"FOR KING AND EMPIRE"

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1914, Page 6

"FOR KING AND EMPIRE"

In a leading article The Time* aays that the attitude of the Army has been adopted not for party purposes, nor for the sake of Ulster, but for the sake of the King and the Empire. This ie a Somewhat surprising definition of motive. Hitherto it was supposed that thfl Army officers based their case on their individual consciencea; that r>n conscientious grounds they cputd not fight the Ulster "covenanters." Of course, the answer to this is that, at the time of Brigadier-General Gough's coup, they had not been ordered to fight j and that their consciences, if affected, had only been presumptively disturbed, by a purely hypothetical contemplation of certain further orders that might (or might ttoo) ultimately be ijiven. - A further indictment of the obstructionist officers was that not only had their consciences gone oft' at half-cock, but that the same consciences had. never phown similar signs of disruptive force at the prospect of suppressing Irish Nationalist disturbances or the violence of conscientious striker*. Thus, by a process of analogy, it wae shown that, the military conscience did not react equally all round; and on this was based the further inference that the protest terminating in the precipitate action of BrigadierGeneral Gough and his officers was dictated by ulterior motives, , social and political. On the one side, the accusers of the officers imputed "party" ; oh. th 6 other side, their defenders cited "conscience." But The Times defence radically changes the ground. Ii the "assurance" which was given by Colonel Seely —and which is now partly repudiated by the Government— was dictated by' tho officers "for the sake of the King and the Empire,'' who made the Army the judge at what is best for ''the King and the Empire"? Certainly "the Empire," insofar as it meajis the self-governing Dominions, will not be impressed by this amazing doctrine of the Army's judgment in matters of public policy. If the pmciple were accepted here it would be the worst blow that oux* compulsory military training system has yetreceived. As it is the attitude of the officers at The Curragh, entangling the Army with politics, is doing the defence cause throughout the Empire no good. It is therefore to be hoped that the cabled summary has done The Times an injustice, and that the rift in the Regular Forces will be speedily repaired. Not, however, on tho basis of optional obedience on the part of officers. The new Army Order forbidding hypothetical questions and hypothetical assurances is the leaet that discipline demands; and in any case, tho need for a demourat'isation of Ihe Service clearly exists, and the country inrfy tha'lik the officers for having so notably drawn attention to it.