The Standing Army a Legacy of Evil from the Middle Ages. — It is the Controlling Feature of the European Situation. — Its Collateral Evils: Wars and Debts. — The Debts of Europe Represent a Series of Colossal Crimes against the People; with the Armies and Navies they Absorb the Bulk of the Annual Revenue. — The People Fleeing from them. — They Threaten Bankruptcy; they Prevent Education. — Germany, the best-educated Nation in Europe, losing most by Emigration. — Her People will not Endure the Standing Army. — The Folly of the European International Policy of Hate. — It is Possible for Europe to Restore to Productive Employments 3,000,000 of men, to place at the Disposal of her Educators $700,000,000, instead of $70,000,000 per annum, and to pay her National Debts in Fifty-four Years, simply by the Disbandment of her Armies and Navies. — The Armament of Europe Stands in the Way of Universal Education and of Universal Industrial Prosperity. — Standing Armies the Last Analysis of Selfishness; they are Coeval with the Revival during the Middle Ages of the Greco-Roman Subjective Methods of Education. — They must go out when the New Education comes in.

The mediæval period conferred upon man two great blessings—a new continent and the art of printing. It also left a legacy of evil. With the partition of Europe into great States the modern age began, and it began with this inheritance of evil from the Middle Ages—the standing army.

The feudal lords wrecked their estates and sacrificed their lives during the Crusades, and a middle class arose and united with the kings in the government of the State. But this alliance was of short duration; it soon gave way to an alliance which proved to be enduring—an alliance between the aristocracy and the kings.

By the ruin of feudalism thousands of serfs were set free. Trained to arms, it was easy to make soldiers of them. They were accordingly converted into mercenary troops—mustered into the service of the new alliance as guards of the modern State. Thus the standing armies of the “great powers” originated. This legacy of evil has so increased in magnitude that it is, to-day, the dominant feature of European public economy, and the portentous fact of the social problem.

The standing armies of Europe number two million five hundred thousand men, and their naval auxiliaries consist of three thousand vessels, thirty thousand guns, and two hundred thousand men. This is the mammoth evil bequeathed to Europe by the Middle Ages, and out of it many collateral evils have sprung, as wars, debts, and exorbitant tax levies.[E25]

Thirty years ago the national debts of the governments of Europe had risen to $9,000,000,000. Since that time they have almost trebled! The cause of this vast increase is easy to find. It consists chiefly of four great wars, namely, the Crimean war of 1854-56, the Franco-Sardinian war against Austria in 1859, the German-Italian war of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-72. These wars were waged to maintain what is termed the balance of power; they involved no principle affecting the rights of man. Whatever their issue, no gain could hence accrue to the people of Europe. And this is the nature of most of the wars in which the standing armies of Europe have been employed since their organization. But the European budget shows that they are the overshadowing feature of the European governmental systems.

The annual revenue of the States of Europe is about $1,725,000,000. Of this sum $700,000,000 is devoted to the support of the standing armies and navies, and as much more is required to meet the interest charge on the debts created in the prosecution of wars waged to maintain the balance of power! Thus, of the aggregate of European revenue, the sum of $1,400,000,000 is devoted to the purely supposititious theory that the subjects of the great powers are inflamed with an intense desire to cut one another’s throats, while the small sum of $325,000,000 is left for the support of the civil service, comprising all the strictly legitimate objects of government, and including education!

The national debts of Europe represent a series of colossal crimes against the people. They were incurred in the prosecution of unnecessary wars, and for the support of unnecessary standing armies. With relation to these debts the people are divided into two classes—one class owns them and the other class pays interest on them. This relationship comprehends future generations in perpetuity. Every child born in Europe inherits either an estate in these debts or an obligation to contribute towards the payment of the interest upon them. Thus the fruits of a great crime have been transmuted into a vested right in one class of people, and into a vested wrong in another class.[85]

If the European standing armies and navies had not been raised and kept up, and if the revenue devoted to their support had been expended for schools, there would not now be an uneducated person in Europe. If these standing armies and navies were now disbanded, and the revenue at present expended for their support diverted to the support of schools, and so applied continuously for half a century, there would not be, at the end of that period, an illiterate person in Europe.

Under existing conditions the debts of the European nations cannot be paid. But vast as the sum of them is, their payment is not only possible, but practicable in a very short time. Disband the standing armies and navies, and continue the present rate of taxation, and there would be an annual surplus revenue of $700,000,000. Apply this sum, together with the surplus of the interest appropriation, accruing through the resulting yearly decrease of the interest charge, to the liquidation of these debts, and they would be extinguished in about twenty years.[E26] But if the period during which provision is made for the extinguishment of these debts be extended to fifty-four years, and, meantime, the present rate of taxation be maintained, there would be released and rendered available for educational purposes, annually, the sum of $600,000,000.

What is the purpose, it may be inquired, of these calculations? Their purpose is to show what the armies and navies of Europe cost, and what they stand in the way of. They cost so much that not a dollar of the national debts of Europe can be paid while they continue to exist. They cost so much that the people who are taxed to support them are fleeing from them as from a scourge. They cost so much that the decline of the nations which support them has already begun, and this decline can be arrested only by their disbandment.

That the nations of Europe are declining is shown by the statistics of emigration. The foundation of national prosperity is manual labor. There must be a solid basis of industrial growth for the superstructure of elegance, refinement, luxury, and culture. Manual labor is as essential to triumphs in literature, music, and the fine arts as the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, buried in the earth, are to the beautiful arch which spans the great river. And in the strife for supremacy between the nations of the world the maintenance of these triumphs depends, also, upon manual labor.[86] The real flower of a population is, therefore, its labor class. All other classes depend upon it, and all national triumphs spring from it. Hence a drain upon the labor class of a nation is a drain upon its most vital resource. The nation that suffers such a drain continuously is in its decadence. It loses some of its vigor, some of its productive power, and the loss is not supplied. True, the poor emigrant takes with him no part of the splendors of the country he leaves, but his brawny arm and skilled hand have contributed to the support of national pomp and social elegance, and as he steps aboard the steamer he withdraws that support forever.

Napoleon the Infamous plundered the conquered capitals of Europe to beautify and enrich the art treasuries of Paris. The art treasures of Europe are destined to cross the ocean, in the track of the column of emigration, if the flower of her labor class continues to flee from her standing armies and navies, as the statues of Rome followed the army of the modern Cæsar. For where the flower of the world’s labor class gathers, there wealth most abounds. Labor, not gold and silver, is the source of wealth, hence it is to the laborer that art triumphs are due, and this is the order of their development. The laborer provides for immediate, pressing wants; he is prudent, and accumulates a surplus; he hungers for education; he develops a love of the beautiful; he seeks to dignify his life and adorn his home; he patronizes art; he draws to himself the art treasures of the world.

The standing armies and navies of Europe have cost the European laborer the sacrifice of all these pleasing and noble aspirations.[E27] Beyond the point of providing for “immediate pressing wants” he has not been able to pass. His surplus goes to the tax-gatherer, to feed and clothe the army and the navy. His desire for education, his love of the beautiful, his hope of a dignified life, and of a home adorned by art—these all are dreams, illusions, which vanish into thin air in the presence of the substantial fact of the annual European budget—for the support of the standing armies and navies $700,000,000!

In the way of the payment of the national debts of Europe her standing armies and navies rear themselves like an impassable wall. Against any general educational system they have hitherto constituted an insurmountable barrier; and in the future, as in the past, their maintenance dooms the masses to illiteracy. They stand in the way especially of the incorporation, in the curriculum of the public schools, of the manual element in education, because it is the most expensive, as it is the most important part of instruction.

Germany affords an admirable example of the power of education, even though defective in character, and of the disgust with which standing armies inspire an intelligent people. The Germans are the best-educated people in Europe. The educational system of Germany was established by Prussia as a politico-economic measure after the humiliation of the German States by Bonaparte. Said Frederick William, “Though territory, power, and prestige be lost, they can be regained by acquiring intellectual and moral power.” The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 verified the truth of this prediction. Her freedom from debt enabled Prussia to inaugurate and carry forward a comprehensive educational system, which in turn enabled her not only to vanquish her ancient enemy, but to make France pay the cost of her own humiliation. Thus at a single stroke Prussia avenged the defeats suffered at the hands of the first Napoleon, and permanently weakened France by compelling her vastly to increase her national debt.

The alacrity with which the French people subscribed for the new bonds was much remarked upon, at the time, as evincing both financial soundness and patriotism. But the really grave feature of the situation—the vast augmentation of the public burdens of France—was scarcely mentioned, and was, perhaps, philosophically considered only by that astute statesman, Prince Bismarck. The war with Germany cost France $2,000,000,000, and compelled an enormous increase of taxation. The debt statement for 1877 was $4,635,000,000—the expenditures $533,000,000; and of this latter sum $373,000,000 were absorbed by the army, the navy, and the national debt!

The significant feature of the European situation is the freedom from debt of Germany. It is by virtue of this fact that she holds the first place in Europe. Her rate of taxation is as low as that of little Switzerland. All the other Great Powers are hampered by great debts. Spain is bankrupt; she does not pay the interest on her debt. Austria increases her debt every year; she is practically bankrupt. It is only a question of time, if standing armies and navies continue to be maintained and wars to occur, when all the debtor nations will be reduced to bankruptcy.[87] The nation sinks as the column of debt rises. France cannot double her debt again and make her people pay interest on it. England draws from her citizens a larger per capita revenue than any other nation of Europe, except France, and she has nearly touched the limit of their capacity to pay taxes. A sudden and considerable increase of her debt would strain the Government, and might shatter it.

Thus, the more searching the analysis of the European situation, the more clear does the exceptional strength of Germany appear. But out of her abundant strength a weakness has been evolved. The system of education that rendered the Germans so powerful against France as soldiers, has made them thoughtful citizens. It has revolutionized the public sentiment of Germany on the subject of government. In the place of passion it has substituted reason. The Prussian “subject” for whom the king thought, has become a German citizen who thinks for himself, and one of his earliest reflections is that, in modern civilization, a standing army is a solecism. The ignorant Prussian hated the French because hatred of them was enjoined upon him as the correlative of the duty of blind devotion to his king. But the educated German knows that the sole motive of the continuance of the standing army is the maintenance of the balance of power, which is merely a tacit agreement between the European rulers, by divine right, to perpetuate their own lease of power. Hence the “intellectual and moral power” conferred upon the German people, by education, reacts upon Germany in the form of a drain of the flower of her population by emigration.

The citizenship of Germany is more valuable, in an economic sense, than that of any other country of Europe—more valuable because Germany is the most powerful nation of the European family of States; more valuable because of them all she alone is free from debt; more valuable by reason of her more moderate scale of taxation. But she still furnishes the heaviest contingent to the column of emigration steadily moving towards the United States. In a word, the most valuable citizenship in Europe—that of Germany—is least regarded and most freely surrendered. Why? Because the Germans are the best-educated people in Europe. Poor as the German primary school system is, it is universal, and it has destroyed what it was founded chiefly to promote and perpetuate, namely, reverence for, and loyalty to, government by Divine right. German intelligence revolts from taxation for the support of a standing army. It revolts from the theory and policy of hate upon which standing armies are based. It comprehends perfectly that the standing army is a menace to the freedom of the citizen, at home, rather than a defence against pretended danger from abroad. It scorns, as absurd, the threadbare assumption that Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and Germans desire to fly at one another’s throats, and that they can be restrained only by a cordon of bayonets.[E28] It realizes that the perpetuation of the era of hate, through the standing army, retards the mental and physical progress of the human race, which would be greatly promoted by the free intermingling of the various nationalities of Europe.[88] That it is from the standing army that the emigrant flees is shown by the records of the military department of the German government.

In the year 1883 twenty-nine thousand men were arrested for attempting to emigrate from Germany to avoid the required military service, and more than a hundred thousand others, from whom service was due, refused, both to report for duty, and to furnish the required excuses for the failure to enroll themselves.

The law of Germany requires every male citizen, capable of bearing arms, to serve three years in the standing army—to devote three of the best years of his life to the preservation of the balance of power in Europe! In addition, he must serve four years in the reserve, and five years in the landwehr. And this service is regarded as a debt due the government. Every male child born in Germany contracts this debt, in contemplation of law, in the act of drawing his first breath, and nothing but death releases him from the obligation. Having been taught in the emperor’s schools to love the emperor, when he reaches the military age, a musket is placed in his hands, and he is taught to shoot the emperor’s enemies. If he refuses to enter the army he is fined; if he refuses to pay the fine he is imprisoned.

The German emperor attributes the decline in the military organization to the negligence of his military staff, but its true cause is the German educational system. The steady augmentation of the rolls of military delinquents is the measure of the growth of German intelligence. The ease with which Germany conquered France flattered the vanity of the educated German, but it did not prevent him from emigrating to America. To the cultured mind the army that wins the contest in which no principle is involved is as odious as the army that loses. To the cultured mind all standing armies are odious, because they are an embodied assumption of the barbarism of man, and a denial of the efficacy of reason. The great stream of German emigration attests the superiority of German culture. The educated German declines to learn the art of shooting the emperor’s enemies, but he knows that Germany is, in fact, governed by its standing army—by muskets—and he quits the country.

Thus the chief power of Germany becomes her chief weakness. A system of education which has made her the first nation in Europe produces wide-spread discontent among her people, because she is governed by obsolete ideas. Nor can the loss in virile force suffered by Germany, through emigration, be made good by a counter movement of immigrants from the less favored countries of Europe. The economic condition of Germany—her freedom from debt and her comparatively low rate of taxation—invite such a movement. But the European policy of international hate, created and perpetuated by standing armies, forbids Germany to recoup her losses of men to America, through corresponding gains of men from the overtaxed populations of neighboring countries. The grinning skeletons of a hundred battles in which the rival nationalities of Europe have been pitted against one another, rise to challenge the social intermingling of peoples separated for centuries by the arts of diplomacy, traditions of blood and flames, and the serried ranks of standing armies.

The disposition of Germans to emigrate irritates the emperor and his prime-minister. The loss of numbers might be borne, for notwithstanding the steady outward flow of emigrants there is a slight increase of population in Germany. But it is the quality of the exodus that annoys the emperor and his chancellor. The German emigrants are strong men and women—strong mentally and physically. All the weaklings, all the paupers, all the imbeciles, the aged, and the infirm remain, only the young and vigorous go. Those who go have been taught at the expense of the State to love the emperor and hate his enemies, but they do neither. The German system of education, from the point of view of rulers by divine right, is, hence, a conspicuous failure. It makes better men but poorer subjects. The more thoroughly the man is educated the more valuable he is to himself and to the community, but the less valuable to his king. His growth in intelligence is the measure of his decline in reverence for rulers by divine right, and the standing armies by which they are alone supported. This is the cause of German emigration, and its effect is to weaken the German Empire. Germany is not so strong as she was when her armies swept over France; she declines in power each year, through the loss of men—the sole support of a State.[E29] They flee from her standing army to the United States, a republic with only a handful of soldiers.

The system of education established to increase the power of Prussia in Europe has accomplished its purpose. But it has done much more—something never thought of by its founders. It has produced a wide-spread feeling of intelligent discontent; and discontent is an inarticulate cry for reform. The cultured German scorns the standing army, refuses to serve in it, protests against its longer existence, and demands more and better education for his children. His protest is unheeded, and he quits the country. But the demand for higher education is not, cannot be, disregarded. Intelligence is contagious; it infects with a thirst for knowledge all with whom it comes in contact. Education is the arch-revolutionist whose onward march is irresistible. Soon a riper culture will make the German Protestants more courageous and more imperative in their demands, and they will remain in the country to enforce them. Education made Germany the first military power in Europe; but education could not have been put to a more ignoble service. The desire of intelligent Germans is that Germany shall become the first industrial power in Europe, and this desire can be realized by the disbandment of her standing army.

This review of the situation in Europe shows that it is practicable for her to restore, at once, to productive employments three millions of men—the flower of her population—now not only idle, but a public charge. It shows, also, that it is practicable for Europe to place, at once, at the disposal of her educators $700,000,000 per annum instead of $70,000,000 per annum, as at present. The corollary of these two propositions is a third, namely, that it is practicable for Europe to extinguish her national debts in fifty-four years. It follows that the regular armies of Europe alone stand in the way of universal education, and of universal industrial prosperity.

Standing armies everywhere within the lines of advanced civilization must soon disappear before the march of education.[89] Social questions cannot much longer be settled by emigration. The world’s virgin soil is being rapidly appropriated. When the surface of the whole earth shall have become occupied, barbarisms of every nature will be intolerable. Man must then be highly civilized, and the only highly civilizing influence is education. The age of force is passing away; the age of science and art—the age of industrial development—has begun, and standing armies are as abnormal in Europe now as slavery was in the United States twenty-five years ago.[90]

Standing armies are the instruments of tyranny; they are the last analysis of selfishness, the incarnation of depravity; for they do not reason—they strike. It is worthy of note that the standing armies of Europe are coeval with the revival of learning, and the revival of learning was a revival of the Greco-Roman subjective educational methods. The logical effect of those methods was the promotion of selfishness, and the standing armies conserved the selfish designs of the rulers of the newly-formed States. It is hence not a mere coincidence that standing armies and the revival of learning through subjective processes of thought are of common origin. The Machiavellian philosophy of cruelty, duplicity, and contempt of man sprung logically from egoism, and as logically led to the formation of standing armies—bodies of armed men, trained, under compulsion, to kill, burn, and destroy.

The synonyms of the standing army are selfishness and its vile issue, feudalism, serfdom, slavery, ignorance, and contempt of man. These conditions are passing away, and the standing army, the worst, as it is the most costly relic of savagery, must pass away with them. It cannot withstand the advance of the new education, whose mission is peace, whose quest is the truth, whose premise is a fact, whose conclusion is a thing of use and beauty, and whose goal is justice.