THE VOLUNTEER SERVICE.

HC Deb 11 March 1893 vol 9 cc1766-77

COLONEL BROOKFIELD (Sussex, Rye)

said he had the following Notice on the Paper:— To call attention to the Volunteer Force; and to move, That, in the opinion of this House, the dearth of combatant officers in the Volunteer Service is a matter requiring the immediate consideration of the military authorities. He was afraid that this subject was not quite so popular and attractive as some of those which bad engaged the attention of the House that afternoon, but, at the same time, the subject of the Volunteer Service was one which possessed very deep interest for an increasingly large number of people in this country, and, he was glad to think, was regarded with more interest also by the military authorities and those who had control of the military policy of the country. In the first place, it was necessary to ask the House to realise what the dimensions of the Volunteer Force were. The numbers had varied slightly since the Force came into being. They had sometimes been larger than now, and sometimes, on the other hand, considerably less; but a sort of average which seemed to be maintained was the very respectable one of considerably over 200,000 efficient men. The composition of the Force was a matter of great interest to military students at the present time. Besides a small handful of Cavalry—almost too insignificant to be included in the calculation—they had a Force of no less than 12,500 Volunteer Engineers, 40,000 Artillery Volunteers, and an Infantry Force of 163,000. In addition to this, it was fair to remember the enormous informal Reserve of. those men which must be existing throughout the country—men who had served for a short time in the Force, and would be willing to resume their connection with the Service in any national emergency. On this subject of the Reserve he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War to give his consideration to a very interesting proposal now on foot for formally establishing a body o Volunteers as a Reserve Force. That matter was well worth consideration. As to the organisation of this very large Force, it was, of course, the case now that they were mobilised—at least on paper. The Infantry were divided into brigades under brigadiers. They were all assigned their allotted tasks in the case of invasion, and he thought it fair to observe that they showed an amount of efficiency and zeal and intelligence which was highly to their credit. But the question he more immediately felt himself confronted with was: What was this large force for? What were its definite duties? The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War had been at pains on more than one occasion to impress on Parliament and the country that the Army was never to take part again in a foreign expedition, and that Great Britain was to be content with regard to military matters to accept the position of a second or third-rate Power. But whether the right hon. Gentleman was correct in his calculations or not— matters of this sort were entirely beyond the control or the speculations of statesmen, however eminent—it was, of course, admitted that the danger of this country being invaded was a definite danger, which must be systematically provided against. As to the part which this large force took in the calculations of the military authorities, he might be permitted to quote the words of Lord Wolseley—an officer whom he had often thought that he had found to be wrong only afterwards to discover that he was right. Lord Wolseley said that the Volunteer Force was a most important factor in the defence of the country; that if we had no Volunteer Force we should have to treble the Army or leave the country exposed to the most appalling risks. Having regard to this opinion of Lord Wolseley, he (Colonel Brookfield) thought that the condition of this Force was not a matter of sentiment but of business, and that it ought to be approached in that spirit by the military authorities, and by that House which criticised the action of the authorities. In dealing with this subject he would relieve the mind of the right hon. Gentleman on one point. The right hon. Gentleman was, no doubt, in the habit of thinking when he received communications from Volunteer officers or questions affect- ing the Force were raised in that House, that the end of all would be a request for increased grants of money. He (Colonel Brookfield) did not intend to ask for any money for the Force on that occasion. What he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman to do was to improve, or to initiate an improvement, in the status of the Volunteers as part of the available Force of the country; to make some small minor improvements in the internal discipline of the Service, and to turn his attention to a matter of growing importance — a matter that amounted almost to the dimensions of a national emergency, the great dearth of officers for the Volunteer Service. These were three practical proposals, and he hoped not to have to occupy much of the time of the House in examining them. It was a maxim in this commercial country that if they wanted a good article they should pay for it. But what he complained of was that in this branch of the Services they paid for a good article and got a very medium one in exchange. In saying this he should not like to be misunderstood. So far as the Volunteers could give any return in the way of personal sacrifice of time and money—as, for example, in attending manœuvres—they always showed their willingness to do so. It was one of the most encouraging signs of the times, the great zeal with which the Volunteers entered into their duties. But the point for which he contended was that the country did not get proper value for the grants made to the Service—they did not demand of the Volunteers all that they had a right to demand. The chief weakness at present lay in the very anomalous position the Volunteers occupied—in the artificial basis on which the whole organisation rested, and the constant attempt of the authorities to graft something in the nature of a new military system upon the old organisation of 1859—an organisation which he thought had very little relation to the present condition of the Service. They could speak of the old organisation of 1859 with a certain amount of enthusiasm. The Force of 1859 was the best thing which they were capable of producing at the time. But the conditions of the Service, the basis in these days, was not well adapted to the nation's needs, and to present notions of mobilisation in emergencies. The first important respect, therefore, in which he would point out the urgent need of reform in the status of the Volunteer Service was with regard to the power lying in the hands of the authorities for availing themselves of the Volunteer Service. It was almost incredible—he very much questioned whether the country or the House realized that at this moment neither the Government nor the military authorities had power to call out a single volunteer—even in time of war. A French writer—Max O'Rell—had satirized the system, and pointed out that insurance offices did not make any extra charge for the policies which they issued on the lives of Volunteer officers. The satire was justifiable when they considered that no power existed to call the Force out in time of war. When no such power existed what was the use of spending money in educating Volunteers, in mobilising them into brigades, and in encouraging the military spirit—of the growth of which they had encouraging signs? He had quoted just now the opinion of Lord Wolseley as to the potential value of the Force. But if no power existed to call out the Force at the proper moment it would be more logical to disband the Force at once, and spend the money to secure the services of men under different conditions of discipline. The only occasion on which the State had the right under present conditions to call for the services of the Volunteers was in the case of actual or apprehended invasion. In that event the Queen could proclaim that the services of the Volunteers were required, and deserters would be punished as such. He would suggest an improvement in that matter—as to the time when the Government should avail themselves of the services of the Volunteers. Instead of only calling them out when there was actual or apprehended invasion, there should be power to call them out, or a portion of them, whenever an order for the embodiment of the Militia was in force. That would, in the nature of things, be a time of emergency. In these days a struggle between this country and some other might, if it arose at all, arise suddenly and be perhaps decided in a few months or less. It would be highly important for the authorities to be able to put their hands on every available factor. The right hon. Gentleman would notice that this suggestion was one that was insisted upon very strongly in 1888, in the Debate which took place on the National Defence Act, and he believed that the proposal at that time as regarded the Volunteers was only defeated by a sort of jealousy of the Force which seemed to be felt in a certain quarter of the House. All Volunteer commanding officers had had confidential instructions as to what should take place in the case of mobilization, and knew where they were to go to. That was a great step in advance. But it would greatly improve the morale of the force if the men knew that they were for the future not only to perform the duties which they chose for themselves, but that the State had a right to call on their services in a less serious emergency than that of invasion or apprehended invasion. To proceed, an impression existed that Volunteer officers themselves were always asking for money. So they were, and it was one unfortunate condition of their existence that they had to ask for money in an eleemosynary way in their different localities. Still, he did not think that the rest of the population should greatly complain of that. It was simply a sort of insurance fee that they paid, and most of them were too lazy to do any work of the kind themselves. Other people thought that what Volunteer officers were always seeking was the enjoyment of military rank and decoration. Of course everyone had met with that sort of officer. He had not the smallest sympathy with him. Better than money rank or decoration would be an increased reality in their rank as soldiers. But let the House go to his next point. He would make a few observations on the condition of the Service in ordinary times of peace as at the present time. One of the most disheartening features in connection with the Volunteer Service was the attendance at drill or rifle practice—the dropping in on one occasion of two or three men, and perhaps two or three hundred on another. He recognised that that was one of the inevitable consequences of the conditions of the service, and he did not propose to make any radical change to remedy that part of the evil. It was one of the inevitable consequences of Volunteers having other avocations to attend to. But what he wished to point to was that some employers were so selfish and unpatriotic as to throw difficulties in the way of the men attending drill or camp, and that some means should be found to discourage their taking that course. The employer of labour who actually dismissed a man from his service because he was a Volunteer and for no other reason, should be subject to the full penalties of the law as to wrongful dismissal whatever they might be; On the other hand, the employer who showed patriotic self-sacrifice, desiring to help the Service, should have encouragement. He was happy to say that there was an increasing number of employers who did take a proper and liberal view of their duty in this respect. With regard to the matter of attendance at drill and in camp so far as the Volunteers were concerned, although compulsory attendance was out of the question and was foreign to the conditions of Volunteer service, there might be some qualification of the existing system. At the present moment the Militia were called out for a month every year. But to get to a closer parallel, the Yeomanry were brought up for their training for six days, or a week's permanent duty. He could see no reason why three days out of the 365 should not be devoted to continuous drill, and why the State should not then have the right to demand and enforce the attendance of Volunteers to this duty. These three days might be arranged for without interfering with the other duties of the men. To the Volunteers belonging to Metropolitan corps very likely the three days following Good Friday would be found most convenient, and in the case of corps in agricultural districts probably it would be well to choose the three last days of the annual encampment, including the inspection day. He believed that that would have a most beneficial effect, and that it would not be followed by prejudicial consequences so far as recruiting for the Volunteer Service was concerned. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War need have no fear of this being regarded as an unconstitutional infringement of the liberties of the British subject. But there was another respect in which he thought great improvement was needed. He had said just now that much of our notions as to the Volunteer Force at the present time had been grafted on to the old ideas conceived in 1859. Well, the condition of the Force in 1859 was such that it was thought proper and compatible with discipline for the rank and file to be taken into the confidence of the officers (whom they usually elected themselves), in regard to all the details of the management of the corps. The result of this was that to make any change in the "rules" of the corps, as they were called —and are still called—it was necessary that a meeting of the corps should take place. He had frequently brought this matter under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman's Predecessors and they had invariably expressed some sort of sympathy with him, and had acknowledged the fact that meetings of all ranks of the corps were incompatible with discipline. The right hon. Gentleman was so accustomed to saying in public that everything that was for the best that he had never found himself able to take any public opportunity of remedying this state of things. The Secretary for War would surely acknowledge that it was a most disorderly provision of the law that, in order to pass the rules or the accounts of a Volunteer corps, it should be necessary to have a sort of parade, with possibly every private Volunteer present, and all enjoying the full right to move amendments. Of course, they behaved very much better than to do so. He had, however, heard of a case in which an adjutant of a corps came into collision with one of the old-fashioned sergeants on one of these occasions. The sergeant said he had an amendment to move, and the adjutant told him if he did not hold his tongue he would put him under arrest. He (Colonel Brookfield) often wished that in some of the deliberations of the House of Commons such a summary course were possible. Another point on which he desired to lay some little stress was that of the position of commanding officers in reference to the orders they received from the authorities. The battalion staff of every Volunteer regiment included, of course, an adjutant, with a sergeant-major and instructor to each company, all of whom were serving under the Mutiny Act. The only person on the battalion staff of a Volunteer corps who was not under the Mutiny Act was the command- ing officer himself, who, it might fairly be assumed, was the last person who would be guilty of mutiny. The result was that that unfortunate officer constantly received communications from the authorities asking him whether "he would like this," or "that he could manage that." Inquiries of that sort were the most irritating kind of communications commanding officers ever received. They liked to get definite orders, and if they were placed under the Mutiny Act he believed it would greatly conduce to the discipline of the Service. There was only one person who held a more anomalous position than the commanding officer, and that was the new brigadier, who was such an utterly nondescript and absurd personage that his position must attract attention sooner or later. In most cases he was a retired Army colonel who had most likely seen war-service, and was known to be a good handler of men. He was dressed in the uniform of a General Officer, and had his staff; yet, when he went into the field in presence of the colonel commanding the regimental district, he had to be hidden away somewhere so that no question of precedence should be raised. If the right hon. Gentleman would make inquiries at head-quarters respecting this matter, there was not the slightest doubt that he would find that grave complications had arisen, and that it was really time to have the precedence of brigadiers of Volunteers definitely decided. A few observations upon the present dearth of Volunteer officers would not be out of place. The Volunteer Returns did not show how matters stood in this respect, and he would suggest that in future Volunteer Returns one column should be used for showing the number of officers in each corps. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War had stated, in answer to a question, that the number of vacancies in commissions at the present time was 1,677, and what was more serious was that 1,417 of these vacancies were in the junior ranks. It was almost impossible to describe the demoralisation that came over a small company or battery when they had no commissioned officer to look after them. When the commanding officer or inspecting officer visited them, and found they did not turn out properly, the Instructor shrugged his shoulders, and when some explanation was insisted upon he had to say, "How can the men be expected to attend to their duties, when they do not get a good example from those they are accustomed to look to for guidance! "The one redeeming point was that the noncommissioned officers, whom he had always been accustomed to regard as the real back-bone of the Volunteer Force, were not only an exceptionally fine body of men, but exceptionally useful, and exceptionally patient under great difficulties. But for their services he did not know what would happen. He had glanced at the Army List, and selected two or three typical cases from different parts of the United Kingdom, to show how matters stood with regard to the dearth of officers. He found that the 3rd Volunteer Battalion of the King's Own Borderers—a regiment which he came upon haphazard—had 10 captains on the establishment, and 10 serving, 15 subalterns on the establishment, and only six serving. Turning to Wales, he found that the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers had 12 subalterns on the establishment and only six serving. Coming to England, he found that the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Manchester Regiment had 13 captains on the establishment, and 12 serving, whilst of 20 subalterns on the establishment, only six were serving. He would undertake to point out to the right hon. Gentlemen the Secretary for War a plan by which he could remove the deficiency of officers as if by magic, without spending any money. It was evident that the class from which the Volunteers expected to obtain officers did not provide them. There appeared to be three ways of getting over the difficulty. One was to offer that class some powerful inducement to change the attitude they had taken up with regard to the Volunteers; the second was to go to a different class for the supply; and the third was to adopt a judicious blend of the first two methods. It had been quite erroneously pointed out, in the Press and elsewhere, that the reason for the dearth of Volunteer officers was to be found in the expenses to which they were subjected. He believed that the expenses of the Volunteer officer at the present time need be very small indeed. If he liked to spend money he could find plenty of ways of doing so; but with the grant for equipment, the allowances for great coats, travelling allowances, camp allowances, and local subscriptions, the expenses of officers were almost entirely confined to their uniforms and mess bills—in other words, to personal expenses. He believed that the real difficulty in the class from which the supply of officers was expected to come was to be traced to causes which were not always recognised in Debates in the House of Commons. He believed that the idleness and selfishness of young men who might join, and would be all the better for joining, had more to do with it than anything else. Generally, when a young man was asked to join be said he had not time. His (Colonel Brook-field's) experience was that in every department of life the idlest of all men were those who never had the time to do anything, and that those who were very much overworked thought very little of undertaking a little extra work. As to the plea respecting the expenses to which Volunteer officers were put, the young men to whom he referred very likely, if their own appetites were concerned, spent in a day or an hour as much as they would have to spend on the Volunteers in a year. He believed the first inducement that could be held out to such young men was one which had been tentatively mentioned several times by former War Ministers, although when they had been asked whether there was any chance of carrying it out they had always answered that the matter was "receiving their careful consideration." It was not surprising, under these circumstances, that nothing had been done. The inducement he referred to was that of occasionally offering Volunteers a commission in the Line. He thought he could offer what almost amounted to a proof that the adoption of such a course would be effectual. Some 23 years back he served for two or three years in the Militia. When he joined there was almost as great a dearth of subalterns in the Militia as there was in the Volunteers at the present moment. A year or two afterwards every vacancy was filled up, the simple explanation being that the new men were scrambling for a commission in the Regular Army. The commanding officers of Militia battalions complained at first that these young men were only making a convenience of the Militia; but he hoped they soon became patriotic enough to see that the system was a good one, and that it benefited the whole Service. He urged the Secretary for War to apply a similar system to the Volunteers. He had also to make a proposal—one of a more fanciful character— of his own. The class which included young men who ought to serve in the Volunteers, but would not, also included several hundreds of young men who had been up for examinations for the Line or the Militia and had failed. He could not see why, when candidates went up for these examinations, they should not be asked to answer one interrogation in addition to those to which they were now subjected. He did not see why they should not be asked whether, in the event of passing and having to wait for admission, they would be willing for a certain period to serve Her Majesty in a regimental district, and if so, in what district they could serve. Then they should be given credit for this, and he believed if this was done they would have a large number of young men ready and willing to fi'l vacant commissions in the Volunteer Force. The key to the situation lay in still further strengthening the good feeling which had happily begun to grow up between the Volunteers and the rest of the Service; and by joining those bonds still more closely together by letting the officer commanding the regimental district from time to time recommend some one from his battalion for a commission in the Line. The other alternative was to go to a different class for the officers, and that was the retired regular Army officers. The necessary personal expenses of an officer were too great to allow non-commissioned officers to take commissions. There were a large number of officers on half pay or who had joined the Reserve who had not half enough to do, and would be very glad to give their service in this direction. It might be remembered that experience had shown that these officers did not always make good commanders of Volunteers. They were too military, and sometimes lacked that tact and exceptional treatment which was necessary in dealing with Volunteers. He did not, therefore, propose to fill up all the vacancies by retired Army officers, but he suggested that they should report themselves to the officer commanding the Regimental District, who would then have a list of officers available when any Volunteer Battalion or Brigade of Artillery was exceptionally denuded of officers. They could serve either as company officers or assistant adjutants. The objection was that such services would have to be paid for. By either of these plans, or by a judicious combination of the two, the main difficulties he had described would be surmounted. The Volunteer system was based on the assumption that voluntary services would be forthcoming. Great credit was due to the tradesmen and working classes of this country for the loyalty they displayed in joining the ranks of the Volunteers, but it was a standing reproach that the other classes to whom they looked for officers were too indolent to serve, and too wanting in public spirit to recognise the duty which they ought to discharge. He thought that something should be done to stimulate them and make them all take a reasonable share in securing the military defence of the country.