HC Deb 04 March 1902 vol 104 cc378-81

The interest of all our calculations in the programme of last year has been centred in the question of recruiting and the question of pay. Now, last year I undertook to say that, if we were unable to get the men required, we should be very pusillanimous if we did not make our own proposals to Parliament. The whole question of recruiting, whether for a voluntary Army or a conscript Army, has been a trouble from time immemorial to every Monarch and to every Minister. I think you might even go so far back as the time when David got into trouble for numbering the people. In every part of the world the question of the remuneration and the period of service has given trouble. In our own Army, our difficulties began very early indeed. We have never reached an amount of pay which has been satisfactory to the Army, and I am not sure that we have ever reached an amount of pay which has been satisfactory to the country. Most of the interest in the pay of the Army has been centred not in what the soldier was supposed to get, but in what he actually got.

In looking back over the records—I confess that I owe a great deal to the work of Mr. Fortescue, who has gone into the subject from the first—I find one thing most remarkable with regard to the pay of the Army. It is that we have been so long accustomed to regard the Crown and the officer as the protectors of the soldier, that one has hardly realised that until comparatively recent days—until the last two centuries —the soldier was the prey of the Crown and of his own officers. The earliest question about the soldiers' pay I can arrive at happened in the time of William Rufus. He asked his Saxon subjects to produce 20,000 troops for service in Normandy, and to provide them with ten shillings for conduct money. Then, having collected the men, he relieved them of the conduct money and sent them back to their homes. The soldiers' pay has been the subject of illegitimate appropriation for many years, followed by legitimatised stoppages. The Tudors and the Stuarts took advantage of both these operations. I do not suppose there ever was a time when any great body of men served for so little as our Army did in these days. The officers were not much more fortunate. From the earliest days—the beginning of last century—they purchased their commissions, and for the privilege of doing so they paid a large fee to the Secretary for War. That has now fallen into disuse. They were subject then to claims by the Paymaster General. The Paymaster General took their balances for a long period and charged them for it. After they had satisfied the Paymaster General, they had a day's pay taken from them for Chelsea Hospital. After that, the muster master and the auditor put their fingers into the till, and in the scramble at that time the civilian clerks were not far behind. There were fees to the Exchequer and to the Treasury on the issue of pay warrants, and to every clerk who could put forward a claim. The officer, in self-defence, robbed the men, having himself been robbed by those above him. We find the colonel made contracts for the regiment, and out of the soldiers' pay, which was nominally 8d. a day, he took large commissions on the clothing and on the food supplies. This was done in a way which would astonish any of us who now know what the feeling of officers is on this subject. This system continued until a civilian Minister of War was appointed at the beginning of the last century.

The recruiting of the Army was carried on during the early part of last century to a large extent from the sweepings of the gaols. There was actually a record kept of the criminals condemned to capital punishment, and who, having been reprieved, were distributed among the regiments so that each might get its share.of the windfall. The result has been that the trade of the soldier up to comparatively recent days was by no means regarded as a worthy or honourable career. I want the House tonight to consider that every change which has been made in the improvement of the conditions of service has been made during the last century.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN (Stirling Burghs)

Will the right hon. Gentleman say down to what period of last century? The expression "last century" covers rather a wide time.

* MR. BRODRICK

I think we may say that the sweepings of the gaols for the Army terminated very early in the century. What I have been remarking upon took place chiefly in the eighteenth century. Early in the nineteenth the press gang still held its own. There was still flogging in the Army. But desertion from the Army, and the attempts to stop desertion, formed almost the entire history of the Army in the eighteenth century. Of course I do not mean to describe the whole Army as being corrupt. We know that the most heroic deeds were done by men who were brought into the Army by the most nefarious means. There was a time when regiments going on foreign service had to be bivouacked in the Isle of Wight so that they should not escape before going on board ship. But from the beginning of last century there has been steady progress and advance to a better state of things. The share of the soldier in the general share of civilisation has been greater than perhaps that of any other class. Better education, better conditions of service, have done much, but there is one thing which has done even more. I think the shortening of the term of enlistment has in itself done a great deal for the Army. We began with perpetual service, we went on to twenty-one years, we came down thirty years ago to seven years, and more recently we have tried the experiment of three years service. I think we may truly say that the more the soldier has been merged in the citizen, and the more exchange there has been between the citizen and the soldier, the better has been the discipline, the less has been the crime, in the Army; and, further, the larger has been the recruiting, and the more confirmed has been the popularity of the service. I want the House to realise that, as far as lies in the power of the War Office, by the relaxation of vexatious restrictions, we have done our share, and are doing our share, and will continue to do our share, to increase the popularity of the service.