WHEN SOLDIERS BEGIN TO THINK
Mr. Ponsonby, M.P., in tho Contemporary Review, says the doctriue of optional obedience involves the crumbling away of the whole basic principle of tho Army as an arm of the civil power for keeping order, repressing disorder, or even for national defence, "But it is the greatest mistake to suppose that we can meet this_ danger, if it is approaching, by what is called democratising the Army. You cannot democratise the Army any more than you can make a nigger into a white man by painting him. A standing Army is an essentially anti-democratic institution, and it is only too probable that rapid democratic advance will produce conflict between civil 'and military authority. " The existence of the Army and Navy, too, is the price we have to pay for the still remaining relics of barbarism which exist in the relations of one State to another. Tho more uneducated and aloof from general enlightenment you can keep them, the better disciplined and the more effective will they be.
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Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 12
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172WHEN SOLDIERS BEGIN TO THINK Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 12
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