W. BOURKE COCKRAN

[Extracts from a speech delivered before the Students' Lecture Association of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, February 4, 1899.]

I.

EVILS OF A STANDING ARMY

STANDING armies always have been and always must be fatal to free institutions. To realize the utter incompatibility of militarism and republicanism we have but to look at France. When we recall the first French Republic scattering the combined forces of Europe through the valor of its volunteer armies, how pitiful is the spectacle of the third Republic cowering in abject fear of its own standing army, incapable of wielding any influence abroad, impotent even to do justice at home. The experience of this country proves that a citizen soldiery is invincible against foreign aggression or domestic insurrection, while all history shows that a mercenary soldiery has never been so formidable to any country as the one which sup-. ports it. A standing army in the long run has always become helpless against foreign foes, but it has always remained of deadly efficiency against domestic liberties. The soldier in war may be a hero, the soldier in peace is either useless or dangerous. The camp may be a school of virtue and patriotism, the barracks are always asylums of laziness and often hotbeds of vice. The moral law is binding on nations as well as

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on individuals. A violation of it by either is always followed by retribution, slow perhaps, but inexorably stern. He who draws the sword will perish by the sword, and the republic that establishes a standing army to smite freedom in other lands will live to find her own liberties trampled in the dust under the feet of a mercenary soldiery.

Aside from its inherent hostility to free institutions, a standing army is a crushing burden on the neck of the laborer, because it operates to reduce his earning capacity while at the same time he is forced to bear the whole expense of its maintenance. The first essential of high wages is abundance of commodities, and a standing army is an insuperable obstacle to extensive production. The volume of production depends on the number of hands employed in labor and the amount of capital available to promote their efficiency. Capital has been well defined as stored-up labor. A man without capital can labor, but not effectively. With his bare hand he might turn over a few feet of earth in the course of a day, but with a plough he can cultivate several acres in the same period. The plough itself is the fruit of labor formerly expended, and, therefore, the laborer using it or any other implement is but utilizing the labor of other days to reinforce the labor of to-day.

Since the efficiency of the laborer depends, not solely on the labor of his own hands, but largely on the amount of stored-up labor which he can employ to reinforce his natural capacity, any policy which tends to dissipate capital in unproductive enterprises is a direct assault on his prosperity. Every dollar of surplus product or capital invested in implements, in machinery, in buildings, is a fruitful dollar. Commodities used in production multiply themselves even while they perish. Every dollar expended for munitions of war is a sterile dollar. It is not used for the

purpose of production, but for the purpose of destruction. It is wasted as completely as if it were thrown into the sea.

The soldier, whether in barracks or in camp, is withdrawn from the field of industry. His own hands add nothing to the product of the country. His pay and his sustenance must, therefore, be drawn from the product of others. The laborer is the sole producer. On him must fall the whole cost of a military establishment. In other words, a standing army imposes upon each laborer the burden of supporting two men -himself and a soldier-while at the same time it diminishes his earning capacity by dissipating the capital on which his productive efficiency depends.

But far worse than the spoliation of the laborer is the degradation which he suffers from a standing army. Militarism has always despised industry. Nothing can be more natural than the contempt in which the industrious man who pays for a showy uniform is held by the idle wearer of it.

The whole literature of the militant ages reflects this contempt. Until very recent years the workman was never mentioned in print except as a villain, a serf, a beggar or some other term so opprobrious that the expressed "base mechanic" seems by contrast like a respectful description.

The establishment of this Republic, based on the equality of all men before the law, has worked many changes in social conditions, but none so remarkable as the change in the condition of the laborer. For one hundred and twenty years we have held him to be the best citizen who by the labor of his good right arm caused two blades of grass to grow where one grew before-him to be the best patriot who bears the most effective part in the great scheme of industrial cooperation, which is called civilization. We have not trusted our security to mercenary soldiers, and we have

grown to be the most powerful nation on earth through the valor of citizen soldiers. We have displayed invincible prowess in war, and measureless genius in peace. The success of our Republic has changed the whole trend of human thought. We have proved it possible to maintain the restraints of wholesome authority without any fiction of hereditary right, or any blasphemous assertion of divine intervention. Our Government has rested secure upon its foundations in the consent of the governed, without any symbol of force to maintain its authority. Law and order have reigned throughout our whole territory without uniformed soldiers in our streets, with no arsenal or fortress casting a sinister shadow over our highways. We have so thoroughly protected property by laws enacted in obedience to public opinion that industry has been stimulated to an unprecedented degree, diffusing among our citizens a prosperity without parallel in the history of the world. All these marvellous achievements are ours, because we have never invoked force except to vindicate justice, because we have steadily refused to corrupt our youth by imposing upon them in times of peace the demoralizing idleness of military life, because we have always refused to admit that any citizen can be more worthy of respect or protection than the laborer who, through all our history, has proved himself the true fountain of prosperity, the engine of progress, the mainstay of order and the bulwark of liberty.

II.

TRADE AND THE FLAG

THE assertion that trade follows the flag is one of those vaporous platitudes which have worked much mischief to mankind. It is the pretext by which the

man of violence has more than once enlisted in schemes of conquest the co-operation of the peaceful producer. The statement is not true. Trade does not follow the

flag. Oftentimes it goes in exactly the opposite direction. Since England's sovereignty was overthrown in this country her trade with us has grown immeasurably. It is to-day greater than her trade with all her colonies combined. Here, as her flag was driven out, her trade rushed in.

Because England is rich and has vast foreign possessions, some think she is rich because she has them. This is a mistake. She is rich, not through them, but in spite of them. They do not yield a dollar of revenue, yet they are a source of immense expense to Englishmen. England expends vast sums for the defence of her colonies. She gets nothing in return; not even a market for her goods. England's colonies impose tariffs on English manufactures just as heavy as those which they impose on ours. John Brown in Melbourne, John Brown in Halifax, John Brown in Cape Town, enjoy all the benefit of the English navy, if there be any benefit in it, without contributing a shilling to the support of it, while John Brown in London is taxed unmercifully to pay the whole cost of its main

tenance.

Markets depend not on armaments, but on prices. Men buy where they can buy cheapest. To hold the markets of Australia, Canada, India, or Egypt, England must supply them with the best goods at the lowest prices. Her capacity to do this is not strengthened by her political connection with them, but it is impaired by the enormous expenditures which she is compelled to make for their defence. A system which entails the establishment of a standing army cannot cheapen goods, but must advance prices, because it restricts the volume of production by withdrawing the best laborers from the field of industry, and, at the