SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MILITARY CONSCRIPTION
General military conscription is not a political accident, but the extreme limit of contradiction contained in the social life-conception--Rise of power in society--The basis of power is personal violence--The organization of armed men, an army, is required by power to enable it to accomplish violence--The rise of power in society, that is, of violence, destroys by degrees the social life-conception--Attitude of power toward the masses, that is to say, the oppressed--Governments endeavor to make workmen believe in the necessity of State violence for their preservation from external foes--But the army is needed principally to defend government from its own subjects, the oppressed working-men--Address of Caprivi--All the privileges of the ruling classes are assured by violence--Increase of armies leads to a general military conscription--General military conscription destroys all the advantages of social life which it is the duty of the State to guard--General military conscription is the extreme limit of obedience, as it demands in the name of the State the abnegation of all that may be dear to man--Is the State needed?--The sacrifices which it requires from citizens through the general military conscription have no longer any basis--Hence it is more advantageous for man to rebel against the demands of the State than to submit to them.
The efforts which the educated men of the upper classes are making to silence the growing consciousness that the present system of life must be changed, are constantly on the increase, while life itself, continuing to develop and to become more complex without changing its direction, as it increases the incongruities and suffering of human existence, brings men to the extreme limit of this contradiction. An example of this uttermost limit is found in the general military conscription.
It is usually supposed that this conscription, together with the increasing armaments and the consequent increase of the taxes and national debts of all countries, are the accidental results of a certain crisis in European affairs, which might be obviated by certain political combinations, without change of the interior life.
This is utterly erroneous. The general conscription is nothing but an internal contradiction which has crept into the social life-conception, and which has only become evident because it has arrived at its utmost limits at a period when men have attained a certain degree of material development.
The social life-conception transfers the significance of life from the individual to mankind in general, through the unbroken continuity of the family, the tribe, and the State.
According to the social life-conception it is supposed that as the significance of life is comprised in the sum total of mankind, each individual will of his own accord sacrifice his interests to those of the whole. This in fact has always been the case with certain aggregates, like the family or the tribe.
In consequence of custom, transmitted by education and confirmed by religious suggestion, and without compulsion, the individual merges his interests in those of the group, and sacrifices himself for the benefit of the whole.
But the more complex became societies, the larger they grew,--conquest especially contributing to unite men in social organizations,--the more individuals would be found striving to attain their ends at the expense of their fellow-men; and thus the necessity for subjugation by power, or, in other words, by violence, became more and more frequent.
The advocates of the social life-conception usually attempt to combine the idea of authority, otherwise violence, with that of moral influence; but such a union is utterly impossible.
The result of moral influence upon man is to change his desires, so that he willingly complies with what is required of him. A man who yields to moral influence takes pleasure in conforming his actions to its laws; whereas authority, as the word is commonly understood, is a means of coercion, by which a man is forced to act in opposition to his wishes. A man who submits to authority does not do as he pleases, he yields to compulsion, and in order to force a man to do something for which he has an aversion, the threat of physical violence, or violence itself, must be employed: he may be deprived of his liberty, flogged, mutilated, or he may be threatened with these punishments. And this is what constitutes power both in the past and in the present.
Despite the unremitting efforts of rulers to conceal these facts, and to attribute a different significance to authority, it simply means the rope and chain wherewith a man is bound and dragged, the lash wherewith he is flogged, the knife or ax wherewith his limbs, nose, ears, and head are hewed off. Authority is either the menace or the perpetration of these acts. This was the practice in the times of Nero and Genghis Khan, and is still in force even in the most liberal governments, like the republics of France and America. If men submit to authority, it is only because they fear that if they were to resist, they would be subjected to violence. All the requisitions of the State, such as the payment of taxes and the fulfilment of public duties, the submission to penalties in the form of exile, fines, etc., to which men seem to yield voluntarily, are always enforced by the physical threat or the reality of physical punishment.
Physical violence is the basis of authority.
It is the military organization that makes it possible to inflict physical violence, that organization wherein the entire armed force acts as one man, obeying a single will. This assemblage of armed men, submitting to one will, forms what is called an army. The army has ever been and still is the basis of an authority, vested in the commanding generals; and the most engrossing interest of every sovereign, from the Roman Cæsars to the Russian and German emperors, has always been to protect and flatter the army, for they realize that when the army is on their side, power is also in their hands.
It is the drilling and the increase of the troops required for the maintenance of authority which has brought into the social life-conception an element of dissolution.
The aim of authority, and its consequent justification, is to restrain those men who are endeavoring, by methods which are detrimental to those of mankind in general, to promote their own interests. But whether authority has been acquired by force of arms, or by hereditary succession, or by election, men who have gained authority are in no way different from their fellow-men; they are just like all others, not inclined to waive their own interests in favor of the many, but, since they hold power in their hands, are more likely to make the interests of the many give way to their own. Whatever measures may have been devised by way of restraining those in authority who might seek their own ends at the expense of the public, or to vest authority in the hands of infallible men, no satisfactory results have as yet been attained.
Attributing divine right to kings, hereditary succession, election; congresses, parliaments, and senates;--none of these have ever yet proved effectual. Everybody knows that no expedient has ever succeeded either in committing authority into the hands of infallible men, or of preventing its abuses. On the contrary, we know that men who have the authority, be they emperors, ministers of State, chiefs of police, or even policemen, always are more liable, because of their position, to become immoral,--that is, to put their own private interests before those of the public,--than men who do not possess such an authority; and this is inevitable.
The social life-conception could be justified only while all men voluntarily sacrificed their private interests to those of the public in general; but no sooner did men appear who refused to sacrifice their interests, than authority, in other words, violence, was required to restrain these men. Thus there entered into the social life-conception, and the organization based on it, a principle containing within itself the germs of dissolution,--the principle of authority, or the tyranny of the few over the many. In order that the authority held by certain men might fulfil its object, which is to restrain those who are trying to further their own interests to the detriment of society in general, it would be necessary to have it in the hands of infallible men, as is supposed to be the case in China, or as it was believed to be in the Middle Ages, and is even at the present time by those who have faith in consecration by unction. It is only under such conditions that the social organization can be justified.
But as no such conditions exist, and, furthermore, as men who are in authority, from the very fact of its possession, must ever be far from being saints, the social organization that is based upon authority cannot possibly have any justification.
If there ever was a time when a low standard of morality, and the general tendency of men toward violence, called for an authority possessing the power to restrict this violence, an authority whose existence may have been an advantage,--that is, when the violence of the State was less than the violence of individuals toward each other,--we cannot help seeing now that this prerogative of the State, when violence no longer exists, cannot go on forever. Morals improved in proportion to the gradual decrease of individual violence, while the prerogative of authority lost ground in measure as it became corrupted by the possession of unbridled power.
The entire history of the last 2000 years will have been told when we have described this change in the relations between the moral development of man and the demoralization of governments. In its simplest form it runs thus: men lived together in tribes, in families, and in races, and were at enmity one with another; they employed violence, they spread desolation, they murdered one another. Thus devastation was on a scale both great and small: man fought with man, tribe with tribe, family with family, race with race, nation with nation. The larger and more powerful communities absorbed the weaker ones; and the greater and more vigorous became the aggregation of men, the more seldom did one hear of acts of violence within these communities, and the more secure the continuity of their existence appeared.
When the members of a tribe or a family unite together to form one community, they are naturally less hostile to each other, and the tribes and families are not so likely to die out; while among the citizens of a State subjected to one authority the contentions seem even less frequent, and hence is the life of the State on a basis still more assured.
These fusions into larger and larger aggregates took place, not because men realized that it would be to their advantage, as is illustrated by the fable that tells of the falling of the Varegs in Russia, but are due rather to natural growth on the one hand, and struggle and conquest on the other.
When conquest was achieved, the authority of the conqueror put an end to internal strife, and the social life-conception was justified. But this justification is only temporary. Internal feuds cease only when the pressure of authority is brought to bear with greater weight upon individuals formerly inimical to one another. The violence of the internal struggle, not annihilated by authority, is the offspring of authority itself. Authority is in the hands of men who, like all the rest, are ever ready to sacrifice the common weal if their own personal interests are at stake; with the sole difference that these men, encountering no resistance from the oppressed, are wholly subject to the corrupting influence of authority itself.
Therefore it is that the evil principle of violence relegated to authority is ever increasing, and the evil becomes in time worse than that which it is supposed to control: whereas, in the individual members of society, the inclination to violence is always diminishing, and the violence of authority becomes less and less necessary.
As its power increases in measure of its duration, State authority, though it may eradicate internal violence, introduces into life other and new forms of violence, always increasing in intensity. And though the violence of authority in the State is less striking than that of individual members of society toward each other, its principal manifestation being not that of strife, but of oppression, it exists none the less, and in the highest degree.
It cannot be otherwise; for not only does the possession of authority corrupt men, but, either from design or unconsciously, rulers are always striving to reduce their subjects to the lowest degree of weakness,--for the more feeble the subject, the less the effort required to subdue him.
Therefore violence employed against the oppressed is pushed to its utmost limit, just stopping short of killing the hen that lays the golden egg. But if the hen has ceased to lay, like the American Indians, the Fiji Islanders, or the Negroes, then it is killed, despite the sincere protests of the philanthropists against that mode of procedure.
The most conclusive proof of this assertion, at the present time, is the position of the working-men, who are in truth simply vanquished men.
Despite all the pretended efforts of the upper classes to lighten their position, all the working-men of the world are subjected to an immutable iron rule, which prescribes that they shall have scarcely enough to live upon, in order that their necessities may urge them to unremitting toil, the fruits of which are to be enjoyed by their masters, in other words, their conquerors.
It has always been the case that, after the long continuance and growth of power, the advantages accruing to those who have submitted to it have failed, while the disadvantages have multiplied.
Thus it is and thus it always has been, under whatsoever form of government the nation may have lived; only that where despotism prevails authority is confined to a limited number of oppressors, and violence takes on a ruder form, while in the constitutional monarchies, and in the republics of France and America, authority is distributed among a greater number of oppressors, and its manifestations are less rude; but the result, in which the disadvantages of dominion are greater than the advantages, and the method--reduction of the oppressed to the lowest possible degree of abjection, for the benefit of the oppressors, remain ever the same.
Such has been the position of all the oppressed, but until lately they have been unaware of the fact, and for the most part have innocently believed that governments were instituted for their benefit, to preserve them from destruction, and that to permit the idea that men might live without governments would be a thought sacrilegious beyond expression; it would be the doctrine of anarchy, with all its attendant horrors.
Men believed, as in something so thoroughly proved that it needed no further testimony, that as all nations had hitherto developed into the State form, this was to remain the indispensable condition for the development of mankind forever.
And so it has gone on for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, and the governments, that is to say, their representatives, have endeavored, and still go on endeavoring, to preserve this delusion among the people.
As it was during the time of the Roman emperors, so it is now. Although the idea of the uselessness, and even of the detriment, of power enters more and more into the consciousness of men, it might endure forever, if governments did not think it necessary to increase the armies in order to support their authority.
It is the popular belief that governments increase armies as a means of defense against other nations, forgetting that troops are principally needed by governments to protect them against their own enslaved subjects.
This has always been necessary, and has grown more so with the spread of education, the increase of intercourse among different nationalities; and at the present time, in view of the communist, socialist, anarchist, and labor movements, it is a more urgent necessity than ever. Governments realize this fact, and increase their principal means of defense,--the disciplined army.[13]
[13] That the abuse of authority exists in America, despite the small number of troops, by no means refutes our argument; on the contrary, it serves rather as a testimony in its favor. In America there are fewer troops than in other States, and nowhere do we find less oppression of the downtrodden classes, and nowhere have men come so near to the abolition of governmental abuses, and even of government itself. However, it is in America that, owing to the growing unity among the working-men, voices have been heard, more and more frequently of late, calling for an increase of troops, and this when no foreign invasion threatens the States. The ruling classes are fully aware that an army of 50,000 men is insufficient, and, having lost confidence in Pinkerton's forces, they believe that their salvation can only be secured by the increase of the army.
It was but recently that in the German Reichstag, in giving the reason why more money was needed to increase the pay of the subaltern officers, the German Chancellor answered candidly that trusty subaltern officers are needed in order to fight against socialism. Caprivi put into words what every one knows, although it has been carefully concealed from the people. The reason why the Swiss and Scottish Guards were hired to protect the popes and the French kings, and why the Russian regiments are so carefully shuffled, is in order that those which are posted in the interior may be recruited by men from the borders, and those on the borders by men from the interior. The meaning of Caprivi's reply, translated into simple, everyday language, means that money is needed, not to repel a foreign enemy, but to bribe the subaltern officers to hold themselves in readiness to act against the oppressed working-men.
Caprivi incidentally expressed what every man knows--or if he does not know it he feels it--namely, that the existing system of life is such as it is, not because it is natural for it to be so, or that the people are content to have it so, but because violence on the part of governments, the army, with its bribed subaltern officers, its captains and generals, sustains it.
If a working-man has no land, if he is not allowed to enjoy the natural right possessed by every man, to draw from the soil the means of subsistence for himself and his family, it is not so because the people oppose it, but because the right to grant or to withhold this privilege from working-men is given to certain individuals--namely, to the landed proprietors. And this unnatural order of things is maintained by the troops. If the enormous wealth earned and saved by working-men is not regarded as common property, but as something to be enjoyed by the chosen few; if certain men are invested with the power of levying taxes on labor, and with the right of using that money for whatsoever purposes they deem necessary; if the strikes of the working-men are suppressed, and the trusts of the capitalists are encouraged; if certain men are allowed to choose in the matter of religious and civil education and the instruction of children; if to certain others the right is given to frame laws which all men must obey, and if they are to enjoy the control of human life and property,--all this is not because the people wish it, or because it has come about in the course of nature, but because the governments will have it so for their own advantage and that of the ruling classes; and all this is accomplished by means of physical violence.
If every man is not yet aware of this, he will find it out whenever attempts are made to change the present order of things.
And therefore all the governments and the ruling classes stand in need of troops above all things, in order to maintain a system of life which, far from having developed from the needs of the people, is often detrimental to them, and is only advantageous for the government and the ruling classes.
Every government requires troops to enforce obedience, that it may profit by the labor of its subjects. But no government exists alone: side by side with it stands the government of the adjacent country, which is also profiting by the enforced labor of its subjects, and ever ready to pounce upon its neighbor and take possession of the goods which it has won from the labor of its own subjects. Hence it is that every government needs an army, not only for home use, but to guard its plunder from foreign depredations. Thus each government finds itself obliged to outdo its neighbor in the increase of its army, and, as Montesquieu said one hundred and fifty years ago, the expansion of armies is a veritable contagion.
One State makes additions to its army in order to overawe its own subjects; its neighbor takes alarm, and straightway follows the example.
Armies have reached the millions which they now number not only from the fear of foreign invasion; the increase was first caused by the necessity for putting down all attempts at rebellion on the part of the subjects of the State. The causes for the expansion of armies are contemporary, the one depending on the other; armies are needed against internal attempts at revolt, as well as for external defense. The one depends upon the other. The despotism of governments increases exactly in proportion to the increase of their strength and their internal successes, and their foreign aggression with the increase of internal despotism.
European governments try to outdo one another, ever increasing their armaments, and compelled at last to adopt the expedient of a general conscription as a means of enrolling the greatest number of troops at the smallest possible expense.
Germany was the first to whom this plan suggested itself. And no sooner was it done by one nation than all the others were forced to do likewise. Thus all the citizens took up arms to assist in upholding the wrongs that were committed against them; in fact, they became their own oppressors.
General military conscription was the inevitable and logical consummation at which it was but natural to arrive; at the same time it is the last expression of the innate contradiction of the social life-conception which sprang into existence when violence was required for its support.
General military conscription made this contradiction a conspicuous fact. Indeed, the very significance of the social life-conception consists in this,--that a man, realizing the cruelty of the struggle of individuals among themselves, and the peril that the individual incurs, seeks protection by transferring his private interests to a social community; whereas the result of the system of conscription is that men, after having made every sacrifice to escape from the cruel struggle and uncertainties of life, are once more called upon to undergo all the dangers they had hoped to escape, and moreover, the community--the State for which the individuals gave up their previous advantages--is now exposed to the same risk of destruction from which the individual himself formerly suffered. Governments should have set men free from the cruelty of the personal struggle, and given them confidence in the inviolable structure of State life; but instead of doing this they impose on individuals a repetition of the same dangers, with this difference, that in the place of struggle between individuals of the same group, it is a case of struggle between groups.
The establishment of a general military conscription is like the work of a man who props a crumbling house. The walls have settled, sloping inward--he braces them; the ceiling begins to hang down--he supports that; and when the boards between give way, other braces are supplied. At last it reaches the point when, although the braces hold the house together, they actually make it uninhabitable.
The same may be said of the general conscription system. The general military conscription nullifies all those advantages of social life which it is expected to protect.
The advantages of social life are those guarantees which it offers for the protection of property and labor, as well as coöperation for the purposes of mutual advantage; the general military conscription destroys all this.
The taxes collected from the people for purposes of war absorb the greater part of the productions of their labor, which the army ought to protect.
When men are taken from the ordinary avocations of daily life, labor is practically destroyed. Where war is ever threatening to break forth, it does not seem worth while to improve social conditions.
If a man had formerly been told that unless he submitted to the civil authority he would run the risk of being assaulted by wicked men, that he would be in danger from domestic as well as from foreign foes, against whom he would be forced to defend himself, that he might be murdered, and therefore he would find it for his advantage to suffer certain privations if by that means he succeeded in escaping all these perils, he might have believed this, especially as the sacrifices required by the State promised him the hope of a peaceful existence within the well-established community in whose name he had made them. But now, when these sacrifices are not only multiplied, but the promised advantages are not realized, it is quite natural for men to think that their subjection to authority is utterly useless.
But the fatal significance of the general conscription, as the manifestation of that contradiction which dwells in the social life-conception, lies not in this. Wherever military conscription exists, every citizen who becomes a soldier likewise becomes a supporter of the State system, and a participant in whatsoever the State may do, at the same time that he does not acknowledge its validity; and this may be called its chief manifestation.
Governments declare that armies are principally required for external defense; but this is untrue. They are, in the first place, needed to overawe their own subjects, and every man who yields to military conscription becomes an involuntary participator in all the oppressive acts of government toward its subjects. It is necessary to remember what goes on in every State in the name of order and the welfare of the community, all the while enforced by military authority, to be convinced that every man who fulfils military duty becomes a participant in acts of the State of which he cannot approve. Every dynastic and political feud, all the executions resulting from such feuds, the crushing of rebellions, the use of the military in dispersing mobs, in putting down strikes, all extortionate taxation, the injustice of land ownership and the limitations of freedom of labor,--all this is done, if not directly by the troops, then by the police supported by the troops. He who performs his military duty becomes a participant in all these acts, about which he often feels more than dubious, and which are in most cases directly opposed to his conscience. Men do not wish to leave the land which they have tilled for generations; they do not wish to disperse on the bidding of the government; they do not wish to pay the taxes which are extorted from them; neither do they willingly submit to laws which they have not helped to make; they do not wish to give up their nationality. And I, if I am performing military duty, must come forward and strike these men down. I cannot take part in such proceedings without asking myself if they be right. And ought I to coöperate in carrying them out?
General military conscription is the last step in the process of coercion required by governments for the support of the whole structure; for subjects it is the extreme limit of obedience. It is the keystone of the arch that supports the walls, the abstraction of which would destroy the whole fabric. The time has come when the ever growing abuses of governments, and their mutual contests, have required from all their subjects not only material but moral sacrifices, till each man pauses and asks himself, Can I make these sacrifices? And for whose sake am I to make them? These sacrifices are demanded in the name of the State. In the name of the State I am asked to give up all that makes life dear to a man,--peace, family, safety, and personal dignity. What, then, is this State in whose name such appalling sacrifices are demanded? And of what use is it?
We are told that the State is necessary, in the first place, because were it not for that no man would be safe from violence and the attacks of wicked men; in the second place, without the State we should be like savages, possessing neither religion, morals, education, instruction, commerce, means of communication, nor any other social institutions; and, in the third place, because without the State we should be subject to the invasion of the neighboring nations.
"Were it not for the State," we are told, "we should be subjected to violence and to the attacks of evil men in our own land."
But who are these evil men from whose violence and attacks the government and the army saves us? If such men existed three or four centuries ago, when men prided themselves on their military skill and strength of arm, when a man proved his valor by killing his fellow-men, we find none such at the present time: men of our time neither use nor carry weapons, and, believing in the precepts of humanity and pity for their neighbors, they are as desirous for peace and a quiet life as we are ourselves. Hence this extraordinary class of marauders, against whom the State might defend us, no longer exists. But if, when they speak of the men from whose attacks the government defends us, we understand that they mean the criminal classes, in that case we know that they are not extraordinary beings, like beasts of prey among sheep, but are men very much like ourselves, who are naturally just as reluctant to commit crimes as those against whom they commit them. We know now that threats and punishments are powerless to decrease the numbers of such men, but that their numbers may be decreased by change of environment and by moral influence. Hence the theory of the necessity of State violence in order to protect mankind against evil-doers, if it had any foundation three or four centuries ago, has none whatever at the present time. One might say quite the reverse nowadays, for the activity of governments, with their antiquated and merciless methods of punishment, their galleys, prisons, gallows, and guillotines, so far below the general plane of morality, tends rather to lower the standard of morals than to elevate it, and therefore rather to increase than to lessen the number of criminals.
It is said that "without the State there would be no institutions, educational, moral, religious, or international; there would be no means of communication. Were it not for the State, we should be without organizations necessary to all of us."
An argument like this could only have had a basis several centuries ago. If there ever was a time when men had so little international communication, and were so unused to intercourse or interchange of thought that they could not come to an agreement on matters of general interest--commercial, industrial, or economical--without the assistance of the State, such is not the case at present. The widely diffused means of communication and transmission of thought have achieved this result,--that when the modern man desires to found societies, assemblies, corporations, congresses, scientific, economical, or political institutions, not only can he easily dispense with the assistance of governments, but in the majority of cases governments are more of a hindrance than a help in the pursuit of such objects.
Since the end of the last century almost every progressive movement on the part of mankind has been not only discouraged, but invariably hampered, by governments. Such was the case with the abolition of corporal punishment, torture, and slavery; with the establishment of freedom of the press and liberty of meeting. Furthermore, State authorities and governments nowadays not only do not coöperate, but they directly hinder the activity by means of which men work out new forms of life. The solution of labor and land questions, of political and religious problems, is not only unencouraged, but distinctly opposed, by the government authority.
"If there were no State and government authority, nations would be subjugated by their neighbors."
It is not worth while to answer this last argument. It refutes itself.
We are told that the government and its armies are necessary for our defense against the neighboring States which might subject us. But all the governments say this of one another; and yet we know that every European nation professes the same principles of liberty and fraternity, and therefore needs no defense against its neighbor. But if one speaks of defense against barbarians, then one per cent of the troops under arms at the present time would suffice. It is not only that the increase of armed force fails to protect us from danger of attack from our neighbors, it actually provokes the very attack which it deprecates.
Hence no man who reflects on the significance of the State, in whose name he is required to sacrifice his peace, his safety, and his life, can escape the conviction that there is no longer any reasonable ground for such sacrifices.
Even regarding the subject theoretically, a man must realize that the sacrifices demanded by the State are without sufficient reason; and when he considers the matter from a practical point of view, weighing all the different conditions in which he has been placed by the State, every man must see that so far as he himself is concerned, the fulfilment of the requirements of the State and his own subjection to military conscription is indubitably and in every case less advantageous for him than if he refused to comply with it. If the majority of people prefer obedience to insubordination, it is not because they have given the subject dispassionate consideration, weighing the advantages and disadvantages, but because they are, so to speak, under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. Men submit to demands like this without using their reason or making the least effort of the will. It requires independent reasoning, as well as effort, to refuse submission,--effort which some men are incapable of making. But supposing we exclude the moral significance of submission and non-submission, and consider only their advantages, then non-submission will always prove more advantageous than submission. Whoever I may be, whether I belong to the well-to-do--the oppressing class--or to the oppressed laboring class, in either case the disadvantages of non-submission are less numerous than the disadvantages of submission, and the advantages of non-submission greater than those of submission.
If I belong to the oppressive, which is the smallest class, and refuse to submit to the demands of the government, I shall be tried as one who refuses to fulfil his obligations,--I shall be tried, and in case my trial terminates favorably, I shall either be declared not guilty, or I may be dealt with as they treat the Mennonites in Russia--that is, be compelled to serve my term of military service by performing some non-military work; if, on the contrary, an unfavorable verdict is rendered, I shall be condemned to exile or imprisonment for two or three years (I am speaking of cases in Russia); or possibly my term of imprisonment may be longer. And I may even be condemned to suffer the penalty of death, although that is not at all probable. Such are the disadvantages of non-submission.
The disadvantages of submission are as follows:--If I am fortunate I shall not be sent to murder men, neither shall I run the risk myself of being disabled or killed; they will simply make a military slave of me. I shall be arrayed in the garments of a clown; my superior officers, from the corporal to the field-marshal, will order me about. At their word of command I shall be put through a series of gymnastic contortions, and after being detained from one to five years I shall be released, but still obliged for ten years longer to hold myself in readiness at any moment I may be summoned to execute the orders these people give me. And if I am less fortunate I shall be sent to the wars, still in the same condition of slavery, and there I shall be forced to slay fellow-men of other countries who never did me any harm. Or I may be sent to a place where I may be mutilated or killed; perhaps find myself, as at Sevastopol, sent to certain death; these things happen in every war. Worse than all things else, I may be sent to fight against my fellow-countrymen, and compelled to kill my own brethren for some matter dynastic or governmental, and to me of foreign interest. Such are the comparative disadvantages.
The comparative advantages of submission and non-submission are as follows:--For him who has submitted the advantages are these: after he has subjected himself to all the degradations and committed all the cruel deeds required of him, he may, provided he be not killed, receive some scarlet or golden bauble to decorate his clown's attire; or if he be especially favored, hundreds of thousands of just such brutal men like himself may be put under his command, and he be called field-marshal, and receive large sums of money.
By refusing to submit he will possess the advantages of preserving his manly dignity, of winning the respect of good men, and, above all, he will enjoy the assurance that he is doing God's business, and therefore an unquestionable benefit to mankind.
Such are the advantages and disadvantages, on either side, for the oppressor, a member of the wealthy class. For a man of the working-class--a poor man--the advantages and disadvantages are about the same, if we include one important addition to the disadvantages. The special disadvantage for a man of the working-class who has not refused to perform military service is that, when he enters the service, his participation and his tacit consent go toward confirming the oppression in which he finds himself.
But the question concerning the State, whether its continued existence is a necessity, or whether it would be wiser to abolish it, cannot be decided by discussion on its usefulness for the men who are required to support it by taking part in the military service, and still less by weighing the comparative advantages and disadvantages of submission or non-submission for the individual himself. It is decided irrevocably and without appeal by the religious consciousness, by the conscience of each individual, to whom no sooner does military conscription become a question than it is followed by that of the necessity or non-necessity of the State.
| Chapter Statistics | ||
|---|---|---|
| Statistic | This Chapter | Whole Book |
| Word Count | 6,498 | 185,826 |
| Paragraph Count | 78 | 2,362 |
| Sentence Count | 182 | 6,344 |
| Average Sentence Length | 40.90 | 34.35 |
| Average Word Length | 4.62 | 4.48 |
| Sentiment | -0.0179 | -0.0016 |