THE MILITANT TYPE OF SOCIETY. 591 



can be used for offensive action ; and we may also noto 

 that the tendency shown in the army during the past genera 

 tion to sink the military character whenever possible, by 

 putting on civilian dresses, is now checked by an order to 

 officers in garrison towns to wear their uniforms when off 

 duty, as they do in more militant countries. Whether, since 

 the date named, usurpations of civil functions by military 

 men (which had in 1873-4 gone to the extent that thero 

 were 97 colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants employed 

 from time to time as inspectors of science and art classes) 

 have gone further, I cannot say ; but there has been a mani 

 fest extension of the militant spirit and discipline among the 

 police, who, wearing helmet-shaped hats, beginning to carry 

 revolvers, and looking upon themselves as half soldiers, have 

 come to speak of the people as &quot; civilians.&quot; To an increasing 

 extent the executive has been over-riding the other govern- 



O o 



mental agencies ; as in the Cyprus business, and as in the 

 doings of the Indian Viceroy under secret instructions from 

 home. In various minor ways are shown endeavours to free 

 officialism from popular checks ; as in the desire expressed in 

 the House of Lords that the hanging of convicts in prisons, 

 entrusted entirely to the authorities, should have no other 

 witnesses; and as in the advice given by the late Home 

 Secretary (on llth May, 1878) to the Derby Town Council, 

 that it should not interfere with the chief constable (a mili 

 tary man) in his government of the force under him a step 

 towards centralizing local police control in the Home Office. 

 Simultaneously we see various actual or prospective exten 

 sions of public agency, replacing or restraining private agency. 

 There is the &quot; endowment of research,&quot; which, already par 

 tially carried out by a government fund, many wish to carry 

 further ; there is the proposed act for establishing a registra 

 tion of authorized teachers ; there is the bill which provides 

 central inspection for local public libraries; there is the 

 scheme for compulsory insurance a scheme showing us in 

 an instructive manner the way in which the regulating policy 



