discovery that an officer and a gentleman, whose sole professional
interest is the honour and welfare of his country, and who is bound to
the mystical equality of life-and-death duty for all alike, will get on
much more easily with a Trade Union secretary than a commercial employer
whose aim is simply private profit and who regards every penny added to
the wages of his employees as a penny taken off his own income. Howbeit,
whether the colonels like it or not--that is, whether they have become
accustomed to it or not--it has to come, and its protection from Junker
prejudice is another duty of the Labour Party. The Party as a purely
political body must demand that the defender of his country shall retain
his full civil rights unimpaired; that, the unnecessary, mischievous,
dishonourable and tyrannical slave code called military law, which at
its most savagely stern point produced only Wellington's complaint that
"it is impossible to get a command obeyed in the British Army," be
carted away to the rubbish heap of exploded superstitions; and that if
Englishmen are not to be allowed to serve their country in the field as
freely as they do in the numerous civil industries in which neglect and
indiscipline are as dangerous as they are in war, their leaders and
Parliamentary representatives will not recommend them to serve at all.
In wartime these things may not matter: discipline either goes by the
board or keeps itself under the pressure of the enemy's cannon; and
bullying sergeants and insolent officers have something else to do than
to provoke men they dislike into striking them and then reporting them
for two years' hard labour without trial by jury. In battle such
officers are between two fires. But soldiers are not always, or even
often, at war; and the dishonour of abdicating dearly-bought rights and
liberties is a stain both on war and peace. Now is the time to get rid
of that stain. If any officer cannot command men without it, as
civilians and police inspectors do, that officer has mistaken his
profession and had better come home.