Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on their fifty years’ work in vain.  They have, little by little, educated the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier, and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his country’s cause is a part of every citizen’s duty, for which he must be prepared by training.

The adoption of this principle will have further results.  So soon as every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority.  The citizen’s interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect.  He will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of England.

XXII.

THE CHAIN OF DUTY

The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which will be of some use to us.

We began by agreeing that the people of this country have not made entirely satisfactory arrangements for a competitive struggle, at any rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign state.

We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to obtain victory.  We discussed the theories which lead some of our countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war, and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements for disarmament.  We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these theories.

Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in conflict all the resources of its land and its people.  In the last war Great Britain’s national weapon was her navy, which she has for centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe.  The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century.  The great event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power, resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to think eternal.