Chapter III: The Result

What was the result? It was this: that the British Empire, the richest prize that the world has ever displayed, spread out its treasures before the envious eyes of militant nations, practically undefended, save for its slender ring of circling ships. There it lay, a constant and irresistible lure, especially to that parvenu and predatory Germanic Power which had appeared upon the European scene, as the offspring of treachery and violence, in 1871. Thus those politicians--they were to be found in all parties--who refused to face the new conditions, who persisted in maintaining that the voluntary principle, which sufficed to police an Empire externally secure, would also guard it against a world in arms, did their unwitting best to render an attack inevitable, and to ensure that when it burst upon us it should do us the maximum of damage.

In due time, that is, when Germany thought that "the day" had dawned, the war came. Then the voluntary principle manifested its proper fruits. We found ourselves suddenly called upon to confront the supreme crisis of our fate with a gigantic proletariat untrained and unarmed, and with a diminutive army (below even its nominal strength), wholly inadequate to the magnitude of its tasks. What were the consequences? They were these: First, that our devoted Expeditionary Force, insufficient and unsupported, was sent across the Channel to almost certain and complete annihilation; secondly, that masses of reserves urgently needed on the Continent had to be kept in these islands to counter the risks of invasion; thirdly, that the mobility of our Navy had to be sacrificed to the same necessity of domestic defence (hence the disaster to Admiral Cradock); and, finally, that Belgium and North-East France had to be abandoned to the enemy--to be recovered later, if possible, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

One would have thought that at such a crisis of destiny our politicians would have faced the facts, would have realized that the time had come to summon the nation, as a disciplined whole, to front its peril and do its duty. If they had but had the courage to do so, who can doubt the loyalty of the response? But, once more, No! All sorts of irrelevant considerations of petty domestic politics--matters of votes and seats and party prejudices--determined the issue. The voluntary principle must at any cost be maintained sacrosanct and intact. Hence, to get the necessary men--or, rather, far fewer than the necessary men--every variety of extravagant and humiliating expedient had to be adopted. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money were squandered in advertisement and appeal, and a chaos of indiscriminate enlistment was inaugurated. Again, with what results? With these results: First, that myriads of middle-aged men with families have been taken while unmarried slackers have been left; secondly, that invaluable war-workers have been drawn from necessary tasks while useless wastrels have remained at large; thirdly, that the rate of recruiting has been spasmodic and wholly incalculable, that our armies have never been quite strong enough for the successive operations assigned to them, and that consequently a vast, needless, and largely fruitless sacrifice of the very cream of our nation's manhood has taken place. To the idol of voluntarism a veritable holocaust of victims has been offered up.