§ CAPTAIN NOLAN, in rising to move—" That the inducements to enter the ranks of the Army ought to be increased," said, that in the absence of full information as to the increased inducements to enter the Army, of which they had heard, he had found it necessary to proceed with his Motion. He had no doubt that the Secretary of State for War had done his best to make an advantageous change in the condition of noncommissioned officers; but, unfortunately, he was not the only person to be considered, and so the hopes of non-commissioned officers as to additional pay had not been realized. With regard to the class of recruits now entering the Army, military officers as a rule spoke of them as being up to the mark, and the right hon. Gentleman himself, speaking from personal inspection of the men at the recruiting depot, had characterized them as highly satisfactory. He (Captain Nolan) had lately been in a very favourable position for forming an opinion on this subject, and his impression was that in three or four years the recruits they were now obtaining would make very fair soldiers indeed. A great many of the men went close to the figure, and had to be passed by special authority. But the point that struck him most was the almost 1210 total absence of any reference to the true character of the men, it being taken upon their own statement. Often it was difficult to judge whether the materials were good or bad, owing to the difference which was presented between a man in uniform and a man in civilian's dress. It was far better to depend upon statistics than on individual impressions, and private Members were in a disadvantage in that respect, because those supplied to the House were a year behind, whilst the Secretary of State for War had them made up to the time when he spoke. He found from the Returns for 1874–5, that there were 93,114 men serving that year in the British Islands. Of that number 1,853 were in prison; 5,582 deserted, and as if the men did not return within three weeks their names were struck off the strength of the Army and were not put on again until their return, therefore, he put them down as 400. There were 14,000 courts martial in and out of the British Islands, and of that number he put down 300 as absent on trial and not in prison. There were 15,868 men under the age of 20; and of the 1,648 men discharged for bad character, he put down 1,200 in these Islands. These figures showed the strength of the Army to be 19,621, which was anything but satisfactory. In Russia no man was taken into the ranks under 21, and in Germany under 20, knowing how useless it was to take men as efficient at 17 or 18 years of age, and when it was tried by the First Napoleon, in 1813, after the Battle of Leipsic, the young troops broke down. Last year General Symonds, Inspector General of Fortifications, had brought the pecuniary view of this subject before the members of the United Service Institution. That gallant officer laid it down as a rule that no recruit should be received into the Army at a lower age than 20 years, and he calculated the cost of his training to the country when he was enlisted at a lower age than that. If a lad of 17 enlisted in the Cavalry he did not become of use as an efficient soldier for three years, and cost the country £318. If he was 18 years of age he would cost the country £236; whereas had he been enlisted when just close upon 20 years of age he would have cost only £62 for his training, so that there would be a saving of £174, which was equivalent to Is. 10d. per day, spread over the remaining years of the 1211 man's service. If a lad of 17 years of age enlisted in the Infantry his training cost £132 more than it would have cost if his enlistment were delayed until he came within eight or nine months of being 20 years of age. Spreading that over the three years which remained of his years of service, it amounted to 3s. 7d. a-day more than his pay; and taking the annual average of lads enlisted under 20 years at 10,000 (in 1873 it was 15,868), it appeared the country might be saved £1,000,000 by giving up the practice of enlisting those who were under 20 years of age. The Secretary of State for War would no doubt say, that because 20,000 had enlisted during the last year that the soldier was satisfied with his position. The statistics for the five years previous to 1873 showed that 6,110 left on completing their first period of service; 12,000 men purchased their discharge; 5,703 were allowed to leave the Army before their period of service had expired; 8,000 were discharged as bad characters, and 17,594 deserted, which showed that the men were not satisfied with their condition. But then how, it might be asked, was it that men were found to enlist if they were not satisfied with the terms which they obtained? Seventy or 80 years ago our system of recruiting was conducted in a way totally different from that which now prevailed, and the recruiting sergeants used to depend very much on treating men at the public-house; but within the last 12 or 14 years all that sort of thing had been given up, and it was no longer sought to enlist men by placing them under the influence of drink. Our hopes now of securing the services of grown men as recruits—for it was not, he thought, a wise course to adopt to enlist mere lads—depended very much on the inducements we held out to them, and the extent to which we were prepared to compete with the employer of labour in the labour market. With regard to pay an Infantry soldier received nominally 14s. per week, one half of it being in rations, &c. There was a deduction of 6d. for stoppages, for which the men got an equivalent, which made it actually 13s. 6d.; but if Is. 10d., the value of his pension, was added, because as he only enlisted for six years, he was not likely to get much benefit from his pension, he would receive 15s. 4d. The ordinary rate of agricultural wages in 1212 the North of England was from 18s. to 22s., although in the South it might not be more than 13s. or 14s., it being still lower, perhaps, in some parts of Ireland. It should, however, be borne in mind that a man seeking higher wages would go, not to the South of England, but to the North, where he would be likely to find a better market, and that, as things now stood, an unskilled labourer would have to give up 4s. 6d. a-week to enter the Army. He did not attach much consequence to promotion from the ranks, because up to the present time only 115 men who were not Hiding or Quartermasters had risen from the ranks, so that the ordinary soldier's chance of promotion was 1,000 to 1. The only position to which the vast majority of the private soldiers could hope to rise was that of a non-commissioned officer; and the man who attained that rank was rather below the position of a Northumberland labourer. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that we were obliged to fall back on immature men quite unfit for war. The only other Army raised by voluntary enlistment was that of the United States; and there they had to contend with the same difficulties as we had in this country. The pay of American soldiers was, before the civil war, $13 a month, and it was raised to $16 during the civil war. After the war it was reduced for one year to $13. In that year there was more desertions than previously; but in the next year, when the pay was again raised to $16, the number of desertions fell off very considerably. The American soldier was much better treated than ours with regard to rations and clothing. Our Infantry private got 1s. a-day, and out of that he had to pay about 6d. for a portion of his clothes and rations. In this respect there was a great discrepancy between the United States and the English Armies, leaving much room for improvement on one side. The question of non-commissioned officers was not merely one of supply and demand. A recruit knew that about one-half of the men eventually became non-commissioned officers, and consequently the amount of pay given to the sergeants would draw men into the Service. With regard to inducements to enter the Army, he thought we might spend our money most profitably on the non-commissioned officers, and beyond this he had no theory 1213 whatever. Any inducement which might be offered ought, in his judgment, to be spread over the whole Army, and no distinction not previously existing ought to be made between one corps and another. By getting men of good character we should do away with a very great deal of desertion. If we held out better inducements to enter the Army, we should be able to pick and choose, which we could not do at present, the result being that we now got many men of bad character. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, in the proposals he was about to make, would be able to change substantially the present state of affairs. He begged, in conclusion, to move the Resolution which stood in his name.
§
Amendment proposed.
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words the inducements to enter the ranks of the Army ought to he increased,"—(Captain Nolan,)
§ —instead thereof.
§ GENERAL SHUTEfully agreed with the general terms of the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway, and said that the inducements to enter the Army must be increased as the short service system came into operation. He could not endorse all the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member, although he thought many of them were valuable in the extreme, and the House must recollect that his hon. and gallant Friend had lately had many opportunities of being thoroughly up in this subject. It was a great advantage to have in the House Gentlemen who either were actually serving or who had lately served in the Army, although some persons thought that officers on full pay ought not to sit in Parliament. Of course officers on full pay ought particularly to avoid questions of discipline; and, indeed, in his opinion, such questions ought to be regarded as altogether foreign to the debates of the House of Commons. The country ought to be most grateful to the present War Minister for his determination to combine the strictest economy with efficiency. It was easy for irresponsible outsiders to say that they should give larger inducements to men to enter the Army; but if this were not done with discretion certain people would say— 1214 "Here are the Tories come into power again, and there is a large increase of the Army Estimates." Some very extraordinary statements were occasionally made to the more unintelligent portion of their constituents on naval and military matters. The other day an eloquent Hibernian, addressing a mob, asked them what was the use of all the twaddle which had been uttered about ironclads, and after referring to the fate of Admiral Byng, declared his opinion that a public execution in Trafalgar Square under the shadow of the glorious Nelson Column would do more good than any number of speeches in the House of Commons. He rather thought the orator considered that the First Lord of the Admiralty ought to be the victim. More must be spent upon the Army if we wanted a really efficient one. Like other employers of labour, we must make the service better worth having. As it was, one-fourth of our regular soldiers were inefficient from youth, character, or crime, not including men in hospital, who were always more numerous in the case of a youthful army than of one matured. The Army surgeons might, he thought, do more to prevent the possibility of boys of 15 passing themselves off as youths of 19; but the fact remained that in all the regiments which represented maturity by the standard of stature—such as the Guards, the Artillery, and the Heavy Cavalry—we were short of men. He confessed that when he was Adjutant he preferred youths as recruits because they were more easily moulded into good soldiers. But then, with a system of long service, there was ample time for this work of conversion. He was not now going to advocate long service. A Reserve was positively necessary to meet the requirements of modern warfare, and they could not have a Reserve unless they had short service, and they could not have short service unless they had some means by which they could secure men of better character and of more advanced age. The real fact was that, to use the vulgar proverb, old birds worth having were not to be caught by chaff. When he last spoke he had given eight suggestions, and regretted that they had not been reported. He knew, of course, that Members could not expect their speeches to be fully reported except those delivered from the front benches. Still, it was to be regretted that the points of 1215 professional speeches were not appreciated and given. He did not, however, blame the reporters—perhaps it was hardly to be expected that they could see the points of professional speeches, and he had therefore sent a copy of the eight suggestions to which he referred to a local paper, in which they had thus been correctly reported. He was strongly in favour of a proposal made in 1872 by Captain O'Hea, who inspected the drill of the industrial schools of London for the Society of Arts—namely, that the boys should be drafted at the age of 16, when their parochial maintenance ceased, into local depôts, there to be trained until they were 18, and then put into the Army. It was calculated that in the London district alone 3,000 recruits might be obtained by acting on that proposal, and they would be soldiers of a better stamp and more suitable for promotion to the rank of non-commissioned officers than the great majority of men enlisted under the present system. Admitting that the inducements with regard to men would be expensive, only just let them think what was done with regard to the officers by the late Government. They had abolished Purchase and the whole plan of retirement; the cost to the country would be £38,000,000, and he only wished that half that sum had been spent on the men. He was immensely glad to see that it was proposed to concentrate two or three corps on a strategical point, because the mere collection of so large a force at a given place would be a most valuable manœuvre. If 160,000 men were concentrated, say, at Redhill, and bivouacked there, even though it were for only one night, put in position, and sent home next day, it would be worth more than dozens of sham fights. The questions affecting the Army and Navy were not of mere Military and Naval, but of great national importance. They were the only real insurance of this country; and if they had a great channel misfortune and a great land misfortune, and London and Woolwich were ever at the mercy of an enemy, they would have to pay four times as much as France. He was sure that neither the House nor the country would grudge the expense that was undoubtedly necessary for their Army and Navy, provided the increased cost would ensure efficiency.
§ COLONEL MUREsaid, that the end of next year, when the men who had 1216 joined the Army for three years began to go out, the difficulty which they at present had to contend with would be trebled. It was curious to look back into the history of the inducements which had been given from time to time to the Army. If they recalled to mind the pay which the soldier had in the days of bounty and pensions, they would find that whilst the demand in the labour market had been multiplied, they had reduced the inducements which were offered to men to become soldiers. They had also in a great measure increased the labour of the soldier; so that they had these three conditions—namely, a far larger demand on the labour market, decreased pay for the soldier, and increased work. It had been said that it was beginning now to be acknowledged and understood that after all the Army was only a branch of the labour market. He should like to ask how the head of any private firm would be able to get men if, while increasing the work required of them, he at the same time decreased their pay, It was said—"Oh, but the condition of the soldier is improved; we give him now facilities for private theatricals and entertainments in barracks, education, and things of that kind." Well, supposing an employer of labour went to his workmen and said—"I will increase your work and decrease your pay, but will give you compulsory education and some facilities for private theatricals." Why, any employer of labour who adopted such a means of trying to get men would be looked on as a lunatic, and his firm would probably soon come to ruin. The question was—What were they to do? It was a curious thing that even now, notwithstanding the enormous difficulties they had to contend with, the Press, and many men apparently qualified to judge, entertained a strong opinion that by short service they would facilitate recruiting in the face of the increased demand on the labour market, which was the inevitable result. He thought nothing would be more calculated to injure the Army than to have shorter service, unless they at the same time considerably increased the pay, so as to get a better class of man. His hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Nolan), who had introduced this subject in a very able and comprehensive speech, had pointed out that one of the means 1217 by which, they might the better induce men to enlist would be by offering greater advantages to non-commissioned officers. In that he (Colonel Mure) cordially agreed, and he was glad that the Secretary of State for War had taken the matter into consideration in the Army Estimates. There was one point which he (Colonel Mure) would like to press on the right hon. Gentleman; he had now, not only for noncommissioned officers but for privates, offered increased pay—for the deferred pay must undoubtedly be regarded as an increase—but he could assure him that one of the reasons why they had such difficulty in procuring men of a venturous spirit as recruits was the feeling that there was an immoral atmosphere in the Army. That was always a difficult and dangerous subject to talk about; and when one had been in the Army oneself it seemed, to use a popular expression, like fouling one's own nest. But they had the fact that year after year between 1,600 and 1,700 men were poured out of the Army as bad characters; and he would like right hon. Gentlemen to consider how far men of the right stamp were deterred from entering the Service by the knowledge that bad characters were indiscriminately admitted. He knew, of course, that if they laid down a rule that no man should be permitted to enter the Army without producing a certificate that he was not a felon, they would in some sense diminish the number of recruits. But then it was clear they would not have to turn out of the Army every year 1,600 or 1,700 men as bad characters, and therefore, on the whole, they would be none the worse off in regard to numbers. By enlisting men of bad character they corrupted and destroyed very many other young men of merely weak character. It would be curious to know how many of the 1,600 or 1,700 who were annually discharged from the Army were bad characters when they originally joined, and how many had become bad through entering the Army, and being there contaminated by vicious company. As a general rule, the tendency of military life and discipline was to improve a man's character, and it was satisfactory to know that in a great measure regimental life had the effect of turning many bad, weak young fellows into good soldiers. But it appeared to him that a 1218 great deal of that social good was swept away by the evil practice of bringing felons and other bad characters into the Army to contaminate their comrades. He thought it would be worth while for the right hon. Gentleman to try the experiment of refusing to accept a recruit unless he produced a certificate from his clergyman or the magistrates of his district to the effect that he was not a felon. In addition to the other plans which had been proposed, he trusted the right hon. Gentleman would take this one into serious consideration.
COLONEL LOYD LINDSAYsaid, that the great problem was how to draw into the ranks a better class of men, and the Minister for War was proceeding in the right direction by giving better pay to non-commissioned officers and deferred pay to private soldiers. The great discrepancy which existed between the pay in civil and military service ought by degrees to be diminished. He was therefore grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for proposing to increase the pay of the Guards; they had always had larger pay than regiments of the Line, and it should be remembered that the expenses they were bound to incur were greater. He would be glad if the right hon. Gentleman could see his way to increase the pay of the soldiers of the Line, and he believed that many of the reforms which we all wished to see introduced would be greatly facilitated by getting a better class of men. Able as a civilian Minister for War might be, and thoroughly as he might have acquainted himself with the details of his Department, there was one thing he could not learn, and that was how men would behave when they were brought in face of the enemy. Those men who enlisted and then deserted and robbed us, and then enlisted and deserted and robbed us again, and went on doing so, sometimes, as we had seen lately in the police reports, as many as 17 times, in foreign service were apt to leave their comrades in the lurch. Although he had not seen service since the Crimean War, he was not absent a day during the two years in the Crimea, and he had seen all the great engagements and many of the actions in the trenches, and he said deliberately that because a man were a red coat it was no reason he should be a hero. Although a soldier might not run away, he could, if he were so in- 1219 clined, avail himself of a great many excuses to evade his duty and keep himself out of danger; and from his (Colonel Loyd Lindsay's) experience he should say that the class of men now coming into the Army were not the sort of men he should like to rely on. It was most essential to get good, reliable men, and that could only be done by offering higher pay and greater advantages than were at present enjoyed by the rank and file of the Army. Now that the short service system was coming into operation, and men were to be passed rapidly through the ranks, if they were not of a higher class than at present the result might be to bring discredit on the Service by distributing through the country a set of men who were unworthy of having worn the Queen's uniform. If the right hon. Gentleman would say that it was necessary that the pay of a soldier should be assimilated to the pay of a policeman or of a porter at a railway, and would ask the House to sanction that, he (Colonel Loyd Lindsay) thought it would do more towards putting the Army on a proper and satisfactory footing than any changes which the right hon. Gentleman might have introduced.
§ CAPTAIN NOLANexpressed a wish to withdraw his Motion. ["No!"]
§ Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.