Democracy Endangered and Snobbery Bred.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 71, 19 July 1912, Page 9

Democracy Endangered and Snobbery Bred.

Compulsory military service will endanger tho democratic ideal in this country. How can it do otherwise ? No military service can be democratic. Such a thing is a contradiction in terms. Military rule is, in essence, aristocratic and autocratic. Military service breeds men who aro accustomed to follow a leader under all circumstances, not men who are accustomed to think and act for themselves. "Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die" when ordered by a leader. Need it be said that such a temper is fatal to democracy?

Even assuming that the officer* come indiscriminately from "classes" or "masses," as far as we havo those social divisions in New Zealand, it does not alter the fact. A Napoleon 19 just as much an autocrat if ho rises from the ranks of the common herd as if he were born in the purple. But despite regulations framed with the intention of securing equal opportunity for men of the working as well as of the wealthier classes to become o-ffiice-rs, it is wore than doubtful whether the desired «nd will be attained. Questions of cost, time, and opportunity for study, «tc, will all militate against tho worker. All along, however, as far as regulations were concerned the commissioned ranks have been open to working men. It would lit? interest in s»- to know what poroontago of working men held -commissions tmder the old regime? How many working men's sons havo been sent to the Australian Military College? This question is, though, after all, only a minor matter- It is the system that is tho enemy to democracy and the personnel of the commissioned ranks makes no difference. The fetters may bo fastened by patrician or plebeian —they none the less shackle tthe limbs.

The Australian Military College, to which tho young New Zealandors who are intended by the authorities to be the leaven to leaven the whole lump of Now Zealand military service are being sent for training, is based on the model of the famous United States Military College at West Point. One reason which led this college to be chosen as the model was tho democratic ideals of its training methods. Hut democratic ideals unfortunately remain ideals only in any military system. Democratic America has not succeeded in attaining; to a democratic army, as the following extract from an article it; a recent high-class American magazine ("The World of To-day") will show:--

"And. sad to say, just such manifestations of snobbery arc to be-witnessed every day at our army posts. The worst of it all is that so far as many army officers are concerned they are not really to blame. Some men are born snobs, other acquire snobbery, and still others have snobbery thrust upoit them. The liom snob finds himself perfectly at home in the officers' quarters. Other men who are not naturally snobbish readily become so in that aristocratic environment. Still others find that if they do not assume such attitudes as 'befit the station.' or in other words, if they do not glare down from frozen heights upon the common soldier, they themselves lose casto in tho quarters, so they, too, become snobs. When I say '.snobs' I use the term as the general run of civilians use it; not as it might be used by an army officer who, in defiance of the dictionary, would probably declare to you that there is no such thing as snobbery' in the army. There is discipline, yes, and a proper assumption of the powers and privileges of rank, but no snobbery. That is the settled view of the army officer. He stands upon the (radii ional code of his class—the unwritten military law that dates away luck to the fighting Assyrians, and before tie-in.

. . . The old, out-worn system demands, or senilis to demand, an air of frozen hauteur not only on the part of a <\>nimanding officer, but on flm part of every little snobling of a lieutenant And this chilly front, must be presented on all occasions, and the iron hand must extend as far as it will reach.

. . . And every day in the year, nil over the country where our uniformed defenders are on duty or at play, the rights that one might consider as belonging to life of almost any sort in the twentieth century are denied to tho common soldiei of 1!>11. who, so far nsi social privileges are concerned, might jus! as veil have lived a thousand years before Christ."

If report speaks truly, we are not quite free from military snobbery ju.sf now in New Zealand. Universal compulsory military sendee will increase the opportunities for and temptation? to snobbery, and therefore the number of snobs. This will not conduce to the growth of democracy. It must ever be kept in mind that the present conduct of officers can be taken as no criterion of what it will be in tho future. At present thoy aro being "tactful and politic" as stated by Earl Dudley.