CHAPTER III

THE PURPOSE OF ARMIES

But the great armies and navies are not really kept to-day for foreign conquest. Now and then, in obedience to the commercial spirit that rules the world, these vessels of destruction are sent to foreign seas. But the rulers of the earth live on fairly friendly terms. Long since, the most ambitious have abandoned their dreams of world power and are content to exploit a portion of the earth. When warships are sent to foreign seas they usually fire a salute rather than train their guns for death. Monarchs the world over respect each other. They are bound together by ties of common interest, if not of common love. When a ruler dies, even though the most tyrannical and despotic, every other ruler promptly sends condolences to the sorrowing court; their own subjects may die unwept, but a touch of common feeling moves them to mourn a ruler’s death. Nations are bound by many ties to preserve peace among each other. Scions of royal families are handed round in marriage from court to court, treaties of all sorts are made and ratified in most solemn form; and even more than this, the real owners of the world, those who possess the stocks and bonds which rest upon the wealth that the poor have labored to create, these real rulers who make war or peace by giving or withholding funds, these own the great bulk of the property of the various nations of the world, and will not lightly suffer their possessions to be destroyed. And yet these same real rulers, who stand behind the thrones of all the world, approve of this preparation for war, approve of taking millions of men from their homes and training them to kill, approve of every fort and gun and battleship. More than this, they contribute largely of their private funds to build batteries and equip militia, especially in the great cities of the earth. Through the speeches of their agents and the voice of their press, all this grim visage of war is for the stranger without their gates. But in reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when the owners of the earth shall speak the word. And these unfortunate countrymen are the outcast and despised, the meek and lowly ones of the world, the men whose ceaseless toil and unpaid efforts have built the forts and molded the cannon and sustained the soldiers that are used to shoot them down.

To say that these armies and frowning forts and gatling guns are needed to maintain peace and order at home is to admit at once that the great mass of men are held captive by the more powerful few. Organized soldiers and policemen, courts and sheriffs, with guns and forts and jails, have the greatest advantage over the disorganized mass who cannot act together, and who know not which way to turn to keep outside the meshes of the law. Not one in a thousand need be trained to arms and authority to keep the unorganized mass in the place reserved for it to live. The purpose of guns and armies is to furnish the few an easy and sure way to control the mass. Neither are these armies made of the ruling class. The officers, it is true, are generally taken from the favored ones, but the regular soldier is the man too poor and abandoned to find his place in any other of the walks of life. He is only fit to be an executioner of his fellow man. No ruler can love his subjects when he takes their money and their labor to buy cannon and train men to shoot them down. That this is the real purpose of standing armies and warlike equipments is plain to all who have eyes to see. More and more the rulers have learned to build their barracks and mass their troops not on the borders of their land but convenient to great cities, in the midst of districts thickly populated by working men. As nations grow older the opportunities of the masses grow less. More men are called to serve the state, and greater preparations are made to preserve the possessions of the rich. These soldiers are moved from place to place, are massed at time of need, not in accordance with the petition of the citizens from whose ranks the soldiers come, but in response to the request of the ruling class.

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Quite apart from the question of the rights of capital on one hand and labor on the other, what must be the effect of this policy of force and violence when reaching over long periods of time? A nation is really great and possessed of the lasting elements of strength in proportion as her people are strong, intelligent, and free. The rulers of a nation should owe their subjects some duty in return for the homage and taxes they receive. The ruler who deliberately governs his subjects by violence and force, and through tyranny and fear, must find in time that this policy of hatred and outrage is destroying and sapping the foundations of the state; the more strength and vitality that he draws from the poor and the more soldiers required to support arbitrary power, the greater the chasm that yawns beneath his feet. The loyalty that is kept through fear is lost with opportunity. The rulers of Rome before her destruction, and of France before the Revolution, had drawn all the soldiers from the people that the fields and shops could spare, and used these to support their tottering power. Kings can gain nothing by governing soldiers alone. They must have farmers, artisans, all sorts of producers, or their conquest is not worth the price. The policy of hatred and violence must in the end destroy the state. It can breed only hatred in the hearts of the outcast and the poor. If their subjection is incomplete, the throne is resting upon the shifting sands. If perfect and complete, their subjects are lifeless machines and their empires crumbling to decay. It is really idle to speculate as to whether love and brotherhood could accomplish more; it is certain they could not do less. To disband the armies and destroy the forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place of war and strife, could tend only to the building up of character, the elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state. True, the class lines would disappear. Brotherhood would have neither ruler nor ruled, would have no authority of man over man, would treat all as brothers and co-equals, and from it would grow a stronger state and a higher manhood than the world has known. Peaceful industry relieved from the burdens of soldiers and arms would inevitably increase, and life, rendered less burdensome by the exactions of authority, would lengthen and sweeten through the beneficent influence of love. No nation can be really great that is held together by gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.