Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/121

 them out of sympathy with the ordinary currents of human life, and reasons against war which appear valid to the ordinary common sense of a civilian, and especially to the worker, have no weight with them. They live in an unreal world, where to be on active service tends to appear at once the most normal and the most noble condition for mankind—it could in fact hardly be otherwise.

Jaurès, as we know, hated war, but as long as there is an army, he says, "it is a crime against the genius of France and against that of the army itself to separate it from the nation." He wished to make it possible for the worker to rise in the army as in any other profession if he showed inclination and capacity for it. To make the army outside the barracks more active and efficient he was in favour of increasing the number of officers. But it would be too great a burden on the nation if these were all paid professional soldiers. His plan was that two-thirds of them should live the life of civilians. He also wished to "have done with the régime at once aristocratic and cloistered of the special military school. It is in the universities that the high military teaching will henceforth be given." Students should attend, with those of other faculties, classes on subjects of common interest—history, science and so on. At the University these young men will find fresh life, the free interchange of