Frederic Natusch Maude

“ The failure of compulsion if applied in the British Isles would be due to the fact that the principal factor of its success—the knowledge of what war must mean and the risk of immediate invasion—cannot be brought home to the people as long as the British navy retains its predominance. If the navy is adequate to prevent invasion, then compulsion is unnecessary; if it is inadequate, then the only way to make good its inadequacy is to bring home to the electors by a course of partial training the consequences which must ensue if they continue to neglect it. ”

“ The principle that every able-bodied male is liable to be called on for the defence of the state dates from the earliest times. The essential importance of the event lies in this, that at a critical moment this law passed by an obscure body of men—absolutely in defiance of the opinion of the greatest reformer that France at that moment had discovered, Carnot, and of the feelings of a very large proportion of the whole community—became permanent by the action of causes set in motion by Napoleon, which ultimately compelled all Europe to adopt similar legislation. ”

“ Now these are the two essential factors which modern methods of military training aim at developing, and these methods in turn evolved naturally from the conditions of service which compulsion introduced. The men who have undergone this training leave the ranks with bodies steeled to resist disease, and minds capable of prolonged concentrated effort. Hence they not only remain capable of work for a considerably longer period of time, but they also do better work throughout the whole time. ”

“ As the years went by, the Prussian military machine was turning out year by year an ever-increasing number of men, who by reason of the physical and moral training they had undergone were head and shoulders above the class whence they had sprung. These men soon asserted their superiority in the labour market and drove their weaker comrades to the wall. ”

“ The compulsory intercourse of all ranks compelled the classes to educate the masses—using the term “education” in its broadest sense. Free book-education itself had been forced on the nation as a military necessity of the moment, for without a certain degree of intellectual development in the recruits it was impossible to make soldiers of them within the short time available. ”

“ The strength of the army being definitely fixed by financial considerations, the proportion of men taken for service to the total number annually becoming liable fell off, during the ’eighties, to a very marked degree, and the men who escaped service, being as a consequence of their want of training less fitted for employment in the organized industries which were in process of evolution, swelled the ranks of the unemployed and thus afforded fresh material for the socialist propagandists to work upon. ”

“ Hence altogether about one million men are still alive and doing good work who without such training would be dead and buried; similarly there are in all some seven millions more, all doing better work day for day than they otherwise would have done. ”

“ Militia forces (corresponding to the former feudal levies) neither could find the specialized labour nor would afford the time—hence the necessity arose of enlisting men who had made the use of arms their special study and were content to abide by the rules of conduct their maintenance as organized bodies imposed. But wherever Europe happened to enjoy a few years of peace, the supply of men who had trained themselves to arms naturally decreased, and the state itself was compelled to assume the task of training its recruits. ”

“ There is perhaps no law on the statute-books of any nation which has exercised and is destined in the future to exercise a more far-reaching influence on the future of humanity than this little-known French act of 1798, introduced by General Jourdan to the Council of the Five Hundred, for it was the power thus conferred upon the French government which alone rendered the Napoleonic policy of conquest possible. “I can afford to expend thirty thousand men a month” ”

“ With the treaty of Frankfurt the last fears of the investors vanished, and capital, hitherto dammed back by the uncertainty of land tenure, particularly in the Rhine districts, literally poured into the country, inducing an era of expansion and prosperity for which one can hardly find a parallel, even in America. ”

“ Amongst the earliest problems of the French Revolution was the question of army reform, and compulsory service was at once proposed, and though for the time the opposition of most of the principal soldiers prevailed, ultimately a proposal was accepted by which voluntary enlistment was retained for the line, all unmarried citizens between eighteen and forty years of age constituted the militia, and the rest of the men the national guards for home defence. ”

“ To understand its full significance we must trace the line of evolution of the then existing armies of Europe.
In almost any state, in proportion as the central executive power prevailed over internal disturbance, the able-bodied males of each country ceased to have opportunities and incentives for training themselves to arms. Trade became more profitable than plunder, and men began to specialize in various directions. ”

“ The whole of Bavaria, Württemberg, and the districts along the Rhine had been saturated with French socialistic theories, and here the task of regeneration fell into other hands, and freedom, of a relative kind, had to be extorted by revolutionary means. To these reformers—many of them both devoted and enlightened thinkers—the armies of their own little states necessarily appeared as merely authorized oppressors of the people ”

“ If the proportion of men escaping service rose materially above one half of the total yearly contingent of men becoming available for service, the danger lay very near that the socialist vote might soon exceed all other interests put together, thus threatening the stability of all existing institutions. ”

“ The law definitely laid down the liability of every able-bodied French citizen to serve from his twentieth to his twenty-fifth year, leaving it to circumstances to determine how many classes or what proportion of each should be called up for service. ”

“ Men accustomed to deal only in hundreds find it difficult to adapt themselves to the business methods requisite to deal securely with millions, and there have been many severe crises due to over-production and speculation, which displaced large masses of workmen and brought misery to thousands of homes. ”

“ In the second place there was the knowledge of what war really means, sufficiently vivid and fresh in the minds of the masses to induce them to submit to the necessary restraints of military discipline. ”

“ For a discussion of the military features of conscription and of other forms of recruiting see Army, §§ 40 ff. The present article deals with the economic and social aspects of compulsory military service, for which, generally and non-technically, the word “conscription” is used more commonly than any other. The word occurs for the first time in France in the law of the 19th Fructidor (1798) , which prescribes the liability of les défenseurs conscrits to serve if required from their twentieth to twenty-fifth year of age. ”

“ The remarkable increase of population, the direct consequence of the broader understanding of elementary hygienic principles instilled into the men during their service with the colours, brought a fresh complication into the problem. ”

“ The men thus displaced, being obviously less fitted to maintain wives and families, found themselves supplanted by their stronger rivals in the affections of the women, and jealousy being thus evoked, they became as it were a nidus for revolutionary bacilli. ”

“ It was never anticipated that all men who had served their two years would become partisans of constituted authority, but only that, whilst all would learn the hopelessness of armed resistance against the force which held control of the solid-drawn cartridges and artillery material, the bulk at least would recognize the substantial advantages that accrued to them personally from their previous connexion with the services, and would form a solid bulwark against the spread of subversive doctrines. ”

“ Moreover, after the peace of Westphalia—the close of the great era of religious wars—wars were made for dynastic reasons and primarily for the acquisition of territory; and since the territory was of no use without inhabitants to pay revenue, the “principle of moderation was introduced into the conduct of hostilities, altogether foreign to their nature” (Clausewitz) . Men were no longer allowed to live at free quarters or to pillage towns. ”

“ This, with the exceedingly complicated nature of the weapons in use, was a very long process, and though even in the 16th century the idea of universal service was put forward by such statesmen as Machiavelli and Maurice of Nassau, practically it could not be put into force, because in the time the male population could economically give to their training, satisfactory results could not be obtained. ”

“ Briefly, however, it may be pointed out that under modern conditions of industry the greatest national wealth-producing power resides, not as formerly in the technical skill of the individual, which machinery is gradually superseding, but in the power of continuous collective effort of organized bodies, and that physical health and the power of mental concentration are the principal qualities required by the units of such bodies. ”

“ To meet this danger it was determined in 1893 to increase the annual contingent whilst diminishing the duration of colour service, so that approximately two-thirds of the men available should pass through the ranks, it being held that the habit of obedience to constituted authority acquired in the army, together with the silent influence which could be exercised on the ex-soldiers and reservists by the sympathy and example of their former commanders of all ranks, formed the best possible guarantee against the undue spread of socialistic doctrine. ”

“ Famine was spreading, political persecution was at its highest, and the ranks of the army became almost the only refuge where men could escape the terrors of secret denunciation. Moreover, experience in the Netherlands and the Palatinate had shown that men could live very comfortably at their enemy’s expense. ”

“ To the political economists of the period it seemed a deliberate waste of productive energy to take the young merchant or clerk from his work and force a musket into his hands, whilst other men already trained were willing to renew their contract to defend the state. To regulate this question and also to define more clearly the obligations of the citizen, Jourdan introduced before the Five Hundred a report calling for a reorganization of the army. ”

“ But the practical value and application of the book teaching had, in sheer self-defence, to be imparted by the better-class recruits to their social inferiors, and, in the unconscious exercise of these functions as teachers of one another, all found themselves strengthened in character and universal sympathies. ”

“ But with every improvement in the nature of hand firearms this ratio of superiority of the trained soldiers tended to disappear, whilst as campaigns became fewer and shorter the difficulty of obtaining war-trained soldiers, accustomed to fighting as the Spaniards had been, always increased. ”