|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 43
What will be in the future the dominant spiritual ideas of those
nations which hitherto have been known as Christian, is scarcely a
question of the twentieth century. Whatever variations of faith, in
direction or in degree, the close of that century may show, it is not
probable that so short a period will reveal the full change of
standards and of practice which necessarily must follow ultimately
upon a radical change of belief. That the impress of Christianity will
remain throughout the coming century is reasonably as certain as that
it took centuries of nominal faith to lift Christian standards and
practice even to the point they now have reached. Decline, as well as
rise, must be gradual; and gradual likewise, granting the utmost
possible spread of Christian beliefs among them, will be the
approximation of the Eastern nations, as nations, to the principles
which powerfully modify, though they cannot control wholly even now,
the merely natural impulses of Western peoples. And if, as many now
say, faith has departed from among ourselves, and still more will
depart in the coming years; if we have no higher sanction to propose
for self-restraint and righteousness than enlightened self-interest
and the absurdity of war, war--violence--will be absurd just so long
as the balance of interest is on that side, and no longer. Those who
want will take, if they can, not merely from motives of high policy
and as legal opportunity offers, but for the simple reasons that they
have not, that they desire, and that they are able. The European world
has known that stage already; it has escaped from it only partially by
the gradual hallowing of public opinion and its growing weight in the
political scale. The Eastern world knows not the same motives, but it
is rapidly appreciating the material advantages and the political
traditions which have united to confer power upon the West; and with
the appreciation desire has arisen.
Coincident with the long pause which the French Revolution imposed
upon the process of external colonial expansion which was so marked a
feature of the eighteenth century, there occurred another singular
manifestation of national energies, in the creation of the great
standing armies of modern days, themselves the outcome of the _lev�e
en masse_, and of the general conscription, which the Revolution
bequeathed to us along with its expositions of the Rights of Man.
Beginning with the birth of the century, perfected during its
continuance, its close finds them in full maturity and power, with a
development in numbers, in reserve force, in organization, and in
material for war, over which the economist perpetually wails, whose
existence he denounces, and whose abolition he demands. As freedom has
grown and strengthened, so have they grown and strengthened. Is this
singular product of a century whose gains for political liberty are
undeniable, a mere gross perversion of human activities, as is so
confidently claimed on many sides? or is there possibly in it also a
sign of the times to come, to be studied in connection with other
signs, some of which we have noted?
What has been the effect of these great armies? Manifold, doubtless.
On the economical side there is the diminution of production, the tax
upon men's time and lives, the disadvantages or evils so dinned daily
into our ears that there is no need of repeating them here. But is
there nothing to the credit side of the account, even perhaps a
balance in their favor? Is it nothing, in an age when authority is
weakening and restraints are loosening, that the youth of a nation
passes through a school in which order, obedience, and reverence are
learned, where the body is systematically developed, where ideals of
self-surrender, of courage, of manhood, are inculcated, necessarily,
because fundamental conditions of military success? Is it nothing that
masses of youths out of the fields and the streets are brought
together, mingled with others of higher intellectual antecedents,
taught to work and to act together, mind in contact with mind, and
carrying back into civil life that respect for constituted authority
which is urgently needed in these days when lawlessness is erected
into a religion? It is a suggestive lesson to watch the expression and
movements of a number of rustic conscripts undergoing their first
drills, and to contrast them with the finished result as seen in the
faces and bearing of the soldiers that throng the streets. A military
training is not the worst preparation for an active life, any more
than the years spent at college are time lost, as another school of
utilitarians insists. Is it nothing that wars are less frequent, peace
better secured, by the mutual respect of nations for each other's
strength; and that, when a convulsion does come, it passes rapidly,
leaving the ordinary course of events to resume sooner, and therefore
more easily? War now not only occurs more rarely, but has rather the
character of an occasional excess, from which recovery is easy. A
century or more ago it was a chronic disease. And withal, the military
spirit, the preparedness--not merely the willingness, which is a
different thing--to fight in a good cause, which is a distinct good,
is more widely diffused and more thoroughly possessed than ever it was
when the soldier was merely the paid man. It is the nations now that
are in arms, and not simply the servants of the king.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|