§ 1. £288,200, Medical Establishments' Pay, &c.
MR. HANBUEY (Preston)said, this was one of the most important Army Votes, and it was certainly one which had a great influence upon the Army. It was a very extravagant, and he was sorry to say, in a good many respects, a most unsatisfactory Vote, because the officers to whom the large sums comprised in the Vote were paid were, perhaps, the very officers who gave the most trouble and complained the most. We spent no less than £700,000 a year on the medical expenses of something like 130,000 men, without taking into account the expenses connected with the Indian Establishment. Very nearly £300,000 went to the medical officers alone. He did not very much complain of this, because he believed the salaries of the medical officers ought to be such as would secure the services of thoroughly good and efficient men. Ho had no complaint to make of the medical officers so long as they were on the Effective Vote; but he was astonished to find that the Non-Effective Vote actually ran up to 75 per cent. of the Effective Vote, so that for every four of the medical officers who were receiving pay on the Effective List there were no fewer than three on the Non-Effective List. This was a monstrous state of things, such as existed in no other Department of the Army. It was undoubtedly due to the exceptional terms on which medical officers were allowed to go upon retired pay. He found that after only 10 years' service any medical officer was allowed to retire with a gratuity of £1,250, whilst after 20 years' service he could retire on a pension of £365 a year. Of course, if 152 a man retired later than that he got a much larger pension. Similar terms were not granted to anyone else. They were not granted to the chaplains, who had to continue in the Service until they got a medical certificate. Nor were they granted to the corresponding service in the Navy. Naval medical officers had to retire after 20 years' service, but with them only service on full pay counted. The Army medical officers who made such good bargains were, in some cases, given other employment whilst they were drawing their retired pay, and until quite recently no fewer than 71 home berths were given to such men. It was not fair that men who robbed the country of their services after only 20 years' work should be allowed to draw salaries from the country in addition to their retired pay. One of the very first recommendations made by the Committee which sat a few years ago on the Army Estimates was that as there was only work for two or three hours a day at small stations, the medical officers should not be employed at such stations, and the work should be done by the ordinary medical practitioner of the district. It was a startling thing to hear that men who had such great advantages should at certain places only be employed for two or three hours a day. There was some complaint also that in the general hospitals the work was not sufficiently done. The Committee to which he had already referred said—
More service may fairly be expected from medical officers. With this view we recommend that a careful inquiry be made into the establishment of the station hospitals at home and abroad, and that the medical officers in charge of them should be required to take a fair share of the executive duties.The Committee wound up by saying—The financial saving which is so necessary must be effected chiefly by limiting as much as possible the establishment of officers and requiring a sufficient amount of work from every officer.He should like to hear how far these recommendations had been carried out. So far he had complained of the medical officers themselves; but now he had to complain of the War Office itself. Only two or three days ago he received a letter from a medical officer of great experience, whose name, if he mentioned it, would carry very great weight. This gentleman said he had seen some 30 153 years' service and had had experience of three campaigns, and he could assert without fear of contradiction that a large proportion of the Medical Staff officers were in supreme ignorance of field hospital and bearer company work. He added that this must be attributed to their never having had experience of such work. It was undoubtedly a scandal if, in spite of the advantages that were given to medical officers, they would be of no use whatever in time of war, and if they had little or no practice in that which in time of war they would be most called upon to do. He hoped the War Office would be able to put an end to such a state of things. He did not know whether the medical officers were responsible for the sanitary state of our barracks and camps; but he did know that the barracks and camps were, up to the present moment, in a most dangerous sanitary condition. He knew that very little had been done to improve the state of affairs.
§ MR. E. STANHOPE (Lincolnshire, Horncastle)Oh, oh!
§ MR. HANBURYsaid, he could only quote the evidence of Lord Wolseley, who, speaking in Dublin a year ago, said that up to that moment a great number of barracks were in such a state that they were not fit to house our troops in. That was the state of things, according to Lord Wolseley, when his right hon. Friend (Mr. E. Stanhope) left Office. In these days, when so much attention was being devoted to the housing of the working classes, everything possible ought to be done to perfect the sanitary condition of the barracks. He hoped a great deal more would be done to place our barracks, at all events, in a good sanitary condition than had been done in many of our public buildings. One had only to go into the Foreign Office and the India Office to find out how bad they were.
§ MR. HANBURYsaid, he could quote a case in which one of the clerks employed in the India Office became ill, and it was proved on investigation that the drains from his rooms did not communicate with the main sewer at all. He hoped the new barracks were going to be built in a better way than that. 154 With regard to the general hospitals, the Committee made a recommendation which he believed would re-introduce the system under which medical officers were attached to regiments and went about with them. It was impossible for a medical officer to take the same interest in men who, as it were, were mere birds of passage, as they would with men who belonged to their own regiments, and with whom they were acquainted. There were two small matters of detail with regard to the general hospitals that were worthy of attention. The difficulties which were placed in the way of a patient who wanted to get a sheet of note paper or a stamp so that he might send a letter to his friends were incredible, the application having actually to pass through two or three hands. There was also a difficulty in getting newspapers to read in some of the hospitals, whilst in others there was a glut of them. He was told that plenty of newspapers would be available if there were only a proper system of supervision. He passed to another subject—namely, the discontent which existed in the Medical Service, in spite of the many advantages which the medical officers enjoyed. He was told that what his right hon. Friend (Mr. E. Stanhope) had done to remove their grievances had only stayed their appetite for a time, and that a combined attack was to be made on the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War with the object of obtaining fresh concessions. Sir Andrew Clarke, in a letter to the late Secretary for War two years ago, said that the great majority of the executive and almost all the medical officers acknowledged that the Medical Department was in an anomalous condition, and that some radical re-constitution of it was necessary to secure the success of the Army in times of difficulty or war. Sir Andrew Clarke also stated that the medical officers were very dissatisfied with the present state of things. If war were to break out to-morrow it was clear that we should have a Medical Service that was not only dissatisfied, but was in no way ready for war. Many of the claims of the medical officers seemed to him to be of a most ridiculous character, and utterly unworthy of the great Service to which the officers belonged. They were members of, perhaps, the grandest profession in the world, 155 and yet they seemed to have a strange hankering after military titles, &c. We should have the chaplains next claiming military rank, and asking to be made colonels, and so on. He wanted to know why demands of this kind should come only from the Army Medical Department. The Medical Service of the Navy was perfectly content with its position, and it contained men who were quite up to the standard of those in the Army Medical Service. It would lead to a most anomalous and unsatisfactory state of things if similar claims were put forward by the Navy. He was afraid that the whole of the difficulty in the Army Medical Service had arisen from the taking of the officers away from their regiments. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see his way to do something to remedy the grievance; remedies would undoubtedly have to be found, because the present condition of the Army Medical Service was thoroughly unsatisfactory, and it was desirable that these officers should be clearly told that they had no right to combine in the way they were doing to bring pressure to bear on the Secretary of State for War. That state of affairs could not too soon be put an end to. Had combatant officers brought the same kind of pressure to bear, they would have met with very different treatment. Ho was told that some years ago the hospitals, in order to secure certain concessions, combined to prevent medical officers joining the Service. Surely that was a most unsatisfactory state of things when it was remembered what high salaries were paid and what liberal retiring allowances were made. He hoped the Committee would have some indication from the Secretary for War that he intended to put a stop to this insubordinate conduct, which might land the country in great danger in time of war.
§ DR. FARQUHARSON (Aberdeenshire, W.)said, he thought the hon. Member who last spoke had not done full justice either to the Army medical officers or to the late Secretary of State for War, for he believed that it was solely due to the persistence of the Army Medical Department that the right hon. Gentleman undertook the reconstruction of barracks throughout the United Kingdom, and started a reform which, when completed a few years 156 hence, would put an end to evils that had so long existed. He did not quite follow the drift of the hon. Member's remarks as to the pressure brought to bear by medical officers on the authorities. The Army medical officers had not directly approached the Secretary for War; they had only given information to those who were able to transmit their ideas and views to the right hon. Gentleman, and he was proud himself to have taken some part in that transmission from friends outside Parliament to friends inside. He did not admit that Army medical officers were too highly paid; the terms given were simply those which enabled the War Office to get the best possible officers in the face of outside competition. When they considered the prohibition of private practice and the drawbacks, difficulties, and dangers of the Army Medical Service, it could not surely be suggested that a salary of £300 or £400 a year was too high. Then, again, complaint had been made of the power of retirement after 20 years' service, but that was absolutely necessary if they desired to have good men in the Service. A deputation which waited on the Secretary for War a few days ago in order to lay before him their views as to certain desirable changes had, he was glad to know, a very favourable reception, and were living now in a state of expectancy. It might be some satisfaction to the hon. Member for Preston to be informed that the concessions for which he was now asking would not involve much expenditure, if any at all. But they were points on which concessions were, by those best acquainted with the Service, deemed necessary in the interests of the proper wording of the Department, in times both of peace and of war. He could not help sympathising with the remarks of the hon. Gentleman as to the abolition of the old regimental system, for under that system the regiment proved a home, and constituted a very pleasant family party, in which the medical officer spent a great portion of his service. He joined with his hon. Friend in the hope that the right hon. Gentleman would give favourable consideration to the recommendation of the Camperdown Commission to enable medical officers in the early part of their service to be attached for some years to a regiment. As the regimental system 157 had been abolished, they were going through a natural process of evolution which must land them in another state of development; and he would, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman to favourably consider the respectful request of Army medical officers to constitute their service a Royal corps somewhat after the manner of the Engineers. The present system of titles was somewhat cumbrous, but it had been found to work well, as it was accustoming combatant officers to call the medical men something else than doctors. Personally, he was bound to admit that the use of these military titles was contrary to his old-fashioned prejudices; but he was told that there was great advantage in a medical officer bearing a rank which a common soldier could understand, and this was becoming the more essential as Army medical officers were now invested with military commands, and had to keep under active discipline more than 6,000 men—a total greater than that comprised in the Corps of Royal Engineers. The second point he had to raise was one to which the Service attached, perhaps, the most importance, and that was the desirability of shortening the period of continuous foreign service. Formerly it was five years in India, but now it was six, and the experience of all with whom he had spoken on the subject was that a man's physical and mental capacity ought not to be subjected to such a severe test. Nearly every officer returned after six years' continuous service a broken down and shattered man, and although his health might not be permanently injured he was unable for a considerable period to perform his proper duties. He would give a concrete illustration. Out of one batch of 25 medical officers who went out to India 17 died, and of the eight survivors two had to be sent to the Hills, and all eight returned home to England in a state of very considerably impaired health. They were told that a man's health frequently broke down in the fourth year of his Indian service, but that a large percentage of the medical officers were able to serve the whole six years. It was also pointed out that combatant officers were able to serve a much longer period. But the military officer served under very different conditions—he could arrange his work so as to keep out of the noon-day sun, and rest during the most 158 exhausting part of the day. He could also indulge in sporting and other recreation; but the doctor was at everyone's beck and call; he was frequently fetched out in the middle of the day; his duties were peculiarly harassing and exhausting; he had to cope with a great deal of cholera and enteric fever, and continuous demands were made upon Ms energies. Surely, under these circumstances, the period of service ought to be reduced to five years, as although he might apparently, after a certain number of years' service, have become acclimatised, the probability was that the mischief to his constitution accumulated year by year, until eventually he broke down Again, he hoped the right hon. Gentle- man would favourably consider the application that medical officers, on their return from foreign service, should have allotted to them a short period for study in the medical schools. They could hardly be expected, when serving in the enervating atmosphere of India, to keep pace with the latest developments of medical science; audit was, therefore, only reasonable that they should have an opportunity to rub off the rust which must inevitably accumulate under the conditions of foreign service.
§ MAJOR RASCH (Essex, S.E.)said, that with reference to the pressure which for a considerable number of years had been placed upon successive Secretaries for War in the interests of the Medical Service, he could endorse what had been said by the hon. Member for Preston. He agreed with the last speaker in wishing they could revert to the old regimental system, because under that the medical officers knew their men, which was almost impossible now. He did not think that the Medical Department had much to complain of. They had been trying for the last 30 years to obtain military rank, and had to some extent succeeded, and now the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire sought to secure for them a reduction of the period of service in India. He, however, failed to understand why a medical officer should only have to serve six years, while a. combatant officer had to stay in that Empire 10 years, and a few years ago as long as 14 years.
§ MR. BARTLEY (Islington, N.)remarked that, as the only lay Member of the Camperdown Commission, he felt 159 bound to state that the late Secretary for War did all that was possible to satisfy the demands of the medical profession. He was one of those who did not approve of the proposal to give doctors military rank and title, and he was certainly surprised to hear from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire that the concession made in that respect was insufficient. It seemed as if these further titles were wanted in order to make the doctors absolutely military men. Reference had been made to their commanding 6,000 men, but all they had to do was to see that certain persons did a certain class of work for them, and that occurred in every rank of life. He had always held that the practice of the medical profession was so high a privilege that those who engaged in it should be superior to military titles. He thought the real cause of the difficulty was a social one produced, to a considerable extent, by the abolition of the regimental system, and he agreed as to the desirability of attaching young medical officers to a regiment in the early part of their service as recommended by the Camperdown Commission. He also held with the hon. Member for Preston that the time had come for the War Office to put down its foot, and say that no further concessions should be made to the Medical Department. It was a most costly Department; the cost of the non-effective branch was more than 75 per cent. of the cost of the effective branch, and the eventual result would be that the non-effective branch would be as expensive as the effective; that would be a startling state of affairs. Parliament and the nation were quite willing that the Army medical officers should be liberally and even handsomely paid while they were on effective service; but it was not reasonable to expect them to pay equally high for a non-effective service. The system under which a medical officer retired after 20 years' service with a pension of £1 per day (or £365 a year) was a bad system. Under it a man left the Service just when he was reaching the perfection of medical knowledge, and just when he was in his prime, and, with the assistance of his pension, he started a private practice. He held that the period of service should be longer. By all means, if necessary, let them pay higher salaries during the extended period; but they ought to fight against allowing the Non-Effective Service to con- 160 tinue to grow as it now was growing, and they ought not to retire their medical officers just when they were most useful. If they kept those who were in health on 10 years longer the Effective Service would be much more valuable than it now was. As to constituting the Army Medical Service a Royal corps, that proposal came before the Camperdown Commission, but was not very strongly pressed. The question of title was the one more vigorously enforced at that time; and, success having attended that movement, they now got the further suggestion of a Royal corps forced on their attention. He hoped that the Secretary for War would be bold enough to resist it. The late Secretary for War showed a great anxiety to meet all legitimate grievances and wants; and he hoped, therefore, that in the future it would be clearly understood that the Service would be kept in better discipline.
§ DR. KENNY (Dublin, College Green)said, that while thanking the Secretary for War for the courteous manner in which he had met his question with regard to the appointment of examiners for the Army Medical Service, he desired, in no contentious spirit, to press him to explain what decision he had come to in the matter. It was a recognised axiom that wherever the examiners were there the students would flock; and he desired to point out that the new regulations under which the examiners were appointed for a limited period of four years instead of for life, although a step in which he heartily concurred, was likely, under certain circumstances, to be highly detrimental to the interests of the Scotch and Irish Colleges. The first four examiners who had been appointed were exclusively appointed from English schools, and were really representative of the great Corporate Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons in London. It was well known that it was by grinding that students got through these competitive examinations, and the fact that the English Colleges only were represented on the Examining Board operated very prejudicially against the Irish and the Scotch Colleges. The result was that students flocked to London for the purpose of being ground; and as the papers in these examinations had a tendency to become stereotyped, and as the grinders were able to give 161 what were called "the best tips" about those papers, a man's chance of passing was greater if he came to London than if he were trained in Edinburgh or in Dublin. The suggestion he would make for getting over the difficulty would not increase the expenses. He could say, with a great deal of authority, that the suggestion would be accepted by the Irish Colleges, and he had no reason to believe that it would not find favour also with the Scottish Colleges. The suggestion was that, instead of having only four examiners chosen exclusively from the London Colleges, there should be a roster containing eight examiners—two from Edinburgh and two from Dublin, in addition to the four from London. He did not know how the examiners were paid—whether by the year, or, so to speak, "by the job"; but, in any case, the additional expense of the system he suggested would not be great, and students would have the assurance that they would have just as good a chance of passing by being trained in Dublin or in Edinburgh as in London. Everyone knew of the jealousies existing between conflicting educational bodies; and there was a feeling, which be did not at all say was justified, that some unfairness was shown towards Irish and Scotch candidates by examiners chosen from English Colleges. If his suggestion were adopted there would be no reason for such feelings, for it would lead to the formation of a perfectly impartial Examining Board. Personally, he was in favour of another system; but the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War did not seem to think it would work in this case, as it was more suitable for class examinations than to competitive examinations. The system referred to was a system of assessors, by which an examiner sat as an assessor with the examiners. If the assessor thought the examiner was dealing too severely with a candidate he pulled him up; and if he thought the examiner was about to pass an incompetent candidate he also pulled him up. That system, however, did not find favour with the right hon. Gentleman; and he would urge him to adopt the alternative suggestion which would get rid of a difficulty that was of vital importance to Irish and Scotch Colleges. He agreed with the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire 162 that the short service was the best for medical men in the Army. An ounce of fact was worth a ton of theory in a matter of this kind. The talk about men becoming acclimatised was not borne out by experience. Men broke down very quickly in India. Many of his old fellow-students had come back from India with their nervous systems broken down, and were now his patients. Looked at from the point of view even of economy, the old five years' service was the best. It was asked why did not the combatant officers break down, as well as the non-combatant officers? The answer in the case of the medical officer was that his work was never done—night, noon, and morning his services were called upon, and, especially in times of epidemic, he never knew rest, and had hardly time to get a morsel of food. It was the worry of work of that kind that broke down a man's nervous system, especially if climatic conditions were favourable. He was, therefore, convinced that if the short service system were adopted the Army would benefit by having a larger number of efficient men in the Service than there were at the present time. He wished also to refer to the grievance of Deputy Surgeon General Joynt—
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling, &c.)I do not recognise that name amongst the list of officers who complain of grievances. He must belong to the Indian Medical Service.
§ SIR A. HAYTER (Walsall)said, that if the Committee referred to Vote 2, Sub-head E, they would find that the cost of medicines for the Army in England and the Colonies had fallen from £25,000 in 1885–6 to £16,000 in 1893–4. This reduction of £9,000 was, in the opinion of the Comptroller and Auditor General and of the Public Accounts Committee, the result of obtaining medical supplies for the Army in England and the Colonies by a system of limited competition instead of from two firms only—namely, Messrs. Savory and Moore and from Apothecaries' Hall. A limited number of firms of high repute were invited to tender for a contract of supplies for a period of three years, and 163 the lowest tender was accepted. The existing contract, which had been in operation for two years, had effected a saving of about 10 per cent. in cost, without any falling-off in the quality of supplies or the efficiency of distribution. The Director General of the Army Medical Department was of opinion that there would be no objection to a limited extension of the area of competition when the present contract expired. No change had yet been made in the arrangements for the supply of medicines in Ireland by one firm, and the Director General stated that upon the expiry of the present contract it might be possible to open the Service to competition among a limited number of Irish firms. He hoped that, as such good results had followed from the limited competition system in England, the system would be adopted in Ireland. There was one other matter which he wished to bring under the notice of his right hon. Friend the Secretary for War. The hospital for Academy Cadets at Woolwich was very small, and he thought that for infectious cases they should be allowed to use a ward in the Herbert Hospital, though, with some structural alterations, their own hospital might be used for cases requiring watching, and for accidents.
§ MR. A. C. MORTON (Peterborough)said, he noticed that medical officers received allowances for servants, and he wanted to know whether an officer was allowed to draw the allowance without employing the servant? He had asked that question before, but had not yet got a satisfactory reply to it. He agreed that it was the proper thing that a medical man should have a servant; but he thought it was wrong for him to draw the allowance, though he had no servant. The Vote for the Medical Service amounted to £288,200; but besides that sum there was a further sum of £200,000 for pensions. The service, therefore, cost close on £500,000 per annum. That appeared to him to be a very large Vote for the Service. It was probably the case that while the surgeons on active duty were not very well paid, there were a number of "ornaments" who were paid large salaries for little work, or for no work at all. He should like to see the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War weeding out a great number of these gentlemen 164 who did nothing, but wanted to strut about the country with titles. He had the greatest possible respect for medical men, and for the Medical Service, for the good work they did for the human kind; but he could not understand their rage for titles. The question of titles for the Medical Service was before the House on another occasion, and he found they wanted further titles now. They were called Surgeon - Major - Generals, Surgeon-Majors, Surgeon-Colonels, Surgeon-Lieutenants, and Surgeon-Lieutenants on probation; but he understood from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire that they now wanted to be called "Royal." He understood they wanted to be called Royal Surgeon-Major-Generals, Royal Surgeon-Colonels, Royal Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonels, and so on.
§ DR. FARQUHARSONThe understanding of my hon. Friend is at fault. They desire to be attached to a "Royal" corps.
§ MR. A. C. MORTONsaid, he supposed that if they were caused to be called Royal they would be called Royal; but he did not see what they should be called Royal at all for. The Medical Service ought to be ashamed of this rage for titles. For his part, he knew of no title higher than "doctor" or "physician." Some people said there was no other profession that a gentleman could aspire to than the military. He did not believe in that sort of thing. He thought honestly that the title of doctor was higher than Field Marshal or Colonel. The business of one was to save life, while the business of the other was to slay. He was ashamed that gentlemen occupying such high positions as doctor and surgeon should be running after these empty, absurd, and useless titles. He supposed that it was only a small number of members of the profession who were running after these titles, and he hoped they would come to understand that a title higher than doctor or physician could not possibly be given. He desired also to say that he did not think it right that medical officers should be allowed to retire at the early age of 44 unless they were certified to be unfit for further work. Most men were not only able to work, but were obliged to work, after 44; and doctors enjoyed better health than the average profes- 165 sional man. In fact, they noticed that doctors worked in private practice up to a greater age than other people worked, and seemed to enjoy good health. He, therefore, thought that medical officers should not be allowed to retire at the early age of 44, when they should be in their prime, and capable of useful work.
§ MR. PLUNKET (Dublin University)I wish to say a few words touching the matter of the Examining Board for the Army Medical Service which has been referred to by the hon. Member for the College Green Division of Dublin. There is no doubt that a large number of those who enter that Service come from Dublin, and I believe that a large number also come from Scotland. I, therefore, think it is only fair that there should be some representation of the medical authorities of those two parts of the Kingdom upon the Examining Board which holds its examinations in London. There are two alternative courses proposed. The more satisfactory of the two is that there should be an addition to the Examining Staff by which admission could be given to medical men representing the interests of Ireland and Scotland. The other suggestion is that assessors should be added to the present Examining Body. I think it stands to reason that, as a large number of students enter the Service from Ireland and Scotland, there should be some representation of the Colleges in which those students are educated upon the Examining Body. But there is also this circumstance, which ought not in fairness to be lost sight of, and that is that it has always been found that from whatever schools the examiners in such public examinations are chosen, to those schools the students who desire to enter for those examinations will flock; and there is a belief—a belief which I think has some foundation—that the fact that the examiners who preside at those examinations are London medical men will undoubtedly have the effect of drawing away students who might otherwise obtain their medical education in Ireland or Scotland. Under these circumstances I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman who presides over the War Department will give a fair and, I hope, favourable consideration to the appeal, in which I join, of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the College Green Division of Dublin.
§ MR. JEFFREYS (Hants, Basingstoke)said, he hoped the Committee would not agree with the hon. Member for Peterborough that the Army surgeons were too highly paid—
§ MR. A. C. MORTONI beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon—I never said the Army surgeons were too highly paid. I referred only to those ornamental officers who did not do any work.
§ MR. JEFFREYSsaid, there should be some prizes in every profession in order to induce good men to join it. So far from Army surgeons being well paid, it was a well-known fact that far higher incomes and salaries were obtained by medical gentlemen in other walks of life; and it would be impossible to get good men to enter the Service unless some prospect of an adequate reward for their services was held out to them. He also thought it was necessary to give Army surgeons certain official rank, as they were not now connected with particular regiments, but formed a corps of their own. In time of war the best medical men of the country would be required in the Army, and these good men could only be obtained by paying them good salaries, and giving them those various ranks and titles which were held in great estimation. It was all very well to say that those privileges were not given to Army chaplains. But the chaplains were never on active service in the field like the surgeons; and, unless some distinctive rank was given to a surgeon, he could not properly perform the services he would be called upon to undertake on the field of battle. In time of peace it ought to be our object—and he hoped it would be the object of the War Office—to get the best men they could obtain, and he was sure that the House of Commons would not stint them in so doing.
§ COLONEL LOCKWOOD (Essex, Epping)said, he must maintain that enough had been done in the way of extra allowances to the medical profession, and he trusted that they would have no further increase in that Vote at all events. As a combatant officer, he would like to add his entreaty to those which had been already made as to the shortening of the term of Indian service of the Medical Staff. He believed that five years were quite as much as any medical officer could stand in India.
§ GENERAL GOLDSWORTHY (Hammersmith)said, he thought there might be some slight modification made in the titles of medical officers. As regarded the shortening of service, he quite agreed that there were times in India when a period of six years' service might be too long; and he thought some means might be devised under special circumstances, such as when fever or cholera epidemics prevailed, for giving extra leave, or sending medical officers home. He certainly thought the views of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire should be agreed to. He hoped medical officers in the future would recollect that they were doctors first. In the campaigns in India the Army had been under the greatest obligation to them, and there was no one in the service who had, to his knowledge, complained about them.
§ MR. HANBURYsaid, he would like to call attention to the supply of medicines to the Army. The effect of extending the competition had been to get equally good drugs at reduced prices, and he thought the system of competition among chemists might be a good deal extended, and that more firms might be asked to tender. There were only five who were asked to tender, and of this number three only did actually tender. It was a remarkable thing that none of the firms who were asked to tender for the Navy were asked to tender for the Army. Under the old system they had practically only one firm contracting from year to year, and they were well acquainted with the medicines of that firm. Then there was no test whatever of the medicines supplied, and one could understand that there was a reason for that. But now, under the new system of competition, they had got a totally new firm this year which had never supplied the Army before, and he did think it necessary that under this new system the medicines should be tested. This was all the more important, because they had had it in evidence that they had in store at Woolwich drugs sufficient for two Army Corps, and these drugs were only turned over once in every two years. It certainly seemed to him rather risky that they should have an entirely new firm supplying them, and that they should take in supplies for two years for what he must term two imaginary Army Corps. It might be said that 168 there was no laboratory in which the medicines could be tested; but there was the famous one at Somerset House, even if they had not one in the Army. He certainly thought this point was one to which the Secretary for War might well give attention.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling, &c.)My hon. Friend the Member for Preston has, in making a formidable attack upon the condition of the Medical Service, set me an impossible task. He has invited me to satisfy a discontented Service by treating their claims as ridiculous, by diminishing their retirement pensions, and by preventing their combination for the purpose of representing their grievances. My hon. Friend made some observations which I think were not justified, implying that there was a considerable disposition in the administration of the Department to allow officers to occupy positions in which the duties are light. I have not found any trace of that in my experience of the Department. I am bound to say that I believe the duties of the Army Medical Staff are performed with the greatest diligence and the greatest success. My hon. Friend, followed in this by some other Members, hankers after the old regimental system. Why, Sir, I was myself a subordinate officer of the War Department when the regimental system was put an end to, and the general hospital system adopted instead, and I very well remember at that time that, although it was most distasteful to regimental officers, and to those who were imbued with old traditions—and very naturally so—yet I think I am right in saying that it had the cordial support of the more progressive and more modern-idead of the officers of the Army, and especially of the Medical Service itself. No doubt in the old days it was a pleasant thing for the Colonel of a regiment to have with him medical officers who looked upon the regiment as their home; but that was incidental to the long-service system, and disappeared with the introduction of short-service. Will anyone justify the state of things which formerly existed, when a medical officer in a hospital would attend to a man of his own regiment and pass by the men of other regiments, however urgent their claims might be? By remaining in one regiment a medical officer 169 also lost touch of the progress of medical science and experience. The medical officer of the present time may not he so good a soldier, but he is, a better doctor under the general system than under the regimental system. With regard to the lack of experience in field duty, let me point out that when an officer joins the Medical Staff he must go for a certain period for special instruction in field work. I admit that it is rather a weak point that there should be no practical experience of what may occur in war, and there is a general opinion that something might be done to remedy that, not necessarily in connection with the Autumn Manœuvres. It is thought that in some way or other a week or a fortnight's practice might be given at one or more central points, which would meet the deficiency the hon. Member pointed out. The Medical Staff has been reproached for the condition of the barracks in the United Kingdom. Has my hon. Friend considered how much has been done of late years to improve the sanitary condition of barracks? The majority of the items in the Works Vote of the present Estimates are connected with sanitary improvements. My right hon. Friend my Predecessor not only induced the House to vote a large sum of money for this very purpose, but reconstituted the old Army Sanitary Committee, in order that the work should be done on the best advice. All the steps taken have already produced a marked effect on the health and comfort of the troops. With regard to the question of newspapers and letters in military hospitals, if the hon. Member who raised the question will point out any case of grievance I will look into it with pleasure. As to the questions affecting the medical officers raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, the most important was the length of service in India. There are only two ways of shortening the period of service in India: either by shortening the time of service at home or by increasing the medical establishment. It has been suggested that there would be less invaliding, and that money would be saved in that way. I am now looking carefully into that point, and have caused an examination to be made. Only yesterday I received a Report as to the percentage of invaliding and of deaths in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth years of service, and the figures of that 170 Report, which are founded on actual fact, do not bear out the complaints made of the extreme effect upon health of prolonged service. It seems that in the sixth year officers recover a little from the effects of the fifth. The result of the figures is rather singular. The West Indies, Bermuda, China, Straits Settlements, Ceylon, and Mauritius, all of which are called unhealthy stations, and in which the period of service is only four years, have been more healthy during the last 10 years than stations now treated without that exceptional indulgence. That shows that the matter requires very carefully looking into. Respecting the vexed question of medical officers' titles, I stand here with an open mind, because my prejudices are directly opposed to doctors assuming military titles. I am not surprised that gentlemen with so many words before their names should desire to drop a few of them, but I am reluctant to see the medical character of the Army doctor merged in the military, though, no doubt, there is something to be said in favour of their having a military title. I should be most reluctant to see the good old homely and honourable title of doctor merged in some other title not distinctive of the officer's duties. As to the question of entrance examinations which has been raised, there is no desire to do anything in the least degree unfair to the medical schools outside of London. On that question my position is this: I am quite willing to consider anything that will prevent unfairness to either Scotland or Ireland, but I have only had representations from Ireland, and I wait for complaints from Scotland. My fellow-countrymen are not backward in crying out when they are hurt, and I have had no complaints from Scotland. Until I hear that Scotchmen share the views of Irishmen on this matter, I am disposed to leave the matter alone. I have not heard the question raised of the tests applied to medicines, but I will inquire into it. As to servants' allowance, that is given in order that an officer may not be without some assistance for keeping a servant, and it was thought better to make a small allowance which, while it does not suffice to keep a servant altogether, goes some way towards it. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough has made some strong observations with regard to the awarding of titles. He said there 171 were a number of highly ornamental persons on the Army Medical Staff who did no work. I do not know whom he referred to. I do not profess to know everybody on the Army Medical Staff, but I know the Chief Officers of that Department are exceedingly hard worked; and with regard to all the officers of that Department, not only have they their British duties, but they have a certain term of service abroad, and they discharge their duties most faithfully. They are exposed, when abroad, in a far greater degree to the dangers of the climate than an ordinary combatant officer; for whilst the latter has the means of protecting himself against the climate and disease, it is the duty of the medical officer to expose himself to these risks, so that he has a much harder existence in this respect. We must, therefore, regard that phase of the Service when we consider the duty as a whole. I think I have noticed all the points that have been raised in the course of the discussion, and I can only say, with regard to the Medical Staff at large, that it is greatly to be regretted there should be the least discontent in it. Those great concessions that were made in the rates of pay and retirement were made many years ago, when there was almost a strike against the Army Medical Service, when the great schools boycotted the Army Medical Service, and when there was a great demand for medical men in civil life, and the fees and emoluments of the profession were beginning rapidly to increase in amount. That was the reason these great concessions had to be made in order to induce men to enter the Service. I do not think we are quite in that position now, but at the same time it is unnecessary that any particular course should be followed. We are most anxious to take any steps that may seem required in order to relieve any substantial grievance.
§ MR. BRODRICK (Surrey, Guildford)said, the speech with which the right hon. Gentleman had favoured them was the best evidence of the practical nature of the discussion, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman had fairly dealt with all the questions that had been brought before him. There were one or two points, however, which he had omitted to mention, and on which it was desirable they should have some information. In the first place, the hon. 172 Member for Preston had alluded somewhat strongly to the large number of acting medical officers, who were paid £150 a year in addition to their retired pay. The Committee would be glad to know what opinion the right hon. Gentleman held as regarded these officers. When they were first appointed or the use of them was largely extended it was done with a view to avoiding the great expense of having additional medical officers for service at the smaller stations; and to obviate the necessity of increasing the number of such officers the late Government employed men who had already spent a considerable time in the Service, who were in receipt of retired pay, and who were willing to take up the work for the modest salary of £150 a year. He hoped the system was working well, and he should be glad to know from the right hon. Gentleman if he saw any reason to be dissatisfied with it. With regard to the extension of the service in India, if the service in India was to be reduced to the present term of six years, would it not be advisable for the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether the very early age at which the pension of £1 per day now commenced—after 20 years' service, and probably at 45 years of age—could not be extended as a set-off for reducing the term of service abroad? The right hon. Gentleman had quoted statistics which seemed to show that the loss in medical officers becoming non-effective was not so large as was supposed in the last years of their service abroad. On the other hand, he thought he was right in saying if they compared the number of casualties between the medical officers and combatant officers, the number of invalided medical officers exceeded that of the combatant officers, and that justified them giving the larger pension at the earlier age. He should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would consider these two points together, so that if it did become necessary to add to the medical staff, they should get some economy at the other end. There was rather an ominous ring at the close of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, of further pressure being put upon him by the Medical Department for further concessions. They had heard of a deputation to the right hon. Gentleman at the War Office. They had been told by the Member for Basing-stoke that it was not surprising there 173 should be grumbling in the Medical Department, and if there were grumbling in all Departments of the Army, the Army would be very fortunate in securing such a channel as the hon. Member for Basingstoke, who always was fair and moderate in his dealing with the matters to which he referred. But that was the difference between an individual Member bringing forward questions, and petitions, and this combined pressure not only of the Army Medical Department but of the profession outside, coming in a body to the Secretary for War and practically presenting a pistol at his head with the threat that the schools would boycott the medical branch of the Army if these concessions were not made. His right hon. Friend the late Secretary for War last year went to the extreme of what Members of that House considered it desirable to do, in order to conciliate the rather sentimental feeling which the officers of the Medical Department had. It was thought that this question had been set at rest, and he should be sorry if it were again to be set on foot by this system of combined intimidation. He hoped, also, they should hear a statement from the right hon. Gentleman that in regard to a Department which they all desired to see efficient and contented an incursion into the War Office of a large body of civilians, as well as military medical men, should be found necessary in order to ensure consideration for their just grievances. While there should always be a fair adjustment of grievances, this one Department of the medical services, because of this extremely strong opposition, should not be made the recipients of favours which were not extended to officers of the combatant ranks.
§ DR. J. C. KENNY, alluding to the question of examinations, said, they in Ireland felt they had a great grievance which ought to be dealt with, regardless of the fact that the Scotch had not raised any questions on this head. This question of Irish examinations was felt very acutely, and the feeling on the subject was likely to become stronger in the future. He knew of a case at the present moment of a young gentleman, who had been twice plucked at the Royal University in Ireland, and who had then gone to Edinburgh and passed there. They had the reputation of having much 174 more severe examinations in Dublin than anywhere else. He could place his hands on dozens of men who, having been plucked by the Dublin Colleges, had gone and passed in Edinburgh.
§ SIR G. CHESNEY (Oxford)gathered from the Secretary for War that claims were likely to be made on behalf of the Medical Department for further changes in their designation, and he also gathered that the right hon. Gentleman was disposed to give to that demand a weight which he did not think it fairly carried. The plea put forward was that the Medical Department commanded a considerable body of soldiers. If they took the whole of the subordinates of the Medical Department scattered over the world they certainly did amount to several thousands of men. But they were only a military body in the sense that they were under the Mutiny Act; they were an organised body only in the sense that they were distributed about the country under disciplinary rules. The medical officer commanded these men on the principle on which a matron commanded the hospital nurses. The Medical Department was in no case required for active operations; therefore, there was a perfectly broad distinction between the command in this sense and the command as understood in the combatant branch of the Army. If they were to make them Field Marshal Surgeons they could nevertheless never take command of troops in active operations, and the youngest subaltern must be chosen over them; so that if these medical officers were now seeking distinctive military rank, and their request were granted, it seemed to him their titles would lose all distinction from that of the combatant officers. There was a strong feeling in the combatant branch of the Service against what they considered the degradation of titles to the combatant rank by their being distributed in a wholesale way over the non-combatant branches of the Army.
§ Vote agreed to.
§
2. Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £1,827,400, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge for the Supply and Repair of Warlike and other Stores, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1894.
§ *SIR G. CHESNEY rose to move a reduction of £1,000, his object, he explained, being to draw attention to the Ordnance Department, the expenses of which were defrayed out of this Vote. He submitted to the Committee that, as this Department was now organised, there was a distinct want of economy and efficiency. The first consideration should be, as we had a comparatively small Army, to see that our arrangements for the supply of the munitions of war were of the most effective description. They should also, at the same time, exercise economy as much as possible. Instead of lagging behind other nations we should be in the front rank with inventive appliances, and we should, to the fullest extent, use our great manufacturing, inventive, and mechanical capacity to make good our deficiency in numbers. The history of our Ordnance Department for the last 20 years had been one continued record of delay and of more or less discreditable failure. Each great advance that had been made in armaments had been carried out always by some other country rather than by ourselves, and we had always lagged behind. Long after the Armies of other nations had got the breech-loading rifle we were still supplied with the muzzle-loading rifle; and we had only quite lately got the breech-loading field gun years after most of the Armies of Europe had been supplied with them. Naturally, they asked what was the reason for so very unsatisfactory a state of things, so opposed to the traditions of the English character and nation in all its Civil Departments. He thought the answer was a plain one, it was not now given for the first time, but had been given over and over again by the most extraordinary disclosures which had been made of incompetence, of delay, and of mismanagement. He did not want to give the whole history of the Ordnance Department; but he would, in a few words, mention what had been the principal changes made. Before the present War Department was established there used to be a separate Ordnance Department under an experienced official called the Master General, who was entirely responsible for all the munitions of war. When the present War Department was established, with that love of centralisation which seized upon the authorities 176 in those days, the separate office of Master General was abolished, possibly very properly; but, unfortunately, no adequate measures were taken to replace his functions. The Secretary for War took upon himself the management of all this complex and difficult business which had before been managed by the Master General, with the result that a state of extraordinary confusion supervened. Shortly afterwards a Committee was appointed to inquire into the organisation of the War Department. That Committee recommended—not the re-creation of the office of Master General, but the appointment of an experienced officer who should fulfil his duties. They recommended the appointment of a Surveyor General of the Ordnance, who should be a military officer of great experience and responsible to the Secretary for War for the business of the Ordnance Department. That recommendation was carried out, but in a very few years the original intention of the appointment was lost sight of, and it was made a Parliamentary official appointment and given to a younger Member of the Government. He ventured to think that there were too many Government officials in Parliament. He thought it was a disadvantage in this way: that some promising young Member of the House was seized and made a junior official, and was thereupon muzzled as long as the Government remained in power, and a good deal of debating ability was thus stifled and lost to the House. The serious point in this case was that over one of the largest, if not the largest, spending Departments of the country, there was substituted for a highly-trained official a comparatively subordinate and practically inexperienced official. In the evidence taken before one of these Commissions the Surveyor General of the day said he was no better than a subordinate clerk to the Secretary for War. A few years later another Commission was appointed to inquire into the great delay which had occurred in the supply of warlike material and the unsatisfactory character of that material, and the Report of that Commission was that there was no one properly responsible for that business. They pointed out that the Surveyor General, as then constituted, was incapable of properly 177 coping with the business, and they recommended the re-appointment of the Master General, to be independent of the Secretary for War. That might have been a good or a bad recommendation; but almost immediately after the office of Surveyor General, already shorn of most of its functions, was abolished, and the present state of the Manufacturing Department was introduced. The Ordnance Department was now divided into two branches. In one branch they had the Ordnance factories for guns, small arms, and gunpowder. These factories were put under a Director General, who was a skilled mechanical engineer of great experience. So far so good. But he was not, in a proper sense, responsible for the performance of these duties. He was placed under the Financial Secretary, who was a subordinate Member of the Administration. The Financial Secretary was, again, nominally responsible to the Secretary for War; but there was no public responsibility for the discharge of these duties. It was quite possible that under the present arrangement the Director General, if he was only left alone sufficiently, would discharge these duties of the Ordnance Department very creditably. But these factories were simply the agents for carrying out the behests of the Military Authorities. They had nothing whatever to do with the kind of equipment or pattern, but had simply to work on the patterns supplied to them. The duty of determining these patterns—that was, of settling the equipment of the Army, field guns, rifles, ammunition, as well as the custody of the stores, had been placed on the Commander-in-Chief—a change well meant no doubt, but the most mischievous of the many mischievous changes that had been made during the last 30 years. Under such a system it was impossible to have either efficiency or economy of administration in this great branch of the Public Service. All these duties were nominally placed on the Commander-in-Chief, who was ostensibly responsible. But the business of commanding the troops was in itself quite sufficient to occupy the energies of the head of the Army, and to suppose that any man in his position could undertake the direct control of every branch of supply connected with the Army was absurd. He submitted that the officers 178 who were appointed to assist the Commander-in-Chief in his duty of inspecting warlike stores were in no sense responsible to anyone.
§ SIR G. CHESNEYsaid, the reduction he proposed to move was in connection with the inspection of warlike stores. There were a great number of officers for inspecting these stores—55, he believed—and there were many assistants. That was the Department created to enable the Commander-in-Chief to carry out his duties.
§ MR. E. STANHOPE (Lincolnshire, Horncastle)It always existed.
§ SIR G. CHESNEYsaid, these men were now placed under the Commander-in-Chief to enable him to carry out his duties. At the head of these Inspectors there was an officer called the Director of Artillery. Hundreds and thousands of letters were issued from the War Office about matters which, in most instances, had never been submitted to the Commander-in-Chief at all, and on which he could not possibly give an opinion. A sham system of control and inspection of that kind must necessarily lead to waste. This system was perfectly unknown in any other country, and had been strongly condemned in the Report signed by the late Mr. W. H. Smith, the present Duke of Devonshire, and many other high authorities; but no action had been taken to remedy it. It was surely, under these circumstances, the duty of the right hon. Gentleman to take some steps to put our War and Manufacturing Departments on a more reasonable basis. In every other Army in the world there was a separate and responsible system for these different duties. Specific responsibility should be placed upon the high Departmental officials, and there should be a record somewhere or other of the opinions and recommendations of these officials, so that if things went wrong the House and the public might know how it was that they did go wrong. It was sometimes said that the adoption of such a plan would interfere with our Parliamentary system; but he thought the position of the Secretary for War would be very much strengthened if he were supported by a staff of trained experts whose opinions 179 would be on record, and it would not then be possible for any Minister of War to make extraordinarily drastic changes in the Army organisation without anybody being the wiser. He would appeal to hon. Members to show their sense of their responsibility to their constituents, the taxpayers, that the public money should be economically and efficiently expended, by voting for the Motion which he begged to submit.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Item A, of '£139,960,' for Inspection and Proof of Stores, be reduced by £1,000."—(Sir G. Chesney.)
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI have listened with great interest to the hon. and gallant Member's very interesting criticism on the present organisation of the War Office, and especially in respect to its control over warlike stores; but I think the hon. and gallant Member is well aware of my position in the matter, and also of my views on the question, and I do not think I can add anything to what I stated to the Committee a few weeks ago. I shared the responsibility for the general tone and direction of the Report of what was called Lord Hartington's Commission; but the present organisation of the War Office has been so recently established, is supported by such considerable authority, and has the advantage of being worked by such able men, that I consider I cannot rashly make any great changes in it. I acknowledge the authority of the hon. and gallant Member and the clearness of his views upon the subject; but I cannot do more at present than express my appreciation of those views.
§ MR. E. STANHOPEAs I was at the War Office last year, I would like to explain to the hon. and gallant Member behind me the nature of the changes, and I shall do so in a very few words. The changes in the organisation were three in number. The first was the placing of the Manufacturing Departments under a single head, who was called the Director General of Ordnance Factories. That change, which I myself carried out, was recommended by various Committees, and more especially by Lord Morley's Committee, and I think everybody has been of opinion from that day to the present that enormous good has resulted from the concentration of these Departments under 180 one head, who is absolutely responsible, and who is put in a position where responsibility can reach him. The second change was the separation of inspection from manufacture. Complaints having been made on this subject, it was thought right to separate those Departments, and to see that military officers should design the weapons and inspect them when made, so that nothing should be given for use in the Army except what had been passed and thought to be desirable for our soldiers. The result of the change has been an improvement in this respect. The change was considered by the Committee presided over by the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), and it reported that considerable good has been done to the Service. The third change is that the responsibility for the inspection and the ordering of arms should be placed on the Commander-in-Chief. The hon. and gallant Member complains that, although this may be the case, the letters written in the name of the Commander-in-Chief do not guarantee that this officer knows very much about what is being done. This, however, is a disadvantage which applies to all Departments of Government. Letters at the Local Government Board and Board of Trade, for instance, although signed by the Presidents of those Boards, are not necessarily written by them. There is a military officer—the Director of Artillery—who is responsible for all this work. He is responsible for the inspection and the design of the weapons; and I think there cannot be any doubt that the concentration of responsibility has tended to make the system more effective than it was before. I only rose to point out to the hon. and gallant Member that these questions were very carefully considered, and that the decision upon them was based upon principle, and works satisfactorily.
§ MR. HANBURYsaid, he should like to draw attention to the Report of the Commission of Sir James Stephen, and to the evidence given before that Body that in times of Party emergency, in order to cut down the Votes, the country was drained of stores, and that consequently in time of war we should not have adequate supplies at hand. One of the recommendations of the Commission was that there should be a technical 181 Body which should state specifically what was the proper supply of warlike stores to be kept for this country, and that no Party out of mere Budget considerations should be allowed to run the country into danger by reducing the supply of stores. Had anything been done in this direction? Was there at the beginning of every financial year some technical authority who was responsible for advising the civilian Secretary of State for War what was an adequate supply of stores; and had the Secretary of State for War, acting on such advice, given the country during the ensuing year a sufficient amount to satisfy the requirements of his technical advisers?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANMy answer to the hon. Member is very simple. The plan which the War Office pursues is the plan of common sense, which dictates the way in which we should endeavour to adjust two things—the absolute requirements of the country and the money available to meet those requirements. To say that a Minister is bound to give everything that can be desired by the Army as necessary to put it into a state of the most complete efficiency in every respect, irrespective of the financial conditions of the country, is not common sense. On the other hand, to say that a Minister is to be allowed, in order to make a Budget, to starve the Army, is also not in accordance with common sense. The War Office has combined the two aspects of that difficult case; and whether they have succeeded I cannot say. But an enormous advance has been made during the last six years, as far as the War Office is concerned, in knowing the precise requirements of the Army. Military officers have directed their attention to the question, have laid down certain proportions of stores, and these are regarded as fixed proportions. Fortified by these rules, the officers approach the Secretary of State for War when the Estimates are being framed and submit their demands. The War Secretary considers those demands in the light of the circumstances of the year. I remember the time when these things were managed in a hand-to-mouth way, and when no scale was laid down to guide the authorities in fixing the amount of stores. To a very large extent this system has been changed; but 182 when the Military Authorities make demands it is the business of the political head of the Department to do all he can to meet their demands subject to the necessities of finance.
§ MR. BRODRICK (Surrey, Guildford)said, there was another point upon which he hoped they would have a declaration of policy from the right hon. Gentleman. It was a very important one, and one upon which the House of Commons had been exercised for some time. It was as to the necessity of going abroad for the supply of projectiles.
§ MR. BRODRICKsaid, he was not going to enter into that particular question.
§ Question put, and negatived.
§ Original Question again proposed.
§ MR. BRODRICKsaid, he merely wished to have a declaration of policy with regard to the question of supplying projectiles. Under the late Government an endeavour had been made to build up a private trade in these materials, so as to enable the country in time of war to get an adequate supply of stores. The late Government had endeavoured to insure that the Sheffield trade should have some opportunity of regular employment, in order that there might be security for a certain amount of work in case of sudden emergency. He could not think that the policy pursued was a wise one. The Orders had been before the War Office, and the great object of keeping the contracts in the same hands was that the War Office should be able to deal with the sources of supply as a whole, and endeavour to distribute them in such a way that we should have something to rely upon. He trusted that even if that system cost a little more money it would be continued. To get our supplies of projectiles from abroad, from manufactories that must be shut to us when war broke out, was suicidal. Leaving out the private trade, the difference of cost between these war materials as made at Woolwich and as made abroad was not sufficiently large to justify the policy of purchasing them from foreign countries. It was the 183 worst form of economy to adopt a system in time of peace which must break down in time of war. He desired an explanation as to the increase of the item for wages at the Small Arms Factory at Birmingham, that increase being £6,000. This was a repairing factory, and at a time when the new magazine rifle was being so largely banded out to the troops there ought not to be much need for repairing. The Inspection Department of the War Office, however, had always been anxious to be a manufacturing department, and that was a system which ought to be kept in check by the Secretary for War. He should like to know how the increase was to be accounted for, and he also wished for an explanation as to the increase of the item for harness and saddlery, which amounted to £16,000. He believed there had been very little competition for contracts, and that it had been with the utmost difficulty that the supply had been kept up even to cope with the ordinary wants of the Army, much less to form reserves. He wished to know not only the reason of the reduction, but also whether anything had been done to form a reserve of these articles for the two Army Corps, or whatever unit the War Office had adopted?
§ MR. WEBSTER (St. Pancras, E.)said, he did not propose to move the Amendment which stood on the Paper in his name, but he wished to say a few words on the general Vote. As everybody who had studied military matters knew, an Army Corps or a regiment with out ammunition was about as useful in the field as an engine would be on a railway without coals. He believed that the Manipur disaster had been partly owing to the troops having various guages and ammunition supplied to them, and he should like to urge on Her Majesty's Government the absolute necessity of keeping each description separate. There were two kinds of ammunition served out for the magazine rifle, and if in war there should ever be any confusion between them our troops might be placed in a very dangerous position. Each description of ammunition, moreover, should be clearly labelled, so that there would be no risk of confusion. There were other types of rifle in use besides the magazine. The Volunteers and the Militia, for instance, 184 were supplied with the Martini-Henry, and this rendered it doubly necessary that there should be no confusion as to the ammunition. He had found the ammunition arrangements to break down at the Cannock Chase Autumn Manœuvres, whilst serving as an officer in one branch of Her Majesty's Service, and this had brought vividly to his mind the great necessity there was for the Administrative Department to take care that each particular regiment should always have at hand the particular ammunition it required.
§ MAJOR RASCH (Essex, S. E.)wished to know what the War Department proposed to do for the employment of Reserve and discharged soldiers, and what their intentions were as to the employment of unskilled labour at Enfield and Woolwich? The present Secretary for War was not unsympathetic on this question of the employment of Reserve and discharged soldiers, for he was the first Minister who had allotted a certain allowance to provide employment for old soldiers. The right hon. Gentleman had done this seven years ago, and within the last few months he had increased the allowance by £300; whereas the late Secretary for War had been applied to in vain for assistance. They had had his platonic sympathy, but that was all.
§ MR. E. STANHOPEsaid, the late Government found the subscriptions to the fund to which the hon. and gallant Member referred were going down, and they had declared that if they were kept up and added to the Government would make a proportionate grant.
§ MAJOR RASCHsaid, he failed to see why the right hon. Gentleman had interrupted him. What he wished to say was that the present Secretary for War first contributed £200 to the Association, and then increased it by £300, and that they had got nothing from the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench (Mr. E. Stanhope) but platonic sympathy. He wished to know how many of the 55 field batteries in India had been armed with the new breech-loading guns? Up to the present they had been armed with a weapon which Lord Wolseley had stigmatised as the worst field gun used in Europe. Another question he desired to put to the right hon. Gentleman opposite was, how cordite, which was the most 185 violent explosive known, suited the new magazine rifle? Cordite was composed of gun-cotton, nitro-glycerine, and a substance technically known as "jelly," and though it answered very well for field guns, he was told that for the magazine rifle it was too violent an explosive, and did great damage to the weapon. He should also like to know when the Militia and Volunteers were likely to be armed with the Lee-Metford rifle, Mark II.; how it was that a paid official at Enfield had received something like £50,000 for the patents of this rifle; and whether the swords now issued to the Cavalry were better balanced and of better material than formerly? Three or four years ago the War Department used to purchase swords from Germany, and they were so bad that they would hardly go through a pat of butter. They were of a better description now, he believed, and he should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State would inform him as to the precise character of the weapon now issued.
§ MR. TOMLINSON (Preston)said, the House had been informed that after 3,000 rounds had been fired from the Lee-Metford rifle the barrel was in such a state as to be unserviceable. If that were so it was a serious matter, and showed that the rifle adopted was not so serviceable a weapon as the Army ought to have. He should like to know whether the Secretary of State could give any further information on the matter?
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEY (Shropshire, Newport)said, it would be satisfactory to the Committee generally to know whether any steps were being taken to arm the native troops of India with the same description of weapon as that held by the British soldiers, by the side of whom they would be led into action if necessity arose? It was possible that one of those composite forces that they were called on to use in India at short notice might have to be employed, and that each of its component parts would be differently armed, requiring different ammunition and transport, and drawing their supplies from different sources. This circumstance would be fraught with great difficulty and danger. He thought it was of first-class importance to the interests of the country that identity of arming and drill between the 186 native and European troops in India should be carried out as soon as possible.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis)wished to call attention to swords and saddles. His belief was that the swords in use in the Army were of a wrong pattern. The hilt was lop-sided, so that when a cut was made with the edge the tendency was for the weapon to incline to one side. As to the point, all officers would agree that it was extremely difficult to get the men to use it, the reason being that the art of fencing was not sufficiently attended to in the schools. Of course, if the point of the sword were to be commonly used a weapon of an altogether different design would be required. As to saddles, he believed that a more cumbrous and uncomfortable piece of machinery was never yet invented than the English Cavalry saddle. There had been an exhibition of saddlery in this country about a year ago, and some remarkable patterns had been there exhibited, especially from Hungary, Austria, and America. The best of all was the American, and something resembling that should be adopted in this country.
§ THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. WOODALL, Hanley), replying to a number of speakers immediately preceding him, said, that with regard to the question of the supply of stores from our home factories and foreign sources, the hon. Member opposite had called attention to a recent order for the supply from France of armour-piercing shells for the Navy. The hon. Member knew perfectly well that the responsibility for policy in that matter rested entirely with the Admiralty; and, no doubt, the Secretary to the Admiralty would be able to answer the hon. Member when the point was raised in connection with the Navy. He might, however, say that the late Government had been in the habit of purchasing from abroad, and the reason for it was obvious. British manufacturers had not yet attained that degree of excellence with regard to the particular kind of projectile referred to which its first producers had obtained for some years past. But with regard to general policy, the conclusion the War Office had arrived at was that it was inexpedient, to say the least of it, to depend on foreign sources for any of the projectiles or 187 materials of war that they required, and which at a moment of emergency it might be difficult to obtain from abroad; and, although they had had to pay a higher price for the articles purchased, they had adopted the policy of looking to the home producers for supplies, and of stimulating them to meet the needs of the Service. With regard to the relative proportions of stores obtained from the trade, and produced in their own factories, a tolerably even balance had been kept for some time past in the amounts expended. They were sometimes a little under and sometimes a little over 50 per cent. of the supply in purchases from the trade. Besides which, the private trade supplied forgings and semi-manufactures to the Arsenal. With regard to the repairing factory at Birmingham, it was under the management of the Director of Artillery, and the necessity for an increase in the wages paid there during the current year had arisen from the fact that last year there were interruptions in the manufacture of the new rifles from time to time in consequence of alterations and improvements in the design; but now, as they might reasonably hope that the improvements were perfected, the number of Martini-Henry rifles coming in were being replaced by the now rifle, which necessitated the employment of a larger number of men, and consequently a larger expenditure. At Sparkbrook, when the late Government thought it was necessary to expedite the production of the new rifle, that which was intended to be only a repairing factory had lent valuable assistance in producing the new weapon. As to harness and saddlery, as the hon. Gentleman opposite who had raised the question knew, there had been great difficulty experienced in obtaining sufficient supplies. That difficulty, however, was now overcome, and the supply now enabled the Department to overtake the demand. As to the danger arising from any confusion in the supply of suitable ammunition, it was so obvious and elementary a duty to guard against such a contingency that it was hardly necessary to enter into the matter. The hon. Member for East St. Pancras had given them a word of caution in the matter; but it was hardly called for. With regard to the employment of old soldiers in the War Office, to which the 188 hon. and gallant Member for Essex had referred, that was a matter of which they had given practical proof of their sympathy.
§ MAJOR RASCHI acquitted the present Government of want of sympathy with the discharged soldiers.
§ MR. WOODALLsaid, the hon. and gallant Gentleman had generously made that admission. Then be had spoken of field batteries in India. He (Mr. Woodall) could assure the hon. and gallant Member, and also the Member for Shropshire, that such orders as had been entrusted to the Department from India for arming the troops in that country were being effectively carried out, and that the Department was within a short distance of completing all the orders received. They had been hoping for, and had been led to expect, further orders for the new rifle, and he could only say that when those orders were received the War Office would be glad to give them prompt and effective execution. The hon. and gallant Member had referred to cordite, and had spoken of it as being a very violent explosive. Well, their experience of cordite had been eminently satisfactory, and the dangers in its production had been considerably modified. They found now that the actual process of production and manufacture was safer than was the case with the old powder. It would be, perhaps, too early to speak confidently as to its effect upon the barrel of the new rifle. After firing 3,000 rounds he believed the barrel was not so efficient through erosion; but it was not rendered unserviceable, although it was less reliable for precision and accurate shooting.
§ MR. HANBURYWhat is the effect upon the Maxim gun?
§ MR. WOODALLcould not say, but the same effect might be anticipated. There were, moreover, other difficulties arising from the small recoil produced by cordite, affecting prejudicially the Maxim action. As to arming the Volunteers and Militia with the new rifle, he could not say how soon it would be expedient to do it; but before the end of the present financial year they hoped to be in a position to have a Lee-Metford rifle for every Infantry soldier—that was to say, they would be able to put the new rifle into the hands of every Militiaman and Volunteer as well as every soldier; but, 189 they did not think it would be right to so arm every branch of the Service until they had a sufficient supply in store to meet any demands that might be made upon them. The production of the new arm was going on at a satisfactory rate. Something had been said about swords; but he was afraid that neither hon. Members nor himself could speak as experts in the matter. When he was in Office before a great deal was said about swords, and the question of the design as well as efficiency was referred to a Committee composed of very able experts. The result was the approval of a new design. He was happy to say that their predecessors did a great deal towards calling into existence English firms who put down plant and addressed themselves to the production of the weapon, and these firms had succeeded in satisfying our very severe system of inspection. The production of swords had almost gone out in England at the period to which reference had been made, and at which the late Mr. W. H. Smith had been under the necessity of purchasing from Germany. There was at that time only one family in Birmingham that kept up anything like a trade. It was satisfactory, therefore, to be able to say that there were now in Sheffield, in London, and in Birmingham firms which could produce swords in much larger numbers than the Government were able to order. He believed he had now dealt with all the matters to which reference had been made. There were many more matters arising out of the Debate that one would have liked to say a word about had time permitted. He would add his testimony to that of the late Secretary of State as to the valuable changes which had been brought about consequent upon some of the recommendations of Lord Morley's Committee. That Committee was appointed by his right hon. Friend, and he had had the honour of serving upon it. It went most thoroughly into the administration of our manufacturing departments, and the chief recommendations which it made—the consolidation and unifying of the manufacturing establishments, and the separation of inspection from manufacture—were carried out by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, to whom he was glad to give credit for what he had done. There was nothing which had 190 since happened which threw the smallest doubt on the wisdom or policy of the system adopted by the right hon. Gentleman. How much the success which had been achieved was owing to the admirable manner in which the War Department had been served by Dr. Anderson—who had been already referred to—it was unnecessary to say; but the way in which they had been able to secure intelligent co-operation between the different superintendents, widely separated as they were, bore testimony to the admirable tact and temper and ability this gentleman had brought to bear upon the administration of the Department.
§ MR. BRODRICKsaid, he did not wish to press the Government unduly on the point; but he should like to ask whether, as the policy of the present War Office was the same as that of the late War Office with regard to orders being given abroad, the hon. and learned Gentleman would have any objection to state the calibre of the shells about which the question had arisen, the price of such shells at the Ordnance Factories, the price at which firms in England were willing to supply them, and the price at which orders had been given to foreign firms?
§ MR. WOODALLsaid, he believed the hon. Gentleman would do better if he addressed his question to the Representatives of the Admiralty; but he could assure him that the question of price, though an important, was by no means the determining, element in the case. The particular shell referred to was of a special kind.
§ MR. BRODRICKsaid, he would put the question to the Admiralty, but he quite saw the hon. Member's point. As to the Martini-Henry rifles, the number of them in store was growing every day, and he should like to make a suggestion with regard to them. In those cases in which rifles were thoroughly overhauled, new barrels were put upon them in a large number of instances. Would it not be possible for the Government to consider whether, when new barrels were substituted for old ones, those of the magazine calibre should be adopted? If that were done, the transformed rifles would carry the same ammunition as the magazine rifles. The experiment had been tried in the case of a certain num- 191 ber of rifles. He believed the cost of making the change was about 25s. or 30s., whilst a new rifle cost £3 15s. or £4. There was a further saving in the fact that it cost about 8s. to make the Martini-Henrys fit for use, so that the extra charge would really be only 17s. or 22s.
§ MR. WOODALLsaid, it was very natural that the hon. Member should have raised this question, as a rifle had been produced of the kind he described which bore the name of the "Brodrick." That rifle, however, had not been actually called into the service. The Department were shortening a number of Martini-Henry rifles so as to make them into carbines, and this was being done at a comparatively small cost. What would become of the great number of the Martini-Henrys in store was, of course, a matter for serious consideration.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid, it was well for the Committee to realise that a matter which might be of supreme importance to the country hinged upon a, possible order coming to this country from India for a supply of Martini-Henrys. He thought the Committee would be doing very good service if the result of what was said induced the official who could send the order from India to send it as speedily as possible. He was delighted to hear that there would be a supply of rifles sufficient for arming all the Militia and Volunteers. It might possibly be worthy of consideration whether some of these weapons would not be more usefully employed, however, if they were put into the hands of our troops on the Indian frontier, who might be called upon to use them at very short notice. It might cause great inconvenience if it happened that a regiment of Ghoorkas and one of British troops happened to be fighting side by side, one using the Martini-Henry and the other the magazine rifle, because, in that case, the same ammunition would not do for both. He could not conceive that any question was more deserving than this of the attention of the Secretary for War.
§ MR. HANBURYsaid, that some five or six years ago, when most of our small arms were found to be in a deplorable condition, a new system of inspection was arranged. He thought it would be satisfactory to know 192 whether this system was being carried out, and whether Inspectors were periodically made in every branch of the Service and in regard to every arm. Great stress ought to be laid upon the importance of having every arm properly tested. He did not himself think that the very best Inspectors of small arms were necessarily Artillery officers. No doubt if they could give their services continuously they might be the best men; but the present system of five years' service as Inspectors not only interfered with the proper duties of Artillery officers, but could not give us efficient and properly-qualified Inspectors. As a matter of fact, at the end of the five years, when the officer might be supposed to be properly qualified, he had to return to his regiment. He wished to ask whether, under the circumstances, Infantry and Cavalry officers would not be the best men for testing small arms? Some soreness had arisen on this point owing to the fact that two Infantry officers, who were certainly efficient Inspectors, had had an Artillery officer with no experience put over their heads. The Secretary for War would recollect that a few years ago a Committee recommended that the Artillery classes should be opened to officers of all arms who wanted to qualify for scientific duties. As far as he knew, nothing had been done to carry out that recommendation, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see that it was carried out. Then there was the question of the viewers in the Ordnance Store Department. Some years ago, when bad stores were passed into the Department, great blame attached to certain viewers. He believed that, to some extent, the evil which then existed had been modified, but he did not think that even now sufficient attention had been paid to the recommendation of the Lords Committee on Sweating. That Committee drew attention to the temptations thrown in the way of these viewers, and reported that they were not properly paid and were not drawn from proper source. It was most important that only serviceable stores should be passed into stock. The lives of our men might depend upon these stores being thoroughly good. He was told that at the present moment there were in the Store Department a large number of men who had come from contractors' establishments. 193 He did not ask his right hon. Friend to sweep them all away at once, but he did ask that no more men who had been employed by contractors should be appointed. Another point, to which attention had been drawn by the hon. Member for Essex, was this: that when a new arm or invention was brought to the Government and it was thoroughly and efficiently tested nobody in the Department should be allowed to pick the inventor's brains. Complaints in this regard had been made over and over again, and every War Minister ought to look with the greatest possible suspicion on any man in the service of the War Office who patented any article that had come before him in his official capacity. There had been in recent years too many great and scandalous cases of this kind, and even now he would ask if it was too late to put a stop to the running on of an arrangement which he was sorry to say, in spite of his protests, had been permitted by the Predecessor of the Secretary for War, and which was full of very evil precedent. One case to which he referred was that of the Slade-Wallace equipment. The War Office had allowed that to be patented by an officer who had been on the Equipment Committee. Captain Maine, an officer in Canada, who had offered the equipment to the War Office, had informed him (Mr. Hanbury) that this equipment had been submitted to the officer who took out that patent, as a member of the Committee. Whether that was the case or not, at any rate no officer on an Equipment Committee should be allowed to put forward an invention for an equipment. No less than £4,000 had been paid to Colonel Slade and Colonel Wallace for their equipment. He was informed that orginally a certain royalty was paid on each equipment, and not a lump sum; but what he wanted to make sure of was that, when these equipments were manufactured for the Volunteers, the royalty would be added to the cost when charging the Volunteers. To come to a much larger question, he understood that royalties to the extent of £50,000 were to be paid in regard to the new magazine rifle, a large portion of which sum, so far as he could understand, would directly or indirectly go into the pocket of a man who was once a foreman in the Enfield Factory at the time when the magazine rifle was before the Small 194 Arms Committee. From a clear and distinct answer he had received from the Secretary for War—the first he had ever been able to elicit on the point—he found that a royalty of 2s. per arm up to £500,000 had to be paid to "The British Magazine Rifle Company." That sounded very innocent. They knew nothing whatever of the British Magazine Rifle Company, and it might have nothing whatever to do with the Enfield Factory; but he had asked in respect of what particular patents was this large sum paid, and the answer given was that it was in respect of six patents—one by Mr. Lake, another by Mr. Lee, and no less than four by Mr. Speed, who was a foreman at the Enfield Factory. The further answer was given that no particular sum of money was assigned to any one of the patents, a lump sum being paid. It was said that 2,000,000 rifles would be required eventually, so that, if the royalty continued, not £50,000, but £200,000 would be paid in respect of these six patents, four of which were taken out by a former foreman at the Enfield Factory. Was that the way they were to pay the men who had been employed at the Enfield Factory, and who had had every opportunity of witnessing all that was carried on before the Small Arms Committee, and who were constantly consulted them? He would go so far as to say that an order issued 15 years ago forbidding any man at all in the factory to take out patents was the proper system to adopt. Men who occupied responsible positions in the factory ought to be paid well, and ought to have no inducement to pick, or attempt to pick, the brains of any inventor. He was not aware that the four patents of Mr. Speed, to which he had referred, were all that had been recognised by the War Office. He himself had seen another article patented by Mr. Speed—a cartridge box—and he did not know whether it had been recognised by the War Office. He was content to deal with this sum of £50,000. All this was arranged before the present Secretary for War went into the War Office; but he sincerely hoped that these two things might happen: in the first place, that if the 2s. per arm had not been promised for any rifles above 50,000, that not one penny of royalty would be given for the re- 195 maining 1,500,000; and, in the second place, that this system of picking the trains of inventors would be discouraged. With regard to accoutrements, he was informed that the price had gone up considerably of late, although the wages paid to the workmen had by no means risen in proportion. He was sorry to say that the increase in price might be, to some extent, due to the action which he (Mr. Hanbury) had taken four or five years ago in having a particular firm struck off the War Office list. He had thought, as that firm had supplied the War Office with thoroughly bad material, that they would be struck off altogether, and never again allowed to supply the War Office. But in that he was disappointed, and the result had been what he had not anticipated. They were brought to a state of things almost worse than that they were in before, because, although this firm was struck off from supplying the War Office itself, other Departments took no notice of the matter, and from that day to this the firm had been supplying India regularly. That clearly showed want of communication and concert between the various Departments of the State, and that some cooperation should be established. Again, a firm struck off the list for supplying bad "buff" should not have been allowed to supply that material to other contractors. But what had happened? Why, that the buff made by the firm in question had still been going into the War Office through another contractor. Furthermore, this firm had been allowed to manufacture for the Volunteers. There had been no limit placed upon that, but he imagined the War Office ought to exercise some control over the equipments supplied to the Volunteers. What had been the natural result of all this? When he got the firm struck off the list, he naturally thought that they would be struck off altogether, and that there would be a new firm manufacturing buff, and new dealers coming into the market. But nothing of the sort had happened. The only result had been that a middleman had been brought in and that two profits had had to be made, where only one was made before. In this way the price of the accoutrements had gone up considerably. He did not hesitate to say, under the circumstances, that the striking off of this firm from the War Office list 196 had been a sham and a farce. He was afraid that the price of all accoutrements had gone up, but he had had some pretty good evidence given to him the other day of the price of what were called the braces having become something enormous. His informant—who was a person who should be thoroughly familiar with the subject—had told him that the price was 10s. 4d. Well, buff was 5s. 3d. per lb.—or that was the price paid by the Indian Government—the making of the braces came to 1s.; the furniture, or brass work, came to another 6d., the total cost amounting to only 5s. or 6s. That would leave a profit of 4s. or 5s. He could hardly believe that his informant was correct in the matter, but he would put a question to the Government on an early opportunity. With regard to another portion of the Slade-Wallace equipment, hon. Gentlemen would agree that if it had a fault it was that it was too heavy, and that nothing should be done to add to its weight. A contract was given out some months ago, and one of the conditions was that the whole belt should be one solid piece of leather. Here was the original pattern. [The hon. Member produced two belts for the inspection of the Committee.] However, not being able to procure a sufficient quantity of leather to make the belts in single strips for the Indian Service, the contractor had asked to be allowed to make the belt in three pieces, two solid pieces at the ends, and a strip composed of three layers of inferior material in the middle. This belt weighed four ounces more than the original pattern upon which the contract was given out. It was clear the divisional belt ought to be produced much cheaper than the original contract belt. Was it the fact that the same price was being paid for the divisional belt as for the more perfect article? Was it fair to our troops that the contractor should be allowed to send in belts weighing three or four ounces more than the contract belt? He laid more stress on that point than on the price paid, and he really thought the matter one to which the Secretary for War should give serious attention. It might be said that the matter was a small one, but he was afraid that it was only a sample of other things which were occurring; and he was still strongly of opinion that there were a 197 great many things connected with the Ordnance Stores Department in which, though considerable changes had been effected for the better, change was still required. These were matters affecting the health and comfort of our troops in time of peace, and their security in time of war, and he trusted that they would not be lost sight of by the Government.
§ MR. BURNS (Battersea)said, he wished to bring before the Committee the low rate of wages paid, as a rule, to the labourers employed by Her Majesty's Government in the Woolwich Arsenal. At the outside, he wished to say that he had no political reason for bringing the subject before the Committee. There was no dockyard or arsenal in his constituency, neither were there any Government servants amongst his constituents, and if there were he was sure they had sufficient intelligence not to vote for a candidate of his political views. He took up the case of the 4,000 or 5,000 labourers who were employed in the various dockyards and arsenals of Her Majesty's Government, because the wages paid them were considerably below a decent subsistence standard. The consequence of that state of things had been brought home to previous Governments. The late lamented Mr. W. H. Smith had said that the Government had no intention of underpaying any servants of the Crown; and in 1891, on Mr. Buxton's Motion, Mr. Plunket announced that the Government would insert a provision in Government contracts to secure the payment by the contractors of the rates of wages generally accepted as current in each trade for competent workmen. He found that the Local Authorities of "Woolwich, and particularly the Local Philanthropic and Charitable Bodies, made serious charges as to the poverty and distress created in the district by the low rate of wages paid to the labourers in the arsenal. It was said, for instance, that the Local Board of Guardians were frequently called upon to supplement the earnings of the labourers. He was aware than many of the female portion of those who indirectly depend upon the Woolwich Arsenal for wages were compelled to do things which he need not mention to the Committee, hut which were not complimentary to Her Majesty's Government, or conducive to that high standard of morality which should prevail even in 198 the domestic economy of the lowest classes. So much was he impressed by the grievance of the labourers that he headed a deputation of the poor fellows to the Secretary for War, who received them very kindly. These men told the short and simple annals of the poor, and it was really most pathetic to hear their stories of how difficult it was for men to subsist on 17s., 18s., or 19s. a week—men who had served the Government for 8, 10, or 15 years. He was convinced that every one of the officials at the War Office were profoundly impressed by the men's statements. The permanent official at the War Office was not present, so that whether he was impressed or not he could not say, but a permanent official was popularly supposed to be a very hard-hearted person. The men—some of them with three, four, and five children dependent upon them—had to pay from 4s. to 6s. 6d. per week rent, leaving them 9s., 10s., and 11s. per week on which to sustain themselves and their families. If the Secretary of State for War would put the permanent and other officials on one side and ask for a Vote of money sufficient to give these men not Trade Union rates of wages, but the fair current rates of wages paid for similar labour, he was convinced that the ratepayers and the House of Commons would endorse any generous aid he might give. On February 18 the House passed a Resolution calling upon the Government in all Government Contracts to make provision against such proceedings as were lately disclosed before the Sweating Committee, and he ventured to say that very few disclosures were made that disclosed such a bad condition of things as those he had just mentioned—cases in which men, engaged in physical and laborious occupations, after payment of rent, had about 10s. a week on which to keep six people, or an average of 2½d. per head per day. In every one of the contracts connected with the Office of Works, the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and the Local Government Board, it was insisted that the contractors should pay the current rates of wages, and he suggested that the Government should set its own house in order concurrently with teaching the contractors to do so with theirs. He therefore asked that the House of Commons should endorse the unanimous 199 Resolution of February, 1891—that they should follow out the recommendations of the Lords in their Report on the Sweating Committee—that they should be consistent, and pay their own labourers in the same manner as other labour was paid for that competed with it. The late Secretary of State for War, on the 19th of February, 1892, gave this information: that in the Ordnance Store Department there were 175 labourers who were paid 17s. per week, 273 who were paid 18s. a week, 150 at 19s. a week, and the rest, some 200 odd got from 21s. to 22s. per week. He knew that the result of the deputations to the War Office eight months ago led to the appointment of a Committee to investigate into the conditions of pay, not only at Woolwich Arsenal and the Victualling Yard at Deptford, but at all the dockyards and depôts under the Minister of War. Somehow or other these men employed at these places, and who received a minimum rate of wage of 17s. per week—which was bad enough in the country; but in the Metropolis, at Woolwich and Plumstead, it was exceedingly poor—were under the impression that this minimum rate of wage was to be raised to 19s. per week only. His opinion was that the Government could not justify a minimum rate of 19s. for all the departments in Woolwich Arsenal when Municipal Authorities like the Woolwich Board of Health paid 24s. per week for men engaged in the lowest of unskilled labour. At Plumstead the Local Board paid 24s., and at the Becton Gas Works the earnings of the unskilled labourer ranged from 24s. to 32s. per week. Outside the Government Department at Woolwich or Plumstead no labourer would think of working for less than 6d. or 6½d. per hour. If the Becton Gas Works, the Woolwich and Plumstead Local Boards, could pay labourers these wages he did not see why the Government should not pay better wages than they did for the slinging of guns and other kinds of labour which was used in co-operation with the skilled artizan, and which required a certain amount of skill in the performance of the work. How was it that at South Kensington Museum and the British Museum, which were Government Departments, the labourers were paid the general Trade Union rates of wages and the same system did not pre- 200 vail at Woolwich Arsenal? The same rate of wages prevailed now that was paid prior to the abolition of the Superannuation and Pension Act of 1861. At the time that Act was abolished it was said that the full rate of wages should be paid. All he wanted the Government to do was to adhere to their Minute of 1861, when superannuation was abolished and pay the fair market rates, no more and no less; he did not think they should show favouritism to any class of workmen, but they should be fair all round, and give the current rate of wages prevailing in similar establishments throughout the country. As he had said, it had leaked out that the minimum rate of wages was to be 19s.; but he hoped the Secretary for War would be able to say it would be 2s., 3s., or 4s. more than that. 19s. per week was scarcely a rate of wage upon which they could expect men to be honest. Where they had a place like Woolwich Arsenal, in which there was no end of valuable materials and stores unless they paid the men fair wages, it was a temptation to increase their wages by peculation and petty theft. He did not think the men would do this for a moment, but they ought to give the men good wages, and then they would not have the temptation. In these days when social and labour questions were coming to the front, when they heard the Home Secretary say the day of competition wages was over; that starvation wages was starvation labour; when they saw the Opposition vieing with the Government Bench—to put it at its lowest level—to get votes and political support, he asked the Government, that had made some attempt to put their House in order by abolishing contract labour in some Departments, to treat their men fairly and pay them properly. As an engineer he said they had the best fitters, boiler-makers, and engineers at Woolwich Arsenal that could be found in Great Britain, or upon the Continent of Europe, and these skilled artizans were in favour of some addition being made to the brutally low wages of the unskilled labourers who attended upon them. If they were to appeal to these skilled artizans they could give them proof that there were scores of labourers who were physically unfit to discharge their duties by virtue of the insufficient food they obtained in 201 consequence of the low wages. There were many of these labourers, who were not only fathers but good fathers, who were giving to their children that which should go to keep up their own strength. He trusted that the Government would at once put themselves ill line with other localities; that they would stick to their Resolution passed in March, 1891, and would not shelter themselves behind the back of the ratepayer, who was really on the side of these men. He trusted the Government would grant generous aid to these men, who had been remarkably patient, who had listened to every objection raised against their having an increase that would put them on a level with the Trade Union rate of wages, and that this deserving body of men would receive the recognition they were entitled to—namely, a rate of wage on which a man could live, and do his work efficiently.
§ MR. MANFIELD (Northampton)said, that representing as he did a working class constituency, he was in the deepest sympathy with the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Burns). In Northampton the Municipality paid such of their labourers as were street-sweepers 4½d. per hour, and the bricklayers' labourer got 5d. an hour, and had recently been asking for 6d. an hour. He thought it was a great shame for the Government of the richest country in the world to have a body of labourers whom all admitted were underpaid; he would not say it was disgraceful, as he believed it was on account of the attempt to keep down the expenses that it was done. But the main point was that they should properly pay their people, and he hoped the remarks of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Burns) would bear fruit. If the Labour Representatives were in the House, he was sure they would support the hon. Member. He trusted the matter would not be lost sight of, and that they should soon reach the point when they would pay their labourers a fair and just rate of wages.
GENERAL GOLDS WORTHY (Hammersmith)said, that he had several times urged the Government to pay lower lower class labour properly. He was one of those who considered underpaid labour was not good labour; and if men could not provide food for themselves and their families, they could not get satisfactory work from them. If a man was contented he put his heart into 202 the work, but if he was not then the work was unsatisfactory. They took the greatest amount of physical exertion out of these men to whom the hon. Member for Battersea referred, and yet these men did not get a wage that enabled them to live and keep their families properly. In addition to this, they had sorrow and trouble at home in consequence of their narrow means, often accompanied by sickness due to the want of nourishment. He did not complain of the present Government any more than of any other Government because he had complained of each Government—not paying proper wages to the unskilled labourer, but he hoped the Government would do what it could to see that these men were paid properly; and if they would do this he was sure that the House of Commons would give them their support. In conclusion, he wished to refer to the high rents that were paid for houses at Wcolwich, and he would ask whether the Government could not find some means of assisting these labourers and others to buy their own houses and thus secure a lower rent? He would ask whether it was not possible that some of these rich Provident Societies might not assist in putting these labourers and others in possession of their own houses? He knew that the late Mr. Bradlaugh, whose loss they all very much regretted, urged this, and he could see no reason why these Provident Societies should not employ their funds in furthering this object. He also thought that the Government themselves might do something to help these men in this way.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI fully acknowledge and appreciate the great fairness and temperate spirit in which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Burns) brought forward this question of wages. It is, as the Committee knows, a delicate, interesting, and some-what critical question, and I should be lacking in my duty if I did not altogether repudiate, as he has done, any political feeling or intention in the matter. What the Government, or any Government in this position, would be anxious to do is to see, as has been so often said, that the wages paid to the men in their employment are such as to enable these men to live a decent life. I also fully acknowlege that we are bound not only fairly 203 by the letter, but we are bound to follow the spirit, of the Resolution of a year or two ago, which enforces upon Government contractors the payment of the current wages in the district, and the question narrows itself almost entirely to the question what the current rate of wages is. We are dealing with the question of the Arsenal and, I suppose, Deptford Dockyard. The question as regards this particular part of the country is aggravated and made more difficult by the circumstances of the very high rent that is demanded for houses in this locality. I do not know that we sufficiently appreciate how much that effects the comfort and decency of the lives of the men we employ, and I confess I do not altogether understand why it should be that houses in this particular locality are so much higher in rent than in other parts, though I believe it may be accepted as true that it is so. I have explained what we have done again and again. We have viewed the matter temperately, and it is now left, as I stated a week or two ago, to each Department to arrange the matter according to the circumstances of its own particular employment. To the Financial Secretary and myself it has, therefore, fallen to consider what changes are necessary in regard to our work. I would at once say, in order to clear the ground, that 17s., which was given as an initial rate, seemed to me altogether too low; therefore, that rate of wages has been suppressed. My hon. Friend says that to speak of 19s. is to mention a wage very much lower than the standard of the district. It must be remembered, with regard to employment in Government Departments, something must be added for the advantages offered to the men employed—the advantage of medical attendance, and other things which are not common or universal in other employment—so that 19s. per week would be really equivalent to 20s. I am not prepared now, in answer to my hon. Friend's appeal, to lay down any absolute rule. I think for the present we should endeavour to work out the plan we have decided upon; and if it should be found that that still comes below what is necessary for the purpose in view, I hope we shall be quite ready to face an additional expenditure that might be necessary. I have already said we wish to proceed ten- 204 tatively; we are dealing not with our own money, but with that of the taxpayers; and though my hon. Friend said the ratepayers were in favour of an increase, I do not know that the taxpayer is disposed to take the same view as the ratepayer, as he has a somewhat different interest in the matter, or thinks he has. I am not ready to admit that such a rate as 24s. a week, which is quoted, can be accepted at all as the ordinary current rate of wages for the common kinds of labour.
§ MR. BURNSsaid, that in the immediate neighbourhood of Woolwich and Plumstead he was connected with a body that employed some 700 skilled labourers, whose wages ranged from 27s. to 32s. per week, and he was positive their duties did not require more skill than the duties of these labourers at Woolwich Arsenal.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANThat may be, but we have made careful inquiry into the matter; we have taken all the pains we could to ascertain the rate of wages given by private employers in that part of the country for labour, and we do not find that the rate ranges at all as high as that named by my hon. Friend. However, I am not going to dispute or quarrel with him on that ground. I can assure him we are anxious to go as high as we are justified in the direction he desires; and while he and some of his friends may be disappointed with us, at all events, I trust that we shall be found willing to go as far as reason will allow us in the direction desired. Well, Sir, going back to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hanbury), he began by asking me whether the weapons in the hands of our troops were inspected and tested. The answer is, that they are tested every three years. He asked as to the employment of Infantry officers as well as Artillery officers in the different Inspection Departments. I am most desirous that the Infantry officers should have their full share of work of this kind, and that they should be admitted to the Artillery College, on one condition and with one safeguard—namely, that they should be subjected to some preliminary examination or some test as to their real capacity for the sort of work they wish to engage in. 205 Then my hon. Friend asked whether we take men on as viewers from the service of contractors. I do not see how this is to be avoided. It is necessary that the viewer should be accustomed to the manufacture as to which he has to exercise his functions; and, although he has served a contractor or many contractors, he may yet be an excellent viewer. Then my hon. Friend asks me with regard to certain patents. As he has said, many of these patents have been passed and a settlement made of the rewards to be given, before I came into Office, so that I am really not very competent to answer these questions on the subject. I believe he stated the facts accurately so far as I am aware; but it is not for me either to justify what was done or to criticise it. He asks, with regard to Mr. Speed's patent, whether the royalty would extend to a still larger sum, and would continue after the 500,000 rifles have been furnished. I do not read it so, because what I am told is this: The Government offered a royalty of 2s. per arm up to 500,000—namely, £50,000 to be paid within 24 months. This was accepted in full payment of all claims, so that I trust that is the end of it. The hon. Member will not expect me to discuss the policy of having granted that royalty and rewarded the patentees.
§ MR. HANBURYWhat I am anxious to know is what will be the future policy? Whether any officials in Government employment will be allowed to take up patents?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANIt is an extremely difficult matter to lay down any rule as to patents. Take the suggestion the hon. Member made that no person employed under the Government should be allowed to take out a patent. How easy it would be to evade that rule. This workman would only have to transfer his knowledge to someone else—a relative or a man of straw—and he would get the benefit of the patent notwithstanding our rule.
§ MR. HANBURYI did not say any workman, but any person employed by the Government before whom the invention might come in his official capacity.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANIf any man, whether a Colonel in the Army or a foreman in one of the manu- 206 facturing establishments, were to do as is being implied, that is, deliberately to pick the inventor's brains and make use of the knowledge he had obtained in order to take out a patent, that would be a gross misuse of his position, for which, if it could be brought home to him, he would deserve the severest punishment. But where a workman of himself makes an invention, and by dint of his ingenuity and experience finds out something which would benefit the public, I think he is entitled to some advantage from the discovery which he has made. As to enforcing the Factory Act in regard to the manufacture of accoutrements, we are doing our best to see that it is complied with. Then as to wages, we have also done our best to enforce what we believe to be the market rate of wages from all contractors. If that is not done it has been from inadvertence or in spite of our endeavours.
§ MR. HANBURYMay I ask where does the right hon. Gentleman get his information as to what are the market rates?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANFrom any source of information we can have, whether Trade Union or otherwise. With regard to one contractor who has been mentioned—Mr. Ross—an application has been made to me to put him on the list again; but I have declined to do so after what has passed, and I think the Committee will support us in taking that step, although it is a very serious one, because it may have considerable effect. The hon. Member brought forward certain matters as to belts, which he says have been changed, and he asserts that the contractors who were employed after all got the buff leather from Mr. Ross.
§ MR. HANBURYNot all of them.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANAll I would say to my hon. Friend is that these details are quite new to me, and I would ask him to come and tell us what he knows on the subject. From his past experience, he has evidently the means of obtaining a great deal of information on these subjects. I can assure him that we shall only welcome, and not in the least degree resent, his communicating to us any information he may give us in order to help us to carry out these contracts in an honest and straightforward way. No change in a 207 pattern can take place without superior authority, and I am not aware that that superior authority was given in regard to the case which my hon. Friend has communicated to the House with so much clearness and force, illustrating his lecture by samples of the commodity in question—a thing which in the whole of my Parliamentary experience I have only seem done once or twice before, but which is always very effective and interesting. I think, however, if he would only come and give us the same information and advantages, that he would be more effectively using the information he possesses, and he would be very well received by us. I think I have answered all my hon. Friend's questions, and I have to thank him for the general tone of his observations, and the great acuteness with which he criticises the transactions of the Department.
§ GENERAL GOLDSWORTHYdesired to say that the reason of his calling attention to the question of providing dwellings for the workmen was this: If they increased their wages to any large extent as was proposed by the hon. Member for Battersea, up would go the rents directly. He wanted to prevent that; and instead of the landlords intercepting the money, he was anxious to see it go direct to the men.
§ MR. BURNSAm I to take it from the Secretary for War that 19s. is a tentative rate, or has been absolutely and definitely fixed as a minimum?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANNo, nothing has been definitely fixed; but it has been fixed for the moment. We have resolved to work up to 19s., and we shall be guided by the results that follow. If, as I hope, it is found we really have better work, that the men are in better condition, and that we are practically recouped by the result for any little additional expense that is involved, that will be very encouraging to us.
§ Original Question put, and agreed to.
§
3. Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum. not exceeding £789,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge for the Royal Engineer Superintending Staff, and Expenditure for Royal Engineer Works, Buildings, and Repairs, at Home and Abroad (including Purchases), which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1894.
§ SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD (Somerset, Wellington) rose to move a reduction of £1,000, his object being to call attention to the neglect of the War Office to provide suitable range accommodation for the purpose of training soldiers in the use of the new magazine rifle. There was no matter, he contended, more important to the training of the soldier than musketry instruction. The country had spent a large sum of money on the new rifle, which was now in the hands of the soldier, and it was their business, at whatever cost, to see that he was properly trained in the use of it, otherwise they were deceiving themselves and the country and living in a fool's paradise. There were many instances in which there was absolutely no range district safe for the magazine rifles. But, bad as was the case in England, it was even still worse in Ireland. In the Belfast and Cork districts the troops had to be removed a considerable number of miles at a very large expenditure for the purpose of undergoing their annual course of musketry training. That movement was a source of great expense to the taxpayer; and if the money spent on such removal of troops were capitalised and used in laying out ranges a great economy would be effected. Of all the bad cases in Ireland, that of the Dublin district was the very worst. There were four battalions quartered in the Dublin district armed with the new rifle; and as there was not one single range in the whole of that district available for that arm, the result was that all those troops had to be removed for the purpose of the annual course of instruction to the Curragh. A considerable sum of money had been laid out on the ranges at the Curragh; but, unfortunately, a road at the back which was supposed to be closed was now in constant use; it was frequently occupied by vehicles, and the result was, as he was credibly informed, that the troops had to stand sometimes for one or two hours without being able to fire a single shot. This had led to a great deal of cold and pneumonia among the troops, and generally disgusted the young soldiers with what should be the most important part of their training. He questioned the Secretary for War two or three months ago as to a range at Kilbride, 14 miles from Dublin, the ground 209 for which had been inspected, which could have been purchased and a range laid out for £20,000. He believed the cost of now having to move the troops in order to undergo their musketry training was £800 a year; and if that sum were capitalised at 4 per cent. they would get the £20,000 necessary for laying out the range, and they would not have this trouble in future. So much for the question of the Curragh. He was informed there was no range in the whole of Ireland which was suitable for battalion field-firing, and the result was that for the last three years no practice of that kind had been carried out in Ireland. There was no more important course than what was technically known as field-firing. The result of not being able to practise that kind of firing was that our force in Ireland at the present time was absolutely inefficient for active service. He had been told, in answer to a question on April 17, that the four battalions in Ireland were still armed with the Martini-Henry rifle, but would, if ordered abroad, be armed with the Lee-Metford rifle. How could they know its practical use without previous exercise? To send battalions upon active service with a rifle they had never handled before, and with which they were, consequently, perfectly unacquainted, was to send them to absolutely certain disaster. It was most important the soldier should have an intimate knowledge of the rifle. The present system was one of the worst economy possible. They were spending money upon a rifle with which the troops could not practise in this country; they were spending money on moving troops, and on clothing and equipment for those troops, and at the same time they were neglecting the most important part of their training. With their small Army they must trust in the superior physique, morale, and the superior shooting of their men. When the question of the magazine rifle was first mooted, one great argument in its favour was that it would have a great impression on the morale of the men by giving them the confidence that they had an arm superior to that of any Continental nation. The arm was superior, but the confidence was not there. How could it be there when the men were sent on service with a rifle they had never seen before? To 210 send men on service with a new arm, in the use of which they had had no practice, was to commit a worse crime than bad economy—namely, that of uselessly sacrificing life. The trained soldier was not an animal that could be easily reproduced at will, like the pigs of the Minister for Agriculture. It took months and months of hard work to produce a really good trained soldier; and it was madness, after spending time and money to make him efficient, to then send him out imperfectly armed, and, therefore, an easy victim of a European foe. It was simply courting disaster and defeat. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman, whom they all respected as an able and capable administrator, and whom every soldier looked upon as a true friend, would give his attention to this matter, and would be able to give them an assurance that the Government would be prepared to take some prompt action.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Item N, of '£82,835,' for Barracks and Rifle Ranges, be reduced by £1,000."—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)
MR. GIBSON BOWLESremarked that the Vote dealt with barracks and rifle ranges, but did not show, with any degree of clearness, how large a proportion was for barracks and how large a proportion for rifle ranges. He complained of this very much. The Estimates were framed in such a way as not to give that knowledge which the Committee were entitled to have before being called upon to vote. Since the adoption of the new rifles the difficulty of providing ranges had largely increased; and he should like to know whether the War Office had made up their minds as to the amount of ground required for such ranges? He should also like to ask this pertinent question. What was the absolutely furthest range they could get with the Lee-Metford rifle? Had a trial been made to find the absolutely extreme limit of the range of the rifle by actual test? If they were going to have ranges, it was important they should know the extreme limit of the rifle they were going to use on these ranges, and he believed that this question had not so far been settled. In the existing ranges mistakes had occurred because of the want of this knowledge. For instance, one year a farmer, who was 211 supposed to be outside the firing range of the rifles, was shot by a regiment from Aldershot; and some years afterwards his son—who was also supposed to be beyond the range of the rifles—was shot by the same regiment. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance, before they settled on their new ranges, they should know, by actual experiment, the absolutely extreme limit the rifles would carry.
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLAND (Colchester)said, that in 1890 a Barracks Bill was passed, providing a sum of £4,100,000 for the purpose of rebuilding, renewing, and refurnishing camps and barracks in this country. He contended that in the operations of this Barracks Bill those camps and barracks that were in the worst condition had been purposely excluded altogether, although he should have thought that when it had been decided to spend such a large sum in rebuilding camps and barracks a commencement would naturally have been made with those which were really in the worst condition. There was one of these camps to which he wished specially to refer. It was that of Colchester, in the constituency which he had the honour to represent. Colchester was one of the most important military centres in this country; and it was upon the shores of Essex, not many miles from this town, that Napoleon proposed to land in his projected invasion of this country. The subject of his complaint was demonstrated by the condition of the buildings, and the class of buildings themselves, in which the troops at Colchester were housed. At the time of the Crimean War some temporary wooden huts were put up there. It was promised that they would be but temporary; and it did not speak well for the civilian administration of the War Office that from that day to this, now 39 years ago, those huts had remained. It was, he believed, recognised that they were so bad that an order had been given to demolish and rebuild one-third of the camp. These huts had been condemned by successive Military and Medical Authorities as unfit for human habitation; and to bring back a regiment from a tropical climate, and house them there during a severe winter, was little short of criminal on the part of the War 212 Office. Soldiers did not complain as a rule; they were willing even to sleep under canvas in the winter season; but he thought there was some right of complaint in a case when the housing was as he had described. Again, he did not see why they should not demolish the whole of the huts, instead of one-third. Another point was that the Government were now employing soldier labour on the demolition of these huts at 1d. per hour. He was informed that it took 20 soldiers about a week to demolish each hut, at a cost to the Government of between £4 and £5. There were 250 huts to be demolished, which would cost about £1,250. Civilian contractors had tendered for the work at 30s. per hut, paying their workmen 4d. an hour. Why, then, were the Government spending £5 per hut, and paying their workmen 1d. an hour only? If the Government wished, they could get the demolition done for nothing, because the contractor who got the contract for rebuilding would do the demolition for nothing. What was the defence of this squandering of public money by the Department?
§ MR. A. C. MORTONasked, did he understand that the men were only getting 1d. per hour?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANYes; extra pay.
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLANDsaid, it was working pay. He was coming to that.
§ COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N.)They get their day's pay as usual.
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLANDsaid, the Government should, as far as possible, act as a model employer of labour, and ought to pay a fair day's wage for a fair day's labour. If the soldiers employed on this work worked for 60 hours a week, they would receive at the end of the week the magnificent wage of 5s. He should like to know whether the Labour Representatives approved of these wages?
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLANDsaid, the Government, moreover, could set up no defence on the ground of economy, because a civilian contractor had promised to demolish the camp for £875 less than the work would cost the Government, and to pay his men 4d. per hour. There was another point to which he should be 213 glad to have an answer. There were in this country 31 Cavalry regiments, and every one, together with its Reserve, was supposed to be able to take the field at a moment's notice. But there were not 15 Cavalry barracks in the country large enough to hold a Cavalry regiment. After an expenditure by the country of £4,000,000 this was a condition of things which required explanation. He hoped the Secretary for War would be able to give a satisfactory explanation with regard to both these points. He begged to move the reduction of the Vote—
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLANDI beg to support the reduction, Mr. Mellor.
§ COLONEL NOLANsaid, the soldiers who worked at the demolition of the huts at Colchester should be well satisfied with the wage they were getting, because they had their ordinary pay as well; but, no doubt, the hon. and gallant Captain was entitled to bring forward the case of those who lived in his constituency, and had he (Colonel Nolan) been Member for Colchester he would have done the same himself. He wished to say, on the question of rifle ranges referred to in the Debate, that the War Office had not been very energetic in finding new rifle ranges, especially in Ireland, where there were many suitable sites. Take Dublin district. Why, there were splendid range grounds in Wicklow; and in his own part of the country, in the West, there was plenty of scope for them in the erection of ranges. In the wilder parts of the country they would be able to find as much space as they required with perfect freedom from the dangers that had been alluded to. The Military Authorities should show more activity in taking up ranges in the wilder parts. It might be unpleasant to have to go to these parts; but, against that, they had the advantage of having ranges that would be perfectly safe. They might give a soldier technical skill, but aim would be of little consequence to him if he did not know where the bullet went. In the wilder portions of the country they could have real practice with no danger to anybody beyond the ranges. He did not see why they should spend a vast sum of money such as had been indicated before now when they could have ranges in the places he 214 had referred to. The fact was the whole matter was in an unsatisfactory condition—it was surrounded by difficulties—and it was the duty of the Secretary for War to deal with it as soon as possible.
§ MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER (Belfast, W.)said, he would like to know whether it was intended to discontinue St. George's Barracks as a central recruiting depot, and at an early date to replace the barracks by a more suitable and properly-constructed building in a leading thoroughfare of the Metropolis. The barracks, at which fully one-third of the recruits for the Army entered, was utterly unfit for the purpose to which it was devoted; and he was certain that until some adequate accommodation was provided for the recruit, an unfavourable impression would continue to be given the men at the very outset of their career. A second point to which he wished to draw attention had reference to Gibraltar. He could not approve of money being voted for any purpose connected with that fortress while the present policy was pursued in regard to it. In the present Estimate the sum of £30,000 was asked for the improvement of Gibraltar, the only use of which at the present time was as a fortress to shield or defend the Fleet. It might be used to prevent the junction of French vessels coming from Brest and Toulon; but for that purpose a dock was necessary there for repairs. Two years ago a Committee of the Admiralty went into the matter, and decided that a dock at Gibraltar was absolutely essential, and they went so far as to select a site for it. But no attempt had been made to commence the work, and they were now told that next year the mole was to be continued, so that the construction of the dock was not even within contemplation at the present time. To spend any money on Gibraltar under existing circumstances was simply waste. We did not want 5,000 men locked in a fortress at the western end of the Mediterranean simply for the purpose of keeping them there. At present, there being no dock at Gibraltar, any British vessel at the Straits had to go 1,000 miles to the east of Malta, or 1,000 miles to the west, to Plymouth, for repairs. It seemed to him that while that state of things continued they must have difficulty in encountering any strong hostile opposition.
THE CHAIRMANI must point out to the hon. Member that his remarks are irrelevant to the subject under discussion. They have nothing to do with the Amendment. We must dispose of it first.
§ MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid, he thought they were dealing with a Vote under which this subject would come.
§ MR. A. C. MORTONsaid, he would like to have some explanation about the 1d. an hour paid to soldiers for extra work, as stated by the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester. He understood that the allowance was extra to the soldier's ordinary pay. But if the soldier attended to his ordinary duties he could not possibly work 10 hours per day. But the extraordinary point to him seemed to be why the soldier should be paid only 1d. an hour when 4d. an hour was paid to the ordinary working man? Now they had given the working man the vote they would have to pay attention to this matter. The money could be found, and he would propose that it should be obtained by docking the ornamental part of the Army. In that way they would be able to obtain the money they required without imposing extra charge upon the public. With regard to rifle ranges, he had reason to believe that both officers and civilians were very doubtful whether the new rifles were of any use, and whether they were likely to break down in service; and as that could be found out only by having proper rifle ranges he was in favour of providing them. He should not object to the expenditure of money on such an object as that. He now wished to allude to an item in the Estimates called "North Britain" including Stirling and Edinburgh Castles. There were many complaints in Scotland that that country did not get her fair share of money that was spent upon barracks. Out of a sum of £ 1,000,000 or more Scotland got only about £20,000 for barracks, although the barracks in that country required money spending upon them as much as barracks in England, especially so far as sanitation was concerned. He had to complain that there was no item in the Estimates with regard to Stirling Castle, although barracks were 216 very badly required there. He found, during a visit he had paid to the town at Whitsuntide, that the old Parliament House had been turned into a barracks and a canteen and the chapel into a store-room. There were private quarters for married soldiers outside; but the accommodation inside was very bad. He (Mr. Morton) should avail himself of some opportunity in the future for finding out whether the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War intended to do his duty in regard to the Castle of the town he himself represented. He would raise the question on a future occasion by moving the reduction of the right hon. Gentleman's salary. He was told that the right hon. Gentleman did not like to ask for the money for his own constituency; but he ought to get rid of his modesty in that respect. Some money had been spent on Edinburgh Castle, he knew. Part of it had been put into repair by a private citizen, Mr. Nelson, who spent £24,000 in doing what the Government ought to have done. He had been over the Castle several times, and he was bound to say that, notwithstanding that gentleman's munificence, it was still in a bad state of repair. He would like to ask what the right hon. Gentleman intended to do to put it and its approaches into a proper state of repair? He found there was a sum of £3,000 put down for the barracks at Hamilton. He was glad that that expenditure was to be incurred; and he did not think he was asking anything unfair when he requested that the Castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, which were of great historical interest, should have an adequate amount of money expended upon them.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War would agree with him that it was somewhat unfortunate that the two items of barracks and rifle ranges came together under one head; because, both for the convenience of the right hon. Gentleman himself and for the general convenience, it would have been desirable that the question of rifle ranges should have met with a specific answer before it was embarrassed with the question of rifle ranges. As to rifle ranges, the observations of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the 217 Member for Galway, and the general feeling of military Members, pointed to the necessity of creating proper and efficient rifle ranges in conjunction with camps of instruction throughout the United Kingdom. In no other way would the Government be able to meet the legitimate requirements of the Army in regard to the new weapon; and it was hardly necessary to say how sorely the need was felt by practical soldiers of ranges where they could be exercised in the full use of that weapon. If it was necessary to add anything to the most convincing facts referred to by the hon. and gallant Member, it would be sufficient to point out how solely this need of rifle ranges was felt by those officers who, after all, would be responsible for leading into action men who would be either efficient or inefficient. The question should receive the careful attention of the Secretary of State for War; and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would assure them that the real genuine attention of the War Office would be devoted to it. He (Colonel Kenyon-Slaney) would have preferred not to have made any remarks upon any other subject; but, for fear he should not be allowed to refer to barracks at all, if he did not deal with them under the present head, he wished to say that he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not entirely forget the advantage which would accrue to the Service if he could place a proper equipment in the barracks, not only in the officers' mess, but also in the officers' quarters, and in the quarters occupied by married soldiers and by non-commissioned officers. Obviously, it led to great inconvenience and expense if an enormous amount of baggage had to be carted about from place to place. This would be obviated if a moderate but sufficient equipment were provided in the quarters which he had referred to. He had listened with regret to the observations of the hon. Member who had preceded him, and who seemed to think that the right way to treat the Army was to bring about reductions in the case of one rank in order to make it better for another. He did not think the hon. Member's argument would find much favour with military men or with the Committee.
§ MAJOR RASCHsaid, he did not agree altogether with the observations which had fallen from the hon. and gallant 218 Member for Colchester, and should like to congratulate the Secretary of State for War on the great progress he had made at Aldershot, Shorncliffe, and Whalley with the work under the Barracks Act of 1889. By the allocation of a sum for securing the employment of Reserve and discharged men, to which reference had been made at an earlier period of the evening, and by his endeavours to make barracks suitable and comfortable for the private soldier, the right hon. Gentleman was doing a great deal, from his point of view, to popularise the Army; and he was also doing—although he. (Major Rasch) regretted to say it—a great deal to popularise the Government. One thing he had not been able to understand was why, in re-building huts of substantial materials, they should not build houses which would contain 50 men instead of 20. The expense would not be very much greater, seeing that they would have the same area of roof and the same foundations. He ventured to say that the present method of building was an expensive one. He could not help thinking that it was connected with the red-tapeism which hung about that noble Institution, the War Office. As an evidence of the evils of that system, not long ago, when huts were sent out to Hong Kong and to Belfast, those intended for the hot climate of Hong Kong, with verandahs and French windows, were sent into the wet climate of Belfast; whilst the substantially constructed huts intended for the Irish town were sent to China. He would urge the Secretary of State for War to consider the desirability of doing away with the tax upon the private soldier in the shape of barrack damages. Under this tax outgoing battalions were charged with damage to wall paper, and so on. In the case of an old coal-box, several battalions were charged in succession with the damage. Fair wear and tear ought not to be charged against the private soldier. With reference to the question of proper ranges, as an old musketry instructor, he endorsed every word which had been said as to the importance of providing them, the necessity being all the greater since the introduction of the Lee-Metford rifle, with its range of 4,000 yards and its low trajectory. Now that they had the new rifle it was time that ranges were provided at which it 219 could be used. He wished to point out that there was a county in which rifle ranges could be cheaply purchased by a Government with an eye to economy—a county in which agricultural pursuits had been extremely prevalent, and in which land could almost be got for nothing by anyone willing to pay rates and taxes and tithes—he referred to the County of Essex. If the right hon. Gentleman would purchase rifle ranges in Essex, he would be assisting the agricultural interest of the county as well as benefiting the Army.
§ DR. FARQUHARSON (Aberdeenshire, W.)said, he wished to emphasise the hope expressed by the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Arnold-Forster) that the St. George's Barracks would be removed. He did not know whether any Members of the Committee had ever been to the barracks and examined the conditions under which recruiting was carried on in them. Nothing more mean and discreditable could be conceived, and nothing more calculated to discredit the Army with recruits. The barracks were now in dangerous proximity to the National Gallery, only two or three feet separating them from the Turner collection of pictures worth, perhaps, £500,000. He hoped in removing them to Millbank the War Office would see that they were not placed too near the Tate Collection of pictures.
§ MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid, that if they were to incur expenditure in locking up men in the fortress at Gibraltar they ought to scrutinise the expenditure very carefully. There were very few naval men and very few military men who would hesitate to say that at the present moment it was almost absolutely worthless for naval purposes in the event of war. £200,000 was being spent on Malta, and if any portion of that sum could be devoted to Gibraltar he should be the last to criticise the works that were being carried out. This question was a broad question of policy, and would be raised again and again until a favourable reply were received. Gibraltar should be made available for the purpose for which it was primarily supposed to exist.
§ MR. ROUND (Essex, N. E., Harwich)said, he wished to support the appeal of the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester. No one was more pleased 220 than he was when the Barracks Bill was introduced by the late Secretary of State for War. He was glad the War Office had undertaken to re-build Colchester Barracks, and he would urge that the work should be completed without delay. The existing huts were built for a temporary purpose—for the German Legion—40 years ago, and had been universally condemned for years past by local military authorities; they were unsanitary, and were most detrimental to the health of young soldiers quartered there immediately on their return from a tropical climate.
§ MR. TOMLINSONsaid, he wished to make a few remarks in support of the observations which had fallen from the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan), who had referred to the desirability of establishing a system of instruction in musketry with small charges at short ranges. There were certain technical difficulties in providing a satisfactory cartridge for this purpose for the Martini-Henry rifle. But in the case of the Lee-Metford rifle this could be easily done. If this system were adopted, the instruction of Volunteer recruits in shooting would be very much facilitated. Some men of experience in the art of teaching recruits to shoot were of opinion that they should not be taken at all to long ranges until they had been thoroughly instructed at short ones. He was one of those who believed that if they had good ranges they ought to be available for all classes of Her Majesty's Forces. The Volunteer Force he belonged to had had a good range for Snider rifles; but for Martini-Henry rifle shooting it had been condemned. That rendered it necessary for the Volunteers to travel 80 miles—there and back—to practise shooting. But there was a range at Chipping, 12 miles away, which he understood was a very good one, though the camping ground was not very satisfactory, being too damp and boggy. He would suggest that if a light railway should be constructed for a short distance to the range it could be made available to a very large district.
§ SIR F. FITZWYGRAM (Hants, Fareham)said, he did not think Commanding Officers were open to the charge which had been brought against them in respect of fines on the private soldiers for barrack damages.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANUndoubtedly the most important question that has been brought before the Committee is that relating to ranges, and I am not surprised that the attention of the Committee has been called to the matter. The hon. Member for Somersetshire, who introduced the subject and moved the reduction, spoke in not too strong terms of the enormous importance of the question. I will not say we are in a quandary; but, no doubt, it is exceedingly difficult in many parts of the country to find ranges suitable to the new weapon that has been placed in the hands of our troops. The hon. Member for King's Lynn has asked me what is the range of the un-aimed new rifle, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Galway has said in answer that the Committee of which he was a Member heard different opinions on the subject. It is true that there has been a great divergence in the evidence that has been given with regard to the outside range of the weapon; but I think that it may safely be taken that a clear distance of at least 2,000 yards behind the butts is requisite. It must be remembered, moreover, that, owing to the low trajectory, the bullets of the new rifle are peculiarly liable to ricochet to a considerable distance. This places a formidable impediment in the way of procuring rifle ranges. In reference to the case of Dublin, an hon. Member has asked why the Government have not gone for their ranges to the Wicklow mountains. Well, they did do so; but they found that the proprietors of that district had an exaggerated notion of the value of the land sought to be acquired for the ranges, and, consequently, the negotiations were not completed. Several hon. and gallant Members have asked why the Government expended so much money in the manufacture of the new rifle when they have not acquired ranges on which the soldiers can practise with it? But one thing must come before the other, and it would scarcely have been wise to have acquired the ranges first and then proceeded to manufacture the rifle. Even some of the defects which were admitted in the first type of the rifle turn out to 222 be of very small importance indeed' Well, having the rifle, we have nothing to do now but to endeavour to obtain ranges to enable the soldiers to practise. I can assure the Committee that no pains are being spared or time lost in proceeding in this matter, and a sum of £20,000 is asked for in the Estimates for the purpose. My impression is that eventually we shall have to acquire a number of local short ranges and to have one long range for each district. We have to consider the requirements in this respect not only of the Regular Forces, but of the Militia and the Volunteers. I think I have said enough to show that not only I myself, but my advisers, are thoroughly alive to the importance of the question. We are alive to the absolute importance nowadays of the soldier who is sent into the field being as nearly a perfect marksman as we can make him. Not a word that can be said about that would be too strong. With regard to the observations of the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester, who complained of the evil tendencies of the Civil Administration at the War Office in sending a battalion straight from the hot climate of India into the poor huts at Colchester there to live and sleep in all the rigours of our cold climate, the hon. and gallant Gentleman ought to know that the movements of troops are not controlled by what he was pleased to call the Civil Administration at the War Office, but by the Quartermaster General.
§ CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLANDI am well aware of that; but what I complained of was the character of the huts that the men were put into.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANThe huts at Colchester have been undoubtedly allowed to exist too long; but the Government are now engaged as rapidly as possible in supplying other efficient substitutes for them. I have been asked why we have not taken the whole of the re-construction of the huts in hand at once, instead of only part of it; and my answer to that is that if we pull down the huts we must find accommodation for the men. It is not easy to do this unless we proceed to deal with a portion of the huts at a time. As 223 to the employment of soldier labour in the work, I am sorry I have not any definite information. But when the hon. and gallant Member asked a question on the subject in the House a short time since, and complained of the civilian labour of the locality being displaced, the answer given was that the soldiers were paid 1d. or l½d. an hour in addition to their ordinary pay, and that, as a matter of fact, the result of employing soldiers in this work is a saving in the destruction of each hut of something like £3. This is information I have received from competent officers on the spot. The hon. and gallant Member has given other figures leading to a totally different conclusion; but I can only say that the hon. and gallant Member's information is at variance with mine. If the hon. and gallant Member will inform me of the basis upon which his information rests, I shall be glad to have the matter examined into. But the answer I gave the other day was furnished to me by the most competent, public-spirited, and intelligent officers in charge of the work, both at Colchester and in the Department in London. They are officers who are accustomed to deal with these cases, and they cannot be mistaken in regard to matters of policy in the way in which the hon. and gallant Member has imputed. The hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. Arnold-Forster) asked me about St. George's Barracks. What I said a few weeks ago was not that the recruiting depôt was to be necessarily removed, but that the barracks were to be removed. I said there was a prospect of new barracks being erected, and that the troops now accommodated in St. George's Barracks would be shifted. If that were done there would be ample room to extend and improve the recruiting establishment, and, in fact, to erect a new one if it were thought desirable to do so on that site. When the troops leave St. George's Barracks we shall, at all events, be free to do what we like in the matter with the knowledge of the necessity of some improvement in the recruiting establishment. I come now to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Morton), who, after a passing visit to Stirling, spent a good deal of time in Edinburgh. I hope my hon. Friend did not undermine me in the estimation of my constituents 224 when he visited Stirling on the memo-able occasion he has mentioned. I can assure him that he is wrong in one respect. He said that I, through my modesty, hesitated to ask the House of Commons to spend money in my own constituency. I am afraid that is hardly true, for a great deal of money has been spent in Stirling. About £40,000 or £50,000 has been spent on the new Ordnance Store buildings there within the last 10 or a dozen years.
§ MR. A. C. MORTONWas the right hon. Gentleman in Office at the time?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI am afraid I was Secretary for War when the new building was started. I think it is very honest of me to say so. As to Edinburgh Castle, it was necessary to erect a new hospital there, as the old one had to be used as a storehouse, the stores having been removed out of the old Parliament House. There has been some correspondence going on with regard to the new hospital. The Royal Engineers are under the impression that they erect very handsome and, from an architectural point of view, impressive buildings, and I believe they have expended upon this particular work their most aesthetic efforts. I may say, however, that if my hon. Friend will bring pressure to bear upon my Colleagues, there is a little money which I should be glad to see expended in making the building more ornamental than we should be justified in making it for the mere purposes of a military hospital. The Railway Company recently acquired a small portion of the ground of Edinburgh Castle for the extension of their line, and the money given for it is in the process of being paid into the Treasury. If my hon. Friend can induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to seize that money and apply it in this way I shall be very glad. That is a proposal I have officially made, but without the aid of my hon. Friend I am afraid my proposal will not be successful.
§ MR. A. C. MORTONWhat is the amount?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANMy impression is that it is £2,000, which would be quite enough to make the difference between a plain, substantial, and useful building on the one hand, and the sort of building which my hon. Friend would desire on the other. My hon. and gallant Friend opposite (Colonel Kenyon-Slaney) referred to the question of providing a certain amount of furniture for barracks so as to put an end to the difficulty that is now experienced in moving from station to station. Personally, I am disposed to look upon the proposal with favour, but I cannot speak with certainty about it, because high military authorities take an opposite view. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Essex (Major Rasch) said I was popularising the Army by improving the comfort of the soldier in barracks. I am bound to say that anything that has been done in that direction has been done under the plan and influence of my right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. E. Stanhope). I am merely carrying out, as well as I can, the very useful and beneficent enterprises he started.
§ MR. E. STANHOPEI do not think the Committee can complain of the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman has met the Amendment of my hon. Friend. It is perfectly clear to the Committee that the right hon. Gentleman, although there are very great difficulties in the way, is doing his best to push on the acquisition of rifle ranges. There is no doubt that great inconvenience and expense are occasioned by having to take troops a long distance in order to practise rifle shooting; but I am afraid that no scheme that can be adopted—at any rate for a great many years to come—can possibly get over that difficulty, except to a small extent. It is so very difficult to get ranges, and they are so costly, that I do not think we can hope to do anything more at present than get one good long range in each military district, and have shorter ranges at different places in each district. If we can do this we shall, at any rate, have taken a very considerable step towards 226 enabling all the Regular Forces of the country to practise with the rifle at long ranges within a reasonable time. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that if he pushes on this matter with the utmost power of which he is capable he will obtain great support on this side of the House. With reference to the question of new barracks, I may say that when the Barracks Bill was being prepared, I visited all the places where any question of building new barracks had arisen, and, after close personal examination, I came to the conclusion that, upon the whole, new buildings were more needed at Aldershot and Shorncliffe than at Colchester. I noticed two very special defects, however, at Colchester. One was the defective condition of the married men's quarters, and the other was the defective state of the hospital. It is very important indeed, in my opinion, that a new hospital should be built for the troops at Colchester as soon as possible, and I hope it will be one of the earliest works undertaken. I have a question to ask with regard to the proposed new barracks at Cape Town. The position in which the question stands is this: We made an agreement with the Cape Government under which the War Office was to give up certain property at Cape Town, and the Colonial Government was to pay a large sum of money, and also to provide a site for new barracks. Unfortunately, just as this agreement was going to be ratified, the Government at the Cape was changed, and the new Prime Minister, acting within his undoubted right, repudiated the agreement. As far as I know, no further agreement has been entered into. I should like, to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman can now, or at some future time, give us some information as to whether there is any hope that within a reasonable period we shall see a new barrack at the Cape?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI will obtain information on that point.
§ MR. W. ALLAN (Gateshead)said, he thought the staff at Woolwich Arsenal should be far better paid than they were at present.
THE CHAIRMANThe hon. Member will find that that does not come on 227 on this Item, which relates merely to barracks and rifle ranges.
§ MR. W. ALLANsaid, this was the first time he had attempted to speak on these Votes, and he had not yet got quite familiar with the Rules. He wished merely to direct the attention of the Secretary for War to the subject. The scientific men who conducted such an immense establishment, from the Director General of Ordnance and his assistants downwards, were paid salaries which he could not help regarding as poor and paltry.
§ MR. JEFFREYSinquired whether the Government had definitely abandoned the scheme for making a rifle range in the New Forest?
§ MR. BRODRICKasked whether, in place of the proposed New Forest range, any other range had been provided for the troops in the Surrey Division?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANwas understood to say it was the present intention of the Government to leave the New Forest alone, but it was very difficult to get another site.
§ MR. SCOTT-MONTAGU (Hants, New Forest)expressed a hope that the scheme would not be revived without due notice.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI intended to imply that the idea was abandoned, but really it is very difficult to get other sites.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Original Question again proposed.
§ MR. TOMLINSONI see on page 63 there is a Vote asked for in respect of a store in the North-Western District. Is that to be an establishment for ordnance, or merely a store for general purposes?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANA store establishment.
§ MR. TOMLINSONFor all purposes?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANIt is a general store establishment.
§ Original Question put, and agreed to.
§
4. Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £1,524,200, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge for Retired Pay, Half Pay, and other Non-effective Charges for Officers and others, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1894.
§ MR. JEFFREYS (Hants, Basingstoke)asked as to the grievances of the purchase officers which on several occasions he had brought before the House. The question, he complained, had never met with the amount of sympathy which it deserved at the hands of the War Office. These officers in former days sank vast sums in the purchase of their commissions, and the money had never been returned. Pie held in his hands a Return of the amount paid by these officers. It started at the end of the last century, and in the year 1871 the sum totalled no less than £26,000,000 sterling. No doubt a great deal of that had been repaid since the decision to do away with purchase in the Army, but it had not gone to the officers most entitled to it. When the late Sidney Herbert was Secretary for War £45,000 was gained by the country through the sale of the commissions of officers, thus reducing the expenses of the Crimean War. Officers paid large sums of money during that war in order to get commissions and to risk their lives and limbs in the service of the country, and to a great extent they derived no good from the outlay. Part of the money had been repaid, but to the wrong people. In 1862 £18,500 was repaid in the form of compensation to four officers of the Yeomen of the Guard, who, it was contended, never purchased their commissions. Between 1861 and 1868 £80,000 was dispersed among 27 Artillery and Engineer officers, who, again, were not really purchase officers. He would like to have a Return showing the amount which still remained and the amount which the purchase officers had paid to the fund. That would help to do away with a legitimate grievance. The late Secretary of State for War said, in 1891, that he should be glad to appoint a Committee with a limited Reference to 229 inquire into any cases of grievance which might be brought to his notice. Would the present Secretary of State appoint a Committee to inquire into the grievances of the purchase officers? If the right hon. Gentleman would do that, and if he would grant the Return for which he was asking, it would afford satisfaction to a number of distinguished gallant officers who had in days gone by paid large sums of money for their commissions, and who now felt that the money was being wrongly withheld from them.
§ SIR R. TEMPLE (Surrey, Kingston)asked whether the War Secretary could state whether charges were imposed upon India in relation to the compensation awarded by the Army Purchase Commission? He said that Lord North-brook had himself stated in the House of Lords that India had not had fair treatment in respect to non-effective charges. Lord Kimberley had implied that the total amount of pension charges thrown upon India was considerable, and that burdens of this kind might reasonably be thought to constitute a grievance. He (Sir R. Temple) admitted that it was difficult to separate the effective from the non-effective charges in reference to the burdens imposed upon India—burdens against which he and others had been protesting this last 25 years. But he would remind the right hon. Gentleman that since 1879 a Committee had been sitting on the subject. He was not sure whether it was now sitting or whether it had been dissolved, but it was sitting up to a recent date. It was then presided over by Lord Northbrook, the best possible President to be found. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman, also, that when Lord Cross was Secretary of State for India reference was made to the Government in India, asking them for their views on the whole subject of the home charges. They sent an elaborate and able Despatch, which was, he believed, transmitted by the Secretary of State for India to the Treasury, with a request that it might be handed on to Lord Northbrook's Committee. It was so handed on after the lapse of more than a year, together with a Despatch 230 from the Treasury itself traversing the statements and arguments of the Government of India, and re-affirming the old-established view of the Treasury that had persisted in the imposition of the increased charges on India, against which charges India had so strenuously protested. Lord Northbrook was so little satisfied with the proceedings of the Treasury in the matter that he declined to lay the Paper before the Committee. He did not know what the result had been, but this was not a time when these additional burdens should be borne by India. On the contrary, it was a time when the British Treasury should look leniently on all claims that India might make. There was a widespread feeling in India that India had not been generously, nor even justly, treated in the matter. Inasmuch as there was an item of appropriations in aid included in this Vote, he hoped that he was not out of Order in inquiring whether this Committee was still sitting, and, if so, when it was likely to present its Report, and whether that Report when presented was likely to receive the favourable consideration of the Secretary for War and the Treasury?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANThe matter is one upon which I cannot speak positively. The Committee to which my hon. Friend has referred is in abeyance, and I do not know whether it made any definite Report before it lapsed into that condition. I can assure my hon. Friend that the desire which I and the Treasury have is to do nothing unfair to India; but, in opposition to what my hon. Friend had been saying, I would remind him that India and this country are in partnership in this matter of Imperial defence, and India must be expected to bear her fair share of the expenditure. The complaint is often made, when changes are introduced in this country which have large consequential results affecting India, that India has never been consulted. Where this occurred I believe that it was a wrong state of things, for India should have an opportunity of stating what would be the financial effect on her. But, on the other hand, when the arrangements are things of the past, and it is clear that India should bear a share of the burden, I do 231 not think that those arrangements should be abandoned or materially altered because of the neglect to consult India in the first instance. As long as India shares in the protection which the Army gives, it is as essential for her as for Great Britain that the Army should be in a sound condition in this country as well as in India. Under the circumstances, I do not think that there can be much prospect of releasing India from these charges. There is no desire that any charge should be put upon her which is more than she ought fairly to pay.
§ SIR R. TEMPLEWill the right hon. Gentleman, before the Report stage, ascertain the exact position of Lord Northbrook's Committee?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI will certainly inquire.
§ MR. BRODRICK (Surrey, Guildford)Has the right hon. Gentleman been able to carry out the improvement he promised earlier in the Session in the position of Lieutenant-Colonels placed on half-pay?
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI stated what would be done in answer to a question some weeks ago. The half-pay is to be increased to £300 a year.
§ GENERAL GOLDSWORTHY (Hammersmith)asked as to the pecuniary position of Quartermasters and of Riding-masters. These officers had, he said, a very great grievance, both in respect of rank and of retiring pay, and the action of the Government in altering the conditions of their service had deprived the widows of those who died of the right to a pension. The sum was a small one, but it was an important consideration to people in their position, and he, therefore, hoped the Government would not refuse the concession he pleaded for. He also drew the attention of the Secretary of State for War to the claims of a medical officer's widow, whose husband had died from an illness contracted in the discharge of his duties. Had he lived a few months longer the widow would have been entitled to a pension. Some allowance had been made to her from the Queen's 232 bounty, but it was insufficient, and she was, he maintained, entitled to special consideration on the part of the War Office. As to the position of the purchase officers, he admitted that some had been well-treated, but others had been treated badly, and it was no consolation to those that some had come off better. Believing that these were subjects that still required discussion upon the Vote under consideration, he was inclined to move to report Progress.
§ MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI hope the hon. and gallant Member will not do that; I can add nothing to what I have said as to the purchase officers, but I shall be glad to consider any individual cases of hardship.
§ MR. TOMLINSONsaid there was an item which he desired to have some information upon, and that was as to the administration of the Compassionate Vote.
§ Mr. Campbell-Bannerman rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
§ Question put, "That the Question be now put."
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 107; Noes 38.—(Division List, No. 171.)
§ Question put accordingly, and agreed to.
§ It being after Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.
§ Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.
§ Committee to sit again To-morrow.