he Legislature may have done. The ruling
class will not be made to submit to law and order which is not their
law and order, except by overwhelmingly superior force. Nobody
supposes that in such a contest the people could win against the
ruling class unless they had been able first to win over the army.
With a professional 'voluntary' army, well paid and well affected to
its paymasters, such winning over would be practically impossible. But
with the armed nation there would be no winning over required. An
armed nation--whatever it may do or submit to--is essentially a free
nation, and whatever such a nation determines upon, that it can do and
have, in spite of any ruling class."[532]

Similar opinions have frequently been expressed by leading Continental
Socialists. Herr Kautsky, for instance, wrote under the heading
"Expropriation of the Expropriators," as follows: "The arming of the
people is a political measure. It can, under certain circumstances,
cost just as much as a standing army, but it is needed for the safety
of the democracy in order to deprive the Government of its most
important weapon against the people."[533]

Those who are of opinion that only the extreme section of British
Socialists, the revolutionary wing, is hostile to the army, are
mistaken. This may be seen from the following resolution of the Fabian
Society, which is the most moderate exponent of British Socialism:
"Armies act as a standing menace not to neighbouring States, but to
the working populations of their own countries. A study of the
strategical disposition of many of the great railway stations and
barracks of the Continent will prove that the most important function
of the modern army is to suppress the resistance of labour to capital
in the war of classes."[534]

Among the "immediate reforms" demanded in the programme of the
Social-Democratic Federation[535] we find a demand for "the abolition
of standing armies and the establishment of national citizen forces."
Army and police are to most Socialists very objectionable because it
is their function to protect the national order and national property
against predatory, anarchistic, and revolutionary attempts. Therefore
it is only natural that "No Social Democrat regards the present police
system as a satisfactory one, or a professional police as other than a
dubious expedient."[536] According to the opinion held by many
Socialists, "The soldier's primary function is to come to the re