306 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



tionists, foreigners, even including Frenchmen and flogged for 

 every offence. Its strength was largely due to the fact that the 

 better officers got rid to a great extent of the old system of 

 brutality and appealed to the men's patriotism. Certainly 

 Nelson's success was in a great measure due to this. On the 

 other hand, the mutinies that nearly ruined us were traceable to 

 the view that brute force is everything in discipline. In the 

 same way in the days when flogging was generally regarded as 

 the only means of controlling the private soldier, there were 

 some regiments, and those among the best, where it was reduced 

 to a minimum. In fact, something beyond physical force is 

 wanted to make armies strong. But to insist upon this is not 

 necessarily to undervalue the exuberance of animal vigour that 

 characterises the men who fight the nation's battles. At present, 

 however, I wish to lay stress upon the necessity of something 

 beyond this, a splendid thing though it is, if an army is to inspire 

 terror in its enemies. And this something, I believe, cannot be 

 entirely dissociated from religion. An individual fighting man 

 may be a despiser of all such things. But being so, he is merely 

 a machine and a machine requires to be set in motion. To use 

 an Americanism, he must be " enthused." National spirit (alive 

 in others though not in the man we are imagining) supplies the 

 motive power, infecting even those who are indifferent and 

 apathetic. And national spirit, if entirely sundered from re- 

 ligion, is found before long to decay. For without religion a 

 nation tumbles to pieces, the power to restrain vice and selfish- 

 ness being wanting. National spirit will check such undermining 

 influences as long as the enemy are at the gates. Its influence 

 wanes during the piping times of peace. 



State In the first half of the eighteenth century England seemed to 

 building j )e gunk j n mere brutishness, without religion or national spirit. 

 The revival of our greatness came with Chatham's revival of 

 nobler principles, with his protest against political corruption 

 and jobbery. And it was not long before this that the religious 

 movement began that is associated with the names of the two 

 Wesleys. Ever since that time there has been in progress a 

 strong national movement never divorced from religion, which 



