132 The military problem 



My first business is therefore to inquire what the tradition of early 

 times amounts to, and how far it may reasonably be taken as evidence 

 of fact. Arid it must be borne in mind that my subject is not the tech- 

 nical details of agriculture in general, but the nature of the labour 

 employed in agriculture. In ages when voluntary peace between 

 empires and peoples on bona fide equal terms was never a realized fact, 

 and as yet hardly a dream, the stability of a state depended on the 

 strength of its military forces, their number, efficiency, and means of 

 renewal. Mere numbers 1 were tried and failed. The hire of professional 

 soldiers of fortune 2 might furnish technical skill, but it was politically 

 dangerous. Their leaders had no personal sentiment in favour of the 

 state employing them, and their interest or ambition disposed them 

 rather to support a tyrant, or to become tyrants themselves, than to 

 act as loyal defenders of the freedom of the state. Mercenaries 3 hired 

 in the mass, barbarians, were less skilled but not less dangerous. That 

 a well-trained army of citizens was the most trustworthy organ of state- 

 protection, was not disputed: the combination of loyalty with skill 

 made it a most efficient weapon. The ratio of citizen enthusiasm to 

 the confidence created by exact discipline varied greatly in the Greek 

 republics of the fifth century BC. But these two elements were normally 

 present, though in various proportions. The common defect, most 

 serious in those states that played an active part, was the smallness of 

 scale that made it difficult to keep up the strength of citizen armies 

 exposed to the wastage of war. A single great disaster might and did 

 turn a struggle for empire into a desperate fight for existence. The 

 constrained transition to employment of mercenary troops as the 

 principal armed force of states was both a symptom and a further cause 

 of decay in the Greek republics. For the sturdy soldiers of fortune 

 were generally drawn from the rustic population of districts in which 

 agriculture filled a more important place than political life. There is 

 little doubt that a decline of food-production in Greece was the result: 

 and scarcity of food had long been a persistent difficulty underlying 

 and explaining most of the doings of the Greeks. The rise of Macedon 

 and the conquests of Alexander proved the military value of a national 

 army of trained rustics, and reasserted the superiority of such troops 

 to the armed multitudes of the East. But Alexander's career did not 

 leave the world at peace. His empire broke up in a period of dynastic 

 wars; for to supply an imperial army strong enough to support a single 

 control and guarantee internal peace was beyond the resources of 

 Macedonia. 



If an army of considerable strength, easily maintained and recruited, 

 loyal, the servant of the state and not its master, was necessary for 



1 Case of Persia. 2 Cases of Messana, Syracuse, etc. 3 Case of Carthage. 



