Novpmber 13, igi5. 
LAMD AND WATER 
THE FORUM. 
A Commentary on , Presentrday- Problems. 
Si.' ^ 'r> < 
AN aiticle in -the current- issue of the 
' Nineteenth -CentHry entitled "True Na- 
tional Service " takes the country to 
task for not being whole-heartedly a 
" nation at war." This article is in the 
tradition of our English habit of self -deprecia- 
tion so widely and in many ways so wholesomely 
developed since the decay of rowdy jingoism after 
the Boer War ; but is conceived in a spirit of 
generous idealism, is temperate not carping, and 
very rightly prescinds from the vexed question 
of conscription. It is indeed a fair and moderate 
expression of that criticism of national short- 
comings which tends to take the form of distrust 
of the general spirit of the people ; which, recog- 
nising the obvious clumsiness of our democratic 
method and the hazard of mingling political with 
military considerations clamours for regimenta- 
':ion , seeks for simple solutions of infinitely com- 
plex problems ; and is a little led astray by the 
claims of symmetry and convenience and by the 
magic of phrases. 
Unlike the most of the critics of his school, 
however, the writer insists on the supreme im- 
portance of the aftermath of war ; recognises im- 
plicitly perhaps, rather than in set terms, that 
victory is a means, not an end ; recognises, even, 
that there are victories which may be worse than 
defeat — a hard saying to many. 
" Be the cause what it may, the result what 
it may, so long as freedom be maintained, war 
has its rich rewards, as well as its griefs and 
sacrifices, for a people who put their hearts and 
souls into the struggle. And when a wide view 
IS taken of the abiding as well as the transitory 
results, it becomes clear: that these rewards are 
of greater value than any of the spoils and con- 
ditions which victory can win. War, which can 
bum out the effete and decadent products of 
luxury and ease, can also inject new. force and 
virility into the veins of a nation ; but, good as 
its surgery may be, the cauterising and cutting 
will simply leave a people weaker if they do not 
submit themselves body and soul to the cure. 
It is upon the spirit in which a nation throws 
itself into a conflict that much of war's best 
recompense depends." 
That IS a passage . which- all -but the doctrinaire 
pacifist and the egregious jingo could fairly sub- 
scribe. It is, then, the more worth while to examine 
whether there lurk no fallacy in the generous 
rhetoric with which the writer develops his thesis. 
His main proposition is that, all questions of 
mditary efficiency aside, the way of the State claim 
to service is a more excellent way than that of the 
State call to service, because the spiritual fruits 
of war will accrue to a nation in the proportion in 
which it is a " nation at war." A " nation at war " 
IS a nation where everyone is ordered rather than 
urged to take his share of work or fighting or 
finapxial sacrifice. 
These arc both assumptions that must on 
reflection be substantially modified. It seems 
certain, so far as anything can be certain in these 
praeter-physical regions, that the abiding moral 
^^ 
X 
effect of ' a' widespread voluntary tespbilse to the 
State call is greater than' the automatic- response 
to the State claim 
The corporate effect on a people of the sum 
of conflicts fought out by multitudes of individual 
wills, conflicts of right and duty against ease, 
indift'erence or fear, or quite often of duty against 
duty, ought to be immeasurably greater in the 
spiritual kingdom, if there be anything in the 
doctrine of responsibility, than any wholesale 
acceptance of an organised system. It is notori- 
ously easier to assume a difficult and dangerous 
duty in company with others than freely to elect 
to face it The deliberate choice by so many of 
our race of all that service involves is almost the 
most magnificent single phenomenon of the war 
True, all this business of heart-searchings 
and individual decisions may be a clumsy and 
in ah obvious sense inefficient process But we 
are here considering, at our author's invitation, 
not efficiency, but spiritual effect. We find, in- 
deed, the same sort of clumsiness as is inherent in 
all democractic action where, a real, not merely a 
nominal freedom is exercised. Autocratic regi- 
mentation, is the " efficient " system as our 
German enemy has unquestionably proved ; so 
uncomfortably efficient that a Ferdinand can push a 
nation into war in a cause which his people almost 
certainly disapproves. The processes of demo- 
cracy where responsibility is thrown upon the 
citizens not upon the head or the dominant clique 
are ponderous and tiresome, and have their own 
dangers. But that we should be spiritually 
advantaged to surrender our substantial heritage 
of freedom in this desperate crisis of our fate is a 
very dubious inferencie. 
Let us give the whole matter a concrete turn. 
Had German Labour reached the stage of political 
freedom attained by Labour in Great Britain there 
would have been no such war as the present — a 
consideration which is pregnant with the sugges- 
tion (especially with regard to this matter of the 
fruits and consequences of war) : that eveti extreme 
democratic privilege is not a thing lightly to throw 
aside. It. is by no means to assume that Labour 
is impeccable. Just as the " managing classes " 
have found it hard to divest themselves of a 
traditional habit of thinking of the workers as 
so many cogs in the machine, mere material of 
war as of production ; and retain the honest belief 
that labour had got a little out of hand with its ( 
rights ; reservations and restrictions : so Trade 
Union enthusiasts tended to be unduly suspicious 
of the " bosses," have been a little ifttiransigeant, 
and very much too much inclined" to set up 
organised labour as a sacrosanct corporation with 
conflicting loyalties within the state ; while in- j 
dividuais, and groups mischievously led, have j 
unquestionably adopted positions which they will 
be glad to be able to forget. Yet it remains true 
most significantly true, that the stubbornness ol 
organised labour and its instinctive opposition to 
the clamour for " regimenting " has been fur al! 
its elements of perverseness and danger a 
substantially good thing. 
{Continued on page 5.) 
