a continental rival to Great Britain's right to the headship of her empire, and which at the same time has to give to that empire the direction without which it cannot remain united. Great Britain cannot do the work thus imposed upon her by her position and her history unless she has the co-operation of all her people. Thus the conception of the nation reveals itself in the twofold shape of duties laid upon England and of duties consequently laid upon every Englishman. It means that England must either decline and fall or do a certain work in the world which is impossible for her unless she constrains all her people to devote themselves to her service. It thus appears that England and her people can expect no future worth having except on the principle of duty made the mainspring both of public and of private life.

We attempted to apply the principles involved in the word nation to the obvious and urgent needs of the British State at the present time.

Victory at sea being indispensable for Great Britain in case of conflict, we inquired into the conditions of victory, and found in the parallel instances of Nelson and Napoleon that both by sea and land the result of the nationalisation of war is to produce a leader who is the personification of a theory or system of operations. The history of the rise of the German nation shows how the effort to make a nation produced the necessary statesman, Bismarck. Nationalisation creates the right leadership—that of the man who is master of his work.

Reviewing the needs of the naval administration, we saw that what is wanted at the present time is rather proper organisation at the Admiralty than an increase in mere material strength; while turning to the army, we discovered that the only system on which can be produced the army that Great Britain requires is that which makes every able-bodied citizen a soldier.

To make the citizen a soldier is to give him that sense of duty to the country and that consciousness of doing it, which, if spread through the whole population, will convert it into what is required—a nation. Therefore to reform the army according to some such plan as has been here proposed is the first step in that national revival which is the one thing needful for England, and if that step be taken the rest will follow of itself. Nationalisation will bring leadership, which in the political sphere becomes statesmanship, and the right kind of education, to give which is the highest ultimate function of national existence.

I have tried in these pages to develop an idea which has haunted me for many years. I think if the reader would extend to it even for a short time the hospitality of his mind he might be willing to make it his constant companion. For it seems to me to show the way towards the solution of other problems than those which have here been directly discussed. I cannot but believe that if we could all accustom ourselves to make some sacrifices for the sake of England, if only by giving a few minutes every day to thinking about her and by trying to convince ourselves that those who are not of our party are yet perhaps animated by the same love of their country as we ourselves, we might realise that the question of duty is answered more easily by performance than by speculation. I suspect that the relations between the political parties, between capital and labour, between master and servant, between rich and poor, between class and class would become simpler and better if Englishmen were to come to see how natural it is that they should spend their lives for England.

THE END