Military caste

“ The military caste, and the clerical caste are the masters of the day. How much of our propaganda can we restore the moment war is over is what I ask? And what will the reactionaries not dare to do against us? ”

“ That philosophy involved the cession to imperial Germany of the best years of young German manhood, the training of German youths to be killers of men. It involved the creation of a military caste, arrogant beyond all precedent, a caste that set its strength and pride against the righteousness of democracy, against the possession of wealth and bodily comforts, a caste that visualized itself as part of a power-mad Kaiser's assumption that he and God were to shape the destinies of earth. ”

“ In this Capital of an Empire, whose foundation is set on bayonets and swords and the “biggest guns,” where militarism runs riot, there is no surprise in finding the streets filled with soldiers and officers, and to meet frequently a marching company, nor does it astonish one to see here the extreme development of the spirit of military caste. ”

“ The military caste having nearly all migrated southwards, the nation remained disarmed and at the mercy of foreign conquerors. Strangers detested by the people had been entrusted with the defence of the empire, and public discontent gradually broke into open revolt. ”

“ For in Europe, too, the propagation of an anti-physical creed went hand in hand with the systematic depreciation of secular work, excepting, perhaps, the trade of professional manslaughter, the military caste, which here, as in India, found always means to enforce respect by methods of their own. ”

“ First, that on a sudden cessation of the war, military life and habits could not be shaken off, and, having become rudely and widely predominant, would bias the country toward an aggressive policy, or, still worse, would find vent in predatory or revolutionary operations. Secondly, that a military caste would grow up with its habits of exclusiveness and command, and would influence the tone of politics in a direction adverse to republican freedom. ”

“ A large group of young men of means and leisure, not a few belonging to the old nobility. They serve because it is a family tradition, because a man must do something, because of the social prestige of the uniform—not seldom with a view to the larger price which officers command in the matrimonial market in the form of a dowry. They are, on the whole, amiable, inefficient and totally without prestige with their men. The old military caste, still the backbone of the German army, is merely an uninteresting survival in France. ”

“ Is it so certain, moreover, that the lawyer caste, the self-advertising caste, and the financial caste are not all of them a great deal worse, even a great deal more dangerous to peace? Is a country any more likely to be safe, happy, and prosperous under the régime of a talking caste—of windbags resourcefully keeping their bellows full of air, and wheedling the most numerous with transparent {155} falsehoods—than where civil servants of tried wisdom and experience are responsible for carrying on affairs of state, aided at their high task by sober military opinion? ”

“ Thus war is endemic, and every citizen of these democracies, every worker ant, has to take part in the fighting. In certain species (Pheidole pallidula) , the military caste is distinct from the working caste. The soldier takes no part in domestic work, but idles away the days in barracks, with nothing to do save at the times when life has to be staked for the defence of the community. [2] There are no leaders, or at any rate no permanent leaders. We see neither kings nor generals. ”

“ Because in India, as we soon found, one man will only do his own mite of work, and scorns the idea of making himself generally useful. Any attempt to enlarge the sphere of their duties would lead, so we were told, to loss of caste. There were, of course, exceptional cases, such as that of the native servant who, on being asked by a new-comer as to his caste, replied, 'Same caste as master, drink brandy sahib.' Owing to the great influx of officers from home, all in a hurry to be off, servants were especially difficult to find. ”

“ They feel that we are sincere in our hatred of the pride of caste. They applaud our republican speeches. In return, they confide to us their grievances and their despair. The poor devils are absolutely unanimous in detesting this horrible butchery.
It is unquestionable that the terrible burden of the war—the most terrible burden of death, weariness, and misery, that has ever weighed humanity down—presses more heavily upon their shoulders than upon ours. We have been held up in the trenches since September. On their side, for a year they have had no respite. ”

“ We did all that could be done for our wounded men. The strength of caste prejudices was so potent that, although in pangs of thirst from pain and general shock to the system, they would accept nothing from our hands. ”

“ Another extraordinary moral consequence flows from this insufficiency of defence: “If the enemy fails to defend his country, we may rightfully appropriate what we want.” Here, now, is a nice question of martial law or casuistry, solved with the simplicity of an ancient Roman. In other words, when in the enemy’s country, the army shall be strictly careful not to seize, capture or appropriate to military or private uses, any property—that it cannot get.
“They (the Southern people) have lost all title to property, and can lose nothing not already forfeited.” ”

“ In others were invalids, soldiers’ wives and children pertaining to regiments13 employed in the war proceeding against China; many as yet unaware that they had been made widows and orphans by the climate of Chusan and coast generally.
Here the conduct of our lads—​for they had scarcely become men—​became so reckless that military discipline had to be rigidly enforced, while in many instances severe or fatal illness seemed to be the direct result of their own misconduct. As a ready, and as thought at the time effectual, means of coercion, corporal punishment was awarded by courts-martial. ”

“ When you have formed those hirelings into a private army to do your bidding against the lives of your fellow citizens, is it not late in the day for you to call up ‘the Spirit of the Republic’? You have gloated in triumph over your victories and the wants of the people. You have seen us surrounded by starvation and destitution. You, professing Christianity, have made us objects of your contempt and insult. Our daughters have not been safe from the contaminating gaze of your weak, puerile progeny. You have adopted crests, castes, social distinctions, sham aristocracy. ”

“ The product of despotic militarism in a land where the army is supreme and the civilian is despised, the German officers are full of the pride of caste. In China they were scarcely inclined to regard those of the other allied troops as equals. ”

“ Such loss may be compared to excommunication in the middle ages, or to a condemnation for an infamous crime in modern Europe. To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, relations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him. ”

“ People are always talking about the caste feeling of the officers, and it is solemnly trotted out when it is a question of excluding unwelcome elements from the officers' corps, or when an officer strikes a civilian with his sword, or whenever an officer fights a duel with a comrade or anyone else. When the cry is raised against them by the other classes the officers always defend themselves with, 'Remember we belong to the highest caste; we have our own sense of honour, which you cannot understand ”

“ It is our belief that conscript armies, with their large corps of professional officers, are a grave menace to peace. Conscription involves the degradation of human personality, and the destruction of liberty. Barrack life, military drill, blind obedience to commands, however unjust and foolish they may be, and deliberate training for slaughter undermine respect for the individual, for democracy and human life.
It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will, or without conviction as to the justice of their action. ”

“ It has practically denied thousands the right to make the Army a profession, and has turned many educated N.C.O.'s out into the world to become somewhat fierce antagonists of a system largely founded on privilege and caste. But things are improving. And, in passing, it is only fair to observe that the men produced by the old system were really of the ruling caste—leaders and fighters, and gentlemen with very few exceptions. ”

“ Idolatry has formerly been, and to some extent still is, publicly patronized and subsidized. Its immodest and cruel rites have been honored with the attendance of Government officers, and paid for from funds under Government control. The system of Caste, which, in every part of it, contradicts and counteracts the Christian religion, has been recognized in Government arrangements for the administration of justice, as well as in the organization of the army, and selfish humanity and contempt of their fellow-men and subjects, have thus received the highest official sanction. ”

“ But to rely on undisciplined, ill-officered men, though each were individually as brave as Caesar, to resist the well-directed impulse of veterans, is to act in defiance of reason and experience. We flattered ourselves, that the constitutional restriction on the use of militia, combined with the just apprehension of danger to liberty from a standing army, would force those entrusted with the conduct of national affairs, to make seasonable provision for a naval force. ”

“ The truth is that, just as in the family the teacher must not spare the rod, and punishments cannot be dispensed with in the State, so military chastisement can never be allowed to fall into abeyance in the Empire. ”

“ It is claimed that war among civilized nations will soon become an impossibility because of the growing devastating power of modern weapons of warfare. In like manner, caste is speedily passing through its very excesses to a reductio ad absurdum; its spirit is so rampant, and its gross evils are becoming so intolerable, that even the patient inhabitants of India will soon cease to endure the ruin which this monster of their own creation carries on among them. ”

“ But their continued enforcement is not for the protection or control of the army, or its officers or soldiers. These remain subject to the laws of war, and are responsible for their conduct only to their own government, and the tribunals by which those laws are administered. If guilty of wanton cruelty to persons, or of unnecessary spoliation of property, or of other acts not authorized by the laws of war, they may be tried and punished by the military tribunals. ”

“ It is easy to imagine the soldiers’ disgust at finding themselves subjects to a mere legal pedant, in the place of their popular idol and born leader Caracalla, subjects of a man whose prime object seemed to be the infliction of harsh and unnecessary punishments in all matters concerning the ordinary enjoyments common to their state and life—a ruler whose first reforms were to make criminal offences those natural pleasures which were alone considered to make the strenuous military life endurable. ”

“ To deprive him of the use of these weapons is to disable him for action .How are you going to break up Caste, if people are not free to consider whether it accords with reason? How are you going to break up Caste if people are not free to consider whether it accords with morality? ”

“ For it is singular, the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary crimes, but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that are utterly out of their power to prevent. Those who have patiently submitted to imprisonment,—those who have not flinched from the scourge,—those who have been as unmoved as marble under torture,—those who have laughed at the menaces of death itself,—have instantly given way, when it has been attempted to subject them to any of those pollutions by which they lose caste. ”

“ You live,—and you live, not to lay aside, but to persist in your audacity.
I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I wish not to appear negligent amid such danger to the state; but I do now accuse myself of remissness and culpable inactivity. A camp is pitched in Italy, at the entrance of Etruria, in hostility to the republic; the number of the enemy increases every day; and yet the general of that camp, the leader of those enemies, we see within the walls—aye, and even in the senate—planning every day some internal injury to the republic. ”

“ Unless done away, it will be a stain on the national character—it is a violation of the Constitution; I believe it is against the law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes, that the strength and character of our army are thus impaired; infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapine—familiarised to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier!" He then proceeded to give the Americans credit still for a natural leaning towards England; believed that they might be drawn from their alliance with France ”