THE BURDEN OF MILITARISM.
It is well for Americans, and especially in the light of the prophecy of Rev. 13:11-18, to study in the path which a sister republic in Europe—France—is now treading, the path upon which this republic is just entering. The prophecy declares that this nation shall make an image to Romanism, a government imperial in civil rule and religion, and that out of this image will come persecution. In fact, unless the spirit of imperialism is dominant, there can be no persecution to any extent. It is the spirit of imperialism which made Rome the great, cruel, iron monarchy. It is the spirit of imperialism which made the Papacy. And an image to the Papacy will have the same spirit of imperialism. In the Independent of January 25 was an article by M. Urbain Gohier, editor of L'Aurore, and author of "L'Armie Contre la Nation." The title of the article is "The Danger of Militarism." He refers to the military display and spirit manifested at the return of Admiral Dewey to this country, and says:— "Assuredly it is not the business of a foreigner to urge his advice at such a moment. And yet it may well be permitted to a Frenchman to recall that his forefathers sustained the first steps made by the other side of the Atlantic in its struggles for liberty; it may also well be granted that a Frenchman who sees liberty so compromised in his own country should hope that it will remain intact in the New World. The trials which France is undergoing to-day and the evils which threaten her, because she is sacrificing herself to the militarist idol, may serve the cause of political liberty in America as much as the material succor long ago rendered by the companions of Lafayette. "Imperialism is intoxicating at present a large part of the two great English-speaking nations. Imperialism can not be conceived of without militarism, which is its instrument. Even the most liberal of the citizens of the United States know the terrible consequences of militarism only by an effort of intuition and reason, since their country so far has had the good fortune to be saved from it. Let them open their eyes and let them consider what is taking place in France; they will tremble. They will see what militarism has made of a nation formerly famous in the world for its spirit of justice, humanity, and fraternity. The Anglo-Saxons, at this end of the nineteenth century, seem to offer, in the midst of other races, the true type of man in the highest degree of energy, activity, and courage. I have often asked myself whether this were the case because they had escaped militarism, or whether they had always turned their backs on militarism because they were such men. Whatever be the answer, it is certain that the Anglo-Saxon would lose all that makes his strength and originality if, like continental Europeans, he allowed himself to be degraded and debased by the military scourge." After declaring what France might have been in leading the world, Mr. Gohier thus speaks of militarism and its influence on the nation:— "The militarist idea was planted in France by the long wars of the First Empire. A brigand of genius, at the head of our armies, killed four million men, pillaged, burnt, sacked Europe from one end to the other, while at the same time he was reducing the French people to the basest servitude. To fool the world, and also to delude herself, France gave the name of Glory to the crimes of Napoleon. She was stunned with this sham glory, and with it she poisoned the soul of generations, giving a subordinate place to the studies and the arts which had formerly gained her her finest prestige, valuing henceforth only the triumphs of arms. In seeking these triumphs she met the awful disasters of 1870. And by a funereal chance, the very catastrophe which should have forever disgusted her with the military folly made her more blindly and puerilely the adorer of the soldier, of the uniform, of the barracks, and of all of the farce and paraphernalia of war. France transferred herself into a vast camp, burdened herself with huge taxes, spent 30,000,000,000 francs in a quarter of a century, in order to parade a few hundred thousand men up and down the continent of Europe, drove herself to economic ruin, to intellectual decay, to moral feebleness, and to political anarchy." "Examine the facts still closer. What has happened in France shows you what would be fatally sure to happen in any other great republic deluded into the same errors. "To begin with the effects of militarism from the soldier's standpoint. Since the soldiers in a vast army make up a large part or even the whole of the youth of a country, the effects of militarism on them are reflected on the whole nation. Thus it is that militarism makes such ravages in the social, intellectual, economic, and moral orders. Formerly the French soldier served seven years; since the establishment of a universal obligatory service he has served five years, then three. The sons of the rich class, through different pretexts, more or less worthy, manage to leave the barracks at the end of a year; but the sons of the farmers, of the workmen, and the whole laboring class of the nation, remain three years in the army. The men who get off with the service of one year escape the necessity of serving in the colonial wars; the victims of the three years' service furnish all the prey of the murderous expeditions into Africa and the far East. This fact, alone, shows a revolting inequality in a society which pretends to be democratic. But the barracks are a source of evil still more fearful. During three years, far from their parents, unable to engage in any intellectual occupation, with nothing to suggest a single elevated thought, the unhappy young men, from twenty to twenty-three years of age, stagnate in the midst of the greatest physical dirt and in the extremest moral degradation. They forget there all they learned that would be practical in the exercise of a profession, and everything that would develop them into healthy, honest men. They contract the habits of idleness, moral inertia, and of low debauch. The barracks are the hearthstone of alcoholism and of the shameful diseases which are spread all through the country to the very heart of the rural districts, bastardizing the race and decimating the population. Loose discipline, the fear of initiative and responsibilities, the attempt to avoid disciplinary punishments by all sorts of ruses, make the barracks, moreover, the very school of lying, hypocrisy, and moral chaos. It is impossible for a human being to come out from such surroundings after a three years' sojourn without having lost all sense of shame and those moral qualities which should give him his value and dignity as a man and his significance as a citizen. The young industrial workman no longer knows his trade; the young farmer, after having loafed so long in the wine shops of garrison towns, no longer desires to return to the soil, and agriculture is abandoned. . . . The economic equilibrium of the nation is therefore destroyed, and at the same time its moral and intellectual strength is ruined. Do not for a moment think that in these forlorn conclusions there is any exaggeration; you will find them developed by every writer, politician, or novelist, who has studied the matter; they are also found, if I may speak of it, in 'The Army against the Nation,' my book, for which I was prosecuted by the French Government at the beginning of last year, and honorably acquitted by the jury, as having told only the truth." He goes on to tell us of the class which the army builds up among the officials, and the political consequences. The "high grades" in the army, he declares, "are the entire monopoly of a few dynasties or coteries, of their kindred or of their fawning creatures. Carrying arms in the midst of a peaceful, unarmed people, they live as tho in a conquered territory, drawing their swords on every occasion, encouraging the violence of intoxicated young soldiers, terrorizing the population in all the little towns, where the democratic element is not numerous enough or sufficiently strong to oppose them. They are a State within a State." Discussing the "honor of the army" and its "conscience," he says: "Just as these officers have their peculiar justice, their special honor, so they have their peculiar kind of conscience, which allows them to be guilty of extortion, theft, violence, and massacre in the four corners of our colonial empire, where rank and honors are acquired by plundering inoffensive population." Of the fearful expense of militarism and the expenditure of money, he declares: "According to the terms of our republican constitution, the people's representatives appropriate money for the public expenses; they control the disbursement of sums furnished by the revenue. During twenty-five years they have voted 30,000,000,000 francs credit for military expenses; they have never obtained any accounts or auditors' reports of the manner of expenditure of this huge sum. For form's sake they send to the ministers lists of expenses, and the ministers communicate them to Parliament; but it is known and loudly proclaimed that these lists are false, and that the Budget Committee repeats each year, with sadness and resignation, that it is impossible for France to know what the military administration does with its money." This article, from which we have taken copious extracts, thus concludes:— "At present twelve million French citizens live in terror of the twenty thousand petty military employees whom they support; the normal development of the French Democracy is paralyzed, its very existence is compromised, by the threatening attitude of its army. And this army is an army which has never gotten over the humiliating defeats it has suffered, and which, on the contrary, is stained by the most wretched failures. . . . I leave this situation for the meditation of the citizens of any country which is careful of the dignity of its men and its own greatness." This will give somewhat of an idea of the evils of militarism in a republic,—the military education the whole world is receiving. But this is not all. Behind the army is something else; and this we will lay before our readers in our next.