THE NEW MILITARISM

...He closes his book with these words: ". . . by mid-century, the American people faced a future clouded with uncertainty...

...Almost equally irrelevant to modern conditions are some of the other historic assumptions about the process by which a free people succumb to the dominion of militarism...

...The grim facts of our changed position are too well known to require more than a brief comment here...

...In a sense, his account of the decline of the American anti-militarist tradition may be considered as an aspect of the same process of national change which is treated in The Decline of American Liberalism...

...Such assumptions are too self-evidently incorrect to require refutation here...

...His review of the anti-militarist tradition in America culminates in a moving statement of what the new form of militarism has become...

...Because of her favored geographical position, England could develop and maintain such a tradition...

...Only in such an atmosphere could the American tradition of anti-militarism, peace, and democracy flourish and continue to be a vital, living force for the future...

...It is probably correct to say that the danger of militarism in America is greater today than at any other time in our history...

...Fervid oratory against the aggressive tendencies of the military has been one of the dominant cliches of American legislative discussions and political debate...

...That the conditions which produced and developed this tradition have now drastically changed— and to the profound disadvantage to the security of the United States—is the stark and simple explanation of the change of the role of the military in the United States and of our changing attitude toward it...

...At times it has seemed that many of our people have feared Americans in uniform more than the hostile forces arrayed against us...

...Ekirch has broadly summarized the history of our anti-militarist attitude from colonial times to the present...

...There is almost no evidence of a deliberate design on the part of the military to attain predominance in this country by gradual encroachment...

...Middle-aged Americans have seen most of these changes in their own lifetime...

...But it would be tragic error to assume on the basis of the foregoing comments that there was no threat of military dominance in the United States today...

...the United States was able to develop such a tradition for the very same reason...

...Two World Wars and the current long protracted cold war have brought a new situation, fraught with threat to the United States and its tradition of civil control of the military power...

...Usurpation of power by the military by conspiracy or by coup d'etat, the kind of thing which has occurred with sad monotony in the long history of man, does not seem a real danger in America...

...Others are in preparation...

...He points out that we inherited from England our anti-militarist tradition...

...We are threatened by a new type of militarism, the militarism of the garrison state...

...Such an assumption rests on the idea that our fears of external aggression are neurotic self-delusions or on the belief that our fears of external aggression are neurotic self-delusions or on the belief that our unilateral disarmament will correct a situation it is assumed we have unilaterally created...

...The doctrine of civil supremacy over the military power was strongly written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers...

...Moreover, in past decades, as at the present time, many have believed that all wars were unreasonable and unnecessary...

...In a sense, many of the frames of reference through which we looked at the threat of military domination of our national life have become naive and obsolete...

...In the past, there has been a persistent assumption by many sincere anti-militarists that militarism is an addiction like strong drink, and that it can be terminated and forever renounced by an act of will...

...As Ekrich says, we appear to have gone far from the age in which militarism manifested itself with brass bands and an arrogant officer class, and when the chief dispute between the military and the civil authority might be over the size of the standing army...

...In a real sense, we become inner-directed militarists...

...This new militarism is not something which will be enforced directly by the courts and the administrative agencies, or by the bristling guns and naked bayonets of soldiers, but is in its origins something which we will enforce upon ourselves...

...The title suggests only in a general way the area with which the book deals...

...Ekirch has organized the materials of his book around the controversies^ which have occurred whenever questions of military policy or of war and peace have agitated the American people...

...Although that time included the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War, as well as chronic conflicts with the Indians, it is nevertheless true that the period from the Battle of New Orleans to the sinking of the Lusi-tania was one of the most settled and peaceful times modern man has known...

...For the United States, as for the world generally, the Nineteenth Century was a relatively stable period...

...His advocacy of a Cabinet office, similar to the War Department, which would have as its responsibility making peace instead of making war, has been recurrently proposed by others since his time, and may be said to have had its realization in 1955 when Harold Stassen was appointed a Presidential assistant with Cabinet rank to direct studies which might facilitate United States and world disarmament, including nuclear weapons...

...From isolation to world leadership, from minimal military establishments to gigantic permanent forces, from limited wars to total wars involving the whole population and the whole economy, from weapons of limited destructability to nuclear an-nihilators, from relative security behind ocean moats to vulnerability to attack from all the skies above us— these are some of the changes in our situation...

...With these changes has come a new threat of military domination of our national life...

...Quite the contrary is true...

...The new-style, perpetual mobilization for war made all the more imperative the return to that general world peace which alone could restore any vestige of normal civil life...

...Arthur Ekirch's book is a valuable addition to that literature...

...Through time and in consequence of chronic anxiety over national security, our own minds become the spokesmen lor the military way...

...It is a militarism that comes upon us subtly, produced by perpetual crisis in a time of mortal threat, where every policy has to be calculated in terms of its impact upon national security and where welfare considerations must be subordinated to military considerations...

...Its specific content is better indicated by its subtitle, A History of the American Anti-militarist Tradition, which, oddly enough, appears only on the dust-jacket and not at all on the title page of the book...

...In the years since that time a number of notable studies have been made...

...Ekirch is professor of history at the American University and the author of The Idea of Progress in America, 1815-1860 and The Decline of American Liberalism...

...Benjamin Rush, a famous physician and political figure of the late Eighteenth Century, reflected the thinking of many of his fellow-countrymen when he urged that there be painted over the portals of the War Department this caption: "An Office for Butchering the Human Species—A Widow and Orphan Making Office...

...Thus it may happen that the race of free men that has ever scorned the man on horseback will go to the polls and vote Big Brother into power, with all that he stands for...

...But all this is drastically changed...

...This seems to be the chief lesson of Ekrich's excellent book...

...And he sagely points out the one sure way in which the threat of this new militarism can be averted...

...It was thought that they could be prevented and outlawed if men of good will and right reason really made an effort to do so...

...The age of the common man seemed limited in its achievement to the guarantee of temporary material comforts, while the progress of science had culminated in the hydrogen bomb...

...Everywhere there was the overshadowing specter of war and the tremendous reality of vast military establishments...

...From the days of the earliest English settlements in America, fear of the military as inimical to freedom and self-government has been a strong trait in American thought...

...Reviewed by Louis Smith a DOZEN years ago, as World War II came to a close, a distinguished American political scientist, the late Charles E. Merriam, commented on the long neglect by American scholars of the relationship of military force to democracy, and declared that the new world situation in which the United States found itself made the need for such studies imperative...