The Crown of Wild Olive
schoolboys, when you go into the army? Because, on the whole, it is love
of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, all
which are sentimental motives, which chiefly make a boy like going into
the Guards better than into a counting-house. You fancy, perhaps, that
there is a severe sense of duty mixed with these peacocky motives? And
in the best of you, there is; but do not think that it is principal. If
you cared to do your duty to your country in a prosaic and unsentimental
way, depend upon it, there is now truer duty to be done in raising
harvests than in burning them; more in building houses, than in shelling
them--more in winning money by your own work, wherewith to help men,
than in taxing other people's work, for money wherewith to slay men;
more duty finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and
unselfish dying, though that seems to your boys' eyes the bravest. So
far then, as for your own honour, and the honour of your families, you
choose brave death in a red coat before brave life in a black one, you
are sentimental; and now see what this passionate vow of yours comes
to. For a little while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you
shoot, and are shot; you are happy, and proud, always, and honoured and
wept if you die; and you are satisfied with your life, and with the end
of it; believing, on the whole, that good rather than harm of it comes
to others, and much pleasure to you. But as the sense of duty enters
into your forming minds, the vow takes another aspect. You find that you
have put yourselves into the hand of your country as a weapon. You have
vowed to strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded when she bids
you; all that you need answer for is, that you fail not in her grasp.
And there is goodness in this, and greatness, if you can trust the hand
and heart of the Britomart who has braced you to her side, and are
assured that when she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no need
for your flash to the sun. But remember, good and noble as this state
may be, it is a state of slavery. There are different kinds of slaves
and different masters. Some slaves are scourged to their work by whips,
others are scourged to it by restlessness or ambition. It does not
matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have
cut thongs for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery,
is in being driven to your work without thought, at another's bidding.
Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others with praise. It
matters not what the purchase-money is. The distinguishing sign of
slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not
what kind of work you are set on; some slaves are set to forced
diggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, others
field-works, and others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some
the juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity
is the same whatever work we are set upon, though the fruits of the toil
may be different. But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be the
slaves of any master, it ought to be some subject of forethought with
us, what work he is likely to put us upon. You may think that the whole
duty of a soldier is to be passive, that it is the country you have left
behind who is to command, and you have only to obey. But are you sure
that you have left _all_ your country behind, or that the part of it you
have so left is indeed the best part of it? Suppose--and, remember, it
is quite conceivable--that you yourselves are indeed the best part of
England; that you who have become the slaves, ought to have been the
masters; and that those who are the masters, ought to have been the
slaves! If it is a noble and whole-hearted England, whose bidding you
are bound to do, it is well; but if you are yourselves the best of her
heart, and the England you have left be but a half-hearted England, how
say you of your obedience? You were too proud to become shopkeepers: are
you satisfied then to become the servants of shopkeepers? You were too
proud to become merchants or farmers yourselves: will you have merchants
or farmers then for your field marshals? You had no gifts of special
grace for Exeter Hall: will you have some gifted person thereat for your
commander-in-chief, to judge of your work, and reward it? You imagine
yourselves to be the army of England: how if you should find yourselves,
at last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the beadles of
her little Bethels?
It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for ever; but what I want you
to see, and to be assured of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is not
mere passive obedience and bravery; that, so far from this, no country
is in a healthy state which has separated, even in a small degree, her
civil from her military power. All states of the world, however great,
fall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less
instant form of error (because involving no national taint of
cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal--it is the error
especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the
calamitous consequences--to take away the best blood and strength of the
nation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, and careless of
reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in trust; and to cast that
into steel, and make a mere sword of it; taking away its voice and will;
but to keep the worst part of the nation--whatever is cowardly,
avaricious, sensual, and faithless--and to give to this the voice, to
this the authority, to this the chief privilege, where there is least
capacity, of thought. The fulfilment of your vow for the defence of
England will by no means consist in carrying out such a system. You are
not true soldiers, if you only mean to stand at a shop door, to protect
shop-boys who are cheating inside. A soldier's vow to his country is
that he will die for the guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her
righteous laws, and of her anyway challenged or endangered honour. A
state without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he is bound
_not_ to defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which
he sees to be base in her. So sternly is this the law of Nature and
life, that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed by a
military despotism--never by talking, nor by its free effort. And the
health of any state consists simply in this: that in it, those who are
wisest shall also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers;
or, rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers its
rulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of England has on the
heart of England, in that they are still always in front of her battles,
this hold will not be enough, unless they are also in front of her
thoughts. And truly her thoughts need good captain's leading now, if
ever! Do you know what, by this beautiful division of labour (her brave
men fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has come at last to think?
Here is a bit of paper in my hand,[6] a good one too, and an honest one;
quite representative of the best common public thought of England at
this moment; and it is holding forth in one of its leaders upon our
'social welfare,'--upon our 'vivid life'--upon the 'political supremacy
of Great Britain.' And what do you think all these are owing to? To what
our English sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age? No:
not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness
of will? No: not to these. To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our
poets, or our captains, or our martyrs, or the patient labour of our
poor? No: not to these; or at least not to these in any chief measure.
Nay, says the journal, 'more than any agency, it is the cheapness and
abundance of our coal which have made us what we are.' If it be so, then
'ashes to ashes' be our epitaph! and the sooner the better. I tell you,
gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your country breathe the
pure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body,
instead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic
acid (and great _that_ way), you must think, and feel, for your England,
as well as fight for her: you must teach her that all the true greatness
she ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields were green and
her faces ruddy;--that greatness is still possible for Englishmen, even
though the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the sky black over
their heads;--and that, when the day comes for their country to lay her
honours in the dust, her crest will not rise from it more loftily
because it is dust of coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the
day is coming when the soldiers of England must be her tutors and the
captains of her army, captains also of her mind.
And now, remember, you soldier youths, who are thus in all ways the hope
of your country; or must be, if she have any hope: remember that your
fitness for all future trust depends upon what you are now. No good
soldier in his old age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Many
a giddy and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good lawyer,
or a good merchant; but no such an one ever became a good general. I
challenge you, in all history, to find a record of a good soldier who
was not grave and earnest in his youth. And, in general, I have no
patience with people who talk about 'the thoughtlessness of youth'
indulgently, I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and
the indulgence due to _that_. When a man has done his work, and nothing
can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil,
and jest with his fate, if he will; but what excuse can you find for
wilfulness of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future
fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless! when all the
happiness of his home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions,
of an hour! A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends
on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when his every act
is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a
fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in _any_ after years, rather
than now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be
nobly thoughtless,--his deathbed. No thinking should ever be left to be
done there.
Having, then, resolved that you will not waste recklessly, but earnestly
use, these early days of yours, remember that all the duties of her
children to England may be summed in two words--industry, and honour. I
say first, industry, for it is in this that soldier youth are especially
tempted to fail. Yet surely, there is no reason because your life may
possibly or probably be shorter than other men's, that you should
therefore waste more recklessly the portion of it that is granted you;
neither do the duties of your profession, which require you to keep your
bodies strong, in any wise involve the keeping of your minds weak. So
far from that, the experience, the hardship, and the activity of a
soldier's life render his powers of thought more accurate than those of
other men; and while, for others, all knowledge is often little more
than a means of amusement, there is no form of science which a soldier
may not at some time or other find bearing on business of life and
death. A young mathematician may be excused for langour in studying
curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those
which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome
herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an
obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an