It is impossible to speak of the fatherland and patriotism without touching on that frightful plague of humanity, militarism. In studying mankind’s origin and the course of its evolution, we noted that the warrior caste was one of the first to be constituted and to impose its authority upon other members of the clan or tribe. A little later this caste was re-divided into chiefs and simple warriors, as a former step in advance had divided the tribe into warriors and non-warriors, all members of the clan having originally been warriors in case of need. We do not know whether humanity followed a regular course of progress; that is to say whether it passed successively through the three stages of hunting, pasturing, and agriculture. That it began by hunting and fishing, the gathering of plants and wild fruits, there is no doubt. As to knowing whether tribes passed from this first stage into the pastoral, then into the agricultural, after the manner one takes his bachelor’s degree in a course in science and letters, we are not so sure. We believe, however, that these different ways of procuring food must have been combined according to the natural resources of the regions inhabited. Thus hunters might continue to live principally by the chase, even after having found the means of cultivating some alimentary plants, before they succeeded in domesticating animals. But be that as it may, the warrior caste continued to remain preponderant and to preserve a large proportion of power even when forced to share it; and this caste has remained the firmest support of those who have succeeded to authority. So long as it remained a closed caste, recruiting itself from within, making war upon its own account, the population suffered greatly from its depredations, the armed man standing on no ceremony about taking from the peasant at his pleasure; but the tithe once paid, and no troops or castle being in his neighborhood, the peasant might hope for a little respite; at all events he was not constrained to give the best years of his life to reinforce the battalions of his exploiters. There came an epoch, however, when the lords began to arm the peasants on their domains during emergencies. Then by means of bounties or by stratagem, they attracted such as it was desired to have enlist in the king’s armies. But it was left to the bourgeoisie to throw the burden of its defense entirely upon its slaves. It is the bourgeoisie which has perfected the system by forcing the workers to devote a certain portion of their youth to the defense of their masters. But since it could not, without some danger, put arms into their hands and say to them: “Protect me in my possessions,” it invented the worship of “the country.” And it is by the help of this lie that it has succeeded in getting the workers to submit ever since to this bloodsucking tax. It is by help of this sophism that for several generations it has been able to take away the strongest and healthiest of their youth, to send them to rot, morally and physically, in the dungeons called barracks, without anyone dreaming of resisting or escaping, without a single voice being raised to inquire by what right people are asked to be transformed for seven, five, or, in the last resort, three years, into automatons, machines for killing and food for cannon.

Nevertheless there have been protests. There have always been some; desertion and insubordination were necessarily born with the institution of standing armies, but these were scarcely conscious acts; the deserter, the insubordinate, did not appeal directly to individual rights; their acts were undoubtedly due to feelings of personal repugnance which they hardly took the trouble to analyze. Let us go further: the protests raised in literature against war and militarism were scarcely more than explosions of feeling, and hardly, if at all, supported by logical deductions based upon human nature and individual rights.

The army! The country! But the bourgeoisie and the litterateurs, its censer-bearers, had intoned so many praises in their honor, heaped up so many sophisms and lies in their favor, as to succeed in making them appear embellished with all the qualities with which they had decorated them, and nobody dared to question the existence of the said qualities; it was posited as a fact that the army was the reservoir of all the civic qualities and virtues. Hardly a romance in which we do not find the portrait of “the brave old soldier,” model of loyalty and probity, attached to his old general, whose servant he had been, following his master through all the vicissitudes of the latter’s existence, helping that master to escape the snares spread by invisible enemies, and finally giving his life to save his superior’s. Or again⁠—for a change⁠—saving an orphan, hiding him and bringing him up, making a hero of him, and furnishing him the means of entering into possession of the fortune which the enemies of his family had stolen from him!

Anon behold how the poets exalted the brave troopers! Military honor, devotion, fidelity, loyalty, were the least of their virtues. The bourgeoisie had to commit this tremendous blunder of forcing everybody to pass a longer or shorter time under its flags before men could see that, under the brilliant tinsel with which the poets and litterateurs had been pleased to cover their idol, were hidden nothing but infamies and rottenness. The volunteering for a year and twenty-eight days has done more against militarism than all that anybody had previously been able to say against it. As long as the workers were the only ones to sacrifice their youth, to become brutalized in the barracks, as long as the public knew nothing of the army but its stage-setting, the glittering of its brass, the rolling of its drums, the gilt of its stripes, the flapping of the flag in the wind, the clatter of arms, in fine all the apotheosis with which it is surrounded when exhibited to the people, so long did the litterateurs and poets help to swell this apotheosis in their works, to contribute their share of lies to the glorification of the monster. But with the day they were put in a position to study the institution closely; with the day they had to bow to the brutalizing discipline themselves; when they themselves had to endure the rebuffs and coarseness of the fellows with stripes on their sleeves;⁠—with that day respect departed; they commenced to pull off the mask from the infamy; they belittled these “virtues” which their forefathers had been so ready to extol; and the soldier, including the officer, began to make his appearance before the public in his true character⁠—that is to say in the character of an alcoholic brute, an unconscious machine!

Ah! One must have sojourned in that hell to understand all that a man of refined sensibilities can suffer there; one must have worn the uniform to know all the vileness and idiocy it engenders. Once matriculated you are no longer a man, but an automaton bound to obey the nod and beck of him who commands. You have a gun in your hands, but you must submit without flinching to the insolence of every petty officer who vents upon you his ill-humor or the fumes of the alcohol he has drunk. Not a move, not a word, or you may pay for it with your whole life or with many years of your liberty. In addition they will take care to read to you, every Saturday, the penal code, whose refrain “Death, death, death!” will haunt your brain whenever the instincts of rebellion begin buzzing beneath your skull.

But what exasperates you most are the thousand and one minutiae of the trade, the meddlings, the annoyances of rule. And for the subaltern who bears a grudge against you, or who, without having a grudge, is simply an unconscious brute, there are numberless opportunities daily to find fault with you, to make you submit to vexations of every sort which his brutishness may find pleasure in inflicting upon you. At roll-call for a poor adjustment of a strap, one button more tarnished than the rest, for the probable neglect to put on braces, etc., you get a blackguarding; the guardhouse, and faultfinding inspections without end! Every seam of your clothes is inspected; you are even made to open your garments to let your underclothes be inspected.11 There is more to follow in the dormitories: a bed out of plumb⁠—a blackguarding! “Beds square as billiard-tables!” is the hideous expression continually dinned into your ears and well known to those who have been through the barracks. Your effects badly arranged on the floor⁠—blackguarding again! But the consummation of the art is to make you wax the soles of the extra pair of boots hung on the wall over the head of your bed, requiring that the heads of the nails shall appear without a spot of wax on them!

And the inspections! No end to these, either. Saturdays the inspection of arms, always with the same observations and epithets of “Dirty soldier”! “Pig”! and similar amenities. For a variation you have examinations as to your cleanliness, when your captain assures himself that your hands and feet are clean! Every month there is something still better⁠—the so-called “hospital inspection;”12 then the pork-butcher of the regiment examines your most private parts! Have delicacy of feeling, and they will make it a laughing stock in the army; your delicacy will soon be crushed under the ignoble paw of your commanders. “The army is the school of equality;” so say the hirelings of the bourgeoisie. Equality in brutalization⁠—yes! But that is not the equality we want.

Our inspections continue; every three or six months (I no longer recollect which) there is a kitchen inspection by a commissary of some sort; every year a general inspection by the commander of the division. During the fortnight which precedes this latter there is a cleanup in the barracks; kitchens and premises are cleaned. For a diversion you have one day an inspection by the sergeant of the week,13 next day the company inspection, then regiment inspection, brigade inspection, division inspection, corps inspection14⁠—inspections are endless! At each of these inspections you must arrange your outfit on your bed: first a handkerchief⁠—which is religiously preserved for these occasions⁠—which you spread out delicately on your bed; on this handkerchief you must arrange your brushes, your extra pair of boots, your drawers⁠—which likewise are hardly ever taken out except on those particular days⁠—an undershirt rolled up in a certain way, and of a certain length, your nightcap, your grease-box, your bottle of polish, a needle-case, thread, and scissors. In order that this exposition may be made according to the rules, illustrative placards are posted in the bunk-room, which must be consulted every moment in order to know the exact place for the everlasting brush, the bottle of polish, and all the other equally important objects. For you must be very careful to put every object in its place! If not, you will soon hear a storm of imprecations bursting upon your ears, vomited forth by whichever of your chiefs happens to perceive the irregularity. Know that the death penalty would not be too heavy to expiate such negligence! Horror! Abomination and desolation! A bottle of polish in the place intended for the grease-box! It would be the ruin of France if the general should come to know of it! We have already spoken of the consummation of the art, but here is sublimity attained: they make you wax the feet of the bed!15

It is in those inspections at which a general presides that the servility of the subaltern and even of the superior officers is shown. Front the instant the general is spied, you behold these officers, so arrogant before the poor devil of a private, crawl and cringe, range themselves most humbly behind the general, who on the other hand draws himself up⁠—when he is not broken down with paralysis16⁠—proud as Lucifer! And his eyes! Fulminating lightnings upon the wretch who lays himself open to an observation from the grand chief! The officers are all topsy-turvy; there is a trooper with a needle short, or who, having forgotten that the fortnight ended the night before, has buttoned his overcoat on the left side when he ought to have buttoned it on the right! The colonel stammers with fury, the commander quakes under his tunic, the captain is green with fright; the corporal alone says nothing; he knows that every one of them, commencing with the sergeant, will take satisfaction out of him. His course is clear; he will turn around and revenge himself upon the delinquent.

Between times, while there is no inspection in view⁠—usually on Saturday afternoon⁠—in order to liven you up a bit, they call for fatigue-duty in the quarter; this consists in making you walk up and down the barrack-yard gathering into heaps the stones and pebbles that may be found therein. After an hour of this agreeable pastime, you go up again to the bunk-room; the little piles of pebbles are scattered by the passers of the week, so you begin again the following Saturday. The military trade has a number of these spiritual little distractions.

And when in the evenings, after days thus spent, you feel a desire to chat with your companions in slavery, their conversation is not of a nature to uplift your morals or inspire you with ennobling thoughts. You perceive a group convulsed with laughter; you approach imagining you will hear something instructive: it is some idiot rehashing smutty jokes, neither new nor wittily told. You turn away and fall in with another group of imbruted creatures, who appear to have no pleasures except in recalling the gluttonies they have been indulging in, or in anticipation of the feast they are going to bury themselves in when the paltry bet they have made, (the amount for which was received from their parents) shall have brought in a few cents. Vulgar gluttony and debauchery! Do not try to go beyond these for they will not understand you! Nothing any longer exists outside of these two pleasures. After this are you astonished that, at the end of three years of this regime, so many men come out of the barracks fit for nothing but policemen and detectives? The army is nothing but a school for demoralization; it can produce nothing but spies, drones, and drunkards. Small indeed is the number of those who are unaffected by those three years of brutalization, and even they retain some traces of it for a long time after they have left the army.

Oh, this brutal and abject discipline, which breaks a man utterly, crushes his spirit, deforms his character, destroys his will! Horrible machine for brutalization, to which you deliver up a young man who only asks the opportunity to develop his sentiments towards the beautiful and the true, whose energies might be unfolded in the daily struggle for life, whose intellect might expand under the impulse of knowledge already acquired and the necessity of knowing more! Military discipline lays upon him a leaden weight which will cramp him and contract his brain forever, slackening even the rhythm of his heartbeats. After having ground him for three years in the multiple gearings of its hierarchy, it will give you back a shapeless rag, if it have not completely devoured him!

We have seen, O savage bourgeoisie, that this fatherland of which you wish to make us the defenders, is but the organization of your privileges; this militarism, that you teach is a duty to which all should conform, is instituted solely for your defense, all the burden whereof you cast upon those against whom it is directed. It furnishes you, into the bargain, with the chance to bestow rank, honors, and emoluments upon those of your relations incapable of performing more elevated functions, the aforesaid ranks and emoluments serving at the same time to stimulate the unhealthy ambitions of those who abandon the class whence they sprang to become your convict-keepers!

What are your country, your frontiers, your arbitrary boundaries between peoples to us? Your country exploits us, your frontiers stifle us, your nationalities are strangers to us! We are men, citizens of the universe; all men are our brothers; our only enemies are our masters, those who exploit us, who prevent us from evolving freely, developing the plenitude of our forces. We no longer wish to serve you as playthings, to be defenders of your privileges, to have the degrading livery of your militarism, the brutalizing yoke of your discipline thrust upon us. We want to bow our heads no longer; we want to be free.

And you, poor devils destined to fall under the stroke of the military law, and who read in the newspapers the recitals of injustices committed every day in the name of discipline, who have not gone without hearing from time to time the story of other infamies of which those who were silly enough to enlist have been the victims, will you not indulge in some reflections on the life which awaits you in the barracks? And all you who had never, until now, beheld the military life save through the smoke of the incense burned before it by the poets, can you not understand all the knavery of these bourgeois writers who have celebrated in every key the “military virtues,” the “honor of the soldier,” and “warlike dignity?” Go, poor devils, who for the sake of the word “country,” or for fear of the court-martial, are going to waste the best years of your youth in these schools of corruption called “barracks.” Go, and know the destiny that awaits you! If you wish to finish your term of service without accidents, leave behind you with your civil clothes every sentiment of personal dignity; crush out of your heart every feeling of independence; the “virtues” and “military honor” require that you be nothing more than killing machines, passive brutes; for if you have unluckily preserved in your heart, under the livery with which they clothe you, the least grain of pride, it may prove fatal to you. If some drunken veteran is pleased to insult you, and if he have stripes upon his sleeves, take care to hide the jerk which in spite of you will twitch your muscle under the insult; the hand which you have lifted to strike the insulter in the face⁠—carry it with military precision to your cap and salute; if you open your mouth to reply to threat or insult, twist it into saying, “Brigadier, you are right!” And yet a gesture, a word, the slightest sign of emotion might be interpreted as irony, and draw down punishment upon you for want of respect to your superior! Whatever be the insult or outrage, nerve yourself against the anger which will prompt you to resent it; remain calm, insensible, inert⁠—your hand in its place, your heels close together! That’s well! You remain impassive under the injury? You do not flinch? No.⁠—Well and good! You are good soldiers. That is what the country demands of its defenders!

“But if it be impossible for us to remain calm,” you will ask; “if, in spite of us, the blood rise to our heads making us blush?” Then there is but one thing for you: do not set foot in this prison, whence you cannot reissue without being debased, brutalized, corrupted. If you wish to remain men, do not be soldiers; if you cannot stand humiliations do not don the uniform. If, however, you have already committed the imprudence of clothing yourselves therewith, and some day you find yourselves in the situation of being unable to control your indignation⁠—neither insult nor strike your superiors⁠—⁠ ⁠… ⁠ ⁠… Let daylight through them! You will pay no more for it.