We have
here another case strictly parallel to several we have already
considered. War is a collective concern; to turn one's back upon it, to
refuse to consider it as a possibility, is to leave it entirely to those
who are least prepared to deal with it in a broad spirit.
In many ways war is the most socialistic of all forces. In many ways
military organization is the most peaceful of activities. When the
contemporary man steps from the street of clamorous insincere
advertisement, push, adulteration, under-selling and intermittent
employment, into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher social plane,
into an atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely more
honourable emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment
to degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do. They
are fed and drilled and trained for better services. Here a man is at
least supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by
self-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endowment of research
by commercialism, its little short-sighted snatches at profit by
innovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable is the steady and
rapid development of method and appliances in naval and military
affairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil
conveniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader, to the
progress in military apparatus during the last few decades.
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