'What is discipline except fear? The soldier is reared to dread what is behind him more than what he is forced to face; he must be more afraid of the fellow-trooper who will be told off to shoot him in the back, than of the adversary whom he is ordered to attack. The army is the incarnation of fear. The soldier must dread his commanders as a burnt child dreads the fire. He must never laugh at their absurdities, nor raise a voice against their injustice or their tyrannies. He must never speak. He must not even think. His superiors do both for him. If he laugh, or resent, or speak, or think, if he be neither a coward nor a dolt, he is a mutineer: he must be tamed, beaten, broken _à Biribi_.' And when the dreamer, Queslier, says that it will not be long before the people will become awake to this abuse of them, and will see that the military caste is established on prejudices and interests hostile to them, and will arise and destroy it, Darien replies, with equal truth:-- 'There will flow much water under all the bridges of the world before the people will have ceased to adore their vain idols bathed in blood and tears.' Vain idols, indeed! For thousands of years the Juggernaut of military despotism has rolled over the living pavement of the prostrate multitudes, and there is no sign as yet that those multitudes will arise and shiver the blood-stained car to atoms. Darien has but little hope in the resistance of the people. He fears that the majority of them will always continue to be daunted, dazzled, made dumb and helpless by the powers which ruin and slay them. William of Germany makes his insolent and inhuman declaration that the soldier must slaughter his own progenitors if his 'war-lord' bid him do so; and yet William of Germany is allowed to continue his reign. What are we to look for from nations which lie down to be stamped on thus? which lick the spurred boots of those who outrage them? _Biribi_, and what _Biribi_ represents, has its prototype in every country of Europe; and wherever Europe introduces her 'civilisation' there she introduces also her quick-firing cannon, her numbered battalions of slaves, her organised butchery, her pulverisation of virility and of volition, her destruction of initiative and of liberty. England considers that such arguments as those contained in this book do not concern her because she has no conscription. But how long will she be able, or be allowed, to be free from enforced service? The present field-marshal, commanding-in-chief, Lord Wolesley, desires conscription. It may well be that events, in the not far distant future, may strengthen his hands and enable him to enforce it.[4] [Footnote 4: This was written by me in 1897; England has not waited long to confirm the truth of it.]