ARMY ORGANIZATION—THE BRIGADE DEPOT SYSTEM.—RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 27 February 1879)

§ MAJOR O'BEIRNE
rose to call attention to the brigade depot system, and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the Brigade Depôt system requires amendment, as it is costly, unsatisfactory, and inadequate to the requirements of home and foreign service. 1873 He said the system had completely failed to attain two objects with which it was introduced — the furnishing of drafts for foreign service, and the welding into one harmonious whole of the forces in the sub-district, so as to form a nucleus of instruction for all auxiliary forces. Instead of that, however, it had been found necessary, in the two cases of emergency that had just occurred, to draft large numbers of men from other regiments in order to make up the strength required. For instance, to fill up the regiments sent to the Afghan Frontier and the Cape the regiments at Aldershot had been denuded of their best men. Then, again, there was a preposterous superabundance of officers at some of the depôts; in some cases there were only 80 men fit for duty under one colonel, one major, four captains, and four subalterns—a great disproportion of officers to men, whose number was utterly insufficient for the purposes of instruction to the auxiliary forces of sub-district. The men ought to be raised to 900 at least, and then they would be able to furnish strength to the battalions if required for foreign service, and be a nucleus of instruction to the Militia regiment and Volunteer corps of sub-district. As regarded the cost of these depôts, it bore no relation to the money paid for the work done and the responsibility incurred by colonels with the Army; and the officers at the depôts were examples of idleness in the districts, which was very injurious. The whole cost of the depôts was £274,000—an enormous sum of money spent on an object which was a complete failure. This Estimate ought to be cut down this year. He begged to move the Motion which stood in his name.

§ COLONEL ARBUTHNOT
said, he was not aware that these debates were coming on that evening, nor he was sure were 1874 a large number of officers in the House, or they would have been present. He agreed with the hon. and gallant Member (Major O'Beirne) that the cost of brigade depôts was very disproportionate to the results obtained. The hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested that the number of men in the battalions should be increased to 900. No doubt, they would then be of much more use for the purpose for which they were intended; but surely, if the number of men were increased, it was only reasonable to ask that the number of depôts should be reduced. The fact was that a mistake was made in establishing so many depôts, and all soldiers, if not all Members of Parliament, were agreed that, however good the design might have been, the territorial principle was not exactly adapted to the size of England, nor to their habits and institutions. The brigade depôt system, it was perfectly true, had failed entirely as regarded the localization of regiments. It could never have been otherwise, for as soon as the two regiments at a depôt centre were filled up, all the recruits were taken away for general service, and sent anywhere all over the country. Again, in some of these centres recruiting was actually at a standstill—had never, indeed, even begun; while in others a very large number of recruits were obtained. This showed that the system did not and could not work well everywhere. He did not quite agree with the hon. and gallant Member about the idleness of the officers. That depended a good deal upon the character of the commanding officer. He knew one depot where the objection was the other way, and the duties of the officers were discharged with 20 or 30 men in precisely the same manner as if there had been 900 men in barracks. No doubt that was going too far, and was a mistake of the commanding officer; but, on the other hand, where there were few men, the officers usually had very little to do. If the regiments were kept up to a sufficient strength of officers, he was not sure that it was not a good thing for a certain number of those officers to have a pleasant and an easy time as they might have at the depôts. His principle always had been, and he commended it to everybody else, to make the Service as pleasant as it could be, so long as it was combined with a careful discharge 1875 of duty. He believed it would be more carefully discharged if every facility were given to officers and men to be employed and amused. There was one little point he should like to bring to the notice of his right hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Stanley), in which he thought a good deal of expense might be saved, and that was in the case of recruits proceeding on foreign service. They were enlisted for foreign service at, let them suppose, Cardiff. If the homo battalion was serving in some remote part of the country, as Scotland, and the other battalion was abroad, it was thought necessary to send these recruits up to Scotland, and then to bring them down again to Southampton and Portsmouth to embark them for India. As he was not aware that this debate was coming on, he did not fortify himself by looking at the Returns, to which reference had been made, and he did not even know how many depôts had been established; but he hoped his right hon. and gallant Friend would think once, twice, and thrice before he began to carry out the system where it was not already in operation. In his opinion, the general feeling of officers of the Army would be decidedly in favour of the modification rather than the extension of this system of brigade depôts.

§ COLONEL STANLEY
said, he, too, like the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Arbuthnot), had come down to the House unprepared to give figures on these matters. He had no right to complain that the hon. and gallant Member (Major O'Beirne) had brought forward this Motion on the present occasion; but he feared he could not give him a full answer. But, inasmuch as he had had some rather intimate acquaintance with the subject, he hoped to be able to show the hon. and gallant Member why some of the objections he entertained were not altogether valid, and why they could not very easily or lightly depart from the system which had been some time settled. To begin with, the hon. and gallant Gentleman left out of sight, for purposes of argument, that the objects of the so-called brigade depôt system were not limited in their effect to the Army. Although the Army was now the primary consideration, its object as laid down by the late Secretary of State for War (Viscount Cardwell), was not only to form a training depot for every pair of 1876 battalions, one of which was on foreign service and the other on duty at home, but also to serve as storehouses for reserve stations where Militia recruits might train in all seasons of the year, and camping places for the Volunteers. He was not prepared to concede that these brigade depôts had wholly missed their original object. With regard to the disproportion between officers and men, at first sight he would be very much disposed to agree with the hon. and gallant Member. But it would be recollected that when they were considering the point, and obtained Returns from the authorities, they found the number of officers returned for duty at the depôts by no means disproportioned to the men. When it came to be reduced to a matter of actual fact, there was not in the majority of cases much incongruity. But in some cases there did appear to be an excessive number, and the Committee over which he had the honour to preside recommended that those officers should, as far as possible, be sent to rejoin their battalions. As regarded the number of men, there was nothing which, as Secretary of State for War, would rejoice him more than to see the depôts extended to the full size of 900 men; but this would mean a fine addition of 40,000 to the Army, and it was, therefore, hardly necessary to discuss it at the present moment. But, apart from this, if they had this large number of men tied up at these little depôts, they would be precisely undoing the object of late years, which had been, not to split regiments up apart from one another at country places, but to bring them together in large camps for better instruction, and in order to teach them the duties they must fulfil when they formed part of a large army. The number of the depôts was a subject on which he did not feel indisposed to speak, for he believed this was one of the very objections he, the late Colonel Anson, and others, had raised when the measure had been first proposed by Viscount Cardwell in that House. His opinion at that time had been that it would be far better not to split the men into such small detachments, but to have fewer and larger centres and more ground. From that opinion he had seen no reason to depart. But, on the other hand, he was bound to say that any alteration of these centres was not a 1877 thing to be lightly undertaken. If they called to mind the number of days and nights that had been spent in the discussion of this localization scheme, they would feel bound to admit that it was one thoroughly accepted on the part of the country, and that the money for it had been voted with open eyes. As to the disturbance of these centres, if it could be shown that, without expense, certain depôts could be reduced without any loss, either direct or indirect, to the country, that was an obvious matter of administration with which anyone would be prepared to deal. But, as a matter of fact, when Viscount Cranbrook acceded to Office, he found in almost all these places either the contracts so far advanced, or the depôts themselves so far proceeded with, that he scarcely had the power, without throwing away good money after bad, to alter the original system. Again, why should they turn back, after having gone half-way, in a scheme which was decided on by Parliament, for which Parliament had voted large sums of money, and when the purposes for which the money had been voted had been only half fulfilled? He confessed he would shrink from the responsibility of lightly asking Parliament to depart from the scheme. There might be small points of administration, here and there, which might be remedied; but if hon. Members looked upon these depôts as being so many men required for duty, they altogether failed of their purpose; they were depôts, and did not purport to be battalions. Perhaps, at another time, it might be his duty to touch on some points where he thought some remedy might still be required; but he was certainly not prepared to go as far as the hon. and gallant Member. The uneven number of recruits was always a difficulty in this country. It was impossible that centres of recruiting should coincide with the depôts; but the distances between the two were short. There could be no doubt that the depôts had served their original purpose of supplying more centres of recruiting than there had been before. He would mention one other point. One of the great complaints of late years had been that the stores were too much centralized. Now, it was quite evident in the late mobilization that the more they were making use of the storehouses at the depôts to distribute the stores, the 1878 better was the service of mobilization likely to be performed. He, therefore, could not see any reason for departing from this brigade-depôt system, at least, so far as the centres themselves were concerned.

§ MR. WHITWELL
thought the brigade depôts were exercising a very beneficial influence. They were more or less affecting the whole body of the Volunteer Forces. He hoped that brigade depôts would soon become the means of affording instruction to the Volunteers.