Europe
now is no more than a household engaged in holding up and if possible
overpowering a monomaniac member.
4
Now the whole of this process of the making and delivery of a shell,
which is the main process of modern warfare, is one that can be far
better conducted by a man accustomed to industrial organisation or
transit work than by the old type of soldier. This is a thing that
cannot be too plainly stated or too often repeated. Germany nearly won
this way because of her tremendously modern industrial resources; but
she blundered into it and she is losing it because she has too many men
in military uniform and because their tradition and interests were to
powerful with her. All the state and glories of soldiering, the bright
uniforms, the feathers and spurs, the flags, the march-past, the
disciplined massed advance, the charge; all these are as needless and
obsolete now in war as the masks and shields of an old-time Chinese
brave. Liberal-minded people talk of the coming dangers of militarism in
the face of events that prove conclusively that professional militarism
is already as dead as Julius Caesar. What is coming is not so much the
conversion of men into soldiers as the socialisation of the economic
organisation of the country with a view to both national and
international necessities.
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