The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-10-14
THE ARMIES OF EUROPE.
Occupations of the Troops While
Awaiting Orders for Active Service.
ZION, fba 7 an 5o., Cnaofoto-

Occupations of the Troops While
Awaiting Orders for Active Service.
FROM the Lon don Spectator.
Life, for the majority of men. is always
scene of monotonous endurance; and the
young soldier while he obeys orders, is
probably not much worse of than the
young peasant or the young artisan. is bet
ter clothed. better hou sed, and enjoys an
exemption from care which has, for the
majority Of human beings, something of
the nature of holiday. His work is not
much harder than in the field or the shop;
it Is performed in the company of a great
crowd, which for the uneducated is enliven-
ing, or they would not seek crowds so Gag
gerly and it Is absolutely regular and intelii-
gi6le. There Is no undue strain pla ced
upon the body, there is none at all placed
upon the mind; and as for the punishments
they are, except in rare cases of personal
spites between the sergeants and the men,
avoidable by the single and easily under
stood recipe of perfect obedience. The ma
jority Of the conscripted soldiers do not de-
scribe themselves in after life as unhappy,
and though universal suffrage reigns alike
in Germany and France, and in the latter
countryis effectively sovereign. no move
ment for the abolition of the consumption
has ever taken effective hold even of
ancient Rome, where also the consumption
reigned, and savage discipline, and the
soldier was hardly paid any regular wages
Thousands must hate the ssrvics for one
cause or another, but they submit TO it as
necessity falling upon all men in all coun-
tries, except, indeed, America and England,
which are outside the natural order of
things. Opinions hostile to regular armies
are laid aside for the time, and questions of
creed or nationality in peace time do not
come to the surface.
We fancy that in war time nationality is
Of importanoe; at least, the best explana-
ton we ever read of jena is that at that
time Poles formed half the Prussisn army,
and Napoleon was the Polish idol from
whom they hoped all things; while it was
said, after Sadowa, that the Ausuro-Italiaus
we're taken prisoners very easily, but ma
tionality does not lead to ordinary mutiny.
Above all, discipline. and especially military
discipline, has a constraining force of its
own, which seems hardly TO yield to any
other impulse That force is based, no
doubt, in the last resort, as all government
is, on terror; but it is also based, as
most government is, on approval, on the
| feeling in the soldier that it is this. and
| nothing else, which separates him from the
civilian, and makes him for certain pur-
| poses definitely his superior. We see no rea-
sou why this force, which has outlasted a
| Is equally felt by all ranks OF men, should
ever die away. A desire for more personal
comfort may spread in modern army, as
| IL did in the Roman, tightening the load the
| legionary had to carry and altering the
quality of his food; but we suspect
that while the CONSUMPTION falls ON
all, it will be endured, and will Weld ar
| mics sufficiently obedlent, even after de-
| feat, which, indeed, dissolves discipline
much less than one would expect. Prus-
sian discipline revived after jena, as Aus
| trian discipline survived Sadowa, while
French discipline has rarely been so strict,
except under the first Nauoleon, as it is
now. Spanish regiment in revolt main
tains its internal discipline sternly; and in
the only great English mutiny of modern
times, the company's Europeans, though in
| open revolt, doubled all ordinary punish
| ments on the comm IN soldier
Anything may happen to confound calcu-
lation, but we see no reason to believe that
military discomfort WILL within any time
worth specializing about, be a trouble in
| European states. The prevalent English
notion, that armies have in modern times
been frequently refractory, rests upon very
| little evidence. There have been, and will
be again, instances of insuho rdination, or
even mutiny, just as there have been
riots in civil life; but outside Spain
during a particular period, soldiers have
|
| thority. They did not, for moment
during the French revolution, when society
itself seemed dissolved, and the military
| chests were empty; but Napoleon was never
troubled by his wonderfully composite
army, and since his time no Frenc regi-
ment has disobeyed the authority ne is
legally bound to Obey, which is not, we
may remark, the government, but his own
military superior. Ney's men we're strictly
obeying orders when they followed him into
the wrong camp. and Louis Napoleon was
commander in chief when he acted
against the assembly. The "armyn
is, we suspect, force which
viii last in every state of Europe, rendering
instruction almost impossible or if it dis
appears. 1t will be under laws emanating
from the regular civil power. II is conceiv-
able, il Russia ever became non-militar Y
state, that the people everywhere might
transmute the standing armies into armies
on the Swiss plan, which is that OF training
all youth. but leaving them at home; but
movements to that end within the armies
themselves are exceedingly improbable
They have always been easy for the soldiers
are irresistible, and have only to dis.
perse to bring the system to an end: but
they have never done it, and we can con-
ceive of no new idea or set of circumstances
which would induce them to do it. The
professional soldier survived the diffusion of
christianity, and may be found to survive
the diffusion Of socialism, if that repellent
faith is to be the new creed of the world.
China alone has almost succeeded in doing
without him, and there is about as much
misery and as much wickedneSs in China as
anywherein the world