Militarism and the British Left, 1902-1914

M. Johnson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137274137
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Politik

Militarism has traditionally been regarded as a phenomenon of the political right. As this book demonstrates, however, various groups on the political left in Britain during the years before the Great War were able to accommodate, and even assimilate, militaristic ideas, sentiments, and policies to a remarkable degree.

1

Ideological Context: War, Martial Values, and Military Prestige

War was no stranger to the Edwardian imagination. Britain had emerged during the nineteenth century as the world’s pre-eminent industrial and commercial power, but she was also, in many ways, a remarkably warlike one. During the sixty-four years of Queen Victoria’s long reign there was not a single year that did not see British soldiers fighting in some corner of the world. As well as large-scale conflicts such as the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny during the 1850s, this fighting included a bewildering number of ‘little wars’ – punitive expeditions, the suppression of rebellions and mutinies, and wars of colonial expansion, through which the British Empire more than quadrupled in size. When Victoria died, in January 1901, Britain was embroiled in a war in South Africa that had already dragged on for more than a year. As Byron Farwell has noted, ‘it was in the Victorian era that continual warfare became an accepted way of life’.¹ Typically, of course, this fighting occurred at a remote distance from the civilian population at home. Yet from the second half of the nineteenth century the experience of war was relayed to the British public in unprecedented detail and with unprecedented immediacy by an army of newspaper correspondents, employed by a popular press eager to sell stories of military heroism and adventure to its readers. A highly romanticized vision of colonial warfare also featured prominently in certain genres of late Victorian and Edwardian popular literature – particularly juvenile literature, from the adventure stories of G. A. Henty to the new boy’s papers such as Chums, Pluck, the Boys’ Own Paper, and Marvel, which proliferated from the 1880s.²

At the same time, increasing British anxiety over questions of national and imperial defence from the 1890s was reflected in speculation about the prospect of a future war between the European powers. Unease about the industrial and military challenge posed by the German Empire in particular led to a widespread belief, fostered by elements in the right-wing press such as Northcliffe’s Daily Mail, that a war between Britain and Germany might be inevitable. Public apprehension was reflected in an Edwardian resurgence in the popularity of invasion novels, in which Germany came to replace France (the bogey of earlier Victorian invasion scares) as the aggressor descending upon the shores of an unprepared Britain.³ Such concerns were raised even within Parliament; in 1909 the war secretary was asked to comment on the rumour ‘that there are, in a cellar within a quarter of a mile of Charing Cross, 50,000 stands of Mauser rifles and 7½ million Mauser cartridges’, to be used in a German invasion of the British Isles.⁴

For many Edwardians, the existence of war appeared to be an inescapable part of life – perhaps even a natural aspect of the human condition. Even on the political left an absolute commitment to pacifism was rare. Wars of national defence were typically acknowledged as justifiable, as were those waged in the furtherance of a great moral cause. The radical Liberal MP and historian G. P. Gooch, for example, had been a staunch opponent of the Boer War but he was perfectly prepared to concede the legitimacy of wars of defence or of revolt against ‘Turkish standards of government’.⁵ Elected to Parliament in 1906, Gooch was a prominent member of the Balkan Committee in the House of Commons. This group comprised many of the leading lights of radical Liberalism, including C. F. G. Masterman, Arthur Ponsonby, and the Buxton brothers, as well as Ramsay MacDonald from the Independent Labour Party. It provided a forum for critics of the Ottoman Empire, and many of its members became advocates of British intervention on behalf of ethnic and religious minorities – particularly Christians – suffering under Turkish rule.⁶

In adopting this stance, Liberals like Gooch were following a lead set by W. E. Gladstone, who, for all his vaunted opposition to ‘militarism’, had been quite willing to concede that ‘coercion’ by arms might form a proper instrument of diplomacy. During the 1870s Gladstone had called for the European powers to threaten action against Turkey in response to the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’, and following the Armenian massacres of 1895–6 he had urged that Britain ‘take into consideration the means of enforcing, if force alone is available, compliance with her just, legal and humane demand’ upon the Ottoman Empire.⁷ When, early in 1906, Turkish troops occupied the town of Tabah, within the Egyptian territory then administered by Britain, Liberal opinion was outraged and there was much talk of a possible military response. The former diplomat Wilfrid Scawen Blunt complained that ‘all the Radical papers are beating the war-drum just as they did in 1882’, and was appalled to hear from John Redmond that Liberals in Parliament were ‘so furious against the Sultan’ that they would do nothing to prevent war.⁸

The widespread Edwardian acceptance of military conflict as an inescapable – and arguably even a legitimate – part of life did not, however, stretch to a popular belief in war as an absolute good in and of itself – something which Martin Ceadel has seen as intrinsic to ‘militaristic’ thinking about war and peace.⁹ A few voices were raised warning against the stagnation supposedly engendered by prolonged peace, and arguing that warfare might exert a beneficial influence on society. J. A. Cramb, a professor of modern history at Queen’s College, London, referred disparagingly to ‘the problem of pacificism’ and asserted that in Europe ‘every advance in politics or religion has been attended by war’.¹⁰ John St Loe Strachey, editor of the Spectator, agreed that ‘universal peace … does not breed worthier men and women’, while Field Marshal Wolseley railed against the ease, materialism, and corruption of Edwardian society, urging that ‘the drastic medicine of war alone can revive … former manliness’.¹¹ Gooch felt it necessary to speak out against the idea ‘that war is still one of the indispensable conditions of progress, a competitive examination that braces the faculties of nations, that a warless world would become slovenly and plethoric, and that manhood would lose its grip and fibre’.¹²

The belief that war was a blessing on humanity never gained widespread credence in Edwardian Britain, however. Conflict might be regarded as an inescapable fact of life, and even as one which might fulfil a certain ‘Darwinian’ role.¹³ Yet, even in its most romanticized or idealized form, war was regarded by most Britons ultimately as a means to an end, rather than as a positive good in its own right. The British Empire had been created largely by British feats of arms. The legitimacy of the empire, however, rested not simply upon crude appeals to Darwinian logic but on the benefits that British civilization supposedly bestowed upon the peoples brought into the imperial fold. Even those such as Cramb, who came closest to espousing ‘pure’ militaristic sentiment about the place of conflict in human affairs, acknowledged that the value of war depended ultimately on the purpose for which it was waged. War might be ‘the supreme act in the life of a State’, but ‘it is the motives which impel, the ideal which is pursued, that determines the greatness or insignificance of that act’.¹⁴

If a ‘militaristic’ belief in the inherent virtue of war was comparatively rare in Edwardian Britain, popular enthusiasm for ‘martial’ values appeared far more prevalent. Virtues such as strength and courage, however, although central to the militaristic value-system, are not exclusively ‘soldierly’ in nature. The Victorian cult of ‘manliness’, with its emphasis on masculinity, robust energy, courage, and physical vitality, never construed these qualities solely in martial terms. ‘Manliness’, a term whose meaning was in fact far from static, could also imply maturity (in contrast to childishness), openness and transparent honesty, or moral rigour.¹⁵ It was often connected closely with Victorian conceptions of chivalry. Yet this phenomenon had itself by the nineteenth century been largely domesticated, democratized, and demilitarized from its medieval roots, into a moral code of conduct that emphasized unselfish devotion and gentleness as much as courage and strength.¹⁶ For many Victorians and Edwardians ‘manliness’ meant essentially ‘Christian manliness’ or, as it was sometimes termed, ‘muscular Christianity’. This tradition had clear martial overtones, particularly in the context of the Christianizing mission of the empire and its promotion by colonial war. Yet ‘muscular Christianity’ was never simply martial Christianity. For apostles such as Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes ‘muscular Christianity’ represented first and foremost a vigorous and extrovert religiosity, an antidote to the asceticism and perceived effeminacy of the Tractarians.¹⁷ The martial dimension to the phenomenon should not be overstated. As Norman Vance has observed, ‘the trouble with the phrase “muscular Christianity” is that it draws attention more to muscularity than to Christianity’.¹⁸

It is a commonplace of modern British historical writing that ‘militaristic’ values and ideals were inculcated in the nation’s public schools.¹⁹ Yet despite the proliferation of military cadet forces and rifle corps in these institutions, many authorities in Britain regarded sport, rather than more overtly martial exercises, as the most effective means of fostering ‘manliness’ among the young. There was no British equivalent of the ‘Schläger-duel’ so popular among German students at this time; proficiency in this, as the German educationist Professor Friedrich Paulsen noted, ‘tends to secure to the individual in his own circle an esteem independent of the size of his bank account’.²⁰ Sir Lees Knowles, a Unionist MP who witnessed students duelling while travelling in Germany, believed that, like rowing at his own alma mater Cambridge, the practice served to inculcate habits of mental and physical discipline. But he also noted the importance of the more distinctly martial – and to British eyes more alien – aspects to the Schläger-duel, such as the gashes and scars that were sported so proudly by the students. Duelling, he observed, ‘makes Spartans of a military nation’, but it ‘may not be sport from an English point of view’.²¹ Indeed, the prestige accorded to those displaying prowess at cricket, rugby, or football in British public schools and universities appears distinctly un-militaristic in comparison with the more martial activities of some of their continental neighbours. This contrast was noted by many British observers, and particularly during the Great War, when questions about the connection between the practice of duelling and other forms of militarism, such as bellicosity in foreign affairs, were widely discussed.²²

The rival stereotypes of militaristic, Schläger-wielding Germans and sport-obsessed Englishmen were recognized by German observers quite as readily as by their English cousins. Commenting on Anglo-Saxon cultural prejudices in 1903, one German school teacher complained that

There are infinitely few Englishmen who have any idea that there can be standards other than those of Englishness. … That sauerkraut, militarism and duelling – the last including student fencing – are crude, ridiculous or barbaric, is self-evident [to the English], and every half-grown lad considers himself in a position to pronounce on them. The view that there might be parallels in English life, that boxing and football for example may equally be called ‘crude’, will find very little agreement.²³

Martial values were indeed widely prevalent in pre-war British society. But they formed only one part of a complex popular value system that construed ‘manliness’ in terms that transcended the purely military.

What, then, of the soldiery themselves, and the question of military prestige in society? A high social status for soldiers is not a universal phenomenon. As Cecil Delisle Burns noted, in China the warrior was traditionally ranked lower than the scholar and the trader in the social order, while in India, Buddhism acted to undermine popular admiration for violence and the military virtues. In the West, however, the Roman tradition of treating virtus (valour) as one of the highest ideals, and the medieval concept of chivalry, served to inculcate the belief that military life represented an honourable calling. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Burns argued, this tradition had translated into an enhanced status for the profession of arms.²⁴ Not all scholars have agreed that militarism of this sort took root so early in European history. John Erickson and Hans Mommsen believed that civilian enthusiasm for soldiers and for military ideals – which they termed ‘civil militarism’ – was a ‘post-revolutionary phenomenon, intimately linked with the genesis of modern nationalism and the nation-state’. In earlier periods, they claimed, the nature of armies prevented the soldiery from acquiring significant social prestige:

As long as recruitment took no account of a soldier’s nationality and was confined almost wholly to members of the lower classes who were pressed into service willy-nilly … and as long as officers’ posts were filled not according to merit and ability but by social status and for the benefit of impoverished aristocrats, soldiers were bound to be regarded … as an instrument of absolutist despotism.

According to this interpretation, the profession of arms achieved heroic status in European societies only once armies became representative of the wider nation, as had first happened in the French revolutionary wars at the end of the eighteenth century.²⁵

In Britain, the romanticized vision of imperial warfare fed to Victorian audiences by the literary and journalistic apostles of empire helped to foster a heroic image of soldiers as the defenders (and promulgators) of Christian civilization. This was particularly true in the wake of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny, when evangelical heroes such as Captain Hedley Vicars, Sir Henry Lawrence, and Sir Henry Havelock became household names as contemporary ‘soldier-saints’, embodiments of a peculiarly literal Church Militant.²⁶ Idealized representations of British soldiers were widely diffused throughout British society, from the novels of Henty to advertisements for consumer goods ranging from alcohol and tobacco to soap. Increasingly, the martial figures portrayed and promoted in this fashion were not only officers but common soldiers too, typified by the affectionate portrayal of ‘Tommy Atkins’ in the popular music hall productions of London’s West End.²⁷

At the same time that the soldier in the abstract was becoming an icon h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Militarism and the Left: Conceptual Problems and the Case of Britain
• 1 Ideological Context: War, Martial Values, and Military Prestige
• 2 Civil-Military Relations under the Pre-War Liberal Governments
• 3 The Militarization of the State: Armaments, Popular Navalism, and the Liberal Party
• 4 The Militarization of Society: Compulsory Service, the National Service League, and Progressive Politics
• 5 Alternatives to Conscription: Richard Burdon Haldane and a ‘Liberal’ Nation-in-Arms
• Conclusion and Epilogue: Militarism and the Left by 1914, the Great War, and the Coming of Conscription
• Appendix I: Liberal MPs with Military or Naval Experience Sitting in the House of Commons between 1900 and 1914
• Appendix II: Liberal MPs affiliated to the Navy League before 1914
• Appendix III: Members of the Liberal War Committee by December 1916
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index