Mobilisation

“ The complete readiness which the new system, when in full swing, will produce, cannot be obtained immediately. All that can be done in the transition period is to see that the number and quality of men available for mobilisation shall be at least as high as it is under the existing system. ”

“ The revolt of 500 men against conscription necessitated the mobilisation of a whole corps d'armée to subjugate them. They lived on the slopes of inaccessible mountains, and the troops had to make the mountain paths into roads practicable for artillery. ”

“ A large proportion of these would be enrolled on mobilisation, and would undertake garrison and other duties, for which they would be fitted after a short period of service, thus freeing all fully trained men for service in the field. ”

“ Since universal compulsory service was introduced and the nobility ceased to be prosperous the gates of military schools were opened wide to people of low extraction and to young men belonging to the lower strata of the people, but with a diploma from the civil schools. They formed a majority in the Army. Mobilisations, on the other hand, reinforced the Officers’ Corps by the infusion of a great many men of the liberal professions, who introduced new ideas and a new outlook. ”

“ Spirits had risen as the day grew older. For at dawn the cheeriest optimist is a pessimist, while at midday pessimists become optimists. In the early morning the German Army had been invincible. At lunch the Battalion was going to Berlin, on the biggest holiday of its long life!
The Subaltern, still suffering from the after-effects of inoculation against enteric, which had been unfortunately augmented by a premature indulgence in fruit, and by the inability to rest during the rush of mobilisation, did not spend a very happy night. ”

“ It must be remembered that never before had the Force been embodied, and that officers and men were civilians, few of whom had ever regarded mobilization as other than a remote possibility quite outside the range of practical politics. ”

“ But is not a corps of one hundred thousand dependents upon government, actuated by one spirit, obeying one will, and aiming at one end, more dangerous and formidable than a standing army? The standing army is separated from the mass of society, stationed in barracks or military quarters, and operates by physical force. The official corps is distributed and ramified throughout the whole country, dwelling in every city, village, and hamlet, having daily intercourse with society, and operates on public opinion. ”

“ I have already described those days of mobilization when an enormous number of young men were suddenly called to the colours out of all their ways of civil life, and answered that summons without enthusiasm for war, hating the dreadful prospect of it and cursing the nation which had forced this fate upon them. That first mobilization lasted for twenty-one days, and every day one seemed to notice the difference in the streets, the gradual thinning of the crowds, the absence of young manhood, the larger proportion of women and old fogeys among those who remained. ”

“ The mobilization of all the manhood of France, from boys of eighteen and nineteen to men of forty-five, was a demonstration of national unity and of a great people rising as one man in self-defence, which to the Englishman was an astounding and overwhelming phenomenon. ”

“ Then notice the discipline they have had as soldiers in the camp, on the march, on guard, in the battle, shoulder to shoulder with our men, sons, brothers, fathers, bravely fighting for the Union, that they might know what war is, and what it sometimes costs to secure liberty and save a nation from anarchy and ruin. ”

“ For the change of an army division from the trenches, tired, worn and bedraggled, moving wearily to its station of rest, with another army division, fresh and eager, moving up from its station of rest to the front, is indeed a social miracle. It is a fine bit of human machinery. So in terms of our modern democracy it may be well to review the interminable panorama of this democratic war. ”

“ What a revolution in the status of officers and men it would come to be, if, instead of a huge sink of idleness, dissipation and uselessness, the army were to become one great industrial school, a national university, an atmosphere of efficiency and work, and the country were delivered once and for ever, from the disgrace of panic, and the no longer imaginary danger of national extinction! ”

“ With prophetic eyes we may behold the victorious march of these farm units by companies, battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions, like a vast army of peace, silently spreading, absorbing and conquering the old selfish system, grandly demonstrating the solidarity of human life, and the irresistible force of the combined efforts of thousands of bravely unselfish souls, working and thinking in unison, filled with enthusiasm kindled and inspired by the magnitude and grandeur of the true purposes of life. ”

“ Mobilization is more necessary now than it was formerly, because we have to deal with the peasant population and masses of unskilled labor which cannot be utilized to the fullest extent by any other means than military discipline. ”

“ At the beginning we planned that a small body of volunteers should constitute our regular army; the balance, held as a reserve force or militia, remaining under control of the states. Militiamen and officers alike are generally untrained, the officers being popular fellows elected by their comrades and commissioned by the Government. ”

“ The transfer of troops from the state of peace to that of war is called mobilization. This is, of course, a matter which primarily depends on good administration, and its minutest details are in all states laid down beforehand. Reservists have to be summoned, and, on arrival, to be clothed and equipped out of stores maintained in peace. Officers and men of the regular army on leave have to be recalled, the whole medically examined for physical fitness to serve, and a thousand details have to be worked out before the unit is ready to move to its concentration station. ”

“ That democratic spirit has therefore always demanded that the armed force should be composed principally of the militia, the citizen soldiery, or, in extraordinary emergencies, of volunteers called out from the ranks of the people, to serve as soldiers for certain well-defined and stated purposes, and then, those stated purposes being accomplished, to return to their civic pursuits. ”

“ How can organizational strength in the resistance be developed? How can participants be trained? What resources (finances, equipment, etc.) will be required throughout the struggle? What types of symbolism can be most effective in mobilizing the population? ”

“ President,” he continued, dropping the jocose, and now rising to speak in form—“and yet, if our colleague's spirited proposal could be carried into effect, and men be found to volunteer under such military leaders as most of us would make,—or if the different towns, as has been suggested by others, would order out the militia on our requisition,—even then, it appears to me, we should raise a permanent and regularly enlisted force, to serve a rallying point or nucleus for the militia, or our patriotic friend's army of volunteers. ”

“ The irresistible force of military preparation drives everything before it. But the class-conscious labor movement obeys, not an outside force, but its own conviction, when it defends the ground upon which it stands, from attack in the east. ”

“ Thus the trait characterizing the militant structure throughout is that its units are coerced into their various combined actions. As the soldier's will is so suspended that he becomes in everything the agent of his officer's will, so is the will of the citizen in all transactions, private and public, overruled by that of the government. The coöperation by which the life of the militant society is maintained, is a compulsory coöperation. ”

“ One result of the 'great fear' was that volunteer forces of citizens, interested in restoring order, sprang up on all sides, in imitation of the National Guard just organised in Paris, to which they were destined before long to be assimilated; and these volunteer forces, though sometimes used by the bourgeois to repress the movements and to maintain the subjection of the labouring class, were still invaluable in restoring peace. ”

“ It is like an army which, entering on a campaign, finding itself without officers; the vacancies are for the boldest, most violent, those most oppressed by the previous rule, and who, leading the advance, shouting "forward" and thus form the leading groups. ”

“ Mobilization is a word with strenuous significance. When it is put into effect every able-bodied man must report without delay for service. His name is on the army lists; if he fails to report he is branded as a deserter. In Germany, the order to mobilize is issued by the Emperor and is immediately sent out by all military and civil authorities, at home or abroad. ”

“ When mobilization is announced the nation turns away from its everyday life and from the world’s calendar, and starts a carefully rehearsed set of operations executed according to an arbitrary schedule. ”

“ I thought of the men who were carrying on the war, in the newspapers—those who wrote: “The line has been pierced; why hesitate to throw in fifty divisions?” Or: “we have only to bring our reserves right up to the line. A hundred thousand men must at once fill the gap.” ”

“ To those who reside at the convulsed throbbing heart of a great revolution, a lifetime seems compressed into the compass of days and weeks; and men and women are conscious of growing prematurely old while watching the rushing, thundering tramp of events, portentous with the fate of nations. W——presented the appearance of a military camp, rather than the peaceful manufacturing town of yore. Every vacant lot was converted into a parade-ground—and the dash of cavalry, the low, sullen rumbling of artillery, and the slow, steady tread of infantry, echoed through its wide, handsome streets. ”

“ It is curious to see, therefore, how the first voluntary national army, long embodied, produced an antagonism, among the mass of the people, to standing armies altogether, a feeling which lasts even until now in theory, if not in fact. ”

“ The Volunteers numbered men from every class and station; the Citizen Army was made up of working-men who had the advantage of being under a man of decision and quick judgment. At four o'clock the Citizen Army mobilized in front of Liberty Hall to carry out the route march as planned. ”

“ And now, look at the soldiers: they enter the army as common men, with no common bond, from different provinces, unable to show any united resistance, with minds already tainted by the clergy and the school. ”

“ Does any one doubt the expediency of our being armed and under military discipline, even if we have always been sufferers at the hands of those claiming superiority? But enough of this. As to public demonstrations of this kind weakening the arm of the Federal Government, I must say that I was prepared to hear that remark among Democratic Union-savers, but I am startled to hear it from among our own ranks of unflinching abolitionists. ”

“ All State bodies, armed forces, political parties, people's groups, enterprises, public institutions, social organizations, and other organizations as well as all citizens must complete their national defense mobilization readiness in accordance with the law; and must accomplish their national defense mobilization tasks after the State issues a mobilization order. ”

“ A small standing army and a well equipped and well disciplined state militia are sufficient at ordinary times, and in an emergency the nation should, in the future as in the past, place its dependence upon the volunteers who come from all occupations at their country’s call and return to productive labor when their services are no longer required—men who fight when the country needs fighters and work when the country needs workers. ”

“ To improve mobilization the law required that the Army, as far as practical, be organized into brigades, divisions, and army corps, with the brigades and divisions perpetuating those that had served in the war. ”

“ Rapid movements and the acquisition of rebellious territory would have promoted volunteering, so that reinforcements could have been had as fast as transportation could have been obtained to carry them to their destination. ”

“ A standing army of professional soldiers is the most effective instrument in the hands of the dominant class, the greatest menace to democracy and popular liberty, and the most effective barrier to revolutionary change that could possibly be devised. ”

“ Can we inspire civilians with the same passionate self-forgetfulness in the pursuit of the higher ideals of peace? Men in a regiment have to a large extent the personal interests abolished. The organization they now belong to supports them and becomes their life. By their union with it a new being is created. Exercise, drill, maneuver, accentuate that unity, and esprit de corps arises, so that they feel their highest life is the corporate one ”

“ As soon as the subsistence of the troops can be assured, and their positions are well established, I shall, by an organized movement, cause each brigade of regulars and volunteers to send detachments, with supports, to clear its front, including sub-bourgs, of the enemy's parties, so as to oblige them to confine themselves within the walls of the city. ”

“ They speak with pity of us—Labour—their father.
“And now we will show them their father in his might. The little machines they have in their factories are toys we have given them and that for the time we leave in their hands. We do not think of the toys nor the soft-bodied women. We make of ourselves a mighty army, a marching army going along shoulder to shoulder. ”