These blessings we owe, and with them the strength of our empire, not
to the force of our arms in the field, but to the subordination of
the military to the civil spirit, both in peace and war.
Other nations fail in their attempts at colonisation because they
proceed on military lines. With them it is the soldier first and the
civilian where he can. England succeeds because she proceeds on
_industrial_ lines. With her it is the plough where it may be and the
sword where it must.
The military spirit never yet built up an enduring empire, and the
danger of military success is that it is apt to confuse means and
ends in the public mind, and to encourage the subordination of the
civil to the military spirit in national institutions. Such a result
could only be disastrous to the British Empire, and so, while
rejoicing in the success of the British arms, it behoves us to oppose
with all our strength the growth of the military spirit.
The seventh decade of the nineteenth century saw the realisation of
one of the greatest facts of our time, the federation of the German
states in one great military empire. The tenth decade has realised a
greater fact, the federation of the British colonies in a great
social and commercial empire.
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