No nation is a living, prosperous nation that has lost the military spirit, or in which the profession of the soldier is not held in honor and esteem; and a standing army of reasonable size is public economy.It absorbs in its ranks a class of men who are worth more there than anywhere else; it creates honorable places for gentlemen or the sons of gentlemen without wealth, in which they can serve both themselves and their country.Under a democratic government the most serious embarrassment to the state is its gentlemen, or persons not disposed or not fitted to support themselves by their own hands, more necessary in a democratic government than in any other.The civil service, divinity, law, and medicine, together with literature, science, and art, cannot absorb the whole of this ever-increasing class, and the army and navy would be an economy and a real service to the state were they maintained only for the sake of the rank and position they give to their officers, and the wholesome influence these officers would exert on society and the politics of the country--this even in case there were no wars or apprehension of wars.They supply an element needed in all society, to sustain in it the chivalric and heroic spirit, perpetually endangered by the mercantile and political spirit, which has in it always something low and sordid.
But wars are inevitable, and when a nation has no surrounding nations to fight, it will, as we have just proved, fight itself.
When it can have no foreign war, it will get up a domestic war;for the human animal, like all animals, must work off in some way its fighting humor, and the only sure way of maintaining peace is always to be prepared for war.A regular standing army of forty thousand men would have prevented the Mexican war, and an army of fifty thousand well-disciplined and efficient troops at the command of the President on his inauguration in March, , would have prevented the rebellion, or have instantly suppressed it.The cost of maintaining a land army of even a hundred thousand men, and a naval force to correspond, would have been, in simple money value, only a tithe of what the rebellion has cost the nation, to say nothing of the valuable lives that have been sacrificed for the losses on the rebel side, as well as those on the side of the government, are equally to be counted.
The actual losses to the country have been not less than six or eight thousand millions of dollars, or nearly one-half the assessed value of the whole property of the United States according to the census returns of , and which has only been partially cancelled by actual increase of property since.To meet the interest on the debt incurred will require a heavier sum to be raised annually by taxation, twice over, without discharging a cent of the principal, than would have been necessary to maintain an army and navy adequate to the protection of peace and the prevention of the rebellion.
The rebellion is now suppressed, and if the government does not blunder much more in its civil efforts at pacification than it did in its military operations, before things will settle down into their normal order; but a regular army--not militia or volunteers, who are too expensive--of at least a hundred thousand men of all arms, and a navy nearly as large as that of England or France, will be needed as a peace establishment.The army of a hundred thousand men must form a cadre of an army of three times that number, which will be necessary to place the army on a war footing.Less will answer neither for peace nor war, for the nation has, in spite of herself, to maintain henceforth the rank of a first-class military and maritime power, and take a leading part in political movements of the civilized world, and, to a great extent, hold in her hand the peace of Europe.
Canning boasted that be had raised up the New World to redress the balance of the Old: a vain boast, for he simply weakened Spain and gave the hegemony of Europe to Russia, which the Emperor of the French is trying, by strengthening Italy and Spain, and by a French protectorate in Mexico, to secure to France, both in the Old World and the New--a magnificent dream, but not to be realized.His uncle judged more wisely when he sold Louisiana, left the New World to itself, and sought only to secure to France the hegemony of the Old.But the hegemony of the New World henceforth belongs to the United States, and she will have a potent voice in adjusting the balance of power even in Europe.To maintain this position, which is imperative on her, she must always have a large armed force, either on foot or in reserve, which she can call out and put on a war footing at short notice.The United States must henceforth be a great military and naval power, and the old hostility to a standing army and the old attempt to bring the military into disrepute must be abandoned, and the country yield to its destiny.
Of the several tendencies mentioned, the humanitarian tendency, egoistical at the South, detaching the individual from the race and socialistic at the North, absorbing the individual in the race, is the most dangerous.The egoistical form is checked, sufficiently weakened by the defeat of the rebels; but the social form believes that it has triumphed, and that individuals are effaced in society, and the States in the Union.Against this, more especially should public opinion and American statesmanship be now directed, and territorial democracy and the division of the powers of government be asserted and vigorously maintained.
The danger is that while this socialistic form of democracy is conscious of itself, the territorial democracy has not yet arrived, as the Germans say, at self consciousness--selbsbewusstseyn--and operates only instinctively.
All the dominant theories and sentimentalities are against it, and it is only Providence that can sustain it.
