THE MILITARIST
BYJOHN EDWARD OSTER
BYJOHN EDWARD OSTER
BY
JOHN EDWARD OSTER
A militarist is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous, irrational being. He is not a man. He is a savage either in heart or manners or both, and is not even a brute, for a brute kills only in self-defense, or for the want of food. He has the feelings, thoughts and inclinations creditable to the worst beast, but not to civilized man.
Without the slightest doubt, the lowest occupation that a man can have is to be a militarist, and it matters not if it is his vocation, avocation, or, whether he is merely an abettor, accessory or accomplice. When he becomes active he is asoldier and then he can no longer distinguish right from wrong, and as far as humanity is concerned, he ceases to think, and is not allowed to reason under any circumstances, and his only alternative is obedience to the commands of his superior, or he is shot with less compunction than a stray dog.
Uncompromising obedience is the first law of militarism, consequently, he obeys without hesitation when ordered to fire on his fellow citizens, on his nearest friends, on his fond children, on his aged parents, or even on his beloved wife. When he is ordered to fire down a crowded thoroughfare where poor non-combatants and emaciated victims of military rule are clamoring for bread, he instantly obeys and sees the wrinkles of old age filled with gore, and the gray hair of fathers and mothers stained with red blood, and streams of life blood gushing from the mangled breasts of helpless women, feeling neither pity nor compunction of conscience.
The militarist is responsible either directly or indirectly for the state of mind which causes these cruelties. The mind is so calloused by the spirit of inhumanity which the militarist fosters, and by the atrocities which according to his reasoning he rightfully practices, that without giving a thought, he will, when appointed as a member of a firing squad to execute an illustrious hero or public benefactor, shoot him down without hesitation, although knowing that the bullet kills one of the noblest men who ever lived on earth.
The militarist thinks in terms of bloodshed, and measures everything in terms of force, hence, his encouragement of the use and application of murderous machinery and methods by the nations of the earth.
The militarist is responsible for the existence of the soldier, whose mind, conscience, life, and very soul are in the keeping of his officers, for all that was human in him, all that was religious in him, and everything that constitutes the distinctive qualities of manhood was sworn away when he took the oath of enlistment.
The mind of the militarist is bounded on the North by Blood, on the East by Envy and Hate, on the South by Sorrow, Horrors and Distress, and on the West by Demolition, Destruction, Devastation and Gore.
The militaristic mind travels in a trench by stage coach, lives in a cave, reads ancient tomes by candle light, thinks of the enemy skulking about, and fears that an antagonist is lurking in every nook and corner, and that behind every tree and fence foes are lying in ambush. It is blind to everything that has happened since the dawn of civilization, and is seemingly ignorant of the results of progress and of almost every matter of common knowledge regarding civilized conditions of life. It requires proof of what every mind knows—that we are not bloodthirsty cannibalistic enemies—and in spite of that construes plain English language and International Law to mean something entirely different from what Webster ever imagined or any other mind would deem possible.
Be it remembered, however, that while the Militaristic Mind lives under the conditions before stated, the Militaristic Personage uses electricity, the telephone, telegraph, aeroplane, the Palatial Hotel, long range telescopes, high explosives, rapid firers, and all other modern conveniences and luxuries produced by civilization, which the Militaristic Mind ignores—the owner of the Militaristic Mind being entirely distinct from the Mind itself, and quite fully aware of changed conditions.
The Militaristic Mind is unable to see anything but fighting, which in reality is wholesale murder, but as he sees it, it is merely right being packed up by might, as was believed in the dark uncivilized days when wild tribes first banded together for purposes of massacre on a larger and more effective scale. It teetotally objects to change in the settling of disputes between nations, and still wishes to annihilate the enemy who has the unbridled audacity to disagree, and still wishes to continue smashing and cutting the enemy to pieces rather than recognize civilized methods of settling international misunderstandings, methods in harmony with the times.
To the Militaristic Mind the idea that life is more sacred than property is the most abhorrent possible. The Militaristic Mind, however, has great merits and shows great possibilities when occasionally it breaks from its fetters, and would be a very excellent sort of mind if it was only humane as well as inhuman; but being the latter apparently prevents it from being the former. But there is hope for the Militaristic Mind. It has been getting so many shocks and severe jolts in the past few months that a fissure must soon appear in it through which common sense and the ideas of modern civilization will penetrate and seep in, and in time undermine its rock-ribbed precedents and prejudices.
Freed from the smoke, rust, and cobwebs which now enmesh it everybody will admire and respect it, instead of being, as nearly everybody is now, irritated by it.
Everything considered, no man can fall lower in the scale of humanity than a militarist—it is a depth beneath which we cannot go, for the greatest thing in the world is man, and the greatest thing in man is mind, therefore, one who concocts and schemes to destroy ruthlessly and wantonly, the greatest thing in the world, is the worst enemy the world contains, and the rock bottom of the depth has been reached by this arch murderer.
There is no such thing as being neutral in this regard. Every individual is either a militarist, or he is opposed to it. When the sheep are separated from the goats, one camp or the other will be supported by an extra member, and that extra member is you, therefore be sure and be counted on the right side.
Having to choose between the two alternatives of safety and war, or in other words between peace, good will and hell, strange to say, some choose the worst, which seems incredible and leads one to think them helplessly hopeless. The time is at hand for the population of the world to recognize the fallacy of force and the perniciousness of that abominable, detestable doctrine, by inaugurating conciliatory methods appropriate to the present standard of civilization.