It rules India ignorantly and obstructively;
it will wreck the empire rather than relinquish its ascendancy in
Ireland. It is densely self-satisfied and instinctively monopolistic. It
is on our backs, and with it on our backs we common English must bleed
and blunder to victory.... And you make this proposal!"
3
The antagonistic relations of the Anglican oligarchy with the greater
and greater-spirited Britain that thrust behind it in this war
are probably paralleled very closely in Germany, probably they are
exaggerated in Germany with a bigger military oligarchy and a relatively
lesser civil body under it. This antagonism is the oddest outcome of the
tremendous _de-militarisation_ of war that has been going on. In France
it is probably not so marked because of the greater flexibility and
adaptability of the French culture.
All military people--people, that is, professionally and primarily
military--are inclined to be conservative. For thousands of years the
military tradition has been a tradition of discipline. The conception of
the common soldier has been a mechanically obedient, almost dehumanised
man, of the of officer a highly trained autocrat. In two years all this
has been absolutely reversed. Individual quality, inventive organisation
and industrialism will win this war. And no class is so innocent of
these things as the military caste.
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