There tends to be, in ruling classes, a predominance of warriors. In some cases, warriors come exclusively from the dominant classes; in others the officers are upper class, and the rank and file from the lower classes.
In "savage or barbarous countries... all adult males are soldiers in the event of war," and that extends to "adventurous raids and forays." Peaceful activities are for women and slaves; men hunt and make war. This sort of society has occurred throughout the world where the political organism is very small with "a de facto autonomy on the part of each little tribe or village" until it gets subsumed into a larger government.
But once government becomes more extensive, and "war ceases to the the most lucrative occupation" then a special warrior class arises supporting itself from tribute extracted from the toilers on the land, and Mosca finds this pattern all over the world, including in the feudal aftermath of the Roman empire.
States that advance in civilization trend towards centralization and bureaucracy, and the central power tries to obtain control of money and soldiers and thus control the smaller organisms in the state. Often the soldiers were mercenaries from another country. The English hired soldiers from Flanders, the kings of France their Swiss guards, the caliphs of Baghdad a Turkish guard. These soldiers defend the central government against the feudal lords.
The more citified a country became, the less its rulers have gone into the field themselves, and preferred to have mercenaries fight for them. Poor countries have tended to be the source of these mercenaries. However, as with Rome and its praetorian guard, the rulers that hire mercenary armies have often found themselves at the mercy of the soldiers they hired to protect them from the feudal lords. If the society is loosely organized then the local bands of warriors will dominate; if society is centralized, then the army will want to "dictate to the rest of society."
The huge modern armies of Europe are a remarkable exception to this rule, where the army is obedient to civil rule and is content to have "very little political influence." However some armies, occasionally in France and more often in Spain, have "overthrown the men in supreme power" in moments of crisis.
The historical process that has led to the modern army starts with the Middle Ages. Centralized monarchy, notably in France, "gradually replaced feudal militias with standing armies." However, even at the end of the Middle Ages, "armies were becoming so complicated in structure that many different social elements where represented in them and served to balance one another." Cavalry regiments were mainly from the nobility, and gradually the command of infantry regiments were entrusted to gentlemen. Various noblemen, down to the time of Louis XIV, organized units at their own expense, and then hired themselves out to some sovereign. In France, the last general call for the feudal nobility occurred early in the reign of Louis XIV and it was found that the lack of common training made the feudal host of little military value.
The mixing of social elements and nationalities in the developing national armies usually kept the sovereigns safe from overthrow but were undisciplined and notorious for plundering everywhere they went. Only when real standing armies of the modern kind developed at the turn of the eighteenth century and conscription began -- with peasants and workingmen as soldiers rather than criminals -- did undisciplined plunder decrease. Officers became, more and more, "a sort of bureaucratized nobility" combining civil service orderliness with the high sense of honor "traditional in the wellborn." The wellborn, of course, identify with the ruling class.
Many countries have maintained nonprofessional militias, especially the United States, but Mosca regards them as practically useless, and uncertain in their loyalty. For instance, in 1870-71 the "citizen militia of Paris became the praetorian guard of the Commune."
Standing armies have usually been officered by "the politically dominant ranks of society" ordinary privates and petty officers from lower classes This seems to be the pattern all over the world, even in ancient Egypt and modern China. It is notable that in the later Roman empire, senators and then knights were excused from service, so that in the 3rd century the period of the Thirty Tyrants "privates could become generals and even emperors."
The question arises as to whether some peoples "are naturally timorous and cowardly, others daring and courageous." Mosca seems inclined to credit military valor and success to a "special training." He notes that in World War I
the soundness of an army depends very largely on the strength of the patriotic sentiments that have been instilled by long and careful education... in individuals belonging to the ruling classes and the masses.
But all peoples seem to have gone through eras when they conquered all before them, and others when they were conquered and despoiled by others.
"In our day" (right after World War I) a reaction has set in against large standing armies, ironically from "the subversive revolutionary elements" that are the most inclined to "assert themselves and impose their will on the rest of society by force." Mosca follows the ideas of the German General von der Goltz who predicts that huge armies of inadequately trained soldiers that can "be conquered by small armies of well-drilled professional soldiers." He wonders if the large complicated armies will be so expensive and deleterious to every family that the "moral aversions and the economic interests that are opposed to war might" weaken the willingness to make the huge sacrifices that war requires.
And if that occurs, then perhaps the dominant European nations might eventually give way to other nations that have "appropriated European methods and instruments of destruction."
When war has ended on a large scale, will it not be revived on a small scale in quarrels between families, classes, or villages?
Mosca wonders if war is not necessary from time to time if our western societies are "not to decline and retrogress to lower types of juridical defense." Then he worries that if the principle of division of labor were too strictly followed, it could easily upset the juridical balance, the balance between various dominant groups under law, with society subject to the group that practices for armed conflict dominating the intellectual and moral standpoints.
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