The Soldier of the Future.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 169, 28 April 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Soldier of the Future.

WANTED-A MINISTRY OF SCIENCE.

By AUSTIN HARRISON in tlu« "Sunday Pictorial." Mr. Austin Harrison, Editor of the " English Review," shows that the failure of our military strategy has been mainly due to our crass neglect of sconce.

Shoitly before the Franco-Prussian War, in lsiis to be exact, an Englishmen w rote ;; book —about education, just a book, yet it almost caused a revolution. The men was Matthew Arnold. His theme may he summed up in his words:

"The want of the idea of science, of systematic knowledge, is the capital want, at this moment, of English education and of English life." Matthew Arnold wrote in a period of transition; when the aristocracy was losing its power before the rise of Democracy, coming up, as lie so prophetically said, 'ike a flower in an unprepared soil.

Before its fall our aristocracy, liko that of the Roman'?, existed as a governing ideal; when it decayed there was in idea or example ready to take its place.

The reason of that lay in the weakness of our middle-class, which grew up neglected, neither educated to rule, nor imbued with the idea of seionc.\ so that when the top decayed the bottom took its place. Now tiic power of the bottom was the vote politics, success, without an ideal. In Franco and Germany, in Switzerland and America education aims primarily at the tuiddle-c'ass; thus 111 these countries, though it is not always apparent, the middle-class is the State. Here it is not so. Our middle-class education is still grotesquely neglected The inevitable result of this want of education is the amateurism that has been so conspicuous in our conduct of the war.

It is an adm.'ted fact that Englisiinu'ii are the worst educated of any people in Europe, and it is owing to this want of education that we have .seen ourselves in recent years so outdistanced and outclassed by the superior education of the Continent. Does this matter in war 0 It matters enormously. What we have suffered from since the war started lias been our siekne-sr, of head; the spirit has been magnificent. Take, as an example, aircraft. It was a newspaper which made our War Office attend to the matter, which prevented us from regarding the new thing as we are wont to regard most new tilings—with derision. Though we v/cro the last big Power to lie at war, and thus had every opportunity to test the latest technical appliances, when war came we had less machine-guns than any other Power, less artillery; we were in every wav the worst prepared.

It is the fact that the Germans have taught us the use of the submarine: the use of air-craft; the use of machineguns; the use of applied knowledge in war; th n military of initiative and that rost'.o.v. organisation which never sleeps. We all realise these things to-day. The Germans individually are not so clever as we are; their strength lies mainly in their middle-class education, which has given them the attitude for science, for war—which in modern conditions is a science. It is in reality our attitude which is wrong. Our attitude towards knowledge, culture, the arts, that attitude which talks of one volunteer being the equal to throe, conscripts, but which forjiets the machine-gun ; that po*e which says "Let them all come," but which omits to make any preparation to meet them. The boy at school who works i« dubbed a"swat." Not long ago it was physically dangerous in the Navy for a boy to speak French well. But there is no need to continue. We know how

the edi:eated Scot jump.- all over us; how the imaginative Celt bullies us; how the educated German came over here to "run" us and even slipped in to the Privy Council. And what did we say about the war '? OUR PARAMOUNT NEED

We bemused ourselves over Norman Angell. We spoke of war as an anaclironis.il. We laughed at our great soldier, Ford Roberts. We talked of •'digging tiie German Navy out, like rats.'' We psalmdised about "not hurting the good, simple Germans." lint for the patriotic section of the Press struggling in the howling wilderness of ignorance or optimism, 1 hesitate to think what might not have been our fate by now, kind had it not licen for the super.l eoninionsense of England oven those patriots could not have saved us from disaster.

To-day we say, ''Never again." Quite so, but the question is the diagnosis, ,f we are to learn to uphold our natinonai continuity. We have the men, tiie spirit, and the brains, but we don't Tp ply them. We don't because of our want of attitude towards knowledge and sconce; yet if we are to live and prosper ;is a great nati ;;i it is this attitude we must change The lin rest ic'diers niusi: fail if the head is wrong. All Empires have fallen through wont of attitude which s only a synonym for youth, that youth which is the glory of America. It s for us to recover it. We can, yet only in one way. That way is to recognise our want and set about the duo reform, and the surest wav to do that is to establish now a MINISTRY OF KIH'CATJON. it is our paramount need.

a-' we are to srnviYKDou't imagine •this is the Inst war—thnt is only the talk of politicians. Tlie future soldier will be :i well-educated man, a man of science, and he will be officered by engineers, chemists, and men who think. He will be a citizen trained nationally in State schools, and service to country will he his gesture.

If we are to survive the war, it is from our great middle-class that this sense, this attitude, this concert, this inialfive must come with and for the State. Our future will depend on me reconstruction of our middle-class education, at present so painfully neglected. Nearly all our great men have sprung from the middle-class. It is our secondary education hich falls so short. It is the intellectual power of the great business class which needs this education ; which needs it ; > much because .t feels it needs it so little. Superior education will take care of itself: it docs. But our rule of thumb attitude must. go. All our omissions, remissness, faults and delays in this war are the result of our want of education, satisfied with the lawyers' device, " Wait and see."

England is great because of her rid-dle-class, but that class has been allowed to fi'll behind. Our trouble has be,ui that we got Democracy before we lirnl attained t > the Democratic attitude, say, of the French. If this war does not give it to us, nothing will. Solomon, who was a wise man, spoke truly some thousands of years ago: "Thev that hate instruction, love death." 1 believe the Eng'i-h soldier of the future will prefer life. —AUSTIN HARRISON.