id of every
vestige of our present distinction between official and governed, and
organized every element in its being.

I imagine that in this ideal war as compared with the war of to-day,
there will be a very considerable restriction of the rights of the
non-combatant. A large part of existing International Law involves a
curious implication, a distinction between the belligerent government
and its accredited agents in warfare and the general body of its
subjects. There is a disposition to treat the belligerent government, in
spite of the democratic status of many States, as not fully representing
its people, to establish a sort of world-citizenship in the common mass
outside the official and military class. Protection of the non-combatant
and his property comes at last--in theory at least--within a measurable
distance of notice boards: "Combatants are requested to keep off the
grass." This disposition I ascribe to a recognition of that obsolescence
and inadequacy of the formal organization of States, which has already
been discussed in this book. It was a disposition that was strongest
perhaps in the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, and stronger
now than, in the steady and irresistible course of strenuous and
universal military preparation, it is likely to be in the future. In our
imaginary twentieth century State, organized primarily for war, this
tendency to differentiate a non-combatant mass in the fighting State
will certainly not be respected, the State will be organized as a whole
to fight as a whole, it will have triumphantly asserted the universal
duty of its citizens. The military force will be a much ampler
organization than the "army" of to-day, it will be not simply the fists
but the body and brain of the land. The whole apparatus, the whole staff
engaged in internal communication, for example, may conceivably not be
State property and a State service, but if it is not it will assuredly
be as a whole organized as a volunteer force, that may instantly become
a part of the machinery of defence or aggression at the outbreak of
war.[39] The men may very conceivably not have a uniform, for military
uniforms are simply one aspect of this curious and transitory phase of
restriction, but they will have their orders and their universal plan.
As the bells ring and the recording telephones click into every house
the news that war has come, there will be no running to and fro upon the
public ways, no bawli