Commons Sitting of 24 February 1903

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
The Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means.
UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  BAKER STREET AND WATERLOO RAILWAY (TRANSFER) BILL.
  "To authorise the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Company to acquire
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  additional lands, and to transfer the undertaking and powers of that Company to the Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BARNSLEY CORPORATION (WATER) BILL.
"To amend the provisions of The Barnsley Order, 1902; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
BATH CORPORATION WATER BILL.
"To empower the Corporation of Bath to construct additional waterworks; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
BECKENHAM URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of Beckenham in the county of Kent to carry out street improvements; to construct and work tramways; and to make further provision in regard to the electricity undertaking of the Council; and for the improvement, health, local government, and finance of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
BILLINGSHURST AND DISTRICT GAS BILL.
"To incorporate the Billingshurst and District Gas Company and to enable that Company to supply with gas the parishes of Billingshurst, Wisborough Green, and other places in the county of Sussex," road the first time; to be read a second time.
BLACKHEATH AND GREENWICH DISTRICT ELECTRIC LIGHT BILL.
"To confirm an agreement for the transfer to the Blackheath and Greenwich District Electric Light Company, Limited, of the undertaking of the Lewisham and District Electric Supply Company, limited; and to confer further powers upon the Blackheath and Greenwich District Electric Light Company, Limited; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BRIDGWATER GAS BILL.
"For continuing the Bridgwater Gas Light Company; for regulating and

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increasing the capital of the Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BRISTOL, LONDON, AND SOUTHERN COUNTIES RAILWAY BILL.
"For incorporating the Bristol, London, and Southern Counties Railway Company, and to authorise them to make and maintain railways in the counties of Bristol, Gloucester, Somerset, Wilts, and Southampton; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
BROADSTAIRS GAS BILL.
"For conferring further powers on the Broadstairs Gas Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
BURGESS HILL AND ST. JOHN'S COMMON GAS BILL.
"For incorporating and conferring powers on the Burgess Hill and St. John's Common Gas Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
CASTLEBLANEY, KEADY, AND ARMAGH RAILWAY (EXTENSION OF TIME).
"To extend the time limited by The Kingscourt, Keady, and Armagh Railway Act, 1900 for the compulsory purchase of lands and for the construction of certain of the railways authorised by that Act; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
CENTRAL LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
"To empower the Central London Railway Company to construct new railways; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

CHARING CROSS, EUSTON. AND HAMPSTEAD RAILWAY BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway Company, to transfer to and vest in that company the powers of the Edgware and Hampstead Railway Company, to authorise agreements with and the lease of the undertaking to the Underground Electric Railways Company
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of London, Limited, to transfer to and vest in the Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway Company the undertaking and powers of the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

CHESHIRE LINES COMMITTEE BILL.
"To enable the Cheshire Lines Committee to make new railways, to run over the Liverpool Overhead Railway, to acquire additional lands; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
CITY AND NORTH-EAST SUBURBAN ELECTRIC RAILWAY BILL.
"For incorporating the City and North-East Suburban Electric Railway Company, and for empowering them to construct railways from the City of London to Tottenham and Chequers Green, Southgate, and to Walthamstow, Epping Forest, and Waltham Abbey; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY.
"For empowering the City and South London Railway Company to construct an extension of their underground railway to Euston in the County of London; and for transferring to that Company the powers of the City and Brixton Railway Company; and for other purposes," road the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
CLAPHAM JUNCTION AND MARBLE ARCH RAILWAY (No.1) BILL.
"For incorporating the Clapham Junction and Marble Arch Railway Company; and for empowering them to construct a railway from the neighbourhood of Clapham Junction Railway Station to the Marble Arch in the County of London; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
COMMERCIAL GAS BILL.
"To make provision for the testing of gas supplied by the Commercial Gas Company; and for other purposes,'' read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
CORK HARBOUR BILL.
"To amend the Acts relating to the Cork Harbour Commissioners; to confer further powers on the Commissioners; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
COVENTRY AND ARLEY RAILWAY BILL.
"For making and maintaining Railways in the county of Warwick, to be called the Coventry and Arley Railway: and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
COVENTRY ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS BILL.
"To authorise the Coventry Electric Tramways Company to construct additional tramways; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills."
CRYSTAL PALACE DISTRICT CAS BILL.
"To confer further powers on the Crystal Palace District Gas Company with respect to the purchase and holding of lands, and to alter the provisions of the Acts of the Company with respect to the illuminating power of gas supplied by them and the testing of gas; and to change the name of the Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
DUBLIN IMPROVEMENT (BULL ALLEY AREA) BILL.
"To amalgamate the Guinness Trust (Dublin) Fund with the Dublin Improvement (Bull Alley Area) Scheme; to vest the property of the Guinness (Dublin) Trustees in the trustees of the said scheme; to change the name of the last mentioned trustees; to confer further powers on them; and for other purposes," read the first time: to be read a second time.

DUBLIN, WICKLOW, AND WEXFORD RAILWAY BILL.
"To provide for the revision of the rent payable in respect of the lease of the undertaking of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway Company to the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford Railway Company; to make other provision as to those two Companies; to enable the Dublin, Wicklow, and
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Wexford Railway Company to make certain diversion railways and other works.; to raise additional money; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

EAST ARDSLEY GAS BILL.
"For incorporating and conferring powers upon the East Ardsley Gas Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
EAST HAM IMPROVEMENT BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Urban District Council for the district of East Ham, in the county of Essex," read the first time; to be read a second time.
EBBW VALE WATER AND IMPROVEMENT BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of Ebbw Vale to construct additional waterworks and to provide additional cemeteries, and to make further provision with regard to the supply of electricity and for the improvement, health, local government, and finance of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
ERITH TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENT BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of Erith in the County of Kent to construct and work tramways; to carry out street improvements; to transfer to the Council the powers within the district of the Commissioners of Sewers for the limits extending from Lombard's Wall to Gravesend Bridge; and to make further provision in regard to the supply of electricity; and for the improvement, health, local government, and finance of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

FISHGUARD AND ROSSLARE RAILWAYS AND HARBOURS BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Fishguard and Rossiare Railways and Harbours Company; for the construction of a railway and other works and the acquisition of lands; and to make provision as to a bridge over the River Suir at Waterford; to empower the Great

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Western and Great Southern and Western Railway Companies to guarantee interest on the capital of the Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

GAS LIGHT AND COKE COMPANY BILL.
"To enable the Gas Light and Coke Company to raise additional moneys, and to purchase, take, and hold lands; and for altering the standard price of gas and redeeming capital; and for other purposes," read the first time: and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GAS LIGHT AND COKE COMPANY'S ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
"To alter the standard price to be charged by the Gas Light and Coke Company for gas supplied; to alter the prescribed illuminating power and to make provisions with respect to the supply of burners; to make provisions with respect to a capital redemption fund; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
GATESHEAD CORPORATION BILL.
"To make better provision for the health, good government, and improvement of the county borough of Gateshead; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second lime.
GORLESTON AND SOUTHTOWN CAS BILL.
"For conferring further powers on the Gorleston and Southtown Gas Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY BILL.
"To authorise the construction of new railways and the acquisition of lands by the Great Central Railway Company in connection with their undertaking; the construction of new railways by the North Wales and Liverpool Railway Committee or the Company in connection with the undertaking of that Committee; the construction of a new railway by the Great Central and Midland Railway Companies in connection with their Shireoaks Railway; the diversion of footpaths by the Great Western and Great Central Railways' Joint Committee in
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connection with their undertaking; the establishment of a pension fund by the Great Central Company; the raising of further capital; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY (No. 1) BILL.
"For conferring further powers on the Great Eastern Railway Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY (No. 2) BILL.
"To authorise the Great Eastern Railway Company to widen their Cambridge and Norwich main line of railway over the River Wensum; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT NORTHERN AND CITY RAILWAY BILL.
"To amend The Great Northern and City Railway Act, 1902, and to authorise the Great Northern and City Railway Company to raise additional capital for the purposes of their undertaking," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT NORTHERN, PICCADILLY, AND BROMPTON RAILWAY (NEW LINES AND EXTENSIONS) BILL.
"To empower the Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway Company to construct railways and works; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT NORTHERN. PICCADILLY, AND BROMPTON RAILWAY (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL.
"To confer further powers on the Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Great Northern Railway Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT SOUTHERN AND WESTERN RAILWAY BILL.
"To empower the Great Southern and Western Railway Company to construct certain new railways; to acquire additional lands; to enlarge and improve their station at Waterford; to confer further powers upon the Company; to enable them to raise additional capital; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY BILL.
"For conferring further powers upon the Great Western Railway Company in respect of their own undertaking and upon that Company and the London and North Western Railway Company and the Midland Railway Company in respect of undertakings in which they are jointly interested, and upon the Fishguard and Rosslare Railways and Harbours Company in respect of their undertaking; for amalgamating the Ely Valley Railway Company with the Great Western Railway Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY (PENSION FUND) BILL.
"To make further provision with respect to the Servants' Pension Fund of the Great Western Railway Company; and for other purposes," road the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
GRINDLEFORD, BASLOW, AND BAKE WELL RAILWAY BILL.
"For making railways in the county of Derby from the Midland Railway (Dore and Chinley Branch) at Grindleford to the Midland Railway (Derby and Manchester Branch) at Bakewell; and to other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
HAINAULT FOREST BILL.
"To authorise the acquisition of lands known as Lambourne Common, Chigwell Common, Fox Burrows Farm, Grange Hill Forest, and other lands in the county of Essex for the purposes of public open spaces," read the first time; to be read a second time.
HAMPTON COURT GAS BILL.
"To authorise the Hampton Court Gas Company to raise additional capital; to convert their existing capital; to enlarge their works; to amend their existing Acts; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
HIGHLAND AND INVERGARRY AND FORT AUGUSTUS RAILWAY COMPANIES (SUBSTITUTED) BILL.
"To confirm an agreement between the Highland Railway Company and the Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway Company; to enable the Highland Railway Company to erect and maintain an hotel at Dornoch, to apply their capital thereto; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
HUMBER COMMERCIAL RAILWAY AND DOCK BILL.
"To empower the Humber Commercial Railway and Dock Company to construct a new dock with connecting railway and other works and entrance into the River Humber; to abandon the dock and work authorised by The Humber Commercial Railway and Dock Act, 1901; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
HYDE CORPORATION BILL.
"To make further and better provision with regard to the improvement, health, local government, and finance of the borough of Hyde; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
IPSWICH GAS BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Ipswich Gas Light Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

KENT WATER BOARD BILL.
"For incorporating a Water Board, to consist of representatives of certain urban and rural district councils in the county of Kent, and for conferring upon such Board power to purchase certain portions of the undertakings of the companies of proprietors of the Kent waterworks and

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the Lambeth waterworks; and to supply water; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE AND LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAYS (STEAM VESSELS) BILL.
"To extend and enlarge the powers of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company and the London and North Western Railway Company as to Steam Vessels; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
LEIGH CORPORATION BILL.
"To make provision as to the water supply of the borough of Leigh and the urban district of Hindley; to enable the Corporation of Leigh to make now waterworks, tramways, and street improvements; and to make further provisions for the health, local government, and improvement of the said borough; and for other purposes," read the first time: to be read a second time.
LLANDRINDOD WELLS IMPROVEMENT BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of Llandrindod Wells, in the county of Radnor, to purchase lands for the purposes of recreation grounds; to acquire certain springs; and to make further provision in regard to the improvement, health, local government, and finance of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
LONDON BUILDING ACTS (AMENDMENT) BILL.
"To amend the Acts relating to buildings in London; to confer various powers on the London County Council; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (ELECTRIC SUPPLY) BILL.
"To make further provisions with respect to the purchase of electric undertakings by local authorities in the administrative county of London, and with respect to the supply of energy from stations of the London County Council; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
"To empower the London County Council to purchase lands; to extend the time for completion of certain works and acquisition of lands; to empower the Metropolitan Borough Councils of Camberwell and Kensington to execute works and purchase lands; to make provision with respect to premises used for receiving horses for slaughter and carcasses of dead horses, and the removal and disposal of dead horses; to alter the method of testing gas employed by the South Metropolitan Gas Company; to make provision with respect to the drainage of Upper Norwood; to confer powers upon Metropolitan Borough Councils with respect to street markets, the fitting of premises of consumers of electricity, and the provision and maintenance of public clocks; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
LONDON HYDRAULIC POWER BILL.
"To enlarge the powers of the London Hydraulic Power Company as to the raising of capital; the supply of water; and the acquisition of a new site for their pumping station at Westminster; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
LONDON, TILBURY, AND SOUTHEND RAILWAY BILL.
"To authorise the London, Tilbury, and Southend Railway Company to construct new railways and works; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
LONDON UNITED TRAMWAYS BILL.
"For conferring further powers on the London United Tramways (1901), Limited, for widening and altering roads and acquiring lands in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and London; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

MAIDSTONE GAS BILL.
"To authorise the Maidstone Gas Company to convert their existing capital; to raise additional capital; and

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for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

MARKET DRAYTON GAS BILL.
"For incorporating and conferring powers on the Market Drayton Gas Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
MERTHYR TYDVIL URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
''To empower the Urban District Council of Merthyr Tydvil to construct additional waterworks and a street improvement; and to make further and better provision for the good government, health, and improvement of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY (WORKS) BILL.
"To empower the Metropolitan District Railway Company to construct railways and works; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
MIDDLESBROUGH CORPORATION BILL.
"To make further provision with respect to the health and good government of the county borough of Middlesbrough and the collection of rates within the said borough: and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
MIDLAND AND BELFAST AND NORTHERN COUNTIES RAILWAYS BILL.
"To provide for the vesting of the undertaking of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway Company in the Midland Railway Company; "read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
MIDLAND GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY OF IRELAND BILL.
"To enable the Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland Company to construct a railway from Kingscourt to Castleblayney; to acquire additional lands; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
MIDLAND RAILWAY BILL.
"To confer additional powers upon the Midland Railway Company and upon the Norfolk and Suffolk Joint Railways Committee and upon the Midland and Great Northern Railways Joint Committee for the construction of works and the acquisition of lands; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
MULLINGAR, KELLS, AND DBOGHEDA RAILWAY BILL.
"To incorporate the Mullingar, Kells, and Drogheda Railway Company; and for making railways and other works in the counties of Westmeath, Meath, and Louth; and to confer subscription and other powers on certain existing Railway Companies and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
NANTYGLO AND BLAINA WATER BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of Nantyglo and Blaina to construct waterworks; and to supply water within the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
NEATH, PONTARDAWE, AND BRYNAM-MAN RAILWAY BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Neath, Pontardawe, and Brynamman Railway Company for the construction of railways; to authorise the Company to raise additional capital; and for other purposes," read the first time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
NELSON CORPORATION BILL.
"To extend the time for the construction of certain waterworks authorised by the Nelson Local Board Act, 1888; for protecting the water supply from pollution; and to make better provision in regard to the supply of water; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE ELECTRIC SUPPLY BILL.
"To transfer the electricity undertaking of the Walker and Wallsend Union Gas Company to the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Electric Supply Company, Limited;

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and for other purposes,'' read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

NEW HUNSTANTON IMPROVEMENT BILL.
"To authorise the Urban District Council of New Hunstanton to acquire land for water and gas purposes; to construct an outfall sewer; and to make further provision in regard to the health, local government, improvement, and finance of the urban district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
NORTH-EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.
"To confer additional powers upon the North-Eastern Railway Company for the construction of new railways and other works and the acquisition of lands; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiner's of Petitions for Private Bills.
NORTH MIDDLESEX GAS BILL.
"To extend the powers of the North Middlesex Gas Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
NORTH-WEST LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
"For empowering the North-West London Railway Company to extend their underground railway to Victoria; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
PLYMOUTH CORPORATION BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Corporation of Plymouth in regard to their tramway undertaking and the construction of street improvements; to transfer the Cottonian Museum to the Corporation; and to make further provision in regard to the borrowing of money by the Corporation and the repayment of their loans; and to the health, local government, and improvement of the borough; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

SCARBOROUGH GAS BILL.
"To authorise the Scarborough Gas Company to raise additional capital; and for other purposes," read the first
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time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

SEAEORTH AND SEFTON JUNCTION RAILWAY BILL.
"For making railways in the county of Lancaster; for connecting the South-port and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway with the Liverpool Overhead Railway; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time
SITTINGBOURNE DISTRICT GAS BILL.
"To confer further powers on the Sittingbourne District Gas Company," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
SOUTH SHIELDS CORPORATION BILL.
"To enable the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the county borough of South Shields to construct tramways in the borough; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
SOUTH SHIELDS, SUNDERLAND, AND DISTRICT TRAMWAYS BILL.
"To authorise the British Electric Traction Company, Limited, to construct tramways between South Shields and Sunderland and other places; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
SOUTH YORKSHIRE JOINT RAILWAYS BILL.
"'For enabling the North Eastern, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Great Northern, the Midland, and the Great Central Railway Companies to construct or take over certain railways in South Yorkshire authorised by the Shireoaks, Laughton, andMaltby Railway Act, 1901, and the North-Eastern Railway Act, 1302; and to construct other railways and works; for constituting a Joint Committee; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
STROUD DISTRICT AND CHELTENHAM TRAMWAYS BILL.
"To incorporate the Stroud District and Cheltenham Tramways Company, and to empower that Company to make and maintain tramways in the county of Gloucester; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
SUTTON DISTRICT WATER BILL.
"To authorise the Sutton District Water Company to construct additional waterworks, acquire lands, and raise further moneys; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
THAMES CONSERVANCY BILL.
"To confer further money and other powers on the Conservators of the River Thames for the deepening, widening, and improvement of its bed and channels as far as the Royal Albert Docks; to amend in various respects the Thames Conservancy Act, 1894; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
THAMES STEAMBOAT TRUST BILL.
"To incorporate trustees for the maintenance of a service of steamboats on the River Thames; to transfer to them the undertaking of the Thames Steamboat Company (1897) Limited; to provide for the transfer to them of certain piers on the River Thames; and for the guarantee by the Corporation of the City of London, the London County Council, and the Conservators of the River Thames of interest on moneys to be borrowed by the trustees; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
ULSTER AND CONNAUGHT LIGHT RAILWAYS BILL.
"To authorise the construction of a railway from Maguiresbridge to Bawnboy Road, in the counties of Fermanagh and Cavan; and of certain railways at Arigna and Dromod, in the counties of Roscommon and Leitrim; and the working of such railways and the Clogher Valley and Cavan and Leitrim Railways and other railways in connection therewith as one railway; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

WALKER AND WALLSEND UNION GAS BILL.
"To empower the Walker and Wall-send Union Gas Company to enlarge and extend their existing gasworks at Walker; and to construct a short line of railway or siding into their said gas-
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works; to raise additional capital; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

WATFORD AND EDGWARE RAILWAY BILL.
"For incorporating the Watford and Edgware Railway Company, and for empowering them to construct a railway from Watford to Edgware; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
WELLINGBOROUGH AND DISTRICT TRAMROADS BILL.
"To empower the British Electric Traction Company (Limited) to construct a new tramroad in the county of Northampton; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
WEST CUMBERLAND ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS BILL.
"To extend the periods for the commencement of the construction and for the completion of the tramways, tram-roads, and other works, and for the taking of lands authorised by the West Cumberland Electric Tramways Act, 1901; to extend the area within which the West Cumberland Electric Tramways Company may supply electricity, and to confer on that Company further and additional powers with regard to such supply; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
WESTERN VALLEYS (MONMOUTHSHIRE) SEWERAGE BOARD BILL.
"To constitute and incorporate a Joint Board, consisting of representatives of the Urban District Councils of Abercarn, Abertillery, Ebbw Vale, Nantyglo, and Blaina and Risca, all in the county of Monmouth; and to authorise the Board to construct main trunk sewers and other works for the disposal of the sewage of such districts; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

WEST HAM CORPORATION BILL.
"To confer further powers upon the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the county borough of West Ham, and to make further provision for the good

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government of that borough; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.

WEST SUSSEX WATER BILL.
"To incorporate the West Sussex Water Company, and to enable the Company to supply water within the parish of Pulborough and certain other parishes in the county of Sussex," read the first time; to be read a second time.
WINCHESTER WATER AND GAS BTLL.
"For conferring further powers upon the Winchester Water and Gas Company; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Pills.
WOLVERHAMPTON AND CANNOCK CHASE RAILWAY (EXTENSION OE TIME) BILL.
"To extend the time for the compulsory purchase of lands and for the construction and completion of the Wolverhampton and Cannock Chase Railway; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
WOOD GREEN URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
"To enable the Urban District Council of Wood Green to acquire part of Wood Green Common for the purposes of a dust destructor; and to make further provision with regard to the electric light undertaking of the Council; and for the improvement, health, and local government of the district; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
WOOLWICH BOROUGH COUNCIL BTLL.
"To authorise the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors of the metropolitan borough of Woolwich to supply electrical energy in bulk to the Urban District Council of Foots Cray; to confer further powers upon the said Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors; and to make further provision with respect to markets in the borough of Woolwich; and for other purposes," read the first time; to be read a second time.
PETITIONS.
  DETENTION OF POOR PERSONS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from St. Andrews and St. Leonards; Holm; Ruthven; Erskine; Galashiels; Barry; Bervie; and, Dumbarton; to lie upon the Table.
LAND TRANSFER ACT, 1897.
Petition from Middlesex, for inquiry into the compulsory system of registration; to lie upon the Table.
SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
Petitions in favour: from Blackpool; Salford; and Stoke Newington; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS.
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 23rd February—Mr. Austen Chamberlain]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 31.]
NAVY (APPROPRIATION ACCOUNT).
Copy presented, of the Appropriation Account of the Navy for 1901-1902, with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon, and upon the Store accounts of the Navy [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 32.]
TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 2936 to 2939 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT, 1889.
Copy presented, of Minute sanctioning the Subjects to be taught under Clause 8 of the Act, for the County of Cardigan (Second Minute), dated 14th November, 1902 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT, 1889.
Copy presented, of Minute sanctioning the subjects to be taught under Clause

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8 of the Act, for the County of Rutland (Fifth Minute), dated 14th November, 1902 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT, 1880.
Copy presented, of Minute sanctioning the Subjects to be taught under Clause 8 of the Act, for the County of Devon (Eighth Minute), dated 27th November, 1902 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
CENSUS, 1901.
Copy presented, of Census, 1901 (Islands in the British Seas) (Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey and adjacent Islands) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1902-3).
Estimate presented, of the further sums required to be voted for the Service of the year ending 31st March, 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table and to be printed. [No. 33.]
BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA (TAXATION OF NATIVES).
Address for "Return showing the rates of Taxation now paid by Natives in the several parts of British South Africa."—(Mr. Herbert Samuel.)

BREWERS' LICENCES.
Return ordered, "of accounts of the number of persons in each of the several collections of the United Kingdom licensed as brewers for sale, i.e. common brewers, victuallers, retailers of beer to be drunk on the premises, retailers of beer not to be drunk on the premises, and brewers of beer not for sale, particularising each class in each collection; and of the number of licences issued to victuallers and retailers of beer to be drunk on the premises and not to be drunk on the premises; and stating also the quantities of malt, unmalted corn, rice, etc., sugar, including its equivalent of syrups, etc., hops and hop substitutes, used by brewers of beer for sale, and of malt and sugar used by brewers not for sale, from the 1st day of October, 1901, to the 30th day of September, 1902."
"Of the amount of Licence Duty paid and Beer Duty charged from the 1st day of October, 1901, to the 30th day of
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September, 1902, distinguishing brewers for sale from other brewers."
"Of the number of brewers for sale (i.) who use malt and hops, or hop substitutes only, and (ii.) who use malt with substitutes for same and hops or hop substitutes paying for licences, from the 1st day of October, 1901, to the 30th day of September, 1902, separating them into classes, according to the number of barrels of beer charged with duty calculated at 1· 055 degrees gravity, viz.: under 1,000 barrels; 1,000 and under 10,000; 10,000 and under 20,000; 20,000 and under 30,000; 30,000 and under 50,000; 50,000 and under 100,000; 100,000 and under 150,000; 150,000 and under 200,000; 200,000 and under 250,000; 250,000 and under 300,000; 300,000 and under 350,000; 350,000 and under 400,000; 400,000 and under 450,000; 450,000 and under 500,000; 500,000 and under 600,000; 600,000 and under 700,000; 700,000 and under 800,000; 800,000 and under 900,000; 900,000 and under 1,000,000; 1,000,000 and under 1,500,000; 1,500,000 and under 2,000,000; 2,000,000 barrels and over; showing separately, in each class, the quantities of malt, unmalted corn, rice, etc., sugar, including its equivalent of syrups, etc., hops and hop substitutes used; and stating also the number of bulk barrels of beer produced, and the amount of Licence Duty paid and Beer Duty charged in each class: "
"And, of the number of barrels of beer exported from the United Kingdom, and the declared value thereof, and where exported to, from the 1st day of October, 1901 to the 30th day of September, 1902, distinguishing England, Scotland, and Ireland (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 71, of Session 1902)."—(Mr. Hayes Fisher.)

PAUPERISM (ENGLAND AND WALES) (MONTHLY STATEMENTS).
Return ordered, "of Statements for each month of the year 1903 of the number of Paupers (except Lunatics in County and Borough Asylums, Registered Hospitals, and Licensed Houses, and Vagrants) in receipt of relief in England and Wales (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 121, of Session 1902)".—(Mr. Grant Lawson.)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Cotton Cloths Factories Acts—Home Office Prosecutions.
  MR. SHACKLETON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state what number of employers were reported during the year 1902 by the Inspector under the Cotton Cloths Factories Act as having exceeded the nine volumes of carbonic acid (carbon dioxide) in every 10,000 volumes of air (Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, Clause 94, section 3); and whether he can state the number of prosecutions which have been instituted by the Homo Department in consequence of these reports.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers Douglas.) There were sixty-three cases in 1902 in which the inspector reported that an employer had exceeded the standard referred to; but in many cases the excess was found only in one part of the shed, while in other parts the proportion of carbonic acid was found to be below the prescribed limit. No proceedings wore instituted on these reports. I do not think the inspectors an; called upon to prosecute unless a contravention of the Act in this matter is continued or repeated after notice from the inspector.

  Licences Refused for Reasons other than Misconduct.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Homo Department whether he can give the numbers of licences refused for reasons other than misconduct during recent years.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers Douglas.) Returns of the renewals of licences refused in recent years have been published for the years 1890, 1891, 1895, and 1000. It appears from these that out of the total of 186 for the year 1890, 43 renewals were refused for the solo reason that they were not required and 37 for that reason combined with others, e.g., misconduct. Of the refusals because not required, five were reversed on appeal. The corresponding figures for 1891 are: total refusals, 339; not required, 103; not required and other reasons, 53; reversals of not
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  required, on appeal, 6. For 1895 the figures are 200, 30, 59, and 4, respectively. For 1900 the figures are 216, 77, 48, and 12.

  Newton Abbot Post Office—Increased Salary for Staff.
  MR. SEALE-HAYNE (Devonshire,): To ask the Postmaster General whether, in view of the increase in the cost of living as well as the increase of postal and telegraphic business at Newton Abbot, he will make inquiries with the purpose of placing that town in the next class, and so increasing the possible maximum salary of the staff; and whether he will consider the advisability of raising the scales of pay in the Newton Abbot Post Office to those in existence at Barnstaple and Bridgwater.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The question of the wages proper to the postmen at Newton Abbot was examined by me so recently as November last, and I explained in my reply to the right hon. Gentleman in this House on the 21st of that month that it was not considered that there are sufficient grounds for placing the postmen upon the next higher scale of wages. Their present scale is the same as that received by the postmen at Barnstaple.

  Telegraphic Addresses of Dublin Bookmakers.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that when Dublin bookmakers put their advertisements in newspapers they state that their name, with Dublin added, is a sufficient address for letters; and will he state what special arrangements or privilege are made for the delivery of such letters.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) No special arrangements are made for the delivery of letters so addressed.

  South Africa—Beer Duty in the Transvaal.
  MR. EUGENE WASON: To ask the Postmaster General, as representing the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether he is aware that the duty on beer imported into the Transvaal is more than double the value of the article, and is a prohibitive
  † See (4) Debutes, cxv., 147.

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  and not revenue producing tax; and will he state what is the duty payable on a cask of beer exported from this country and the duty on a cask of beer made in the Transvaal.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, for the Secretary of State for the Colonies.) The duty on beer imported into the Transvaal is at present that fixed by Law 4 of 1894 of the South African Republic, which has not been amended in this respect. It is 7½ per cent. ad valorem, plus a special duty of 3s. per gallon. The imports of past years show that this duty has not been prohibitive. There is at present no Excise duty on beer brewed in the Transvaal, but Customs duties are of course levied on the raw material imported.

  SouthAfrica—Loss on Sale of Blockhouses.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Postmaster General, as representing the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether the blockhouses in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, which were taken over by Lord Milner from the War Office authorities for *50,000, have now been resold to the inhabitants of the districts; and, if so, will he state whether the re-sale has resulted in a loss; and, if so, how much.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, for the Secretary of State for the Colonies.) I have no later information than that given to the hon. Member on the 15th December last.†

  Mails to Japan, Australia, etc.—Respective Times taken in Transmission by Alternative Routes.
  MR. CALDWELL: To ask the Postmaster General the approximate time which is taken in the transmission of correspondence from London to Yokohama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong respectively via United States; also the approximate time from London to Sydney via Vancouver and via San Francisco.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) Correspondence despatched from London via the United States reaches Yokohama in from thirty-one to thirty-three days, Shanghai in about forty days, and Hong
  † See (4) Debates, cxvi., 1203.
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  Kong in about forty-three days. The approximate time occupied in the transit of correspondence from London to Sydney via Vancouver is thirty eight days, and via San Francisco thirty-four days.

  House of Commons Ventilation—Recommendations of Select Committee.
  MR. WYLIE (Dumbartonshire): To ask the hon. Member for North Hunts, as representing the First Commissioner of the Board of Works, when the Report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Ventilation of the House of Commons building will be issued; and what stops, if any, have been taken during the recess to remove some of the insanitary conditions.
  (Answered by Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.) The Select Committee found it impossible to conclude their inquiry last session, and it is proposed to ask the House to reappoint the Committee at an early date. During the recess the authorised improvements in the ventilation of the Commons Committee Rooms have been completed, and new fittings have been supplied to the sanitary offices on the ground floor terrace front, and mechanical ventilation has been introduced into them with excellent results. Other sanitary offices in the building will be dealt with in the same way as opportunities arise during recesses.

  Women Typists in the Civil Service—Alleged Grievances.
  MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the petitions presented, in the early months of 1902, from women typists employed in various Government Departments relative to the conditions of their service; will he state whether any answer has been sent to those petitions; and whether the Treasury will be able to grant the improvements in the conditions of employment which are desired by this class of public servants.
  (Answered by Mr. Hayes Fisher.) The Papers have only recently been laid before me. I am in communication with the various Departments concerned, and I hope that an early decision may be arrived at.

  Income Tax—Dates for Payment in England and Scotland.
  MR. WYLTE: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer why taxpayers in Scotland are still being forced to pay income tax two or three months sooner than England, seeing that in 1901 his Department promised that both countries should be treated alike in future, and no pressure should be used in the one country which was not used in the other; will he arrange that this course shall now be followed; and will he also say the latest day on which income tax may be paid, without costs being incurred, in both countries.
  (Answered by Mr. Hayes Fisher.) As the facts referred to are somewhat complicated, I have caused a Memorandum to be prepared, of which I am sending a copy to the hon. Member. He is at liberty to make any use of it which he desires. He will observe that there is now no ground for the impression that Scotland is more strictly treated than England.

  Navy—Increased Pensions to Petty Officers.
  MR. REGINALD LUCAS: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he can announce the date upon which the increased pension to chief petty officers becomes operative; and how it affects men whose period of service will have ceased before the forthcoming Estimates are presented.
  (Answered by Mr. Amold-Forder.) The new scale of pension for chief petty officers, sanctioned by Order in Council of the 16th February last, applies to ail chief petty officers who may be pensioned on or after the 1st April, 1903. Chief petty officers discharged to pension before that date are not affected by the change.

  Leicestershire County Council's Education Scheme—Board of Educations Objection.
  MR. LEVY: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether he is aware that the draft education scheme framed by the Committee of the Leicestershire County Council was informally submitted to the Board of Education without the
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  authority of either the Committee or the Council, and before it had been submitted to the Council for consideration; and that, in consequence of objections raised by the Board of Education to the draft scheme, it was withdrawn and another scheme prepared for presentation to the Council; and if he will state in what particulars the scheme originally prepared was not in accordance with the requirements of the Education Act; and on what grounds the objections of the Board of Education were based.
  (Answered by Sir William Anson.) I have nothing to add to my answer of the 20th instant except that an Education Scheme was submitted to the Board of Education by the County Council of Leicestershire on the afternoon of that day. In my judgment no useful purpose can be served by stating in answer to Questions in this House the purport or details of the various discussions or communications, sometimes extending over some time, which take place between the Board and local authorities, or members and representatives of those authorities, while a, scheme is in course of preparation or while it is being settled for publication.

  Ireland—Suggested State Lunatic Asylum for Alcoholic Lunatics.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he has seen the Report read by Dr. Norman Connolly at the recent meeting of the Richmond Asylum, in which reference was made to the increase in the number of cases of alcoholic lunacy committed to that institution: whether he is aware that the Richmond Asylum authorities have, since the year 1900, made several representations to the Irish Government on this matter: and whether, in view of the state of the law as regards the care of alcoholic lunatics, and considering the revenue derived by the State from the sale of intoxicating liquor, he will recommend the establishment of a State Infirmary in Ireland for the treatment of persons who have become insane from excessive indulgence in intoxicating drinks.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The reply to the first and second queries is in the affirmative. The concluding part of

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  the Question suggests an amendment and widening of the existing law which provides for the establishment of institutions for the reception of habitual drunkards under certain prescribed conditions. I cannot give an undertaking such as suggested.

  Ireland—Fair Rents in the Trim Districts—Case of John Flynn, etc.
  MR. TULLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Land Commission are aware that in the case of John Flynn, Rathrone, Enfield, and other tenants in the Trim district, the landlords have had their applications to have second-term judicial rents fixed transferred from the county court judge to the Sub-Commission; and whether, in order to expedite the hearing of these cases, they will direct that a Sub-Commission court be held in Trim at an early date.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The originating notice of application to fix a fair rent in the case specially named in the Question was not served until the end of last October, and was transferred to the Land Commission in December. A list of cases from the Trim district is now in course of disposal. It contains, however, only such applications as were made at dates anterior to that referred to. There is no power to list cases for hearing out of their regular turn except by order of the Land Commission, which should be applied for in the usual way.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  The War Commission.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War who is responsible for the preparation and authenticity of the summary of the evidence given before the War Commission which has been supplied to the Press; whether such summaries have been revised by the witnesses; whether the evidence already given will be laid before Parliament at once, and when the taking of evidence by the Commission will be concluded.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK,):
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  I assume that the secretary of the Commission is the person responsible for the preparation and authenticity of the summary of the evidence. I do not know if the summaries have been revised by the witnesses. No report has been forwarded to the Government, and it may be assumed, therefore, that no Papers will be laid till the inquiry is concluded. I am not in a position to state when the inquiry will be concluded.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: I wish to know whether, in accordance with invariable practice, the right hon. Gentleman has communicated to the Commission and to its secretary the fact that this question was going to be asked in the House of Commons, and what answer they had asked the right hon. Gentleman to give to it.
  MR. BRODRICK: I am not aware that there is any precedent for Government laying such questions before the Royal Commission. If that is the case, I will certainly lay it before the Commission, but I think in that case the Question should be addressed to the First Lord of the Treasury. I have no authority over the Commission, nor had I any authority in the appointment of it.
  *SIR HENRY FOWLER: I beg to give notice that I will repeat the Question to the First Lord, and I hope we shall get such an answer as is due to the House.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can explain on what grounds the conclusion was arrived at that the proceedings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the conduct of the late war should be wholly secret, having regard to the fact of his statement in the House of Commons on the 12th June, 1902,† that the question as to whether the Commission was to be an open or a secret inquiry was a question for careful consideration, and that in all probability some parts of the inquiry would be conducted in private.
  MR. BRODRICK: When questioned on the subject of the inquiry I could only give my opinion as to the probable course which would be adopted. I have no doubt
  † See (4) Debates, cix, 499.

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  the Royal Commission gave the matter careful consideration, but their decision was entirely a question for themselves, and the Government was in no way concerned in it.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: But when the right hon. Gentleman said that the question whether the proceedings should be wholly secret was under consideration, did he mean under the consideration of the Government or of the Commission?
  MR. BRODRICK: The Government can only appoint the Commission, which has itself to decide the course of procedure.

  Surrenders in South Africa.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can inform the House what inquiries into surrenders in South Africa have been reopened otherwise than by the Royal Commission, and what officers who had been cashiered or placed on half-pay have been reinstated.
  MR. BRODRICK: Some cases have been reconsidered, but in only one case has an officer been reinstated, when it was found that the Court which tried him had been illegally constituted.
  *SIR CHARLES DILKE: Was that the Helvetia case?
  MR. BRODRICK: No, Sir.
  *SIR CHARLES DILKE: But has not the officer in that case been reinstated?
  MR. BRODRICK: That case is under consideration.

  Parcels Post for Agricultural Produce
  MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether, in the interests of the tenant farmers, the agricultural labourers, and the general public of great Britain and Ireland, he will take steps to secure that agricultural produce may be forwarded by parcel post at reduced rates and under special conditions.
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): I would refer the hon. Member to the
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  answer which I gave on Thursday last, the 19th instant, to a similar Question put by the hon. Member for the South Molton Division of Devonshire.

  Appointments to Postmasterships—Unsuccessful Candidates.
  MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that a telegraphist named Mercer, of the Bristol Post Office, has applied for 160 vacant postmaster ships since 1894; whether, seeing that during these periods clerks of less service, experience, ability, and salary have been the recipients of these positions, he will make inquiry into the case.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I have no knowledge of the number of applications made by Mr. Mercer since 1894, but it is clear that he has not been considered by either my predecessors or myself the best qualified candidate for any appointment for which he has applied, and I see no reason for making special inquiry.

  Cattle in the United Kingdom.
  MRGEORGE WHITELEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he will state the number of cattle at the present time in the United Kingdom, and how that number compares with the same period in the year 1896.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. HANBURY,): The number of cattle in the United Kingdom (including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands), on the 4th June, 1902, the latest date for which statistics are available, was 11,376,969. At the same period in 1896 the number returned was 10,941,655.

  Aliens in London—Police Arrests.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many aliens had to be arrested last year by the Metropolitan Police, and if his attention has been called to the representations on the subject by the

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  Judges of the High Court of Justice, by the Recorder of London, by the Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions, and by juries, and what steps he proposes to take to save the taxpayer from the expense of maintaining these alien criminals during imprisonment.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. COCHRANE,): I am aware that representations such asmy hon. and gallant friend indicates have been made. It would be a matter of extreme difficulty to give trustworthy figures in answer to this question, but I have under consideration the best way of laying the necessary information before the Royal Commission which is now inquiring into the whole question of alien immigration.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: But I was given last November † the number of arrests up to October, so surely the Department has the information in hand?
  MR. COCHRANE: My hon. friend had better put another Question.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: That is my Question.

  Women on Education Committees.
  MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE (Somersetshire, E.): I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education if his Board, in approving schemes for Education Committees, will see that each scheme makes provision for the inclusion of at least two women on the Committee.
  *THE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,): The Board of Education are advised that the Education Act only requires that a scheme should make provision for the inclusion of one woman on an Education Committee. The Board have not found any reluctance on the part of the County Councils to place women on the Education Committee, but in asking for the inclusion of more than one woman the wishes of the local authority and the needs of the area must in each case be considered.
  MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE: Can the hon. Gentleman give me any information as to the number of authorities which have made such provision?
  † See (4) Debates, cxvi., 1358
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: I have the information as to thirty-nine counties. In three provision is made for one woman member, in twenty-seven for two, in six for three, in two for four, and in one for five.

  Railway Rates in Ireland
  MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state if the Board of Agriculture for Ireland would be prepared to appoint a Departmental Commission to report upon the railway rates at present charged in Ireland, their effect upon the agriculture, trade, and industry of the country, and the steps necessary for amelioration of the present position. On 8th April, 1902†, you informed Mr. Field (Dublin, St. Patrick) that "while far from saying that such an inquiry would not be useful, you were not at present prepared to recommend it."
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM, DOVER): The Department of Agriculture is constantly investigating questions affecting railway transit and rates and obtaining information which would prove of utility should it ever be decided to appoint a Committee of Inquiry. The Department does not think, however, that the time has yet arrived for such an inquiry.

  Technical Instruction in Ireland—Grant in Aid.
  MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Belfast Corporation have adopted a resolution characterising the withdrawal of the grants-in-aid of technical instruction in Ireland as an evasion of Parliamentary responsibility, contrary to the understanding come to with local and educational authorities in Ireland, and unfair to the taxpayers of Ireland; and whether, in view of similar pronouncements by other public bodies in all parts of Ireland, he can state what action the Government propose to take.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Representations have been made to this effect. I have stated that it has been decided that the existing grants, amounting to *3,500, shall continue, but that a limit to their
  † See (4) Debates, cv., 1260

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  expansion should be laid down, not as a final limit, but as a future point of departure for the reconsideration of these grants in correlation with other Irish demands, whether educational or industrial, which may be disclosed, and with the resources available to meet them. The limit is fixed, provisionally, in accordance with these considerations, at *7,000 a year.

  Land Purchase in County Sligo—Land Commission Advances.
  MR. O'DOWD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state the circumstances under which a gamekeeper became purchaser of a non-agricultural holding situate in a congested district near Aclare, County Sligo; whether the purchase-money, amounting to hundreds of pounds, was advanced by the Land Commission; and, if so, whether it is usual for the Land Commission to make such advances to persons in such a position, who have had no previous connection with the localities in which they purchase.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The purchaser in question was tenant of the lands purchased. The Land Commission report there were no grounds for refusing to make the loan, as the security for the advance was considered ample.

  Imprisonment for Contempt of Court—M'Elligott's Case.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the case of John M'Elligott, a Protestant farmer from Shraugh, County Cavan, now two years in Dundalk gaol for contempt of court; and whether, after this long term of imprisonment, he can hold out any prospect of M'Elligott's speedy release.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I stated in reply to a similar question put to me yesterday that the Executive has no power to intervene in such cases. To purge his contempt the prisoner must apply to the Master of the Rolls, the committing Judge.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: May I ask if this terrible abuse of power—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
  MR. MACVEAGH: Is there any precedent in this country for a man being kept two years in prison without trial?
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: May I ask—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The Question on the Paper has been fully answered.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: I wish to ask if the Judge has power to inflict imprisonment for life?
  *MR. SPEAKER: That is not the Question.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: May I ask whether, in view of this and similar cases, the Government will undertake to introduce legislation to prevent—
  *MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must give notice of that Question.

  Marine Works in Ireland.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the claim of the port of Kenmare, County Kerry, to receive assistance under the Marine Works (Ireland) Act has been favourably considered; and, if so, when will effect be given to this decision.
  The following Question also appeared on the Paper—
  MR. HUGH LAW: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can now say what works it is proposed to execute under the Marine Works Act, and especially whether he proposes to provide for the improvement of the harbour of Portnablagh and the construction of piers at Portnoo and Kincasslagh, and of a pier or boatslip at Falchorrib.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Saturday next has been fixed for a conference between

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  myself and representatives of the Councils of Congested Districts Counties to discuss the whole question of the allocation of the funds provided by this Act. For the present, therefore, I would ask hon. Members to defer these Questions.

  United Irish League—Inniscarra Meeting.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that during the holding of a public meeting, under the auspices of the United Irish League, at Inniscarra, County Cork, on Sunday, 1st February, a body of police was posted on the evicted farm of Mrs. O'Oallaghan, Ballyshoneen; and will he state the nature of the duty for which these constabulary were detailed.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Directions were given by Government that the meeting should not be allowed to be held on the farm in question. The police were there to give effect to these directions. The meeting was held in the vicinity.
  MR. SHEEHAN: Is it usual to plant the police on evicted farms?
  MR. WYNDHAM: It is the practice of the Irish Government to see that the police are placed where they can carry out their instructions.

  Betting Offices in Ireland.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a number of betting offices and houses are being kept open daily in Armagh, Ballymoney, Cork, Coleraine, Londonderry, Limerick, Maryborough, and Waterford, and will he reconsider the advisability of taking proceedings in their cases under the Betting House Act of 1853.
  MR. DELANY: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers the Question, I beg to ask him whether he is aware that the principal parties who frequent betting houses in Maryborough are officials of His Majesty's Prison—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
  *MR. DELANY: Who are also disciples of Mrs. Smily's, of Birds' Nest fame, Dublin, as well as of the hon. Member himself.
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I must call attention to the fact that it is gross disorder for an hon. Member to persist in putting a Question after he has been called to order, and whilst I am standing.
  *MR. WYNDHAM: The police report that, though vigilant watch has been maintained, no evidence has been obtained to show that any offices or houses have been kept open for betting in any of the places named. A prosecution was instituted for betting under an archway in Armagh, but was abortive, as the King's Bench Division decided it was not a "place" within the meaning of the statutes. In Londonderry, where a bye-law has been passed against street betting, a conviction was obtained. In Cork there have been seven successful prosecutions since 1896.

  Royal Irish Constabulary—Pay and Pensions.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state when he proposes to introduce a Bill to give effect to the recommendations of the Committee appointed in May, 1901, to inquire into the pay and pensions of the Royal; Irish Constabulary; and when he intends to give effect to that portion of the recommendations that requires no legislation.
  *MR. WYNDHAM: The Estimate for the next financial year will contain provision necessary to give effect to such of the recommendations of the Committee as do not involve legislation. With respect to the question of legislation, my hon. friend will understand that in view of existing demands upon the time of the House, I cannot fix a date for the introduction of the measure he refers to.

  Alleged Forged Will—Case of Thomas O'Keeffe.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAM: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

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  whether he can explain the cause of delay in the prosecution of Thomas O'Keeffe, of Cuniglass, County Cork, for forgery and perjury, as ordered by Mr. Justice Wright in a forged will case tried before him on the 10th December last.
  *MR. WYNDHAM: Mr. Justice Wright did not direct a prosecution in this matter. The case will be laid before my right hon. friend the Attorney General in a day or two. The delay, which is unavoidable, is caused by the necessity of obtaining copies of the voluminous documents in the action.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAM: Will steps be taken to prevent this person leaving the country in the meantime?
  *MR. WYNDHAM: Any precautions that are necessary will, of course, be taken.

  Irish Local Taxation Pund—Expenses of Midwives
  MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the result of his promised consideration to the matter of the allocation of the Irish Local Taxation Fund; and whether, in that consideration, he found himself able to set aside a sum for the repayment to boards of guardians of half the salaries and expenses of mid-wives employed by these boards in the various dispensary districts, on the same principle as half the salaries of medical officers is refunded.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am not yet in a position to recommend an allocation of the unexpended balances. The proposal in the second part of the Question was duly considered when the Local Government (Ireland) Act of last session was being drafted, but the Government felt unable to make any concession in the direction suggested.

  Afforestry in Ireland.
  MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether it is intended to give effect to the recent recommendation of the Departmental Committee on British Forestry with reference to the acquirement by
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  the State of areas for practical demonstration; and, if so, whether he will consult with the President of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland as to the advisability of securing in Ireland a similar area.
  MR. HANBURY: The evidence taken by the Forestry Committee has not yet been published, and I am therefore not at present in a position to come to any decision with regard to the proposed provision of demonstration areas. It is clear, however, that the recommendations of the Committee involve important financial considerations, which will require careful examination both at the Treasury and by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, as well as by myself. We shall certainly consult the Irish Department of Agriculture on the subject before any action is taken.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is the intention of the Government to appoint a Commission to inquire into the promotion and extension of afforestation in Ireland, in view of the fact that the Commission appointed for a similar object as regards England and Wales has recently issued its Report.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Some of the recommendations in the Report of the Committee on British Forestry are applicable, in principle, to Ireland. The Irish Department is at present conducting a special survey of existing woodlands, and lands suitable for forestry operations. Such a survey is necessary to enable the Department to consider the measures to be adopted to give effect to the recommendations of the Report in question.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Is it proposed to make any provision for the preservation of existing plantations in Ireland?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I can make no announcement on the subject.

  The Colonial Secretary.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg, to ask the First Lord of the Treasury by which of the other four principal Secretaries of State are the duties

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  appertaining to the headship of the Colonial Office Department, in the absence from the kingdom of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, discharged; whether there has been any departure from the position whereby in the absence of a Secretary of State the duties of the Department of State allotted to him are discharged by one of the other principal Secretaries of State; and if, during the absence of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, there has been any departure from this practice, what are the reasons on which such departure is based; and what precedents, if any, are there for the departure from such practice.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The hon. Member asks this question under the impression, apparently, that the Colonial Secretary has entirely severed connection with the office of which he is the head. That is not the case. The absence of the Colonial Secretary throws on the Under Secretary—a most competent person—a great deal of work and a certain amount of responsibility which would naturally devolve on the Secretary of State; but, of course, the Secretary of State can be communicated with by cablegram. As to the signing of documents which require to be signed by another Secretary of State, the ordinary practice is being followed.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: They are signed by another Secretary of State?
  MR. A, J, BALFOUR: Yes.

  Reform of Parliamentary Procedure.
  MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will consider the desirability of appointing a Select Committee to consider the proposals for the reform of the Procedure of this House, which were placed on the Paper last session by the Government and by private Members, but were left undiscussed for want of time.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Included in the proposals which remain unfinished among the Standing Orders, I hope that there is at least one which is practically
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  uncontroversial dealing with consolidation. But I will consider whether the remaining proposals I made last year ought, or ought not, to be sent to a committee. I should like, however, some time for reflection.
  MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider as to whether other proposals from unofficial Members of the House might not be dealt with by the Committee?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think that if a committee is appointed it might as well be given plenty to do. They might have a roving commission over the Standing Orders of the House, but I do not know that these inquiries come to much. I have personally felt that as to the Rules dealing with procedure from day to day the Leader of the House knows as much as any commission or committee can teach him. Though there may be legitimate differences as to whether he is right or wrong, it is not on account of the ignorance of any proposal that the opposition to the Government in such matters arises. Therefore, though I have not the same hopes as my right hon. friend, I will consider the suggestion.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis): Are there not many hon. Members who object to the proposal of consolidation?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Perhaps I was wrong in saying uncontroversial, but I have gathered that the great body of opinion in the House without restriction to Party is in favour of it.

NEW BILLS.
  INGEST BILL.
  "To provide for the punishment of Incest," presented by Colonel Lockwood; supported by Sir John Kennaway and Mr. Henry J. Wilson; to be read a second time upon Friday next, and to be printed. [Bill 51.]

  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (WALES) BILL.
  "To enable owners and occupiers in Wales and Monmouthshire to have effec-

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  that control over the Liquor Traffic," presented by Mr. Herbert Roberts; supported by Sir Alfred Thomas, Mr. Lloyd-George, Mr. William Abraham (Rhondda), Mr. Samuel Evans, and Mr. William Jones; to be read a second time upon Friday, 1st May, and to be printed. [Bill 52.]

  PREVENTION OF POLLUTION OF RIVERS AND STREAMS BILL.
  "To make further and amended provisions to prevent the Pollution of Livers and Streams." presented by Sir Francis Sharp Powell; supported by Mr. Wilson-Todd, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, Sir John Dorington, Dr. Farquharson, Mr Brigg, Sir John Brunner, and Sir Walter Foster; to be read a second time upon Tuesday, 17th March, and to be printed. [Bill 53.]
  PUBLIC HEALTH BILL.
  "To amend the Law relating to the qualification and tenure of office of Medical Officers of Health and Inspectors, and to make further provisions relating to superannuation allowances for such Officers and Inspectors; and for other purposes," presented by Sir Francis Sharp Powell; supported by Sir Walter Foster, Mr. Talbot, Dr. Farquharson, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, Mr. Cripps, Mr. Heywood Johnstone, Sir Michael Foster, and Sir John Batty Tuke; to be read a second time upon Tuesday, 17th March, and to be printed. [Bill 54.]
  TRADE UNIONS AND TRADE DISPUTES BILL.
  "To legalise the peaceful conduct of Trade disputes, and to alter the Law affecting the liability of trade union funds," presented by Sir Charles Dilke; supported by Mr. Bell and Mr. M'Kenna; to be read a second time upon Friday next, and to be printed. [Bill 55.]
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL.
  "To amend the Local Government (Ireland) Acts,'' presented by Mr. Duffy; supported by Mr. Reddy, Mr. Conor O'Kelly, and Mr. Roche; to be read a second time upon Friday, 20th March, and to be printed. [Bill 56.]

  AGED PENSIONERS (No. 2) BILL.
  "To provide Pensions for the aged deserving poor," presented by Mr.
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  Samuel Roberts; to be read a second time Friday, 22nd May, and to be printed. [Bill 57.]

  BANK HOLIDAYS (IRELAND) BILL.
  "To make provision for a Bank Holiday in Ireland on the Seventeenth day of every March," presented by Mr. O'Mara, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. W. Lussell, and Mr. Hemphill; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 58.]
KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).

  Army Organisation.
  Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [23rd February] to Main Question [17th February], "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
  " Most Gracious Sovereign,
  "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Gretton.)
  Which Amendment was—
  "At the end of the Question, to add the words, 'but we humbly regret that the organisation of the land forces is unsuited to the needs of the Empire, and that no proportionate gain in strength and efficiency has resulted from the recent increases in military expenditure.'"—(Mr Beckett.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
  (2.40.) MR. WINSTON CHURCHILLsaid that two years since, upon an unlucky Friday, the right hon. Gentle man the Secretary for War came down to the House of Commons to move his now famous Army Scheme in what was, by general consent, thought to beavery admirable speech. The right hon. Gentleman, if he might say so without presumption, always made a very good speech, and their experience the preceding night in no way fell short of what they were led to believe was his accustomed Parliamentary skill But he had ever noticed that the right hon. Gentleman always made a very good

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  speech when he was in a very difficult position: the more there was to be said against the cause he was defending the better the speech he made. It would be admitted by all sections of the House that the speech he delivered on the previous day was one of the best he had ever delivered in the whole of his Parliamentary career. But there was one thing about the speech which was a fault—the right hon. Gentleman proved too much. After all, they who had friends in the Army heard what the soldiers said about the Army Corps Scheme; and they heard, too, what the officers said about the length of their commands. Was all that a mere delusion? Were all the statements in the newspapers, written with some responsibility—were the statements made by "uninstructed" persons in the country-mere delusions? Had they at that moment got what the right hon. Gentleman seemed to prove on the previous day—three real live efficient Army Corps, and were they to have in another six weeks time three more?
  Therighthon. Gentleman established his case in the face of much incredulity the preceding day by means of two statements which were variously put before the House. The first was the White Paper about Army Corps, which was issued in the morning, and the second was the statement in the debate about recruiting and about the general strength of the Army. He wanted to know what was the relation between the two statements. What relationship was there between the immense number of men the right hon. Gentleman said he had got and the skeletons which were produced on the White Paper? That he believed to be a valuable and useful line of inquiry. The White Paper gave a very rosy and glowing account of the Army Corps system. To judge by it one would think that the whole work had already been achieved, and that there was nothing more to do. But, unfortunately, not ten days before the White Paper was distributed another publication from the War Office came out by authority, and in regard to it he might observe that it was not produced with reference to any particular debate in the House of Commons. He alluded to the Army List, which hon. Gentlemen were, no doubt, aware contained the
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  names and disposition of every battalion and every battery in the British Army. It was most carefully compiled and was kept up-to-date. He observed a very great discrepancy between the White Paper and the Army List. The latter bore the date 9th February; the former was issued on 22nd February. According to the White Paper out of twenty-five battalions the First Army Corps ought to have already possessed twenty-four, but when they looked in the Army List they found that it actually had only twelve battalions in the Aldershot command. Admitted that four more were out of the command there still remained a discrepancy of eight battalions. Had these arrived at Aldershot between the dates of the publication of the Army Lid and the issue of the White Paper? Really the Army Lid was very instructive, for he found further that although the First Army Corps had twenty-four battalions, the 1st Division had only one brigade, and the 3rd Division, which should have two brigades, had none at all. General Bruce Hamilton was still on leave, as he had been for more than four months, the time which had elapsed since he was appointed to the command of the 3rd Division of the First Army Corps.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BEODRICK,): He has not taken up his command; he is still on half pay, and he will not take up the command until the troops are there.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL said the right hon. Gentleman's interruption proved his point. He was perfectly well aware that General Bruce Hamilton had been appointed, but not gazetted. He was appointed and his name appeared in the Army Lid; but why had he not been gazetted? Because we had an institution in this country, which many people thought ought to be done away with—the Treasury, which in its nasty crabbed Treasury way would not pay for an officer unless it could be shown that he was in real military employment. But to continue his investigation into the Army List. The 4th Division of the Second Army Corps—on Salisbury Plain—was commanded by Sir Charles Knox, who had a complete staff. He ought to have also two brigades of infantry. But he had no infantry at all.
  According to the Army List and the White Paper, in the Second Army Corps there were nineteen out of the twenty-four battalions which were needed, so that it seemed rather unfortunate that Sir Charles should not have one out of the eight which he required. In drawing the attention of the House of Commons to these very curious and remarkable discrepancies he did not want to prove too much. He did not suggest for a moment that the right hon. Gentleman had been disingenuous in his conduct towards the House, but he did think he had gone up to the limit of Parliamentary tactics in presenting his case. He did not suggest for a moment that the right hon. Gentleman had not got the men which he said he had, but what he did suggest was that when they compared the two statements—and perhaps the Press, who were watching this matter, would find it interesting to publish them side by side—they would see that it was as easy as possible for the War Office, with its great power of manipulating the very complicated figures, to present a very different complexion on almost exactly the same set of facts. That was all he wanted to establish. He must give one more instance of that power of manipulation—that power of presenting a case. The facts, as they knew, were most complicated; an enormous number of factors had to be taken into consideration, and at every stage of the calculation the balance of advantage was given to the side on which it was desired to establish a principle, so that at the end of the calculation they had a very imposing array. When the right hon. Gentleman introduced the Army Scheme two years ago he was very anxious to show the large addition it made to the Regular Army. He said that for an inconceivably small sum they were adding no fewer than 11,500 men to the Regular forces. Yesterday, however, he asked: "Why complain of the Army Scheme as a source of expenditure: it only adds 5,000 men to the Regular Army." He could quite believe both statements were perfectly accurate and true; he was only endeavouring to establish that although the comedy was always the same it made a great deal of difference whether they looked at it through the right or wrong end of the opera glass.
  No one doubted, as far as he knew, that the British Army still existed; no one doubted that there were a considerable number of persons who were on its muster rolls, as well as upon its pay lists, and no one doubted that, with unlimited time and money, it was possible to produce most things in England—even the six Army Corps of the right hon. Gentleman. But he had always felt that the attempt to impose on the Army that great organisation at a time when it was very much exhausted by the strain and drain of the South African War, and at a time when the War Office was very much over-pressed by carrying on the war, would result in wide-spread disorganisation. It might very often happen that stragglers, spread far and wide over a country as fugitives on the line of the retreat, made in their aggregate very nearly as great an array as that which marched out in the morning, but their fighting power was very different. How could the disorganisation produced in the Army by the unwise policy of the last two years be better illustrated than by the fact that, though recruiting had never been so good, though the barracks were full, though the Army was 12,000 above strength, though the cavalry were considerably above their strength, though, in fact, the right hon. Gentleman had everything he had asked for and wished for, yet he had not yet produced one single field Division? At that moment he could not count on more than nine brigades properly formed out of twenty-three promised. Bearing in mind the extreme flexibility of the figures when once they got into the hands of the War Office, and the most ingenuous methods of the Department, he was bound to say that he could not quite accept the rosy picture of the recruiting for the Army drawn by the right hon. Gentleman.
  Yesterday morning he received a letter from an officer commanding one of the largest depots in the country, who had had ample opportunity of seeing the class of recruits we were getting. [Cries of "Name."] No, he would not disclose the name because he understood that efforts had been made to bring home to people the fact that statements that leaked out were likely to lead to inquiries, and so forth. But his friend wrote that the greatest number of the men enlisting were unskilled workmen, and that their

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  main reasons for joining the Army were hunger, short time employment, and poor wages; he added that he never came across a case in which a recruit had any idea how much pay he would receive, they would generally say they had been earning from 20s. to 30s. a week, and they seemed to think that be would regulate the amount they were to receive. His hon. friend the Member for Plymouth on the preceding night made a very clear and exhaustive examination of the last Report of the Inspector General of Recruiting. Why had they not that Report for this year before them? He hoped they would see it before they had another discussion, for then the House could see whether the evil features of the previous Report had disappeared. The right hon. Gentleman had been rather severe on "the uninstructed persons" who during the recess were liable to make statements which perhaps were not precisely accurate Among those ''uninstructed persons" the right hon. Gentleman no doubt included Lord Hardwicke, the Under Secretary for War, who on Friday said the Army Corps were largely upon paper. Business men were all very well in politics, but when they got to the War Office they were apt, at the beginning of their official careers at any rate, to let the cat out of the bag. Six weeks ago one "uninstructed person'' said that Lord Grenfell would have no Army Corps to command; that there was only himself, although perhaps he was a host in himself, or something of that sort. That statement was perfectly true today, and it would remain true, according to the right hon. Gentleman's own statement, until midnight on 31st March. He should look forward with interest to that date, because it would witness a most interesting event—the birth of an Army Corps. Some people thought that when General Grenfell arrived at Colchester at the head of a large staff he would be welcomed by the Mayor and Corporation, and that on every road converging on the town long lines of horsemen and artillery would be marching. There were different ideas as to what would happen; but what really would happen would be a little disappointing to those who would be looking for spectacular
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  effect. He would point out to the right hon. Gentleman, who perhaps had not given them the consideration they deserved, that it was on the Volunteers he would have to rely to form part of his Army Corps. Every Volunteer would on that occasion be following his ordinary avocation in the usual manner. The Militia would be called out for training at the ordinary time, and the Household Cavalry Brigades and the Guards Brigades would remain to brighten and adorn the streets of London. What would happen would be this. The right hon. Gentleman would wake up in the morning, and lot there would be only three Army Corps, but when he came home in the evening he would have established the fourth Army Corps by a mental process and a scratch of the pen. The scattered battalions, which might be called anything else as well as an Army Corps, would become the Fourth Army Corps, and General Grenfell with his staff, costing *10,000 a year, would be there to command them. It was very easy to make Army Corps like that. Indeed he was astonished at the moderation of the right hon. Gentleman. A hundred battalions were the infantry not of one Army Corps, but of four. Why should he stop at one when he could just as easily make four, and they would be equally effective. If the Army Corps Scheme had been introduced to the House frankly as a convenient and innocent measure of decentralisation it might not have been attacked, but everyone knew that it was not introduced as that, or anything like it. It was introduced with a flourish of trumpets. It was introduced as the means by which England was to become a great military nation, and as the means by which the taxpayer should be cajoled into paying in time of peace all the sums of money drawn from him to keep up the Army during a period of war. Hon. Members knew it for themselves; but he ventured to think there was hardly a man in the country who took the slightest interest in public affairs who did not believe that for an increased expenditure, which the right hon. Gentleman thoroughly explained, the country was actually going to have a great, brand new, powerful, and effective weapon, far more powerful than had

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  ever been heard of or seen before. When he saw operations of that kind which were to be achieved in a few weeks he felt he was perfectly justified in taking every opportunity of describing such a proceeding as a humbug and a sham; and, with all respect to the right hon. Gentleman, against whom he had not the slightest personal feeling, and to the Government, he would certainly take the opportunity of repeating those statements on every convenient occasion that might arise. He would ask hon. Members to cast their minds back to a period of two years ago when the right hon. Gentleman made his speech introducing his scheme. The right hon. Gentleman made some fine promises in that speech, by which he thought every one who heard them was carried away. He said he would keep a Regular Army at home of 150,000 men, a Reserve of 90,000, a Militia of 150,000, a Militia Reserve of 50,000, Yeomanry 35,000 strong, and 250,000 Volunteers, allowing for some reduction under the more stringent conditions of service. The net addition, said the right hon. Gentleman in conclusion, under this scheme would therefore be 126,500 men. That was the right end of the opera glass, but last night that addition became a matter of 5,000 men.
  MR BRODRICK: Regulars?
  MR WINSTON CHURCHILL MR WINSTON CHURCHILL said that whether Regulars were included in the scheme or not made a very great difference in the presentation of the figures. It was possible to show all those figures of the War Office and produce a different effect according to the desired intention. The net addition was to be 126,500 men and even allowing *50 000 a year for the staffs of the new Army Corps it was to be achieved by an expenditure of a little under *2,000,000 a year. He would ask the House to let him examine that statement of the right hon. Gentleman's seriatim, in order to see how far they had progressed. The right hon. Gentleman promised 11,500 Regulars. He now said that they had 5,000. He promised an organisation which would give twenty-three brigades of Regular infantry, and to each of the last three Army Corps one Regular Division. Now
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  he noticed in the White Paper which had been issued that the last of the six Army Corps, instead of having a Regular division dwindled down to two battalions. Instead of twenty-three brigades they had, according to the Army List, only nine. The right hon. Gentleman promised 90,000 Reserve, and by an arrangement last year that was to be increased to 150,000 in the near future. Yesterday the right hon. Gentleman said the number was 60,000, but during the recess, in reply to his hon. friend, he estimated the number at 51,000. He did not blame the right hon. Gentleman because his Reserve was depleted after a great war, but the depletion of the Reserve was a fact they had got to reckon with, for until the Reserve was filled up he did not see how they would mobilise the Army for war. The right hon. Gentleman promised 150,000 Militia—he was speaking in round figures—and in order to obtain them he offered an extra bounty of *3 a year. Like most inducements which were conceived in a hurry, that inducement appeared to have been ill-considered, for the actual strength of the Militia had not appreciably increased. It had not increased by more than 1,000 or 2,000 since the bounty was given. But in the meantime there was a permanent charge of *300,000 a year. When they spoke in the Amendment of no proportionate gain as compared with the cost, he thought hon. Members who were associated with it, had a right to point to that one figure as alone proving emphatically all they asserted. The right hon. Gentleman promised a Militia Reserve of 50,000. There was a Militia Reserve of 30,000; he was glad it had been done away with, and that only 10,000 of that Reserve now remained. For the new Reserve an appropriation had been taken in the Votes for the year, for, he thought, *150,000, but, so far as he understood, there was not a man on that Reserve at all. He was comparing the inducements set before the House by the right hon. Gentleman with what they had actually got. The light hon. Gentleman promised 35,000 Yeomanry, who were to be part of the 126,500 men he would provide for the Army. He welcomed what the right hon. Gentleman had done for the Yeomanry. He thought it was the best part of his scheme, but out of 35,000 men—the right hon. Gentleman would correct

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  him if he were wrong—he understood that there wore only 17,000.
  MR. BRODRICK: We expect 29,000.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL said he agreed. He did not expect the whole of the scheme to be carried out in a day. That would be absurd to expect. There were two items in the right hon. Gentleman's proposals in which he had succeeded thoroughly and absolutely, and in which the expectations the right hon. Gentleman himself entertained were surpassed. When the right hon. Gentleman promised 250,000 Volunteers there wore 288,000 in existence, and according to the information he gave last night he bad not yet quite achieved the figure which he had hoped for, but he himself had every reason to believe that in the very near future the right hon. Gentleman would have realised all that he expected in regard to the Volunteers. The other matter in which he had realised his expectations was in regard to expenditure. All he had described was to be produced for a little under *2,000,000 a year over and above what was before asked for. Then next year the right hon. Gentleman asked for an increase of pay which meant another *2,000,000 a year—a permanent continuous charge. He would not say anything about what that increase of pay meant to India; but he wondered hon. Members interested in India did not say something about it. This year he apprehended—indeed the White Paper, which told them little else that was worth knowing, indicated it as distinctly probable—that there would be another barracks loan to house the troops, although he understood that they had houses in other parts of the country in which they now resided. Of course, if the light hon. Gentleman got his troops he had a right to ask Parliament for the barracks to house them, but he could not subtract the cost of the barracks from the total cost of the scheme; and if the right hon. Gentleman estimated the cost of his scheme without including the barracks necessary, he was not quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman gave to the House the impression he no doubt wished to convey. Let the House judge the scheme by its results.
  No doubt the right hon. Gentleman had tremendous difficulties. Every one who knew even as little as he himself
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  did about Army administration and the War Office would sympathise with the extreme difficulties with which the right hon. Gentleman was confronted. Therefore, he to some extent sympathised with the defence of the right hon. Gentleman yesterday. What was that defence. It amounted to this: "It is not my fault; all this expenditure is not due to my Army Scheme at all, but to that wicked Lord Lansdowne and to the smooth, persuasive manner of the present Chief Secretary." All the right hon. Gentleman did was to transform their handiwork into something more closely resembling his conception of what an Army ought to be. He had superadded to it in addition and gloried in the result. The right hon. Gentleman had boasted in the House of what he had done for the Army; he had boasted at the Colonial Conference that the expenditure on the Army had been raised by *9,000,000 a year, and that being so, he (Mr. Churchill) felt that it was the right hon. Gentleman who must stand up against the growing storm of criticism which was surely coming, and which would rage until this aggravated system of Army reform had been for ever cast aside. It had been said that the House of Commons had assented to this scheme, but he did not think the House of Commons ought to be made the scapegoat in this matter. After all, they were not very well qualified to judge of this scheme, coming as it did from a responsible Minister. He did not see why the House of Commons should have been blamed for accepting the scheme two years ago, when the war was still going on, and when the thing of paramount importance was that the Government should be supported. He did not then rejoice at the scheme. He was glad to say he was the only Conservative Member who had the great and lasting honour to vote against it. Two years had now gone by, and he invited any hon. Gentleman, apart from partisanship, to put the question to himself: Could any one deny that it would have been much better for the Army, the country, and the right hon. Gentleman, if be had only consented to wait until calmer times, when with more deliberation he could have introduced a scheme and applied the lessons actually taught in the war. It was the contention of every hon. Gentleman who agreed with the Amendment yesterday that this,

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  scheme had not yet been achieved in practice; that it was not in fact carried out. He held to that still. He was convinced by the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman yesterday that he was not to blame because the facts were not such as could be substantiated. But whether the scheme had failed in practice or not it was an entirely wrong one. It had caused much disturbance, very little reform, and a very large outlay which had not given any appreciable gain in safety. While millions were being spent ungrudgingly in order to make believe this scheme was being carried out, or in order that it might be carried out, a very few thousands were grudged for another very necessary and urgent Army object.
  One of the most remarkable features of the British Army for a great number of years had been its number of generals. The right hon. Member for the Forest of Dean, whose knowledge of the Army was encyclopaedic would correct him if he were wrong, but he was told that in the British Army there were fewer bayonets and fewer sabres and more generals than in any army in the world except that of Venezuela. The scheme of the right hon. Gentleman had tended to make that disproportion more apparent, because if the scheme were carried out there would have to be six Army Corps commanders with complete staffs, eighteen infantry generals with complete staffs, thirty brigadier generals with complete staffs, but there would not be in return the great safeguard that the men would be trained in times of peace by the men who would command them in time of war. The right hon. Gentleman had partly carried that out. He had set up a large number of staffs. He had set up more staffs than tactical units, and we were paying for more staffs than tactical units. We were paying generals of Divisions for commanding brigades, and generals of Army Corps for commanding what, under the old system, were only districts, and we were paying staff's of Army Corps for commanding what hardly amounted to more than a mixed Division. While all this was going on, the Intelligence branch put in a request for a small increased grant, amounting to something like *3,000 a year—they wanted rather less than four officers to look after Asia and little things like that—and, so far as he was advised at present, they had not
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  yet obtained that grant, although the new Army Corps were to cost *60,000, although there were more officers than were necessary to command the same number of troops—whose salaries came to far more than the £3,000 they asked for—yet, nevertheless, this £3,000 had not been granted.
  Rather more than three years previously he was present at the battle of Spion Kop, and the fact that had struck him was on what tiny trifles the fortune of battles depended. Had there been, on the morning of the battle of Spion Kop, a few good maps of the country with the troops, they could have taken up a position on Spion Kop as nearly impregnable as the one they did take up was untenable. The hill was held all day at a great sacrifice of life, and had there been a little oil to work the signalling lamp at night, so that communication might be kept up between Sir Charles Warren's headquarters and Colonel Thorneycroft on the hill, that sacrifice might have been taken advantage of and reinforcements sent up. He was very much inrpressed by that. When one heard the right hon. Member for the Forest of Dean say, as they had heard yesterday, that although we were allied with Japan, and ran considerable risks through our alliance with Japan, and that the only gain to us might be the assistance of her army, yet, nevertheless, hardly an officer in the British Army could speak Japanese, and none were being sent to learn it or to be about with the Japanese army and learn the conditions of that army. It was excusable to feel some indignation when one contemplated an Administration spending millions on their fads and fancies at home, and grudging a little to save disasters such as those from which the country had suffered in recent times.
  In order to carry out this scheme every Regular soldier, every single shilling that could be got from Parliament for making soldiers, every battalion, however thin it might be, was necessary. There was no margin of funds for other things of the most necessary kind. Although the price of two battalions would make our Army as good as any army in the world, and the price of one battalion would give the men free tickets to the rifle ranges and find them in ammunition, although it would brush away all the troubles with which Volunteer colonels had been so

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  manfully contending, although the cost of the infantry which had been added in the last few years, 30,000 men, would pay for a brand-new fleet in the North Sea, not a single penny could be spent. When he saw how much the reputation of his right hon. friend was involved in this Army Scheme, and saw on the other side those urgent and vital facts, he could not but think, in spite of his great talents in debate, nevertheless, his usefulness in the position he held must be thought to be considerably circumscribed.
  The right hon. Gentleman had complained on the previous day of the fact that the critics of his policy had favoured him with most inconsistent advice, and he had said that although the people who attacked the War Office were agreed that whatever the War Office did it was extremely foolish, they were agreed in nothing else. That was not his view. It had, he thought, been the general consensus of opinion—he would not go so far as to say that all who spoke on the Amendment were agreed upon it, but he thought their views converged and combined to enforce the same great principle—and if this view were confirmed in the Division the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman would have to go, and some other scheme would have to be put in its place. They were agreed that of the fund for Imperial defence the Navy must have the largest share, and that if the Navy wanted more the Army must do with less. They did not want a large Regular Army for home defence. They were agreed that they ought to place, for home defence, greater reliance on the Volunteers, Yeomanry and Militia forces, or forces organised there from. There was a consensus of opinion on the complacency with which the dwindling of the Volunteers was being watched by the War Office, without any effort being made to retain the men, or any inducement being held out to them to stay on, and there was a general consensus of opinion that the scheme of the War Office had not been conceived in the public interests. No one was under any obligation to provide an alternative scheme of his own. They contended that if they established their principles the military authorities would be able to form a scheme in accordance with them. It was the duty
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  of the House to establish a principle, the duty of the Cabinet to propound a scheme, and the duty of the military authorities to administer it. The Army in this country, up to 1897 was not a bad Army, nor was the system a bad system. He did not agree with those who suggested that it was altogether rotten and absurd. It was one which stood a good deal of knocking about in theory, and in practice produced the Army of which they had heard in South Africa. Moreover, it cost only £18,000,000 a year. Since then, Army expenditure had been increased by nearly £12,000,000, and he put it to the Prime Minister—he did not ask him to reply, because the answer would probably not be what he wished to receive, but he asked the right hon. Gentleman to answer in his own mind, a tribunal for which he entertained the most sincere respect—did he really contend that they had now an Army as much stronger than the Army of 1897 as £30,000,000 was larger than £18,000,000? The linked battalion system had broken down. On a small scale he believed it to be the best of all systems, but since the foreign garrisons were so much increased the balance between battalions could not be maintained except at ruinous and extravagant cost. This system would have to be modified by force majeure, and in view of the actual facts. South Africa, the grave of many reputations, was also the grave of the linked battalion system.
  The right hon. Gentleman had taken, as the basis of his scheme a garrison of twelve battalions in South Africa. A trustful and confiding disposition, however amiable, did not always lead to the most successful results in the conduct of the affairs of State. Did anyone believe that in the next three or four years our garrison in South Africa would be measured by twelve battalions? He did not know what reason would be given—perhaps it would be that of local security, or that Africa was a good strategic position from which to bring forces to India, or that it was a fine place in which to train soldiers, or that a large army in Africa might be made a great colonising instrument, or that the Colonial Secretary had expressed an opinion in favour of a large army in
  Africa, or some equally good reason—but the House might be perfectly sure that the garrison there would largely exceed the dimensions anticipated by the right hon. Gentleman. That being so, the linked battalion system would have to go. Whether the necessary modification would be obtained by a partial application of the system, or by calling Africa a "home station," or by some system of having two Armies, a one-year Army with a large Reserve for home defence, and a longer service Army for abroad, was a matter of detail with which the House could not properly or adequately deal, but one with which the military staff would not have the slightest difficulty in dealing once they knew exactly the requirements they had to meet. The linked battalion system was going; he could not say he regretted the fact, as it had too often been made a lever to extract from the House of Commons supplies of men which otherwise would never have been voted, and to justify a great many of the increases which had been made under the regimé of the right hon. Gentleman.
  But the Secretary of State claimed for his scheme two advantages quite apart from the linked battalion system, viz., that it would produce a larger expeditionary force for foreign service and a much stronger Regular Army for home defence. If the scheme were carried out that would undoubtedly be true. But both those provisions were unnecessary. For foreign expeditions one Army Corps was quite enough to fight against savages, but three Army Corps were not enough to fight against Europeans. As to a stronger Regular Army, either we had the command of the sea or we had not. If we had it we required fewer soldiers; if we had it not we wanted more ships. These remarks were doubtless what the right hon. Gentleman would call unimpeachable platitudes, an expression which in politics usually meant precepts to be noted and then set aside. Various reasons had been given to justify the request of the Government for an increase of the expeditionary force. It had been said the increase was necessary because of the recent South African experience. Was there any truth in that? There might have been some reason in increasing the expeditionary force before the war, but where was the reason now? There was obviously much less reason on that
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  account, because it was hoped that South Africa was now permanently outside the region of physical force. As to Canada, no one would contemplate the idea of three Army Corps operating in Canada; the United States were no more prepared immediately to invade Canada than we were prepared immediately to defend her. Was it in regard to India that this increase was demanded? The House were incompetent to deal with questions of strategy; there was no use in their talking about what could or could not be done on the Indian frontier, but they could contrast the views of experts on the subject. Before the South African War, there was a provision of reinforcements for India; he had always understood that, in the first instance, it was about an Army Corps. That provision was established on the opinion and reputation of many distinguished soldiers such as Lord Roberts and Sir Donald Stewart, whose names the Government would not have hesitated to invoke on other occasions. What had occurred to make a largor provision necessary now? It was said to be the lessons of the war. The contrary was the case. South Africa had taught us two things which made our position in regard to India much better than it over was before; the first was the increase in the defensive powers of modern weapons, and the other was the fact, hitherto undemonstrated, that we could count on many more men to go abroad to serve the country in time of emergency than had ever been supposed. Before the South African War, it was not known that the Militia would volunteer practically en masse, although under no statutory obligation, or that the Volunteers would produce a large number of men capable of serving side by side with the finest troops in the Regular Army.
  There was in existence an idea against which he wished respectfully to warn the House, viz., that if by taking thought we added a cubit to our military stature, we should be able to make war against a great Power easily, cheaply, smoothly, conveniently, without trouble or worry, that the battle would be, won without casualties, and the campaign concluded almost without disaster, and that when the triumph which would speedily attend the operations was won the vanquished would cheer with hardly less enthusiasm than the victors—and Parliament would

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  adjourn for a General Election. The real truth was, that a war with a great Power, whatever its issue, would end in broken hearts and straitened purses; hunger would be in our streets, and ruin in our market-places; and when all was over, our most formidable commercial rivals would be found entrenched in all our old vantage grounds. England, through the character of her people—who did not mind fighting, but detested drill—necessarily had very largely to depend, and her insular position made it possible for her so to do, in great crises, on an army of emergency.
  There were two kinds of success—initial and ultimate. Both were very desirable, and should occupy the attention of those who had the care of public affairs; but what he would most earnestly press on the notice of our statesmen was, that they should not risk the certainty of ultimate success in order to gain triumphs at the beginning. The certainty of ultimate success required the power of finally mobilising and bringing into the field the whole of the immense resources of the State. By only one agency in the world could that be assured. He did not defend unpreparedness, but, with a supreme Navy, unpreparedness could be redeemed; without it, all preparation, however careful, painstaking, or ingenious, could not be of any avail. The present tremendous Army expenditure, and the demand for men, and the demand on Parliamentary time and public attention now being made by the Army, undoubtedly challenged in a very serious manner our naval supremacy. There was a time when such an Amendment as that under discussion would have been commended to the House from considerations of correct and thrifty finance, or of international goodwill; they might have been told that a reduction of armaments left more money to fructify in the pockets of the people, or to minister to reforms that were urgently needed. A strong Volunteer citizen Army, however satisfactory to defend the soil on which it lived, was, after all, a cumbrous weapon with which to attack the land of others. But a strong British Navy was undoubtedly one of the greatest of all ultimate factors in maintaining the peace. Something, too, might have been said about our
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  living on an island, and consequently not having the same dangers as continental countries, and therefore having devolved upon us a greater responsibility, a higher moral duty, to do something to stop this mad, cut-throat race of armaments. Those days were gone, and those arguments belonged to the past or the future; they were not the arguments upon which his hon. friend's Amendment claimed support. They based their case upon material grounds, and upon material grounds alone. They asked their case to be judged only by the standards of physical force. They claimed to have proved that the present employment of public money upon the Army was in its character wasteful and excessive, and in its results did not produce a proportionate return in fighting power. They held that large reductions and economy were possible in the Army, both in money and in men upon the regular establishment. As for the men, it seemed to be the opinion of the House that quality should be studied rather than quantity, and that what could be saved from the Regular Army could be better devoted to strengthening either the Volunteer forces or the Navy. This Amendment was intended, by the most deliberate means, to bring home and force, in the first place, on the attention of the Prime Minister, a matter of urgent and vital public importance, which, despite what had been said in this debate, unless it was lifted by his exertions from the condition of confusion, both of thought and action, in which it now lay, could not fail seriously to injure the reputation of His Majesty's Government.
  MAJOR RASCHsaid that a good deal of water had run under the bridges during the last eighteen months, during which time he did not think the War Office had done so badly. He deprecated the somewhat flamboyant speeches which had echoed in that House, and which had been promulgated in the papers. Those speeches had been most brilliant, and he wished that he could have made such speeches himself in reference to swine fever. He did not, however, think that those speeches would do much good in the direction of reforming the War Office. Perhaps the House would pardon him if he gave one or two arguments showing why he thought this Amendment was

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  inopportune and not required at the present moment. He wished to call attention to the Militia force, for which nobody used to care a brass farthing, and which was now a sort of Cinderella to the Army. Hon. Members had called upon the War Office to abolish the Militia Reserve, and the War Office had not only done this but they were creating a real Reserve of Militia. For that he thought the War Office deserved praise. With regard to the treatment of the Royal Garrison regiment, a change in the strategical localisation of the Army had been effected, and they had found a way by which old soldiers might still remain with the Colours. With regard to recruiting, this had always been the bugbear of every Secretary of State for War, but the War Office during the last eighteen months had done a good deal towards solving the question of recruiting. Barracks in a good sanitary condition had been built all over the country, the pay of the soldiers had been raised and the terms of enlistment reduced, and that was the only way to get recruits. A great deal had been done for the private soldier, who had been better clothed, and fed, and allowed to go out in plain clothes; in fact, he had been treated more like a man than he had ever been before. In this respect he wished to produce the testimony of another authority besides the Secretary of State for War, namely, that of a distinguished soldier, General Sir William Gatacre, who said that in his district they were getting so many Army recruits that he did not know what to do with them. If the Secretary of State for War had done anything to solve the tremendous question of recruiting, then at least he deserved the thanks, and not the censure, of the House.
  The term "Army Corps" did not smell very sweet after Mr. Gathorne Hardy's experiment years ago. He got eight Army Corps together on paper, and they were afterwards laughed out of existence. He could not say whether Army Corps were suited for this country or not, he was an agnostic on that question. All he had to say was that the right him. Gentleman's scheme held the held and nothing else had been suggested. The hon. Member for Whitby said he did know of a scheme, but nothing would induce him to divulge it to the House.
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  although he said that under certain circumstances he would reveal it to the Secretary of State for War. He did not see how anyone could get together six Army Corps in eighteen months. How could they get them with 40,000 of the troops in South Africa, and the rest of the Army disorganised and all to pieces, as it was now at home. They would have to wait till these Army Corps were matured, and, in his opinion, he did not think they would have to wait very long. The question of the general staff had been alluded to in connection with the National Committee of Defence. He had been told that there was a Service Members Committee, and they formulated a resolution last session which they intended to press as an Amendment to the Address calling upon the Government to take steps to see if this Committee was to be a sort of nucleus to the general staff. The Prime Minister, however, at Liverpool, spiked their guns and practically moved their Amendment himself, and now he understood they were to have something of this kind which would be made a nucleus of the grand general staff The want of such a staff accounted for all their faults in the Crimean War and during the South African campaign, and he now understood that the War Office had accepted the proposal of the first Lord of the Treasury to form such a general staff. It was suggested by Lord Hartington's Committee of 1888 that some such general staff should be formed. It was not supported on the ground that a general in the field of action would be able to know what to do without any general staff at all. Shortly after that Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister of this country. Lord Rosebery, the apostle of efficiency, tried to run the British Army on the cheap by allowing it to get short of powder. He would, with the greatest pleasure and alacrity, vote against the Amendment. He congratulated the Secretary of State for War on sticking to his guns.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL BANNERMAN (Stirling Burghs): Two years ago, when the right hon. Gentleman introduced the scheme of so-called Army Reform of which we have heard so much today, I felt it my duty to move an Amendment in

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  condemnation of it, in almost the same terms as the Amendment which has now been moved to the Address, and, therefore, there can be no doubt as to the course I shall take in cordially supporting that Amendment. I ventured to say then in anticipation, what has now become apparently the deliberate opinion of a great number of hon. and gallant Members who, on that occasion, voted against me. Now, Sir, neither then nor now have I, and those who voted with me in the same Lobby, any Party taint whatever in our attitude. I have always endeavoured, through the many years in which I have been more or less connected with this Army question, to keep the subject of the Army, and of the public service generally, out of the arena of Party politics altogether, and I hope that that will not be departed from on this occasion. It is greatly to be regretted that to-day a technical interpretation of this Amendment does give that colour to it to a certain extent. It is, of course, as we all know, the theory that every Amendment to the Address must be resisted by the Government, and that, whatever be the circumstances of that Amendment, if it is accepted, that fact is regarded as being as fatal to the position of the Government as if a vote of censure had been passed on them.
  In passing, may I express the hope that we may find a way of getting rid of this restraint on our debates. Of recent years such inroads have been made on the opportunities of private Members bringing forward subjects of this kind, that they are driven in a heap, as it were, on to this debate on the Address, and, amid all this, we are always told, when we complain of not having sufficient opportunity, that the Address is open to us. But it is most desirable, surely, to get rid of the incubus which vitiates our debates and prevents the expression of the real genuine opinion of the House. That however, by the way. We ought to discard if we can, not political bias only, but also those prejudices and prepossessions which I am afraid beset these military questions almost more than any other. The question is so vital and so important that we ought to approach it with an open mind. I do not say for a moment, in speaking on this subject, that people should be
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  ready to forget or to leave behind them their fixed opinions, if these opinions are based on wide views and a full knowledge of the facts; and also I would admit that with those fixed opinions we ought always to keep ourselves in active consciousness of the fact that as time goes on the circumstances upon which those opinions were formed may materially change. But, as I think all of us must know from our own experience, there are many men, military and civilian alike, who are swayed in these matters by prejudices and by partial knowledge. You may have a most distinguished officer who has served through a long career with the greatest credit, and who has had every opportunity of informing himself of military facts, and yet who has served during the whole of that time in such circumstances that he has not been induced to take a broad view of questions—such a question for' example, as Army organisation. I take, for instance, the case of an officer who has served a long life as a regimental officer. He may have excellently discharged all his duties, and yet may never have been able to look far beyond the efficiency of his own regiment and the necessities of his own duties, and may never have taken the wide view of the general situation which is necessary. Another distinguished officer may have served abroad all his days, and he may remain at the end of his service in a large degree ignorant of those difficulties, those impediments, those delicate influences which have to be taken into account in. everything which affects the recruiting and the administration of the Army. Well, I should hope that in this debate at all events we shall all of us endeavour, whether administrators, creators, or critics, to keep an open mind.
  The right hon. Gentleman took exception to something I said the other day of his scheme having been a panic scheme, and justified his action by stating that it was called for by the general sentiment of the House and the country. I quite agree with him that at that time there was a considerable military fever and a great deal of alarm as to our position. It is a satisfaction to me to remember that I raised my humble voice in deprecation of any such panic. It no doubt existed, and I raised my voice against it for two reasons—firstly, the action taken in a panic is

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  seldom soundly considered and permanently successful action; and in the second place, that panic or fever might be used in order to guide us, and drive the people of this country into a conception of this as a military nation—as a nation dependent upon military power—whereas I hold that we shall go very far astray indeed in our policy in other matters besides military administration if we forget for a moment that this Empire is not a military empire, but an Empire cemented and maintained by trade and commerce, and amity and friendship amongst the different elements which compose it.
  As to this particular proposal, I ventured to say, as the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has said, that we ought to wait. The right hon. Gentleman's hands were then presumably full with the war, and he ought to have waited until the lessons of the war, of which we have heard so much, were more fully mastered and seen in their proper perspective, and also until the generals, who were best able to give him advice, had returned from the scene of action. That was the reason why I spoke of the scheme having been a panic scheme. There are two principal divisions in the subject with which we are dealing. First of all, we find fault with this Army Corps scheme, and, in the second place, we wish to direct the attention of the House and the country to the larger question of military expenditure generally.
  On these two subjects I will venture to say a few words. I will take the technical matter first. This Army Corps Scheme had the effect, to a large extent, of dazzling the eyes of the people and of soothing the nerves of the country. But the right hon. Gentleman himself, in speaking of it, now says he was not the inventor of it. No. the name was familiar to us. In the late seventies the system of the grouping in units of Army Corps was introduced into the Army, with the effect of greatly increasing the bulk of the Army List, but with no other effect I ever knew. I always regarded with suspicion and dislike that new departure. The only thing that I could see that could be said for it was that which the right hon. Gentleman said yesterday—that it did furnish a standard up to which you might work. But it was open to great misconception, and the
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  right hon. Gentleman has set himself to make these Army Corps real. If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, he has many good qualities. Among others he is not only intensely patriotic and intensely laborious, but he is also intensely serious, and if I may venture to point to what may be considered a defect in his character—not in his private but his public character—it will be rather surprising to him when I name it, because we are all startled when we see ourselves in the looking-glass. I mean the defect, as it appears to me, is that he has not a sufficient sense of humour. He takes too serious a view of a question. He does not allow for the play of human nature, and having these six Army Corps on paper, he immediately took them seriously and treated them CM pied de la lettre. He treated them as they were never intended to be treated, and that is the cause of all this mistake. That was before his German experience, when he saw, I presume, Army Corps in action. But I think I have traced to its proper source the origin of the mistake which the right hon. Gentleman made.
  Now, what is an Army Corps? An Army Corps is a collocation of military units in certain dispositions, under a certain hierarchy of military control. The right hon. Gentleman said that it was not a German institution that he had introduced into this country. I quite agree with him; but it is a continental institution. I am not aware of any other country in the world that has Army Corps on a continental scale except continental nations. It represents a formation which they find by their experience most expedient and convenient for their purpose; but there are two points which distinguish them completely from us. In the first place, they have a conterminous enemy. When they go to war they can arise and march over the frontier as they are; and, therefore, the whole Army Corps having been located in its own district moves to the frontier and passes into the enemy's country unaltered in any respect. The next difference from us is that the whole of Europe, with the exception of a very few parts, is unenclosed country, so that this body of troops with.

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  its particular formation can be moved with the most mathematical accuracy in every direction. There are some districts, no doubt, but not numerous, between Calais and Bucharest, where the country is enclosed, but for the most part it is open country, for the simple reason that the climate does not permit of cattle remaining in the open; they are kept in houses and not like with us, in the fields, which do not need to be enclosed. And, therefore, when the crops are off the ground there is nothing to prevent the march of an Army wherever it chooses to go. With us, where is the Army Corps, qua Army Corps, capable of being used? What was the use of an Army Corps formation in South Africa? Was any part of the campaign in South Africa conducted in the formation of an Army Corps? No, Sir; because it would not have suited the situation, and the result of that consideration is that if we send an Army Corps abroad for any purpose, the first thing we have to do is to break it up and send it to the port of embarkation, and start afresh at the end of the voyage. When we turn to our own country and the question of the defence of this island, we are met with the same thing. There is not a more enclosed island in the world, and the same may be said of the island of Ireland. It is so enclosed in fact, that it is a matter of complaint that the great difficulty with us is that we cannot find room for the training in open country of our troops except in one or two districts. It is on that ground, I suppose, that the suggestion has been made that in future a large force of our troops should be maintained in South Africa. That seems to me to be one of the strangest reasons put forward for that proposal—that there should be abundant opportunity for training. I only hope, with regard to that suggestion, that a great deal of consideration will be given to the proposal before it is adopted. I will mention two circumstances which, I think, are of great weight. The first was mentioned by the Secretary of State last night, when he asked what effect this would have on recruiting in England? When a man joins the Army he does not join it for foreign service, but for a mixed home and foreign service; and if he knew that he would
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  be taken out of the country immediately when he enlisted, or that when he was made fit as a soldier he was to go to South Africa or anywhere else, and then perhaps to be transferred from there to India, and would never, in the whole course of his service, have a chance of being in this country at all, I venture to say that it would have a. most prejudicial effect on the recruiting for the Army. There is another point urged; that South Africa is half way to everywhere—half way to India and to Hong-Kong, and to every place we can imagine where troops would be required. Yes, but the conveyance of troops across the ocean is a matter of transport, and where are the transports to be found in South Africa? Suppose you had 25,000 men in South Africa, and you wanted to use them in India, the first thing you would have to do would be to engage shipping in this country and send transports out to pick the troops up and carry them to India from South Africa. I mention the proposal by the way, because I think that although it has some attractive features in it, it is certainly one which requires most careful consideration.
  Now, if the Army Corps system, which the right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to create in flesh and blood, is, as I have proved, unsuited for us in time of war, is it suited for us in time of peace? The right hon. Gentleman named a list of improvements that have been recently made in decentralisation of all kinds, of stores and duties. I did not gather that any one of these could not have been effected under the district arrangement we had before—which arrangement had the advantage of being much cheaper than that he has adopted. As to the other advantage put forward—I should have mentioned this when I was speaking of the warlike use of a Corps D'Armce —it was that the men would go into the campaign under the command of the same officers under whom they had been trained, and that every one would find himself, on his right hand and on his left, in company with a neighbour with whom he had been engaged for years. Now, that is inconsistent with the necessary constitution of our Army, where it has always been held that the battalions for home service ought to move about. It would be inconsistent, too, with the comparatively

  709
  short tenure of staff appointments and the command of regiments. All these arrangements completely militate against the idea of a stereotyped machine of that sort being employed in the way I have referred to. Now, several arguments have been used which show that there are lurking in certain minds fallacies which I would have thought had been disposed of long ago. One hon. Member made light of the Reserve. He asked, "What was the use of this Reserve, because it was put in the first line at the commencement of a campaign, and therefore nothing was left behind? "He cannot but be aware that this is the use made of the Reserve by all the nations of Europe that have a Reserve. As to the system of double battalions, I shall have something to say. The hon. Member for Oldham used a phrase which has become a standard phrase, when he said that the system of double battalions has broken down. Well, to prevent misunderstanding as to the meaning of the Amendment, I must say a word or two on these elementary questions; and [think it is all the more necessary because a generation has arisen which knew not the original controversy, and a great many men who speak intelligently on this subject are not really aware of the rationale of the reasons for the system which existed and which, as the hon. Member for Oldham said, continued down to the year 1897, and did very good service for the defence of the country and the Empire. I take, to begin with, the short service in order to lead up to the other. Does the House bear in mind why this short service was introduced? It was simply because we could not get recruits in this country for long service. That can be proved from the Reports of Royal Commissions over and over again, and from the evidence given before them. It was no strange fancy of the so-called Army reformer, full of fads and fancies of his own. It was the absolute necessity of the time, that unless you took men for short service you could not get recruits for long service—I mean by long service recruits men whom we kept for their whole lives and most of whom died in our hands. If we are to have short service, then arises the difficulty of adjusting this to the duties of foreign garrisons. You must have some means of drafting sufficientment to the units abroad, and in order to accomplish that
  710
  purpose you must have a certain number of regular soldiers at home. I read in the Press, and I have heard in the course of this debate, observations to the effect that we do not require any Regular troops at all at home. Now, how could your battalions in India be maintained unless you have some troops here? Then, you must have depots; but depots are most extravagant, and a most inefficient form under which you can train men to arms.
  MR. BECKETT: How about the Marine depots?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The Marine depots are very small things, and you can carry them on, as you used to do, with a limited number of recruits. Besides, the conditions of the Marine service are entirely different from those of the Regular Army. The Marines serve for three years on board ship and one year at home. The men of the Regular Army have to go for seven or eight years to India. There are many ways I could point out in which you could not find any analogy which could help you between the Regular Army depots in England and the depots for the Marines or the old Presidency troops. Therefore, what are you to do? You must have a certain number of them for training purposes. Why not take the benefit of them and make use of them for other purposes? The system of double battalions is no idle dream or spiteful invention of some too active-minded reformer. ft results from the necessities of the case. I confess to the House that I think it ought to have been carried further: that instead of the double battalion arrangement there ought to have been a multi-battalion system, which would have given us greater facilities. Let it be remembered that there was another memory in the minds of men in those days—the memory of the Crimea. In that war there were only certain corps which managed to maintain their efficiency throughout the whole of the war, and those were the multi-battalion corps—the Guards and the Rifle Brigade. That conveyed a great lesson, and was a strong inducement to adopt such a system as that I speak of. The average draft to foreign battalions is 180. The House can see what a hole that makes in the battalion at home; and, therefore,

  711
  this system never can be popular with the officers of the home battalion, because they are always drilling, and always parting with the men as soon as they become efficient. They never have a decent force to show on parade; and so their prejudices—and I sympathise with them immensely—are against this system, and if they looked at it from the interests of themselves or their battalions they would condemn it. But, on the other hand, if you look to the interests of the Army at large, you would not take that view. It is said that this system has broken down. What do you mean by breaking down? When it was adopted there were to be seventy battalions abroad and seventy battalions at home. But that has never been realised. We have occupied Egypt, and sent troops to different places, preventing the possibility of that balance being maintained. But, as far as the balance has been maintained, the system has worked admirably. I am quite ready to agree that, if you increase your forces abroad inordinately, the confusion becomes so great that you must resort, for the purpose of the battalions abroad, to some modification of the system. Such a change of circumstances compels one to modify the strict opinion one has formed, while retaining it in principle. But it is forgotten by many that this system has worked exceedingly well, and resulted in our sending such a large force to South Africa when the war broke out.
  MR. BECKETT: What was the state of the battalions at home, described by Lord Wolseley as "squeezed lemons"?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That is a phrase which has stood those who attack the system in good stead. But Lord Wolseley was one of the originators of the system, and has always been a defender of it. As the question of Army organisation is condemned in the Amendment, I must disclaim any desire to include in it any general condemnation of the system which I have described. What is more pointed at is the Army Corps system which the right hon. Gentleman introduced two years ago. But now I come to the larger and more comprehensible question—that of Army
  712
  expenditure. I do not like this practice of comparing the Army with the Navy expenditure. There is constant complaint that the Army has more than the Navy or the Navy more than the Army; that because the Army Estimates are larger in one year than the Navy Estimates, we ought to build one or two more ironclads to redress the balance. That is not the proper way to discuss the question. The proper way to look at this subject is to see that we should not spend a penny on the Navy that is not justified by naval wants, or a penny on the Army that is not justified by Army wants. We all believe that the Navy has the first claim, and that the wants of the Navy ought to be fully and even generously supplied. I do not know whether great additional expenditure is required; but there is always the danger in naval expenditure that the more we do in shipbuilding the more we stimulate other nations to keep pace with us. But I fully endorse the dictum that the Navy has the first claim upon us, and that it ought to be maintained in the fullest efficiency. But the fact we have to face—whether we like it or not—is that the national expenditure is increasing beyond the patience, the endurance, and almost beyond the resources of the people of this country. Why is it that those who approved by their votes the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman two years ago are now attacking it? It is nothing else than the salutary and sobering effect of the income-tax. My right hon. friend the Member for Montrose said that the tax-gatherer was the great schoolmaster, and he has been busy educating all classes in the country. The result is this change of opinion in a great body of the community. It is quite clear that the military expenditure must be reduced, or, at least, checked. But, before going further, I say again what I said last week—that the first thing we have to do is to inquire into the military requirements of the country and determine what, in present circumstances, they are.
  The hon. Member for Oldham has said that up to 1897 our Army was a good one and sufficient for our purposes. I have no reason to doubt it. The idea was then that we should never contemplate anything more than an expeditionary force of 70,000 or 80,000 men; and that was more than

  713
  accomplished with the machinery and material that we had. The question is, What has caused since then an increased demand on the Army? If the Army were strong enough in 1897, why should it need to be stronger now? If the expenditure of £18,000,000 were sufficient in 1897, why should we now require an expenditure of £30,000,000? We want an inquiry by a competent and responsible authority, not only into the general question, but into the particulars of the question, to see precisely what we ought to provide for. I have some hope that this Cabinet Council of Defence may give an opportunity for this sort of inquiry. It ought to be a deliberate and careful inquiry, and I should not object to its being a slow inquiry, if it were adequate. But do not let me be understood as altogether appreciating the merits of the particular arrangements explained to us by the Prime Minister. I am old-fashioned in this matter, and I think it is the constitutional duty of the Executive Government to determine this question. When I read of the Government's chief professional advisers—the Commander-in-Chief, the First Sea Lord, and others being members of the Committee—and not merely having the most ample opportunities for putting their views before the Council—which, of course, is most necessary—I think that a somewhat singular situation is created. These officers have only one responsibility. The Cabinet is responsible financially, as well as administratively, but these officers have only an administrative responsibility.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND. FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The Council has no administrative responsibility.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: These officers are responsible to their departments and professions for putting forward the claims of their branches of the service, but they have no responsibility for finding the money. That is the difference. I frankly say that if I were a Quartermaster General or a First Sea Lord, and were serving on that Council, I would pile up my demands in order to make myself secure; because it would be no part of my duty to find the money. That would not be done beyond conscience and reason, but it would be the tendency.
  714
  When the First Lord made his statement to the House, he said with great naiveté that his proposal does not interfere with Cabinet responsibility, because all the decisions of the Council come under review by the Cabinet. Yes, Sir; but the Council are to be the Prime Minister, the Secretary for War, the Lord President, and the Colonial Secretary.
  MR: GIBSON BOWLES: No, no; the First Lord of the Admiralty.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Yes, the First Lord of the Admiralty, but not the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but whoever they are, they are the Prime Minister and his principal colleagues: and who is to tell me that the rest of the Cabinet, who know nothing about the matter, or, at all events, have no special knowledge, are going to override a solemn resolution come to by the Prime Minister? If it has any effect at all it cannot but diminish the responsibility of the Cabinet; and. with all good-will towards a scheme of this sort within certain limits, I cannot go so far as that.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I entirely differ.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I may not understand the plan—we shall hear more about it, no doubt, by-and-bye, but as far as it has been explained it seems to me gravely open to these objections. I say we should look round and determine what it is we really require for the defence of the Empire, both naval and military. You ought to determine what is needed according to the circumstances—you cannot have finality and then to set about supplying it. Now, the right hon. Gentleman has shown no disposition during the last six or seven years to check the increase of the Army and the expenditure upon it. In seven years the Army has been increased by 54,000 men. I am quite aware of the pressure brought upon the right hon. Gentleman in the Press and in this House more than anywhere. There is nothing he has done that has not been received with cries of approbation and delight. But we must be stern in this matter, and say that he ought not to yield too readily to pressure from Members of the House of Commons. No doubt

  715
  it is difficult often to resist, but the question now is, as expenditure has increased to such an extent, how can you reduce it? It is never easy to reduce the number of men. I doubt whether the right hon. Gentleman is alive to the effect of what is being done. I will give one small instance of the sort of thing I refer to. Last year the right hon. Gentleman introduced a scheme to give the soldier the option after three years of continuing his service and receiving another 6d. a day. I am favourable to short service and to elasticity in the terms of service, and so that commends itself to me. But what I do say is this, that the greatest dead-weight we have in the Army consists of the young men whom we must recruit young, but who are not fit for foreign service or service in India, The age was raised from eighteen to nineteen not many years ago, and it had immediately a most disastrous effect. The men must be taken young, and that causes a great increase of the Army at home. The right hon. Gentleman succeeds in getting his recruits easily, mainly owing to the want of employment. Now, under his new scheme, no man can go to India until he has served three years, and in that way the right hon. Gentleman has increased tin's dead-weight. At the present time a man can go to India if he has served one year and is twenty years of age; but the right hon. Gentleman will not send him there after a year's service if he can come back at the end of three years and claim his discharge. Until he makes the option he must remain at home. This new arrangement does not come into force until next year, but I should like to know whether any proper calculation has been made of the expense.
  The first thing to be decided is what the force of the Regular Army ought to be, and the strength of the other forces as well. There must be a mixed force for home defence; and I do not agree with the hon. Member, who contributed an excellent speech in seconding the Amendment, in the somewhat strange argument that to train Volunteers and Militiamen with Regulars, or Regulars with Volunteers and Militiamen, in some mysterious way would spoil them both. I believe that it would improve both. The whole country will insist, and the right hon. Gentleman must
  716
  make up his mind to this, on a full recognition of the Militia, the Volunteers, and the Yeomanry who have played such a prominent and successful part in the recent war. They cannot now be snubbed or neglected, and they must receive the training which will make them efficient, and their place in the work of defence must be defined. But they must not be overdone or overburdened. It is obvious that an excessive annual training would have a most damaging effect on the force if it interfered in any way with civil employment; and I would venture to suggest what has always appeared to me to be the best settlement of that difficulty. It is that they should on first being enlisted be subjected to a somewhat long and severe course of training, and then a smaller and less irksome training each year afterwards will suffice. I am inclined to think that that is the solution of the difficulty. It is by developing this home force, it is by avoiding grandiose and ambitious schemes, it is by patiently considering the requirements for the defence of these islands and the Empire, and by adhering to the standard which is set up—it is thus we shall be able to provide for the security of the country and at the same time to lay no undue burden on the already over-weighted taxpayer.
  *THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY,): Whatever we may think of the arguments of the hon. Gentlemen who put forward this Amendment, I as one of those who are standing here, so to speak, on their defence, cannot have one word to say against the way in which the prosecution have brought forward their case, and I want to admit to the fullest possible extent my knowledge that those Gentlemen who have spoken on, and who are going to support, the Motion are not animated by any animus against the Government, but are simply endeavouring to lay before the country and the House of Commons what they consider to be the requirements of the country. The right hon. Gentleman opposite and other Members have appealed to the Government to have an open mind on this question. I confess I do not quite under-stand what an open mind on such a question is; because, if I take an open

  717
  mind to be the attitude assure ed by the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, it seems to consist in supporting all the arguments of the Government, and at the same time voting for the Amendment against them. I am willing to admit also that from these debates, as a general rule, nothing but good can come, and that reforms in general have always come from Members of this House, though they have been opposed by the Minister for War for the time being. The hon. Member—or the ex-hon. Member, for Woolwich; I hardly know when he is in the House or out of it—gave himself full credit for having secured the Council of Defence, but I think the Army reformers are too moderate. I was an Army reformer before I was in office. I think they should take all the credit they possibly can. and not credit for any particular thing. Every point in the scheme which is now cavilled at has been advocated in the strongest way by the Service Committee, and was adopted by the Secretary for War at their instigation, and after due discussion in the House.
  There is another thing the War Office cannot complain of, and that is the number of schemes that are invariably put before it. Everybody who has a relation, however distantly removed, who was ever in the Army, has a scheme for Army reform. It is like an infantile disease which nobody escapes, and I am bound to say I am not immune myself. I wish to speak of my own scheme for this reason: It has been alleged that there are people at the War Office in favour of conscription. On this particular point I have not only spoken, but, on one occasion, written. I wish to make my position perfectly clear. I have a scheme which does involve conscription, which I did advocate, and which I do not for one moment say that in my heart of hearts I do not, however, believe to be the right scheme. But, at the same time, I have to see things as they are, not as I would like them to be, and I have to consider that my own scheme, which consists of an adequate long service voluntary Army abroad, and an extremely short service compulsory Army at home, is impracticable, at all events at present; and, that being the case, I have to drop any idea of
  718
  seeing that scheme adopted, and back up to the best of my ability any scheme which I think will adequately take its place.
  There is a matter from which Army reform suffers to an extraordinary extent, and that is that schemes are proposed, most carefully thought out and put into execution, but, because in the first instance they do not turn out the successes they were expected to be, there is a strong inclination on the part of the country, and sometimes of officials at the War Office, to follow the example of the children who pull up a plant and look at its roots to see whether it is growing. The consequence is that schemes which, if left would have developed, are often hurriedly east aside, and then after some years we have to return to the schemes which, if they had only been left undisturbed, would have been in working order.
  No alternative schemes have been put forward. The mover of the Amendment says he has one up his sleeve, while the scheme of the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight is that of an armed people—a people armed, but not organised. Surely that is a principle which would not he accepted, even by the supporters of the Amendment.
  MAJOR SEELYsaid the people of the Free State were very well organised.
  *LORD STANLEY: I do not know whether the hon. Member has read General de Wet's book on the subject, but that does not show that the organisation or the discipline in the troops of the Orange River Colony was so extraordinarily good.
  MAJOR SEELY MAJOR SEELY was understood to say he spoke only in comparison—meaning that the people of the Free State were better organised for war than were the present Volunteer forces by the War Office.
  *LORD STANLEY: The question of organisation is the principal thing we have to discuss, because it is the Army Corps system that is attacked. My right hon. friend has stated very distinctly that he attaches absolutely no importance

  719
  to the name, but that he attaches the greatest possible importance to the organisation which is being carried out under the name. I quite admit that if the organisation is to be compared with foreign organisations. Army Corps against Army Corps, the name may not be quite appropriate; but I look upon "Army Corps" as a name for an organisation in which it is our ambition to gather together such complements of troops as are held to be in the right proportions for use in the field—to bring together under one man the right number of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and to decentralise as far as possible all questions of administration and expenditure. The hon. and gallant Member for the Heywood Division of Lancashire asked whether Lord Roberts approved of this scheme. I saw Lord Roberts to-day, and he told me a fact which may be interesting to the House. In 1879, when in Afghanistan, he was sent for by Lord Lytton, the then Viceroy, to attend a conference on the re-organisation of what were then the Presidency Armies. He was asked by the Committee to draw up a scheme for them to consider. He drew up a scheme consisting of the Army Corps into which India was afterwards, under him, divided. He can, therefore, be said to be not only the sponsor of the present scheme, but the father of the Army Corps scheme which was carried out under him in India.
  LIEUT.-COL. GEORGE KEMPsaid he quite understood that such a scheme might be advisable for India, and that Lord Roberts might advocate it there, but the question he asked was whether Lord Roberts was in favour of an Army Corps Scheme for England, and whether he was consulted before he came back from South Africa.
  *LORD STANLEY: Of course, there is only my word for it, but I hope the hon. Member will take it. Lord Roberts told me this morning that he fully considered the scheme before it was put into operation, and that it has his unqualified approval at the present moment.
  Granted that there must be some organisation and some Army, it is for us to consider what the duties of the Army are. I am perfectly ready to admit, as a general
  720
  principle, that our Army must be subservient to the Navy, that our Navy is our first and principal line of defence; but still there are other duties which must fall on the Army. Our Empire is partly insular and partly continental. As far as the insular part of our possessions is concerned, there is not the slightest doubt that the principal defence must be in the Navy. But there are duties which must fall on the Army, and in regard to which the Navy must, to a certain extent, be subservient. First of all, I would put the defence of India; secondly, the defence of the coaling stations; and, thirdly, the defence of this country against any possible invasion. In regard to the defence of India, the mover of the Amendment expressed it as his opinion that it was only a bugbear.
  MR. BECKETT: As the opinion of experts on the frontier.
  LORD STANLEY: And I think he quoted as an expert a Russian General. I cannot help thinking that if the, Russian General sees those remarks in the paper he will be only too glad to cultivate the acquaintance of other Members of the House. But who are the authorities on the frontier? We can deal with them only through our responsible advisers in India; we are bound to go by what they say. Quito recently I have had an opportunity of speaking on this subject to men who, after all, are the greatest experts in the matter, and they do not look upon it as a bugbear. They look upon an attack as, at all events, something practicable, and though they have no doubt as to the result, their confidence exists only so far as this country is prepared to give them the support they require. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Northumberland spoke of South Africa, and pointed out that one of the greatest faults in the management of that campaign was that we did not have sufficient troops before the outbreak of the war. Now, Sir, I ask if it is good in that place, is it not equally good in India? Ought we not to be absolutely prepared to send troops to India before the war breaks out and not wait until after war has broken out. If hon. Members agree to that, what is the use of putting forward a proposition to send out the Militia or the Imperial Yeomanry?
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: Nobody ever suggested that an expeditionary force should be kept to reinforce India.
  LORD STANLEY: I think it is better to be prepared to put the maximum number you are asking for, and not put in a part and wait for the other half until Parliament has given you sanction. With regard to the defence of the coaling stations, that is a point upon which we shall all agree, for we all desire that those bases should be kept intact for the use of the Fleet by the Army. It has now become one of the greatest bones of contention as to whether there will be, or could be, an invasion of this country. With that point I am naturally not competent to deal. I quite admit that the onus of protecting this country from invasion must rest with our auxiliary forces, and they ought to be thoroughly organised to the best of their ability; and we ought to lose no hint as to how to resist any attack that might be made upon our shores during the temporary absence of our Navy. I come now, therefore, to the question of the number of men required for this purpose. In this matter, are we not rather fighting with one hand tied behind our backs, because nobody would wish anybody in a responsible position to deal with the actual eventualities which might arise, and at the same time stint the number of troops you would send? Therefore, a great deal of this scheme must be taken on trust. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment said that if details are given to the military authorities they ought to be given to the House of Commons. With that statement I entirely disagree.
  MR. BECKETT: I said that a general reason ought to be given which would satisfy the public.
  LORD STANLEY: But what is the general reason? I have endeavoured to say what I consider the policy is. It is to send sufficient troops to keep India, and enough to amply safeguard the whole of our coaling stations, and to rely to the greatest possible extent on our auxiliary forces in case of invasion. The question is—How many troops are required for the first two purposes
  722
  which are not to be met by auxiliary forces? It is the whole question of the Regular Army that is dealt with in this Amendment, and it is a question as to how many Regular soldiers can be sent abroad, and whether they shall be sent. I know that the Defence Committee has been reconstituted. Some hon. Members have asked whether the Estimates for this scheme were submitted to the Defence Committee as well as to the Cabinet. I have the authority of my right hon. friend for stating that they were submitted to the Defence Committee before being placed before the Cabinet. These Estimates were submitted by the right hon. Gentleman to the Defence Committee of the Cabinet after full consultation with the whole of his military advisers. They went up to the Cabinet Committee to be considered as the final requirements of the War Office. The Navy Department do precisely the same thing, and, therefore, the Cabinet Committee has the two proposals before it, and is able to gauge what are the requirements of both. I do not for one moment believe that if the right hon. Gentleman comes down next year, and in the name of the Cabinet asks for a certain number of troops, and declares that he asks for them alter the advice, and at the instigation, of the Committee of Defences that he will be any more believed than he is to-day. when he says that a certain number of men are required.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: I entirely agree with that.
  *LORD STANLEY: I doubt whether the House would think any more that the number fixed upon by that Committee is the right number, and hon. Members would still reserve the opinions which they have now expressed that the number asked for is excessive. At the present moment the Secretary of State for War, who has enunciated not his own policy but the policy of the Government, tells you that the number of troops which we must be prepared to send abroad is three Army Corps. You cannot expect that the details of that number can ever possibly be given. That is impossible, and that is what I mean when I say that you must, to a certain extent, take these

  723
  figures on trust, and you must believe that a responsible Minister making such a statement is doing so with a full knowledge of his responsibility, and the House should give him credit for not asking for a single man more than his military advisers and the Cabinet think are required for the necessities of the case. On the subject of numbers it may be said that we do not need to send 120,000 men abroad, and that we only need some 30,000 or 40,000. What we have to rely upon is the military experts who advise us in such matters. Hon. Members of this House have not hesitated to draw a comparison between the Intelligence Branch of our Army and that of the German Army.
  *SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that he made rather a detailed comparison, and what he compared was the British Army and Navy Intelligence Departments with that of the German Intelligence Department.
  *LORD STANLEY: There is one thing which has never been taken into account in estimating the strength of our Intelligence Department. The great place we want to collect all the intelligence we can is undoubtedly on the Indian frontier. [Cries of "Why?"] Hon. Members cannot have it both ways. You do not want intelligence about all the interior of foreign nations, because you say that our Army cannot be used at all in any such enterprise. In India there must always be a concentration of an enormous amount of interest which must affect at all times the strength of the Army. We have got in India an Intelligence Department which is well organised, and which naturally sends back to us matters which have been sifted and can be dealt with without practically any further inquiry. I may say that in South Africa Colonel Henderson is still employed as Intelligence Officer, and he has with him the full staff of intelligence officers which he himself considers necessary.
  LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE KEMP LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE KEMP asked whether the staff Colonel Henderson had with him in the war were now employed.
  LORD STANLEY: When the war is over there is not the same necessity to have the same staff. All of them are not therefore at the present moment employed at the War Office. The House may be perfectly certain that when Intelligence Officers are wanted those who did well in South Africa will be used on every possible occasion. I feel as strongly as anybody can feel that we should have the best Intelligence Officers we can possibly have for the whole of our requirements. But I would quote in respect to this subject some words of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. He was referring to the General Staff, and to what has been called the thinking part of the Army. On that point he made a remark which is just as opposite today as on the day when it was made. The right hon. Gentleman said the task of Continental countries differed fundamentally from that of Great Britain; we had no designs upon, our European neighbours; Indian military policy would be settled in India; in small wars the plan of campaign must be governed by the particular circumstances, and he was at a loss to know why this larger branch was needed. I agree with him in some of the deductions he has made, though, at the same time. I entirely disagree with him in not wishing to see this particular branch increased largely—increased above what it was then, and, if necessary, above what it is now. There has appeared in The Times a series of most interesting articles. They have been directed against the War Office, and I confess today it seems to me, when the last of them has appeared, that it is almost like parting with an old friend. They are written, according to common report, by a gentleman who is a great personal friend of my own, who I know has studied the whole question of Army reform most deeply; but I must entirely disagree with him as to what, after all, is a fundamental part of his scheme, and that is the retention of the First Army Corps in South Africa. It has been pointed out by hon. Members, and by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in particular, that it will be difficult, if we keep troops there, to secure the requisite number of recruits. Now I do not think that the question of where the recruits are coming from does influence

  725
  this matter to any great extent. But I am told by those who are competent to judge that when a man has been two or three years abroad, he then feels homesickness coming over him, and he feels the time has arrived when he would like to return home. That being so, we should be asking him at the time when he is most desirous to come home from South Africa to re-engage for a period of five years. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment used an admirable phrase when dealing with the question of drafts for India. He said that we were gambling on a sixpence. I hope it is an investment and that it may not be a gamble. I understand his feelings most fully, because I appreciate the view that if by any chance there is a failure to secure the requisite number of men to complete the drafts for India, the whole of that scheme for short service must fall inevitably to the ground. Therefore I would ask Members of this House to dismiss entirely from their minds the idea that we are able at present to entertain the suggestions put forth in that article. But we shall at all events have something by which we can judge. We are at the present moment keeping in South Africa certain troops who ought to be, and I hope may be, before long on the home establishment. We are at present sending out recruits, and we shall be able to judge when the time comes for them to re-engage whether we can rely on their re-engaging in sufficient numbers.
  I have only one word more to say, and that is on the subject of the Volunteer force. It has been said that the Volunteer force has been slighted at the War Office, I should deeply regret such a mistake, and I should still more deeply regret that there should be any reason for the suggestion being made. I do not believe that on the part of a single man in that office is there any such intention. The new regulations have been referred to as having created some feeling. Before these regulations were put out they were thoroughly considered; but lot us grant, for the sake of argument, that they were not considered by the Volunteers. On the second Committee I served personally myself. On it there were a majority of Volunteer members, and the rules and regulations that were put out
  726
  were not carried by the War Office members but by the unanimous vote of the Committee. I spoke on this matter to my hon. friend behind me, and also to the hon. and gallant member for the Kilmarnock Burghs, and they told me at the time that they saw no reason why the Volunteer force in the main should not be able to carry out these conditions. We have endeavoured to put them as low as we can, and we have endeavoured to give the Volunteers that amount of training and administration which we consider essential to enable them to comply with that part, and practically that part alone, which refers to the defence of the country in the case of possible invasion. The House tonight will have to decide between the two schemes that have been put forward. It is not only an Amendment for or against a particular Army Corps Scheme. The cleavage is very much greater and deeper than that. It is a cleavage as to whether we shall have our present comparatively large Army or whether we shall have a small Army in the future. These seem to be the two sides of the question. On our side of the question I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to state the reasons why I consider our present system must be maintained. We have, at all events, military experts on our side as to the number required. On the other side you have got the arguments, powerful as they are, of those who have moved, seconded, and supported this Amendment. The question cannot he decided by any vote the House of Commons may take today. It is for the people of the country at large, and they will have to judge, hut whether the question he submitted to the House or to the country, I feel absolute confidence as to the result.
  *MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid he found himself in some difficulty as to the course he should take in regard to this Amendment. The arguments which the noble Lord had addressed to the House were very similar to those in the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition. The noble Lord dwelt on the necessity of keeping in this country a considerable standing Army, and of course on that point he was in agreement with the Leader of the Opposition. The Amendment, as it stood on the Paper, asked for a reduction of military expenditure,

  727
  and it also drew the attention of the House to the number of men now employed in the Army. He found, or at least he thought he found, a very considerable amount of reason why they should separate the one question from the other. None of the speakers who had supported the Amendment, and who referred to the increase in the Army Estimates, had taken notice of the corresponding increase both of area and population which had occurred in the British Empire since these Estimates began substantially to increase. It was not until the year 1892 or 1893 that there was any very substantial increase in the Army Estimates. Between 1887 and 1892 the Army Estimates had varied from £17,000,000 to £18,000,000. They were dropped in 1898 to £15,000,000. During that same period the British Empire was increased by no less than one-third o the present total area. It went up from 8,000,000 to 12,000,000 square miles, at which it stood at the present moment. It went up in population from about 250,000,000 to very nearly 350,000,000, and amongst the population thus added to the Empire might be found as wild, warlike, fanatical and restless tribes as could be found anywhere on the face of the earth. In this calculation he put aside the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The new territories cost considerable sums to acquire, and they must cost considerable sums to maintain. We had to police and protect them from their own internal unrest, and we had to guard them from possible external attack. Therefore it could not be said that the problem that presented itself to the War Office at the present moment was precisely in degree and character the same as the problem that presented itself before those expansions took place. In coming to a conclusion on this matter he had endeavoured as well as he could to take those considerations into account.
  He hoped he might be permitted to put forward one or two arguments in support of the principle he had laid down. The War Office, which in 1887 was four-twentieths of the total expenditure of the country, was now five-twentieths, in spite of the increase of the area to which he had referred. In 1887 the Admiralty expenditure was three-twentieths,
  728
  and it was now five-twentieths. In 1887 the education expenditure was one-twentieth, and it was now two-twentieths. There had therefore been a corresponding increase in the other Departments of the public service. The three Departments he had named were keeping pace with the natural increase of the whole Empire.
  Although he must say that he regretted the present expenditure of £30,000,000 on the Army, he thought that the process of reducing that expenditure was by no means so simple or easy as some hon. Members appeared to think. The Leader of the Opposition laid down two propositions which were echoed from the Benches opposite—that you must know how many men you require, and how you are to got these men. Now, fortunately for us, practically the whole surface of the world had been absorbed by one Power or another and we were not able to add to the area of our Empire to any considerable extent. Therefore, it was to be hoped that some finality had been reached in increasing our possessions. Some of them had been profitless, a great many had been forced on us by the action of other countries, and some of them had been acquired by our own greed, but the process of absorption was complete. Therefore you could lay down some general proposition as to the number of men and the amount of money required. The military authorities had only got to decide the way in which these were to be supplied.
  The right hon. Baronet the Member for Forest of Dean, he knew, would like to proceed on what he called revolutionary lines. He would do away with the linked battalions and a Regular Army for home defence and constitute a special Indian Army. That was indeed revolutionary, and there was a great difference between that scheme and the proposals put before the House by the Secretary for War, which were not of so far reaching a character, but only involved what might be called alterations. He thought the right hon. Baronet would find it very difficult to satisfy any one that the system of linked battalions could be abolished. There must be some system at home for keeping up the supply of men for India, Egypt, and the colonial garrisons. It was idle to conic down to the House and propose to sweep

  729
  away a system without some general idea as to what was to be suggested to take its place. They could not play with the system of the Army and go to the War Office and otter a plan in accordance with the results gained in every campaign. They had done this in 1870, and they wanted to do the same thing in 1900. They could not destroy a system because of some personal experience in a particular war. They must take the consensus; of opinion of the military authorities, and fortunately the War Office had had the assistance of the best brains in the Army during the past five years; and it was idle for hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House to say that if an easy, cheap, and practical scheme could have been evolved it ought to have been evolved before now.
  Putting aside the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman, and also the question of conscription, which was impossible now, whatever it might have; been in 1900, they came to the scheme of the substitution of auxiliaries for the Regular forces. The letters in The Times, to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick, referred the previous night, and which he made the basis of a simple but telling speech, laid down, first of all, that they must transfer the First Army Corps to South Africa, then that the general reliance for the defence of this country should be placed on civilian levies and on an increased Intelligence Department. He would say a few words on each of those propositions. In the first place, if they did get a better training ground in South Africa than possibly in this country, they would obtain a training ground not for infantry but for mounted troops. If a future campaign were to be fought, it would not be in a country like South Africa, but one which was broken and enclosed by ditches and fences, in which not mounted troops but infantry would be required; and, after all, the latter could be trained equally well in Scotland or Ireland as in South Africa. In the next place it was said that a Corps d'Armć e was required in South Africa. That argument might have been valid two years ago but the focus and arsenal for hostilities being gone now and the country having settled down, the numbers of troops, together with the South African Constabulary, which need be maintained for policing purposes,
  730
  would not be sufficient for an Army Corps Then, in regard to the vulnerability of England and the Colonies, and the strategic advantages to be gained by sending troops to South Africa, it was admitted that South Africa was not likely to be affected, nor Australia, nor Canada. India would not be attacked by any Power except Russia, and troops could be supplied, he argued, for the defence of India as well from England as from South Africa. India had been described as impregnable, but Russia had already absorbed Northern Persia, and there was no guarantee that she would not also absorb Southern Persia. The moment the latter event took place our frontier in India, with the impregnable fortress of Quetta, would be turned. Therefore strategic mobility was not to be gained by sending an Army Corps to South Africa, The right hon. Baronet referred to the possibility of reliance for the defence of this country on civilian levies, as had been shown in the case of South Africa. Everything was now to be referred to a South African standard. But what was the cause mainly of our victory in South Africa? It was not the existence of organised levies of the people well acquainted with the country, and accustomed to an outdoor life. We succeeded in spite of the very qualities inherent in the Boers. [An HON. MEMBER: We succeeded because we were ten to one against them.] Yes, but what would have happened when they were ten to one against us, if they had been Regular troops? The Boers, in spite of their natural advantages, failed because of their want of cohesion, of their irresolution and their incapacity to strike after victory. If the Boers, being exceedingly good men, had been properly organised, led by commanders who had been trained in the real school of warfare, they would have driven us from the country before we could have sent reinforcements to South Africa. A considerable trained force was required for the protection of Gape Town and Calcutta, but what would be the effect if there was a raid on London by a continental force? There would be a general uprising of the military spirit throughout the Empire, but they could not afford to run the risk of leaving London to be defended alone by civilian levies.

  731
  He would ask the House to consider the strength of the garrisons of this country. Which one of them could be weakened without seriously endangering all? Was it proposed to keep fewer troops in India than 75,000? Was it proposed to keep less than 30,000 troops in South Africa during the next seven or eight years? In Canada there were only one battalion garrison regiment, two companies of Engineers, and two companies of Royal Garrison Artillery. Could they be reduced? In Egypt there were one cavalry regiment, one Royal Artillery battery, one mountain battery and four infantry battalions. Were those garrisons in Canada and Egypt too large, and should they not be increased rather than diminished? In all the colonial stations there were only fourteen companies of Engineers, ten batteries of Field Artillery, twenty companies Royal Garrison Artillery, and eighteen battalions. That was the garrison of the Colonial Empire, and could it be reduced? Some of them were garrisons of inferior troops which the War Office would not dare to put into the field, but which might be of some service behind earthworks. There was one further point to which he wished to refer, and which had been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick. The right hon. Gentleman most reasonably and effectually argued for the increase of the Intelligence Department. Had everyone forgotten what was the fate of the Intelligence Department before the war, and of Sir John Ardagh's report which was presented to the military and civil authorities and absolutely disregarded by both? That report told the Government that they could not send infantry to South Africa without an adequate force of cavalry to guard their flanks. It told them the armaments of the Boers and their probable number. It pointed out the weakness of Ladysmith, drew attention to every single defect, and told the Government where the weakness of the British Army was, and where the weakness of the enemy. The Cabinet and the military authorities disregarded that report, and, in the face of that, what was the good of increasing the Intelligence Department. What was the good of having 500 men at the
  732
  intelligence Department if the War Office and the Cabinet disregarded their advice and the knowledge they collected? What guaranteehad the House of Commons that the civil and military authorities would take notice of the recommendations and advice of the Intelligence Department? What they had to do was not to go on increasing expenditure on Army Corps, but to bring the existing departments up to date. They had got to see that the principal officials in Pall Mall made use of the information they got, and that they should take a real interest in the better administration of the Army. He hoped that nothing he had said would lead anyone to suppose that he was speaking in favour of the Six Army Corps system. It was the most portentous humbug ever laid before the House of Commons. It never had any real existence, and the holes picked in it by the hon. Member for Oldham did not need his brilliant oration, but a little industry, a little common-sense, and a little frankness from the War Office. They never did get from the War Office the same frankness they got from the Admiralty. They ought to have from the War Office an annual statement such as the Admiralty presented.
  *LORD STANLEY*LORD STANLEY said, if the hon. Member would permit him, he would answer a question which had been put to him by the hon. Member for Oldham, who asked how the discrepancy between his right hon. friend's speech and the Army List could be explained. Three battalions had arrived in England since the Army List was published. Four were on their way at the present-moment from South Africa, and four barracks would, he hoped, be finished in a very short time, when they would be able to bring four further battalions back from South Africa.
  *MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE*MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE said that if one Army Corps was brought up to its strength, it would weaken the other Army Corps. One of the battalions of the First Army Corps was stationed in Scotland. Were they sure that that was not counted in the Scottish Army Corps?
  *LORD STANLEY: Certainly.
  *MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE*MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE said that his confidence in War Office figures, though not in the noble Lord, was somewhat weakened. In the scheme of the Secretary of State for War they had brigadiers without brigades, brigades without brigadiers, batteries without guns, and cavalry without horses. All those defects might have been remedied by careful administration. If they were going to have the First Army Corps ready, as he thought it ought to be ready, to go anywhere and do anything, they ought to concentrate in that First Army Corps all their available units, and not scatter them through various other Army Corps, rendering none of them complete. There had been committees and inquiries into the Medical Department, the Remount Department, and several other departments during the war. They had not been told whether any of the recommendations of the committees with respect to these departments had been carried out. They did not know whether the Remount Department had been improved, or whether it had been brought into touch with the Intelligence Department. There was an air of mystery about the War Office which they wanted to clear up. He did not grudge the War Office every sixpence they spent well and wisely. What he grudged was money taken for the service of the War Office and not frankly and properly accounted for to the House of Commons.
  *SIR JOHN COLOMBsaid the hon. Member (Mr Charles Hobhouse) had given in his very important speech the reasons why he, a member of the opposition, would vote for the Government on the present occasion. He did not know whether the House realised that the Amendment was the Amendment which was moved by the Loader of the Opposition when the scheme was affirmed; but the Leader of the Opposition did not, of course, object in the least to hon. Members on the Government side stealing his thunder. The motion was now supported on the ground of principle, but the Leader of the Opposition supported it on grounds of detail. In moving it on the 13th of May, 1901, he said that the question was a question of detail, though now some of his hon. friends on this
  734
  side said it was a question of principle He was surprised that the right hon. Baronet the Member for Berwick, whose conspicuous fairness in the House was worthy of praise, stated calmly and deliberately that this particular scheme was rushed upon the House, or rather that the House had not been given time to consider it. That was not an accurate statement. The scheme was produced on the 8th of March, 1901, when the House was expected to discuss Army Estimates and the scheme, but instead it plunged immediately into a discussion of the personal grievances of generals who thought they had been hardly treated. Afterwards, several hon. Members, including the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, brought before the Government the importance of obtaining the calm and deliberate opinion of the House of Commons on the scheme, and the Leader of the House took a most unusual course, and said that the Government would give a special opportunity for the purpose.
  That was in May, the scheme having been laid before the House in March. When the scheme was brought before the House some hon. Members opposed it. He opposed it tooth and nail, and said wild horses would not make him vote for it. He did not vote, for it then, and he assumed the same attitude towards it now. But it was rather a strong order, and it was inconsistent with the dignity of the House or the business aspect of this question to ask them now, on an Amendment to the Address, to deliberately upset a scheme after it had been before the House for an unusually long period, and had been discussed at great length and had been accepted. He mentioned this in order to justify his own position. He thought for the House of Commons to attempt to upset, on an Amendment to the Address, a scheme which it had deliberately adopted after being challenged by the Leader of the Opposition, after due discussion, to reject it, was not the right way to proceed. If they adopted such a course they would deserve neither the respect of this country, nor the loyalty of the Colonies, nor the respect of the foreign nations. He therefore considered it was his duty not to vote for this Amendment. It was for no Party reason that he did not support it. On questions of British security he acknowledged no

  735
  Party ties, and he would never follow a Party in a question of this sort. These were not mere empty words, because, as many hon. Members were aware, he had consistently acted up to what he supposed to be his duty in these matters.
  With regard to the subject matter of the Amendment the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for War had been good enough to allude on the previous day to his (Sir John Colomb's) constant advocacy in this House for developing, increasing and maintaining the striking power of the Army. The right hon. Gentleman, or any other Minister, could always depend on his unhesitating and unswerving support of any policy of that sort. He saw in the speeches supporting the Resolution the dangerous idea that if we only had a Navy strong enough we needed no striking military force at all, and merely a citizen army for the defence of these islands. He protested against that doctrine, and always had, and he would warn those of his hon. friends who had suddenly come over to the "blue water school" not to carry their argument too far, but look a little further into the question. When this scheme was first propounded, the Secretary for War announced a new departure of which he cordially approved. The right hon. Gentleman put in the forefront of his scheme the necessity of the Empire possessing an adequate striking force. That had for some forty years been put in the tail of the hunt, and that was a new departure upon which he immediately congratulated the right hon. Gentleman. His ground of subsequent objection broadly was that when the scheme came to be developed he found that this scheme of an adequate striking force was only words and nothing more. His positive objection to the scheme was that it chalked up in big letters "Striking Force," and that the right hon. Gentleman ran away when he developed it. When fully developed, he found it was not a real but a sham scheme on the old hypothesis, and that the right hon. Gentleman finally mixed up in these Army Corps forces rooted to the soil of this kingdom and that free force which was the striking force—the Regular Army.
  It was because he was not going to support the Amendment that he wished to make it plain that he was, then and now, in vehement and violent opposition
  736
  to the scheme. He hoped that was pretty clear. The only excuse for bringing this question forward in the shape of an Amendment to the Address, when the House was within measurable distance of a proper opportunity being afforded for its discussion upon the Estimates, was that by the procedure of the House when they came to consider Army policy, in going into Committee or in Committee, they were forbidden to discuss the broad principles in relation to sea-power. He had frequently been called to order for attempting to do so. That being the case, his hon. friends, had they waited for the proper opportunity, could not have made their speeches, and therefore he hoped they would not think he was criticising them unduly hardly though he said that he felt strongly that the House should not, on the occasion of an Amendment to the Address, upset an Army scheme formally approved of only a few months previously. But though this discussion was excusable on that ground, it was inexcusable on others, one of which was the deliberate adoption of the scheme by the House, and another that within the last few months a step of the greatest importance had been taken. He alluded to the Council of Defence. That was a new body the functions of which were to review and bring before the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the Cabinet, who alone must be responsible for the defence of the country, all information. It would bring the War Office, in their presence, to prove its doctrine that sea supremacy was no security; and it had this function valuable above all others, it was to keep records and preserve them. They would have in the future a record kept, and if ever the cowardice and pusillanimity of Ministers plunged this country into a chaos of danger and difficulty, the House of Commons would be able to turn up the records, and would know what Minister to hang. That was the first step towards establishing real Ministerial responsibility.
  This particular question, therefore, the influence of the sea power as affecting the military policy, and the question raised as to whether we should have a small, big, or no Regular Army, was a matter which he for one left with full confidence to the Council of Defence. But when Ministers were being asked by hon. Members

  737
  whether the Council of Defence had considered this matter, he could only assume that hon. Members had no knowledge of what a Council of Imperial Defence really meant. How could a Council of Defence, which was only brought into existence within the last three months, and which had not formulated any machinery, be expected to plunge into this question and deal with it offhand? Its members would be unworthy of the position they held if they did anything of the sort. It was in view of the fact of this Council being appointed that he could not go with those who now wished the House of Commons to upset the deliberate decision at which it had arrived a few months ago. He would remind his hon. friends who had lately come over to the" blue-water school" that, as pointed out by Mr. Thursfield, sea power did not merely mean sea force. It meant a combination of military power and sea force, and when they spoke about sea power, they spoke not merely about ships and sailors, but about the just apportionment of the two services for the purpose of providing for national safety and of meeting our obligations to the Empire. He desired to protest against the reckless use of phrases about a "big fleet" and "a small Army." What was meant by a small Army? The measurement of the army, its strength and composition, could be determined only by the practical and real purposes for which that army was necessary. By a "small army did hon. Members mean small in proportion to the Empire's needs, or small relatively to continental armies? If the latter, he would agree with them, but if the former, he strongly disagreed with them. The real reason for the Amendment was the fear of hon. Members at having to answer to their constituents for the expenditure upon defence. That was a matter for Members to consider, but, for his part, even though it cost him his seat on the morrow, he would never vote for cutting down the necessary expenditure on defence by a single penny.
  Why was he in favour of the maintenance and development of a military force for striking purposes over-sea as a necessary adjunct to the Fleet? The frontier of India had been casually
  738
  disposed of in a sentence, and with regard to the frontier of Canada, a right hon. Gentleman, who had held and would again hold office, had declared that in contemplating the questions of military necessity, America might be ruled out of account altogether. While expressing in the strongest possible manner his desire that the policy of this country should be so guided as to avoid all possible friction with the United States, and that the two Powers should proceed amicably hand in hand, he could not forget that that country was the arena of the bloodiest, most horrible, and revolting war of the last century, and if a people in their own territory and over their own internal quarrels could carry on such a war, it was asking too much that he should rule them out of account in such a question as this. But having thus lightly disposed of these frontiers, Members proceeded to ask: "What, then, is the use of an Army?" If a state of war prevailed, and England was supreme at sea, what did it mean "? It meant the paralysis of the enemy's fleet, that if her war vessels came out of port they would be driven in again. So long as that condition of things prevailed, the freights in British ships and British goods might be comparatively safe, but the enhancement of freights and increased cost would handicap the nation in the markets of the world. Already the margin of profit between importing raw material, manufacturing, and exporting, was so small that there was great difficulty in keeping ahead of other nations, and that margin would disappear if the condition of things he had suggested arose. What were the "blue water school" without an Army then going to do? Were they going to wait to be ruined? Did they think there would not be a furious outburst from all the manufacturing cities, demanding that such a state of things should be terminated? But how would they terminate it if they had no striking power? The matter had been dealt with entirely from the point of view of the passive defence of our own land frontiers. Purely passive defence was never successful defence. But other Powers had oversea territories. He rejoiced that America and continental Powers were pushing their interests over-sea, because, so long

  739
  as England maintained her maritime supremacy, every possession over-sea of another Power was a hostage to British peace. He agreed that maritime supremacy in the hands of England was the greatest guarantee of the world's peace, but he was not so sure it was such a guarantee of peace if there was no military power immediately available behind the fleet to cause other nations to hesitate to quarrel with us. Such a position contemplated by his hon. friends would ruin our commerce and trade. The House ought not, therefore, to dismiss the question in an offhand way, by saying that because we had a big fleet a Regular Army was not required for striking over-sea.
  One other matter had not yet been referred to. All agreed that the real incentive to this Resolution was the question of Imperial expenditure. The House had been told that the expenditure had almost reached breaking strain, that the people could not bear it, and so forth, with that view he agreed. But what was the cause of the expenditure? The energy and enterprise of the people of these islands had created an Empire overspreading the world. Every part of the Empire was profiting by the past and present expenditure of money, men, and resources of these two islands. If we were to face the future simply as two islands with an Empire on our back, while the Empire itself did not bear its fair share of cost in discharging the duties and the responsibilities, of Empire, he admitted we could not go on. That was the real question, but everybody shirked it. People were frightened to raise the question of colonial contributions. He did not know why they should be. He was confident that if the facts were put strongly and plainly before our fellow countrymen beyond the seas they would have common sense enough to accept the facts, and do their duty like men. The sooner the outlying portions of the Empire understood that this country could not go on for ever bearing the burdens of the Empire almost alone and afford all the security they expected free of cost to them the sooner would this bugbear of expenditure be got rid of. In the case of a great war every other country would draw its resources from every corner of its territory,
  740
  while we should have to rely on the resources of two islands, with merely the sympathy and loyalty of our outlying peoples, unexpressed in organised form. That was not a satisfactory position. Members must make up their minds as to what they were going to do, whether they would run away from their Imperial obligations, because their constituents did not like the expense, or whether they would face them boldly, and say to the peoples of the colonies—
  "These two islands have spent their treasure, and blood in building up your Empira; you are wealthy and prospering now; is it right to expect the mother country alone to go on for ever bearing your burdens?"
  He was satisfied that if the case was once put before the colonies by a frank declaration of this House, they would rather contribute their share of the expenditure than allow the British Empire to go down.
  *SIR J. DICKSON POYNDERsaid the hon. and gallant Member for Yarmouth advocated a large Army and a striking Army.
  SIR JOHN COLOMB: I never said a large army, but one large enough for our needs.
  *SIR J. DICKSON POYNDER*SIR J. DICKSON POYNDER said that during the Napoleonic wars the reason they were able to contend satisfactorily against the great continental system under Napoleon was that our fleets commanded the seas and we succeeded for a number of years in blockading all the French ports, although Napoleon had nearly a quarter of a million troops ready to invade this country. His hon. friend opposite made what might appear to be one of the most potent arguments against the attitude taken up by the mover of this Amendment and those associated with him. He wanted to make it quite clear that they did not contend for a moment that for home defence they should rely wholly and solely upon an auxiliary force. There should always be a small, well-trained Army in this country. A competent general with whom he had spoken agreed in the main with the view that if they had a well-trained auxiliary force in this country, with a small leaven of well-trained Regulars, they would have all that

  741
  was necessary for the defence of this country. He wished to point out, however, that by setting aside the auxiliary element and pushing forward the regular element they were bound to stifle that patriotism by which, and through which alone they could hope to raise what they wanted from the civilian element of this country. They could not have a better illustration than had been seen in South Africa in the recent war. In South Africa the population was fairly evenly distributed between the Dutch and the English, but the commencement of the war showed that practically the whole of the Dutch went to arms in the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The population of the Orange Colony was about 72,000, but within a very short time no less than 18,000 were gathered to arms, and the result was only too well known in regard to what they did. They not merely defended their own country, but they invaded our territory, and held no less than 12,000 of our troops in one place. With regard to Natal, what did they do there to defend their country? Why, out of a population of 68,000, only 3,000 men were drawn to take part in the defence of that colony.
  Two years ago, like his hon. friend the Member for Oldham, he ventured to speak in the debate which ensued upon the unfolding of the programme of his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War. He said then that he thought it was an ill-matured scheme brought forward at an inappropriate time. Although, upon that occasion, he spoke in an apprehensive and critical way, he did not then feel justified in recording his vote against the scheme. The war had now happily concluded, and this scheme had been in operation for some two years; and the time had now come for this House, and the country at large, to take stock of the position, to consider what the scheme was, and what it was doing for the country. Whatever apprehensions he had two years ago had been borne out by experience, and he felt it incumbent upon him to express his rooted objection, both to the principles that underlay this scheme, and the details by which it was made up. In the first place, the right hon. Gentleman's scheme was subversive of Imperial
  742
  interests; secondly, it was lacking in appreciation of the necessities of the country; in the third place, it showed a disregard of military resources; and in the fourth place, it was imposing a burden of alarming and unnecessary extravagance upon the country. Actuated by that strong conviction, he should not only associate himself with the mover of the Amendment, but he should associate himself with him in the Division Lobby. This debate had been a good thing, for two reasons. In the first place, it afforded an opportunity to the Prime Minister to become fully acquainted with the strong feeling of antagonism amongst Conservatives who sat upon those Benches. In the second place, it gave the Prime Minister an opportunity, which he hoped he would not pass by, to inform the House and the country whether he really meant to adhere to this scheme, or whether he would alter or modify it. He hoped that whatever he said, it would not be interpreted in any shape or form as being an attack upon his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War, for whom he had the deepest possible regard. All he wished to confine himself to was to attack the scheme solely upon its merits.
  He admitted that the right hon. Gentleman had founded this scheme upon what he thought was an imperial basis, but it displayed, in all its essentials, a complete misconception of the Imperial sentiment which now animated this country and the other portions of this Empire. The scheme consisted of six Army Corps, provided in six compact units, all of which were to be drawn from this country. Was the Army required to invade the territories of our continental neighbours? It would be perfectly ridiculous to suppose that we could raise up a force to contend against those great military countries. Was it for home defence? The Secretary of State appeared to him to fail to realise how different were our conditions as a sea Power from those of continental countries which had contiguous frontier's. Of course France and Germany and other countries were obliged to have great Army Corps. They had frontiers every inch of which had to be defended by garrisons. These frontiers

  743
  were mapped out by the Intelligence Departments, and from the very moment of the declaration of war vast armies would be hurled on to the frontiers to their allotted places. But with Britain, being a sea Power, it was not necessary that we should have these immense armies. Was it proposed to have this army for foreign expeditions? What possible use could it be for us to have a unit the size of an Army Corps for a foreign expedition? Was it likely to be required as one unit, because the whole basis of the argument as he understood it was—these bodies were to be trained and equipped as one unit, with a general and staff, and were to be ready to move as such? He wondered if the right hon. Gentleman had arranged with the Admiralty to ear-mark the ships which were to take out these troops. The scheme presupposed that in the event of war in these far off territories, wherever they might be, these Army Corps would be sent out simultaneously as one unit. Everyone knew that complications on the Indian frontier or in China would not take place in a day. There would be a gradual threatening for many months, and during these months it might be hoped the Government would be gradually concentrating troops on the spot, so that by the time the war took place there would be a large body of troops out there. When the war was over this largo body could not possibly be removed immediately. They would be taken away gradually. On the first outbreak of war there would be a complete obliteration of the Army Corps system. The Army Corps system seemed to be quite possible for a country with a land frontier where there was an adjacent objective, but it was quite impossible for a country like ours, with a distant and unknown objective. This scheme, unwittingly perhaps, was based on a servile imitation of continental militarism. In the guise of an Imperial scheme, founded on a continental basis, the Secretary of State had really introduced a scheme in the spirit of the Little Englander. The shock of war had revealed the solidarity of the Empire's patriotism; the scheme ignored the teachings of the war; and at the very moment when it had been shown that a large regular Army, drawn solely from this country, was unnecessary paradoxically proposed such an increase. The more actuated the
  744
  colonies were by patriotism, and the more desirous they were to come to the help of the mother country in the time of emergency, the more the Government proposed to increase the regular Army and overburden the taxpayers of this country by an increased expenditure. The establishment of a great military system on a continental basis was not necessary or suitable for our Empire. Last year, at the time of the Coronation, the colonial Premiers were gathered together at a conference with the responsible ministers, with the view of developing the question of Imperial defence. He had carefully read the Blue book containing an account of the proceedings of the Conference. It seemed to him that the Secretary of State for War might well, on the ground of their patriotism, have appealed to the Premiers to take over the defence of the colonics they represented, in order to relieve the ratepayers of this country of the great burden imposed on them for the maintenance of naval works to defend the shores of the distant colonies. What seemed to him to be the main argument put forward by the Secretary of State for War was one which he did not think any one who understood the sentiment animating our colonial fellow subjects could possibly have proposed with any hope of success. The Secretary of State proposed that a portion of their troops after being trained should be handed over to the control of the War Office at Pall Mall. If there was one thing which the colonials valued it was the principle that there should be no separation between taxation and representation. If they paid for their men we must allow them to have control over them. The opportunity of profiting by the Imperial sentiment of the colonies had not been made the most of.
  His second point was that in his judgment the scheme showed a want of appreciation of the necessities of the country. It had been said in the course of the debate that this scheme ignored the fact that we were a maritime Power, that the Navy must be the first line of defence, and that the Army must be planned and organised in subordination to the paramount claims of the Navy. We must have a transcendent and unchallengeable Navy. In view of what had recently been heard, it was possible that our Navy, strong as it was, might

  745
  not be strong enough. It was our bounden duty to increase that Navy to whatever extent might be necessary. He was very pleased to hear the statement of the First Lord of the Treasury that the Council of Defence was to be brought to life again, and was to undertake the co-ordination of the two services. He had no hesitation in bringing a grave charge against the Government for not having brought this Council of Defence to life many years ago. He came now to his third charge, viz., that the scheme had an utter disregard of our military resources. Even supposing that our national necessities required a great Army, which, he thought, was not the case as he had amply shown, he contended that the inherent conditions of our national life rendered it impossible. The plan was too big for the site; the cost was too much for the country; it demanded more troops than the country could produce in normal times. This scheme must always be a grossly extravagant sham and an entire make-believe. What had the Secretary of State for War done to bolster up his scheme? The right hon. Gentleman had increased the pay of the whole of the Army—a matter which they need not, in itself, at all deplore; he had had to resort to a reduction of the standard of the men enlisted, although they had been told the previous day by the right hon. Gentleman that he had succeeded in restoring the standard again which had been very considerably reduced from what it used to be. And the right hon. Gentleman had also reduced the time of service. It was said that the recruiting during the past year had been very satisfactory, that 51,000 recruits had joined the colours. He always looked with a certain amount of scepticism on official figures. Without impugning for a moment the accuracy of the Secretary of State for War, he would just like, if the right hon. Gentleman, in order to remove that scepticism, would issue an order from the War Office to parade these 51,000 recruits in the Palace Yard. They would then be able to see them for themselves, and what sort of recruits they were; while he was certain it would add immensely to the success of the proceeding if his right hon. friend would once more don his uniform and put himself at their head. How many of these 51,000 recruits had since left the Army, and how many had been discarded as inefficient? These
  746
  were very interesting points for the House of Commons to know. He said this with all the more force because he happened to know that at one period the minimum standard for cavalry had been reduced to 5 ft. 2 ins. That seemed to him almost unbelievable, but the fact remained that so low had the standard been that many men had joined the ranks who were physically, mentally, and morally unfit for service. He should like to know how many of these men were included in the 51,000 mentioned by the Secretary for War. Last year they voted on the Estimates an establishment for the Regular Army of 219,700 at a cost of £29,310,000; but now the Secretary for War told them that they had not 219,700 but 271,000 men. Therefore 271,000 men either exceeded the normal establishment as voted in the Estimates by 50,000, or included the additional numbers enlisted temporarily for the war, to be afterwards disbanded.
  MR. BRODRICK MR. BRODRICK said that his hon. friend was under confusion as to the figures. The previous night he had taken the whole number of men for this country and for India, which made a total of 271,000. Last year everything had been complicated by the fact that the Reserves, having been called up, were on the establishment, whereas this year, their services having been withdrawn, they were not on the establishment.
  MR. BECKETT MR. BECKETT asked if the whole home establishment had therefore been exceeded by 50,000 men.
  MR. BRODRICK: No, it was 12,000 above the strength.
  *SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER*SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER said he would not press that point further. He would now turn to the third head of his argument against the scheme of the Secretary for War. What he contended was that they could not get the recruits in a normal year unless they had difficulties in the labour market, which unfortunately they had had during the last four or five months. Looking to this country from the point of view of its commercial ascendency—and without that they could not hope the country would maintain its position—they would be unable to obtain a large number of recruits without dislocating

  747
  the labour market. The result would be that the pay must go on increasing, and if the pay of the Army was increased, so must the pay of the Navy be inevitably increased. It had been held out two years ago that whatever might be said against the Army Corps Scheme, one thing was certain, that there would be decentralisation in different districts, and that the over-congested War Office would be relieved of a great mass of work. He did not believe that that had taken place, but that the congestion and confusion in the War Office were now greater than before the scheme was introduced. He had seen an example of this recently on his journey from India. A young officer, whom he met on the voyage, had told him that he had served for three years in South Africa, and then had been invalided home. His regiment was at Hong-Kong, and being anxious to avoid going out there he applied to his commanding officer to be transferred to the depot of his regiment at home. He also wrote direct to the War Office. The commanding officer recommended his transfer to the depot, but the War Office replied that another officer had already been recommended, and that he must rejoin his regiment. He and his wife, therefore, started off at once for Hong-Kong, where his commanding officer informed him that he had recommended his transfer to the depot, but that he could not allow him to go back to England now that he had rejoined his regiment. So this young officer wired home to the War Office asking for information, when he immediately received a telegram that Captain So-and-So was to return with all speed to the depot. All this had been done at a cost to the nation of £450. There was no doubt that nearly every Member interested in military matters could give similar instances as to the confusion which reigned at the War Office.
  And, it being half-past Seven of the Clock, the debate stood adjourned till the Evening Sitting.

EVENING SITTING.
  KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOB AN ADDRESS).

    ARMY ORGANISATION.
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment [23rd February]
    748
    to Main Question [17th February], '' That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth.
    "Most Gracious Sovereign
    "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr Gretton.)
    Which Amendment was—
    "At the end of the Question, to add the words, ' But we humbly regret that the organisation of the land forces is unsuited to the needs of the Empire, and that no proportionate gain in strength and efficiency has resulted from the recent increases in military expenditure."—(Mr. Beckett.)
    Question again proposed, "That those words be there added.'
    *SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER*SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER, continuing his speech, said, before the Adjournment of the House he was trying to point out, on the question of these Army Corps having been instituted in this country with the view of obtaining decentralisation, that it appeared to him the confusion at the War Office was more confounded than it was before. The selection of the Army Corps districts was unfortunate, and the authorities had been particularly unhappy in the selection of the Army Corps centre, with regard to the Salisbury Army Corps. That district contained all the southern counties of England from Dover to Plymouth, and took in the whole of the important coast line between those two towns, yet the centre selected for that district was Salisbury Plain. If the Secretary of State for War before he devised that centre had studied "Bradshaw," he would have found he could not have selected a worse place for a centre than Salisbury Plain. It was most difficult of access, and Army Corps centres to be of any use at all must be in the most accessible position of the district. Salisbury Plain was connected with all the many towns of the district by branch lines only, and was most inaccessible. He could

    749
    conceive no worse place for a general who wished for immediate orders or immediate sanction to any action he was taking. Beyond that there was another question with regard to Salisbury Plain. A few years ago the Government, with the full sanction of the House of Commons, purchased Salisbury Plain in order to obtain an available training ground for all the troops in the South of England. The war had shown more than anything else how necessary it was to have some training ground where troops might he trained adequately in extended order. The House of Commons willingly consented to the purchase of Salisbury Plain as the most fitting ground for that purpose, but what had happened? In order to comply with this Army Corps plan, the Secretary of State for War had converted this grand manoeuvring ground into a monastic garrison. It seemed to him that nothing would put a premium on discouraging recruits and encouragment towards desertion so much, as placing this garrison in this most unattractive spot; a spot invaluable for training purposes. He had, he hoped, shown the House that this scheme, appeared to be one not suited to the requirements of this country, and one which was bound to create much greater expense in the future. If the scheme was realised according to the ideas of the right hon. Gentleman the. Secretary of State for War, it. would not only result in the sum of money which the country was now asked to pay, but a very much larger sum in the future. The right hon. Gentleman now asked for £30,000,000, but when these Army Corps were filled up, he would have to ask for more money for barracks. That was utterly out of proportion to the requirements of the country in relation to the other service.
    We had, as had been shown by the First Lord of the Admiraly in 1900, a sea-borne traffic of £1,200,000,000. These Army Corps were not going to preserve and maintain that great trade; it was to the Navy alone that we could look for that, and it must strike every one that this inflated and excessive expenditure for this scheme was totally out of proportion to the needs of the State. Those who asked for these reforms were not those who desired to do away with the Army, but those who believed in small, well-trained Regular Army ready to go out at a moment's notice. The
    750
    garrisons must, of course, be kept properly manned in our dependencies and India, and in order to keep up a proper establishment the number of recruits must be kept up. The day had come, he thought, when the linked battalion system would have to be abandoned and a system of depots established for the maintenance of our garrisons abroad. For the defence of our own shores we must fall back on our civilian element, and in order to do that we must give every encouragement to the Volunteer forces, an encouragement which, in days gone by, had been conspicuous by its absence. The Volunteer force could not be encouraged too much, and should be adapted to the professional life of the nation. What would comply with the requirements of one locality would not do for another, and therefore the conditions should be made as elastic as possible, and every facility given for the work of training. The War Office must not remain the over-centralised office it was at present, and the Army must not be blind to the aspirations of the civilian community. The country at the present time was quite ready to accept the principle that the young manhood of the nation should prepare and train itself for service in times of national emergency, and he would like. to see the Government introduce some system of physical training into the school curriculum which would be of the greatest possible use in the future.
    He appealed to the Government to utilise as far as possible the local authorities of this country, who were becoming far more important in their own districts than before, and who were composed of the most influential men. These local authorities might be made use of in innumerable ways to great advantage so far as the defence of this country was concerned. These authorities now possessed a register of the whole of the district, and it would be quite possible in that register to include the physique and occupation and previous character of every man in the district, and if the local authority were asked to place upon its body the military representative of the district in a very short time there would be an influence brought to bear on it which would be invaluable to the service. The mayor and corpora-

    751
    tion of a district had just as much at heart the defence of the country as the military itself, and that fact should be emphasised in both branches of the service. He did not attempt to indicate a scheme, but only a line of principle contrary to the principle under which this scheme was propounded. All he tried to indicate was that this principle was better than the principle governing this system of Army Corps on the Marconi principle, for that was all it was. Under it we had useless staffs, which were highly paid and had nothing to do, depleted regiments and empty battalions. What we wanted was a small efficient Army, well trained, ready to be sent out at a moment's notice; our garrisons abroad to be well maintained; and a large force of citizens at home well trained to de-fend our shores and quite ready to take part in any large operations should any come about. His action in voting against the Government was governed by the belief that in so doing he was doing his best to induce the Government to abandon a scheme of Army Reform not conceived in the best interests of the country, and to adopt one which in the future would be of incalculable value to the Empire; and he should continue in his opposition until the present scheme was abandoned.
    *MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENconsidered this to be the most extraordinary debate that had taken place in this House for some years. In his experience the general burden of all criticisms of the past with regard to the War Office had been that we did not possess a sufficiently large Army, we had not sufficient men, guns, organisation, horses in fact, that we could not put into the field in foreign countries more than a limited number. Hon. Members who had been in the House for any length of time would remember that that was the whole criticism directed against the War Office in times gone by. The War Office, more sanguine, said they could always put two Army Corps into the field. Then came the war in South Africa, and they succeeded in sending more men than anyone thought possible. They did not, however, send enough. The hon. Member for Oldham, in one of the articles he wrote whilst acting as a correspondent
    752
    in South Africa, stated that half-a-million men were required to finish the war; now the hon. Member came to the House and asked the Government not to increase, but to decrease, the numbers in the Army. After all these years a new school of criticism had arisen, which demanded that the Army should be decreased and the auxiliary forces increased. That was not the only extraordinary change that was suggested. It had been said over and over again that our Army was so arranged that there was no organisation; that there were scattered units all over the country, and no connecting link, no regular staff; that when the war broke out masses of men, horses, and military stores had to be gathered together and a staff improvised which had never worked together before, and consequently did not work well then. The Secretary of State, two years ago, brought in a scheme which got rid of that want of system. Army Corpsdidnot mean a great increase in the Army, but that a regular system of organisation should obtain; that the troops to be utilised in time of war, and everything necessary for them, should be collected in times of peace; and that the officers who would command them in time of war should have the training of them in times of peace.
    The new school of criticism first of all said the Army was too large, and secondly, that this scheme of organisation was useless and costly. He felt considerable disappointment when he listened to these criticisms. He thought the old critics were right; that the Army was not sufficiently large or sufficiently organised; and when a Minister attempted to remedy these defects, then this new school of what might be called irregular critics arose against him. The hon. Member for Oldham had said that the Army Corps system was a failure in practice and unsound in theory. The hon. Member was very severe in his criticism upon what he called the failure in practice of this Army Corps Scheme, but in his speech he had quite overlooked the very short time which the Secretary of State had had at his disposal to work out this scheme. It was not yet two years since the scheme was introduced,

    753
    and for the first fifteen months of that time the war was raging, and it was impossible to take steps to set the scheme in operation. There was no reason why plans should not he laid to carry out the scheme as soon as troops were available, and now that troops were becoming available, he trusted the scheme would be successful. The hon. Member for Oldham made great fun of the fact that of the Militia Reserve of 50,000 men which we were to have under the scheme we had not one, but the Act which enabled that Reserve to be created only passed into law last December, and then a serious attempt was made to stop its passage by the very critics who had spoken upon this Motion. The hon. Member further said that the scheme of new Militia bounties had laid a great burden on the country, and only yielded 2,000 extra Militia recruits, but the recruiting had been falling for many years and this was a great improvement. With regard to the Yeomanry, the hon. Member said that of the 35,000 Yeomanry we were to have we had only 23,000, but even then that was 10,000 in excess of what we had before. In less than two years the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State had more than doubled the numbers of the Yeomanry, and was justified in taking credit for it. Lastly, with regard to the Volunteers, the hon. Member stated that under the scheme his right hon. friend proposed to have 250,000 Volunteers, and inasmuch as there were 280,000 before, his right hon. friend had nearly got down to his limit. What we wanted in the Volunteers was not enormous numbers but a better standard of efficiency. Some corps were splendidly efficient and some were not so good, and it was infinitely better to have a smaller number of Volunteers with a high standard of efficiency than immense masses of men with varying standards.
    He had therefore shown, he thought, that the scheme of his right hon. friend was not a failure. If it had not succeeded in every detail, allowance must be made for the difficulties his right hon. friend had to contend with in its introduction. But within two years of its being brought in, and within one year of the end of the war, it was a travesty on
    754
    our institutions for hon. Gentlemen to come here and try and dig up the whole scheme in favour of some other which they had not disclosed, and which, he believed, did not exist. Turning from the practical side to the theoretical, he noticed that the contention shown on the other side was mainly based on the scheme being too costly. Their argument was that the nation spent a certain amount for its defence; that it could only spend a certain amount; and that, therefore, if the Army took more than the Navy, we must deduct from the Army and give to the Navy. Surely the only sound principle was that both the Army and Navy must be kept up to such a state of efficiency and strength as was necessary for the due defence of the country. The only way to do this was to proceed upon a perfectly sound basis. It was an unsound basis to consider only the Navy, for they had got to take both forces and see what was necessary in the case of each. They had not got to take both forces together, but separately. When they had done this, then the nation must find the money, even if the sum was larger than they were spending at the present time. The safety of the State was of supreme importance, and the necessary money must be found. The policy which involved starving one service for the benefit of the other was a perfectly unsound one, and he was astonished to hear it advocated in that House. Having advocated the reduction of the cost of the Army in order to have more money to spend upon the Navy, his hon. friends had proceeded to state that the provision made by the Secretary of State for War was altogether too large, and that it was an imitation of the Continental system. Was an Army of three Army Corps too large? [An HON. MEMBER: Six Army Corps.] No, not six, because three of them were composed almost entirely of auxiliaries. Did hon. Members say that this force of three Army Corps was altogether too large? If the Navy was smashed and their main fleet destroyed, neither their Regulars nor irregulars would be of the slightest use. [An HON. MEMBER: We should surrender.] They would not surrender, but they would soon be starved, for they could not survive the

    755
    destruction of their fleet, which meant that the command of the seas would pass from them. The argument of trusting to the Navy was not so much an argument against reducing the Regular forces as reducing their large body of irregulars. Putting aside entirely the question of home defence and what troops were required in case of invasion, and taking account of what they would require for the purpose of foreign service, he asked were three Army Corps too many? [Cries of "Yes."] He said emphatically "No." Three Army Corps were not too many in the case of the South African War.
    Hon. Members might say there was no possibility of ever having to send such a largo force abroad again. Of course they never expected ever having to send such a large force to South Africa. Some hon. Members had stated that a war with America was unthinkable. He hoped it was, but supposing the American people were to attack Canada in a fit of Jingoism, and supposing the Canadians appealed to us for help. Surely they must be prepared for such an emergency as that. [An HON. MEMBER: What would be the good of three Army Corps then?] Well, three would be better than none at all. The natural result of having an Empire was that they must be prepared to fight, if necessary, in any quarter of the world, and he could not see that three Army Corps was an excessive amount to form an Army for such a purpose, and this was the very least they ought to have. Hon. Gentlemen appeared to think that for the purpose of sending troops abroad they could get rid of Regulars and trust to auxiliaries. The hon. Member for Oldham said in the country that the true and only policy was to strengthen the Volunteers at the expense of the Regular Army. He admitted that the Volunteers, the Militia, and the Yeomanry had done good work in South Africa, but did hon. Members think that the work done by auxiliary forces in South Africa would not have been better done by a sufficient number of Regular forces? Did anyone contend that the second batch of Imperial Yeomanry did as good work as an equal batch of Regular cavalry would have done? To diminish the Regular troops and substitute for them irregulars was a most dangerous policy. In the case of the Militia
    756
    and Volunteers there had been the very greatest difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of officers. [An HON. MEMBER: Why?] He did not know why, but he was merely stating the fact. If they trusted more to auxiliary forces, were they going to again send out masses of men with insufficient officers? The Militia had done excellent service, but what was their difficulty? Why, officers. Not only was the Militia short of officers, but the bulk of the Militia officers were young men who joined in order to pass into the Regular forces. What was the result at the outbreak of the war? To take his own battalion, they went out with a full complement of officers, and before they had been at Malta long their officers were taken away in order to join the Regular forces. To endeavour to substitute auxiliaries for Regulars, without entirely changing the system whereby the auxiliary forces were officered, would be a most dangerous thing to undertake.
    There was the further question of whether auxiliary forces could stand the strain of a prolonged campaign—he did not mean either physically or morally, but he alluded to other matters which they had to attend to at home. When some of the Yeomanry had been out twelve months, hon. Members knew that demands wore made in that House that they should be brought home and others sent out in their place. Surely it did not strengthen Lord Kitchener's hands to have a large number of trained soldiers taken away and others who were untrained sent out to take their place. He ventured, therefore, to think that it was a very strange and novel doctrine that they should reduce their Regular forces and substitute auxiliary forces. He did not wish to depreciate the value of the auxiliaries. On the contrary, he valued them very highly, and he wished to point out that one of the best things in the scheme of the Secretary of State for War was that he was the first War Minister that had really paid any attention to the auxiliary forces. Was the right hon. Gentleman not to have any credit for that, and for organising the Yeomanry and getting rid of that sham of the old Militia Reserve, and substituting a real Reserve of Militia? And yet these things were all part of the scheme which hon. Members had condemned. Because the scheme of

    757
    the right hon. Gentleman assisted the auxiliary forces, and for the first time established some sort of system; because it increased the number of Regulars; and finally because it tackled the question of recruiting, and did something to solve that question, he thought the scheme ought to have a fair trial. Although he did not always support the Government, he would support them that night with the greatest confidence, feeling that, at all events on this occasion, they had endeavoured to meet the greatest difficulties, and they had tackled courageously and fearlessly a most difficult problem. He believed, if they allowed this system to develop, as it was developing at the present time, they would at least get an efficient Army. For these reasons be would give his vote against the Amendment and in favour of the Government.
    CAPTAIN SINCLAIRsaid he could not join in the approval which the hon. Member who had just sat down had showered upon the doings of the Secretary of State for War. In this scheme very little regard had been shown for that long-suffering person, the taxpayer. In no part of his duty had the Secretary of State for War laid himself so open to censure as in his position as a civilian Secretary of State standing against the interests of the taxpayer. The right hon. Gentleman was an elected Minister, and a member of the House of Commons, and his resjxmsibility was directly to the people of this country and to their pockets, and if he might suggest it—and he did so with the greatest respect—he thought the right hon. Gentleman had made a great mistake in endeavouring too much to popularise the Army. He recollected a phrase which the right hon. Gentleman used when he characterised himself as being "laagered round with civilians." And it struck him that this meant, from the point of view of Parliamentary control and the expenditure of the country, that by appointing a military head of the civilian department of the War Office, and other things that had happened of a like kind, the Secretary of State for War had so much weakened the guarantee they were entitled to claim from him in regard to economy. This was an old story, and the country went through it after the Napoleonic war, and the Duke of Wellington and other author-
    758
    ities could be quoted to show that the civilian sphere and the military sphere should be kept absolutely distinct, that one should not interfere with the other, and that only by that method of administration could they succeed in obtaining that strong Parliamentary and Administrative control which alone was a guarantee of economy. The blame which had been showered upon the Secretary of State had not been confined to him, and criticism had been directed at the War Office, by which, he supposed, was meant the Headquarters system of organising the Army. The War Office could not mean simply the officials at the War Office, because no praise was too high for the efforts they used during the late war to provide for the requirements of the Army in the held.
    The Government themselves were largely responsible for much of the blame which had been directed at the War Office during the last two or three years. The Secretary of State told them last night that a few years ago, if anybody asked what the requirements of the Army were in regard to foreign service, anyone would have said that to send 70,000 or 80,000 men abroad would be quite sufficient. In South Africa the Government undertook a war which involved the employment of three, or four, or five times that number of troops. Naturally there was a breakdown in the Hospital and the Remount Departments, and consequently the Government were themselves to blame for much of the criticism which had been directed to the War Office. But the Government had never admitted, what was the real truth, that they had undertaken the war in South Africa with a machine admittedly incapable of a sufficient output of troops to carry out so vast an undertaking. The Government were directly responsible for this, and it was a tremendous tribute to the system that it did so well as it undoubtedly did. With regard to the Army Corps Scheme, the Government and their supporters would share the responsibility. During the General Election of 1900, the main issues were two—the settlement in South Africa and Army Reform. In this matter the Government were too ambitious. The hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just sat down said that the criticism

    759
    passed upon this scheme was too premature. No one could have listened to the debate of the last few days without being convinced that it was not the criticism which was premature, but the scheme. Decentralisation was a very good thing, but it was very costly to start their Army Corps in times of peace on a war footing. It was very costly, and all the advantages of the Army Corps system could have been introduced perfectly easily and applied to our former system of distribution of troops in this country. The Government should not have yielded to the clamour of the moment, and brought forward an ambitious scheme which was entirely inapplicable to the needs of the country. He agreed that the moment of introducing this scheme was inopportune, and that the methods adopted were unsuited to the wants of this country.
    He rejoiced to think that though there had not been much expression of it in the House of Commons, the country was now beginning to look at the Bill. Comparisons had been made with the Navy. He would not enter into the differences which prevailed as to what proportion Navy expenditure should bear to Army expenditure, for he held that each service should be judged on its merits. But if they were to avoid excessive expenditure they must be more cautious in committing themselves to new expenditure. The Secretary for War had claimed that, after all, his scheme on]) ' involved an addition to a former addition, while it would add 5,000 troops. But that involved an outlay of £300,000 a year, apart from the provision of barracks. If they looked after small things, great things might be trusted to look after themselves. Everyone who had had anything to do with a constituency in which troops were quartered, or in which there was a dockyard or other Government establishment, knew perfectly well how vehement the opposition was to any reduction of the establishment, especially when it involved hardship or want of employment among the men working there. The fact was, that once we had put our neck in a collar of that kind it was extremely difficult to withdraw it. If this Government were to make a new departure to-morrow, it would be years before the effect of any economical arrangement could be seen, or before it made any
    760
    deep impression on the Estimates of the country. They were advised to change their system, but he must dissociate himself entirely from that view if it involved the abandonment of the linked battalion system. He differed from the hon. and gallant Gentleman who last spoke in his view that our Army system was devised and maintained for the purpose of sending expeditionary forces abroad. That was not the object of their system at all, although it was a heresy which was very widely spread. In The Times of that morning he found it stated—
    "The whole scheme is, in fact, based upon the notion that we must keep up a large and costly Army to defend the soil of this country, and then make it as suitable as we can for defending the Empire upon occasion. The opposite view is that we need an Army for the defence of the Empire, trained for modern war as no Army can be in this crowded country, and that, incidentally, we shall always have enough of that Army at home for all the domestic purposes for which Regular troops will be required.''
    The latter was exactly a description of what our present system was; it was, shortly, a system created and maintained in order to provide our necessary foreign garrisons, and that was the standpoint from which he ventured to criticise it. They were told that they must rely upon voluntary service. But the hon. Member for Oldham had reminded them that this country detested drill, while the hon. Baronet the Member for the Chippenham Division had said that the right hon. Gentleman, in not relying on the Volunteers, was stifling patriotism. In all endeavours to utilise and employ to the fullest extent the auxiliary forces of this country he was in the most hearty agreement, for, to his mind, the training of the Volunteer and Militia forces would enable them to cope, with the difficulty of providing foreign garrisons. There was an obligation upon this country to provide garrisons for India, for our coalingstations, for Egypt, and for South Africa, and it was the necessities of that obligation that measured the amount of the burden placed on the taxpayers of the country by the present establishment of our Regular Army. We had seen their system tested; indeed no system had ever been put to such a test as the present system of the linked battalions had been put to in the course of the South African War during the last three years. It was introduced against military opinion, it

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    was the subject of the most severe criticism, and it was no exaggeration to say that in the elasticity which it showed, in the number of the trained citizens which it provided for us in South Africa, and in its working, the system surpassed all expectations.
    He remembered very well that during the General Election a letter from Lord Lansdowne was published, in which his Lordship expressed exactly the same opinion; he said that if it had not been for the Cardwell system, and for certain changes introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stirling Burghs when Secretary of State for War, we should never have been able to do what we did in South Africa. Now that system relied upon voluntary effort. It was not sufficient to judge by the experience of the last twenty-four months: we all know the state of military enthusiasm which prevailed among the civilian population of this country, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago. Our circumstances materially differed from those which obtained on the Continent. We had no land frontier with troops of other nations drilling on our borders. There was a sense of security given to us by our insular position, which no amount of preaching was likely to root out of the minds of our people. He doubted very greatly whether we should be wise in relying to a greater extent than we did on voluntary effort. Still he did not think the remedy was to be found in changing the system. He doubted, too, if we should depend too greatly upon the recruiting results of the past year; to suppose that the present rate would be maintained was, he feared, to take too sanguine a view.
    There had, it must be remembered, been a recent rise in the pay of soldiers, and the acutest observer must be at a loss to say what the precise effect of that advance would be. We must not strain our military system too much: and certainly it ought not to be abandoned until we had a better one to substitute for it. It had never been proved that there was any other system which would do at a cheaper cost what this one was accomplishing. For himself he was quite open to conviction, but he would like to see any proposal worked out in pounds, shillings and pence before it was substituted for the
    762
    old one. The previous system had to be abandoned for the reason that it was too costly and because, although the pension list and the sick list involved heavy expenditure, we could not get good men. What were we to do? There was one thing we had done hitherto which we ought equally to do in the future, and not be placed in a position of too great importance. It related to the defence of our self-governing colonies. A suggestion had been thrown out that it would be a good thing to have an Army Corps in South Africa, that it would attract emigrants and be a good advertisement. So it might, but it would also be a very costly advertisement. He could not say what the cost would be, but as the expense of each man in our Army worked out at from £60 to £70 a year, it would be seen that to keep an Army Corps in South Africa would involve a very great outlay. We had other experience to go on. Before our present system was introduced we had troops in many Colonies, and in nearly every place where we had them we had wars which had to be paid for by the Exchequer. There were the several Kaffir wars, and there were the wars in New Zealand, and judging by past experience in regard to our self-governing Cokonies, we could not insist too strongly that self-government should carry with it the duty of self-defence, and that in the interests of economy and in the interests of the taxpayers of this country our responsibilities should be kept within limits. Twenty years ago there was not a leading Minister or Statesmen on either side of the House or in the country who did not declare that our Imperial responsibilities were large enough, and that we had territory enough to defend. In South Africa alone, since that time, we had added 1,250,000 square miles to our territory, to say nothing of what had been added in West and East Africa and in other quarters of the globe. A result of this war had been a further addition to our territory and responsibilities, and if our responsibilities were to continue to increase at the present ratio, the House and the country would never be able to keep the current expenditure within bounds. If we were to have any regard for economy, the House must retain its control over the expenditure on the naval and military

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    services, and although the phrase as to the control of the Treasury in the interests of the taxpayers was frequently used, there would be no real economy secured in regard to the Army and the Navy until the House itself was prepared to stand up for the rights of the taxpayers, and to take upon itself, through the Government for the time being, the full responsibility, unshared by any expert advice at all, for all expenditure on the defensive services.
    LORD ALWYNE COMPTONsaid he was one of those who rejoiced that at last there was a clear and definite issue raised as to what ought to be the magnitude of our land forces, and whether we were to recognise the obligations of the Empire or to run our Empire on the cheap. He had always longed for the moment to come when they could once and for all determine what should be the strength of the land forces of this country, and he confessed that he felt a certain amount of excitement when the Amendment under debate was put down on the Paper. He came down to the House with a fairly open mind, anxious to hear what the critics had to say and what charges were to be brought against the scheme already propounded by the Secretary of State for War. With regard to the speeches of the mover and seconder, and of those who supported them, he thought he might say, with all due respect, that they displayed what he might call a certain amount of shyness in grappling at close quarters with the real definite question of what the magnitude of our land forces should be. He might, perhaps, make an exception in the case of the hon. Member for Oldham, who did tackle the subject most boldly. But even he shared, with the others, what seemed to be a fundamentally defective conception of what the real requirements of the Army ought to be in that respect.
    They had listened to some speeches also from the Opposition Benches, to speeches by the Leader of the Opposition and those who sat behind him. And after listening most attentively to them he was struck by the fact that, in substance, the speakers on that side seemed to agree with the principle upon which the present scheme had been founded, although finally they said they regretted they must
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    vote for the Amendment. Indeed, the only criticism he could discover in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs was his criticism against the Secretary of State for War that he had not shown sufficient humour in the conception of his plan. He hardly knew how to interpret that criticism; he would have thought that a scheme of Army organisation would require to be approached with a feeling of deep seriousness, or were they to take it that in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman the scheme need not be looked upon from a serious point of view. Possibly that was not a surprising suggestion from one who was a Member of a Ministry which came to grief because it failed to keep sufficient gunpowder in hand for the needs of the Army. This question of Army reform was surely one of the greatest problems which the country could be called upon to solve. Hitherto many suggestions had been brought forward, but up to the present no satisfactory solution had been discovered. Much had been said in the course of the debate with regard to the Navy and the standard which had been set up as desirable to be maintained. But he would like to point out that the position of the Navy was not analogous to that of the Army. In reference to the Navy the public mind had been impressed to a certain extent with the idea that a given standard was necessary. It seemed to be agreed that the Navy should be of a magnitude equal to that possessed by the Navies of any other naval Powers combined. That might be an incorrect idea, and to his mind it was somewhat so. But at any rate it was the pivot upon which the discussions had been based and it was a standard which the public were able to understand. A standard for the Army, however, had never yet been arrived at, and the question they had to ask themselves was how such a standard was to be judged. Was it to be fixed in some proportion to that of the armies of great military Powers, or was it to be judged in some entirely different way. In his humble opinion they must adopt a different method. They could learn no lesson from the way in which Continental nations decided what the strength of their armies should be. There were considerations applicable to them which did not touch us. One of their chief objects

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    was to be able to quickly transform their armies from peace strength to war strength. We had not that consideration to keep in mind, because we had to make provision for small wars which were of annual occurrence. The Secretary of State for War had been bold enough to try and solve the problem, for when he came down to the House two years ago, and propounded his scheme, he used words in introducing it which seemed to embody the spirit by which it was necessary for us to be guided. He said that his proposal was to lay down what was necessary for the country, and then to find the proper resources for the required organisation. He could not understand how hon. Members could take up their present attitude. When the scheme was originally introduced it was received with acclamation, whereas now it was severely criticised. The bedrock of the question was the magnitude of the Empire. What did hon. Members moan by a large army? No military authority would deny that there must be a certain proportion of trained soldiers for the garrisoning of such places as Portsmouth, Plymouth, the Thames, the Tyne, and so forth, on which a raid might be made on the outbreak of war. The Navy occupied a different position to-day than in days gone by. Then our insular position was a source of strength, now it was a source of weakness. Other nations had constructed navies, so that in time of war our Navy would be occupied in protecting our trade routes. That being so, and bearing in mind the duties the Army had to perform, he could not agree with the contention that the proposed Army was a large one. Having supported the scheme on its introduction, he was prepared to support it now, and until the scheme proved to be a failure he would support the Government.
    *MR. ASQUITH (Eifeshire, E.): The proposition which is before us, taking as it does the form of an Amendment to the Address—very properly, in my judgment, for a subject so urgent and so important demanded the promptest and most comprehensive opportunities of discussion—necessarily involves, according to what I venture to think one of the least rational of our Parliamentary conventions, a vote of censure upon the Government; and it
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    may, therefore, very well be that when we come to the division to-night it may not meet with the acceptance of a majority of the House. It follows, therefore, that on an occasion of this kind the debate is of infinitely greater significance than the division; and no one who has followed this discussion during the two days it has lasted can, I think, fail to have been impressed by the striking, and in my experience almost unprecedented, consensus of opinion from both sides and almost every quarter of the House, not only as regards the defectiveness of the scheme of the Government, but what from a national point of view is of still greater moment, as regards the true lines upon which a well-conceived policy of Imperial defence ought to proceed. No such agreement, I think, would have been possible ten, or perhaps even five, years ago. To have shown that it exists is a service rendered by the hon. Member for Whit by which entitles him to public gratitude. I venture to think myself that this Amendment, and the discussion upon it, will be remembered as a landmark in the history of our administrative policy long after the six Army Corps of the right hon. Gentleman have vanished into the thin air which is their native element. Last night the Secretary of State, whose efforts for raising the material and other conditions of the soldier's life we all heartily acknowledge, rehearsed with some little complacency the improvements in Army administration of which he has been the author. He dwelt, with perhaps not unnatural satisfaction, upon the figures for recruiting for the past twelve months, which, it appears, exceed the record of the best year of which we had previously had experience. He produced and made the most of that wonderful piece of white paper—one of the most confused and confusing documents which it has ever been my fortune to attempt to understand—with the presumed object of proving to, I am afraid, a. rather sceptical world that these Army Corps of his, which have been calumniously represented as skeletons and shadows, are really a living and thriving family.
    I will not follow the hon. Member for Oldham in his brilliant, but, I must confess, rather pitiless diagnosis of the sad case of these ricketty infants. I prefer to point out to the right hon. Gentleman and the House, because I

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    think it is more relevant to the question raised by the Amendment, that assuming, as I will for the purposes of argument, that all the right hon. Gentleman's figures both as to recruiting and as to the composition and growth of the Army Corps are literally accurate, it does not in the least degree touch, or even approach, the gravamen of the charge which is made in the Amendment against this scheme. I will, for the purpose of argument, make that assumption. I think it is a very charitable and even a very generous assumption, because I rather gathered from the statement I heard from the noble Lord the Financial Secretary tonight, that as regards the first, presumably the best-equipped and most advanced, of these embryonic Army Corps, one battalion, for some reason or other, is still exercising its profession in Scotland, while I think four are either in South Africa or on their way from there. These are all arts of an Army Corps supposed to be permanently located at Aldershot. [" No."] However, Sir, I pass that by. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] I am stating admissions made by the Minister himself, but they are quite sufficient to show that the paper completeness of these Army Corps has very little correspondence with their actual condition. As I was saying, that does not touch the real gravamen of the case. One might almost be justified in saying that if a system is bad in principle, if it rests upon a vicious foundation, the more completely it is carried out, the worse may be expected to be the results. I will take, by way of illustration, the figures which the right hon. Gentleman quoted as regards recruits, and I will assume these figures to be right. I am not impeaching in the least degree the authenticity or the good faith of the statements that have been made. I should think there was an a priori probability that there would be a large increase in the number of recruits last year. The pay of the soldier has risen; a year hence it will be raised still further, in the case of soldiers who have served two years by as much as 6d. a day. Moreover, in some places the labour market has been greatly disorganised, and there has been a considerable want of employment. The point I submit to the House is this: When we criticise
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    the right hon. Gentleman's scheme, the question we have to consider is not what is the number of your recruits, but for what purpose are they being recruited—how are you going to use them? Some of them will fill the places of men who have been discharged, time-expired men, and so on; but how and for what purpose are those who represent the permanent addition to the Army going to be employed? Are they going to be trained and paid at the rate of something like £60 per head per annum to do that which could be done as well, or better, by our Volunteers, Yeomanry, and Militia? If so, the increase in the number of recruits, with the additional burden to the public finances, is not a gain, but rather the contrary. Are these men going to be employed to fill up the half-empty cadres of some unnecessary and ill-placed Army Corps? We are paying £5,000,000 a year more than we paid six years ago for the expenses, for the most part, of the rank and file of our Army; and the question this debate is intended to raise and, if possible, settle, is this: Are we, as compared with our position five years ago, getting value for that additional expenditure? It is not enough to say that you have got more men; it is not enough to say that they are better trained, better housed, better fed, better equipped; that in fact you have got a more efficient fighting machine, although I agree that if that is so it is so much to the good. There is a preliminary question which has to be answered, and that is, whether and how far these 54,000 additional men whom we have in the Regular Army as compared with the numbers in 1896 or 1897 are really needed for work which only a Regular Army is fitted to perform? Until you have answered that question and satisfied the House and public opinion that they are doing work which could not be as well done by somebody else, it is no use giving us these figures of recruiting.
    The right hon. Gentleman claims, and rightly claims, not to be judged by this or that detail, but by the general scope and results of his scheme. He claims that it is a great scheme of Army reform; and in his peroration last night, in which at one moment it seemed to me he assumed rather a pathetic tone, he almost adopted the attitude of a martyr about to be sacrificed by a bigoted and uninstructed public opinion on the altar of some great principle. He will

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    admit, he is bound to admit, that outside the War Office—I do not know what may be the state of opinion inside—his scheme has no champions and, as this debate has I think shown, very few apologists. How does he account for this? The right hon. Gentleman has a very simple hypothesis to account for it. He says that an Army reformer is almost always disparaged and misunderstood by his contemporaries, like one of those unfortunate pioneers or missionaries of truth who have to trust for their vindication to the more equitable judgment of a perhaps very remote posterity. But I am not sure myself that in these matters the present is always wrong and the future always right. Suppose that, with the best intentions in the world, the would-be reformer presents what he calls a reform, but which is not actually a reform, may not the fair and unbiassed opinion of the country be pronounced against it without the supposition that the objections proceed from bigotry, misconception, or prejudice, and still less—and I was rather sorry to hear the suggestion from the right hon. Gentleman—from petty grievances and personal disappointments? Why, anybody who has listened to this debate will see there is no foundation for any suggestion of that kind.
    Now, I wish in the very few moments I intrude upon the House—for the ground has been very completely covered during these two nights' debate—to present in the very broadest outline two or three fundamental objections that we take to the right hon. Gentleman's scheme. My first criticism upon it is this. The problem of national defence is a composite problem, in the solution of which both the Navy and the Army are interested, and both are entitled to be heard, and in the solution of which, in a country and, in an Empire situated as ours is, the Navy is entitled to the predominant voice. My first complaint against the scheme is that this composite problem of national defence has been approached by His Majesty's Government from one side only, and that the less important side. We know—we heard with gratification the recent announcement of the Prime Minister—that the Cabinet Committee or Council which looks after national defence is to be reinforced, and in some respects to have its composition changed; and what is the purpose of this change? It is, as I under-
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    stand it, that as between the two great Departments responsible for our national and Imperial defence there shall be a more constant interchange of ideas, and a more complete co-ordination of policy. Does this scheme spring out of such concerted action? Were the naval authorities consulted? Is there any naval authority in the House, or out of it, who can be vouched as an advocate or a supporter of it? We know that only last summer, when the Colonial Conference was assembled, and delegates from the Colonies were asked to consider what contributions they would recommend their constituents to make to the common burden of Imperial defence, two documents were produced, one containing the official view of the War Office, and (me that of the Admiralty, and these were totally different, fundamentally divergent one from the other. As the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean has more than once pointed out, if you take the total military and naval expenditure of the Empire—not merely of the United Kingdom, but of the Empire, the expenditure on the Army is something like £50,000,000, and upon the Navy something like £30,000,000—or, in' other words, the subsidiary force, the less important force from a national and Imperial point of view is the more expensive, and exacts the larger contribution from the taxpayers in the proportion of five to three. With these facts before us, and when we had in relation to the Colonial Conference these statements as unmistakable proof of the want of contact or co-ordination between these two great Departments, we are entitled to complain that a great scheme of national defence like this should be launched upon the solo authority of the War Office, and without any consultation with or approval from the more important and senior service. How far does that objection go? This scheme assumes that the Regular Army has a certain share—I will not discuss the precise quantity, but many of us think it has an excessive share—in the task of home defence. Now, we should very much like to know the opinion of the Navy and the Admiralty upon that. The hon. and gallant Member for Yarmouth, who is recognised as a great authority on these matters, in the speech he made before the dinner hour, rather sneered at the length he

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    conceived their new faith carried some of the converts to what is called the "blue water school." I do not know how that may be with others, but I hope I do not belong to the extreme "blue water school," if there be one, which suggests that we should get on well enough with the Navy alone without any Army. I doubt if any such school can be found outside a lunatic asylum. You want not only the "blue water," but the "thin red line; "and it is by combining the two by a co-ordinated policy arrived at and agreed upon between the two authorities that you can solve the problem of home defence.
    The fact is, that this scheme, presented two years ago, and which we are again asked to approve, was concocted in hot haste in the middle of the war, when many of the lessons of that war were not even taught, much less learned, marked, and digested, and when the War Office had to justify itself, when it had to divert public attention from the past, and had to convince the world that it was animated by a new spirit, and capable of a new departure. It was then this crude and ill-conceived scheme, which, the more it is considered the less it is seen to meet the requirements of the Empire, was launched. But I pass from that to a point which is of still greater and more general importance, and which embodies a still graver objection. We say of this scheme—and I think it has been abundantly demonstrated in the course of this debate—that it either ignores, or at any rate does not take due note of, the governing conditions of the problem of Imperial defence which it is intended or expected to settle. Those conditions are two. The first of them is, that ours is an Empire which for certain obvious physical and economical reasons always has depended, and now depends more than ever, both for defence and offence, upon sea power. And the second condition is this—that for the discharge of the functions, the important functions, the varied functions, but still subsidiary functions, in such an Empire, of what is properly called a Regular Army, we must depend, and must continue to depend, on a force recruited, not by any form of compulsion, but by voluntary enlistment. These are the two governing principles of the problem of Imperial defence. I will not dwell upon the first principle, which has now almost become a commonplace of the day, that
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    in the long run both defence and offence depend on sea power. But once we accept that principle, I agree with the hon. and gallant Member, who said that sea power means a navy having behind it such a degree of military force as would be necessary to make its action effective. There I think we all agree. But once start with the proposition that sea power is the governing factor, and you at once get rid of the notion that it is either necessary or expedient to keep a large and expensive body of regular troops constantly immured in these islands to repel an invasion. The dilemma has been put over and over again, and there is no escape from it. Either you maintain the command of the sea, or you lose the command of the sea. As long as you maintain it, invasion is out of the question; invasion is impossible. But the moment you lose the command of the sea it is not six, it is not sixteen, it is not sixty Army Corps that will save you from collapse, for the House well knows that it is not merely a question of invasion. When the command of the sea, and so long as the command of the sea, passes from our hands into the hands of our enemies, we who look for the means of subsistence and for the materials for our industries from abroad could be starved into submission in less time than it would take to mobilise an army.
    I need not say—except that one has to be careful in these matters, it is so easy to be misapprehended or misrepresented—we are all agreed that there may be accidents which would deprive us for the moment temporarily of the command of the seas. There might be that which fills many minds with apprehension, a raid or series of raids on our unprotected seaports. But no one supposes that we should denude the country of a sufficient land force to meet an emergency of that kind. On this point again we join issue with the Government; for here we look more and more to our Volunteers, to our Yeomanry and Militia. It is an ideal you cannot attain in a day, but you ought to make it your ideal that these are the forces to whom should be properly appropriated the task of dealing with homo defence. You should, in my opinion, develop this ideal. You should

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    encourage, you should inspire, you should aggrandise, you should magnify—you should give every possible consideration to these forces in order, as far as possible, to fit them for their proper position in any rational scheme of national defence. This is where we take issue, on this particular point, in regard to the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman. We say that under his scheme not only is there a large, but many of us think an excessive, share of this task still assigned to the Regular forces; but that by your organisation you mix thorn all up, Regular and auxiliary forces, higgledy-piggledy in a contused mass, making it still harder than before to work out a well-organised ideal of home defence.
    Well, there is one other point, one other test, to which a scheme of this kind should be subjected. We want, not for home defence—and on this proper stress must be laid—a mobile striking force which can be used for foreign service on those numerous occasions which, in an Empire like ours, periodically recur when we are obliged to send our troops on foreign expeditions. Does the scheme of the Government give us what we want thru? It is true it gives us on paper three permanently organised Army Corps intended for that purpose and for that purpose alone. For my part, I doubt more and more the more I hear the matter discussed whether for this purpose there is any necessity for the large addition made in recent years to our Regular forces. It is said that the war in South Africa has demonstrated that our Army is too small. I do not think that it demonstrates anything of the kind. It has taught us many—a great many—lessons; it has taught us the value of better information. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Oldham, who said that we might spare the staff of one of these Army Corps which at present do not appear to be in a very advanced stage of development, and devote the money to the better equipment of the Intelligence Department. But while the war has taught us many other lessons, I confess I do not sea that there is any evidence to support the contention of the right hon. Gentleman that we are justified in keeping up such an Army as he proposes in view of any of the
    774
    normal wars in which we may become engaged. I do not see the necessity of cooping up in this country throe complete Army Corps ready to be launched at a moment's notice for foreign service; and I do not see the necessity for it for home defence. For these reasons, whether the scheme is looked upon from the point of view of home defence or foreign service, our criticism is—first, this scheme is unsuited to the special requirements of the Empire—that, I think, has been established beyond all cavil in this debate—and, next, that it imposes an unnecessary, and therefore unjustifiable, burden on the taxpayers of the country. Under what circumstances is that burden sought to be imposed? We have just spent £250,000,000 on a great war, and have made an addition to the public debt which it will take the lifetime of a generation to wipe out. The income-tax is higher than it has ever been since the Crimean War. Sugar is taxed; coal is taxed; corn is taxed. You may say that the resources and the credit of the nation have proved equal, and more than equal, to the strain. So they have. But may we not well ask with your late Chancellor of the Exchequer—who was the first to ask it—whether those resources and that credit will continue to be equal to the strain if the military expenditure advances during the next ten years at the some ratio as it has done in the past? Meanwhile, do not let us forget that there are necessary and unavoidable social demands which are increasing day by day. There is not one of those great domestic questions, with the settlement of which most of us agree that our national welfare is bound up—education, housing, provision for old age, and the rest—there is not one of them that will not make year by year new and growing drafts on the Exchequer. National security, I agree, is the first of all our National needs. But to this scheme, framed as I believe it to be on a radically false conception, both of the functions of the Army and the needs of the Empire, imposing, as I believe it does, at a time of great strain and stress a wholly unnecessary and unwarrantable burden on the loaded shoulders of the taxpayers, I, for my part, shall continue to offer, as I have done from the first, an uncompromising opposition.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Mr. Speaker, I avow myself, and have always avowed myself, an admirer of the right hon. Gentleman's speaking, and for many reasons, but for this reason in particular—that he always goes straight to the heart of the controversy which he is engaged in. In this case I think he has not belied the reputation which his previous efforts in this House thoroughly deserve. He has not imitated those sitting on this side, nor has he followed their example in dragging into this controversy small points of administration, small questions arousing prejudice; he has gone straight to what is, after all, the heart of the question—whether we have or have not too large and too costly an Army for the needs and resources of the Empire. I think the right hon. Gentleman has done well. He has intervened in a debate which has had many curious circumstances—a debate in which a vote of censure has been elaborately moved from the side of the House on which the Government sit, which has been seconded from the same side of the House, and which, if the rumours that reach me are correct, is intended to be pressed by those who support it to the furthest lengths which their powers will enable them to go. That is, in my experience, a novelty. Of course, it is quite impossible that in a large Party, or even in a small Party, there should be absolute agreement even upon the great subjects with which this House is concerned. But I do not remember in my personal experience that such a course has been taken, not merely to express a difference of opinion, and to express it with every circumstance which can aggravate that difference of opinion, but to choose a moment for expressing it in which its acceptance by the House would constitute a vote of censure on the Government, of which the Gentlemen who have moved it are, I understand, ardent and faithful supporters. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for really having given only a few cursory sentences to the controversy with regard to the Army Corps. That has filled three-fourths of the remarks of other hon. Members—some serious, some humorous, some humorous which were intended to be serious, some serious which were intended to be humorous—but it has filled three-quarters of the other speeches which I have heard on this Amendment. And yet how small a matter that is compared with the real
    776
    issue before the House! After all, Army Corps are a method of organising the forces we possess in this island. At the time at my disposal I am not going to argue in detail whether organising the forces in this island by Army Corps, as compared with the plan of leaving them unorganised altogether, which is the alternative—[An HON. MEMBER: "No."]—if that be thought an extreme statement, I will say, as I wish to be moderate, that the question whether the best way of organising the Army within these shores is by means of Army Corps or by means of districts is a really relatively small and insignificant issue compared with the other issue before the House. For my part, I do not hesitate to say that the decision which the Government arrived at two years ago is a decision to which the Government still adhere. We still think that an organisation for Army Corps has the enormous advantage in time of peace that it facilitates decentralisation, and has the enormous advantage in time of war that if any large bodies of troops are to be sent abroad they can be sent abroad in an organised condition. And if it were worth while to make quotations from expert authorities, I could quote speeches, for example, from so great an authority as the Member for the Forest of Dean, who made bitter complaints of the absence of this very kind of organisation when we were occupied in sending out almost all our Regular forces to South Africa. I do not mean to dwell upon that, because I have more important subjects on which I have to address the House. I only regret that, in the speeches of the hon. Members who have criticised the military policy of the Government this comparatively insignificant detail has figured so largely, and the really important questions have only appeared at the tail-end of their orations. The real question we have to ask ourselves is this—Is the Army which we have provided too large, or is it not? If it be too large, what matter whether it be arranged in Army Corps or not? That is a small matter. If it be too large, surely the House will not occupy two days on a vote of censure on the King's Speech in discussing such a small matter as the particular form of organisation which this Army ought to have.

    777
    To the question, therefore, whether we have or have not provided too large an Army, I now proceed to address myself. And let me, in approaching that subject, put aside some points about which we all agree, and some about which there may, perhaps, be only slight diversity. One of the points about which, if we are not all agreed, there is not any great diversity of opinion, is that if we are to have an Army of the size which we have provided, that Army could not probably be brought into existence and organised at any less cost than we are asking the House to furnish. There may be, and probably are, Army reformers listening to me at this moment who think they have a plan to provide the force which my right hon. friend provides at less cost to the Exchequer than he has provided it. But I think, on the whole, I shall carry the House with mo when I say the charge against us is not that if we have this large number of men we are paying too much for them, but that we ought not to have so large a number of men. That is the first point which I ask the House to agree with me in putting aside. The second point is incomparably more important, and it relates to the primacy as between the Fleet and the Army, in the whole question not merely of national defence, but of Imperial strategy. Nobody, of course, nowadays is so foolish as to suggest a doubt that in the circumstances of the British Empire the Fleet stands first from every point of view. It stands first as absolutely essential to the defence of our shores; it stands first because it is absolutely essential to the defence of our commerce; it stands first because it is essential for the defence of our Colonies; and it also stands first because it is impossible that any military operations beyond the sea should take place unless we have a Fleet to protect it. And, of course, it is admitted on all hands, and by every person who has given even the most cursory attention to the subject, that the Fleet is the leading element, and the most essential element, in our whole plan of Imperial strategy. But I have heard some Gentlemen—and I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down amongst them—arguing from this indisputable premiss that we ought always to spend a great deal more upon our Fleet than we do upon our Army. The argument is really an
    778
    irrational argument. It does not follow that the expenditure on the Army and on the Fleet must necessarily be proportionate to their relative importance. You might as well say that, as bread is a prime necessity of life, no man ought to spend more on any other part of his household expenditure than he spends upon bread. I hope, therefore, we may hear no more of this fallacy of proportion, of which we have heard so much in some of the speeches of this debate.
    Then the third point on which we may approach—I do not say we shall reach—agreement is that it is in the main upon the Volunteer forces, or the citizen forces, of this kingdom that we must depend for our home defence. I entirely agree with the proposition that has been laid down by the right hon. Gentleman with an air of paradox and as if he were endeavouring to impress this thesis on a reluctant Government. It is the very principle on which the Government has proceeded in all their reorganisation. In our view that is the very ground on which we have proceeded. Our view is that, for reasons I shall develop directly, we must have three Army Corps for Imperial work outside these islands; and if you eliminate for the purposes of home defence these three Army Corps, and consider the composition of the three remaining Army Corps, any Gentleman who has read the White Paper will see that the forces in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Army Corps are really more in the nature of a stiffening and assisting element than in the nature of the main force on which we are relying. Any Gentleman can verify what I am going to say by referring to the Paper; and they will see that, as far as infantry is concerned, the Regulars supply fourteen battalions and the Auxiliaries sixty-one; while of the cavalry five are provided by Regulars and ten by Auxiliaries. Therefore let us all agree that on the citizen and Volunteer forces we depend for national defence. I heard my right hon. friend attacked in the course of the debate for having undervalued, ignored, and snubbed the Volunteer force. I am prepared to show that the Government—I will not say my right hon. friend, because he is a member of the Government who are responsible for and who are sharers in the work he is

    779
    carrying on—the Government, in my judgment, have shown themselves more anxious, more desirous of making the Auxiliary forces an efficient part of our national defence, and have done more to fulfil that in every respect than any of their predecessors. I am not going into details. I am not going to mention any monetary improvements in the position of the Volunteers in any way, but the purely military reforms which we have carried into effect in the last two years. We have provided the Volunteers with heavy guns of the most advanced pattern. for which they have been asking for years. We have done all we can to improve the position of the Militia, and we have created a great Militia Reserve, for which I think every Gentleman who has spoken on both sides of the House has thanked us. We are doing our best to provide all the training and all the inspection which would make the Volunteer force all it should be; and I think that to contend that, because my right hon. friend has endeavoured by the proposals he has made to raise the efficiency of the Volunteers, be has therefore done otherwise than to deserve well of the Volunteers is surely, to direct against the Volunteers the greatest insult you can imagine.
    I have omitted, perhaps, the greatest reform for which we may claim gratitude—I mean the reconstitution of the Yeomanry—which has had the happiest effect, which has re-ally met with no serious criticism, but has for the first time provided a great body of mounted troops, invaluable should this country be invaded, and invaluable should the force be required elsewhere. I really think that those who say we have undervalued the Volunteers, the citizen elements of the forces of the country, wholly misunderstand the situation. On the contrary, we have paid them the highest compliment we could. We appeal to them as a real force on which we have to depend in case of emergency; and I do not doubt the appeal we have made will find an echo all through the country, and we shall be able, when the bitterness of this immediate controversy is past, to look back upon this period as an epoch in the history of the citizen army of this country, and to get then the increased
    780
    efficiency from which we and those who come after us will reap infinite benefit. Having thus dealt with points on which, I think, agreement may be reached, I come now to a point on which we differ. The point made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the point made, as far as I can discover, by every speaker on this side of the House when he came to the real kernel of the dispute, is the difference between those who accept, and those who do not accept, the Government principles of Army administration. And what is that central difference? The central difference is this: Do we, or do we not, in addition to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Army Corps, mianly composed of Auxiliaries, and mainly required for home defence—do we, or do we not, require troops equivalent to three additional Army Corps for work outside the shores of these islands? It is on that point—which is the critical point of this debate and the one of real importance when we come to divide to-night—that I would venture to say a word to the House. We have heard a great deal of what the Fleet can do; and the Fleet can do much; but it cannot do everything. All the Fleet can possibly do, as far as I am aware, is to protect these shores, to protect our commerce, to destroy or to contain the fleets of the enemy, and to embarrass the enemy's trade. I believe that this list exhausts the whole of the capacity of a fleet, howsoever big or well-equipped it may be, or howsoever superior to a force that may be brought against it. You cannot bring a war, to an end by the Fleet, you cannot even strike a heavy blow at most of the enemies with whom we may conceivably have to deal. I do not develop that thesis, because I really do not think it can be denied; but I am prepared to do so if anyone questions it. Then how are you to supplement the Fleet? Every writer on strategy I have ever heard of, Admiral Mahan, who is a great authority on sea power, and others, have all agreed in telling you that after the command of the sea has been secured, then the Fleet is only useful as making absolutely secure some military operations on a foreign theatre. How are you going to do that with your citizen army? How

    781
    are you going to do that without these Army Corps of Regular troops? You cannot do it. I think my hon. friend the Member for Oldham said that a Fleet gave you time, and that if you had time you could create, equip, and drill an Army; and that, with time, having equipped and drilled it, that Army would be useful for offensive purposes. Does my hon. friend really think it is business to say that we are to carry on a maritime warfare for one, two, or three years while we are drilling a Regular Army for the purpose of finishing the war?
    MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: I submit to my right hon. friend that it would be better than not being able to carry on a maritime warfare, and consequently not being able to realise the latent resources that you have.
    *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I thought my hon. friend was going to interrupt me to say that I had misinterpreted him, but he took the opportunity of continuing the debate. He will therefore permit me, perhaps, to complete my argument, which is that to spend one, two, or three years, by means of your Fleet, in developing what he calls our latent resources would, I think, in the opinion of every strategist who has ever written, be a very inconvenient, expensive, and destructive way of carrying on a great war. Very well, then, I hope if I have so far carried the House with me they will admit that here is one most important object which we can only attain by an organised body of Regular troops available for service outside these shores. Let us dismiss therefore these dilemmas constantly put before us such as, "Are you going to use your Army?" "Are you going to land on some foreign shore with 50,000 or 100,000 men?" or "Are you going to fight with some foreign Power which has one, two, or three million armed men at its disposal? "Why, of course you are not going to. But I would remind my hon. friend and the House that that does not exclude the possibilities of offensive action in time of war; and it would be folly to deprive ourselves of the power of exercising such offensive action if the proper time should arise.
    But there is a more important object for which the organised body of troops
    782
    available for service beyond the seas is absolutely necessary, and that is the defence of India. The defence of India has been touched upon by more than one speaker, by my hon. friend the Member for Whit by, who moved the Amendment, and by another hon. Member who spoke late last night, each of them mentioning the possible danger only to deride it. My hon. friend the Member for Whit by has travelled over the Indian frontier, and he tells us that the result of his observation is that the Indian frontier is impregnable. My hon. friend the Member for Plymouth has travelled in Central Asia, and he assures us from his experience and observation that it is impossible, with such means of communication as Russia possesses, for her to concentrate any large body of troops on the Indian frontier. My hon. friend the Member for Whit by thinks the passes leading into India are unassailable. My hon. friend the Member for Plymouth, who has evidently suffered a good deal in the process, says that the Russian lines are so abominably laid that the trains do not go more than six and a half miles an hour, and that the rolling stock is wholly inadequate. And in addition to the opportunities of personal observation which my two hon. friends have had on this very important question, they have each had the good fortune to meet an expert in the course of their travels who has given them valuable information. My hon. friend who travelled in Central Asia met an Indian expert, and my hon. friend who travelled upon the Indian frontier met a Russian expert. And while the Russian expert said that Russia could not invade India if it would, and would not if it could, the Indian expert said that, whether Russia invaded it or not, the forces at present in India were amply sufficient to repel any hostile attack. I think that a war between Russia and Great Britain is to the last degree improbable, and I presume that a war between Germany and Russia is to the last degree improbable. But what would be thought of the German military authorities if they had not, however remote such a contingency, thought out all the military difficulties winch it involved, and had not prepared, to the best of their ability, for dealing with it? In the same way, though I regard the contingency as in the highest degree improbable, I cannot of course forget, when

    783
    I am required to deal with the strategic and military question, that the frontier of India is the only part of the British Empire where it may be said to be militarily adjacent to a first-class military Power; and it is impossible that we should not therefore consider that as the key of our military position.
    And let me say here that, so far as I understand the military problem as presented by the British Empire, it is not the problem of home defence which settles, or ought to settle, the magnitude of the British Army. It is the question of what that Army may be called upon to do in spheres of action far removed from these shores. I am very reluctant to express any difference of opinion with hon. friends of mine who, with a considerable military knowledge which I do not possess, have done what I have never done—namely, visited the important scenes with which we are concerned—and have studied the means of access to the Western frontier of India which Russia may possess, and have studied the character of the passes through which any advance to India must be made. But I am bound to say that I am not aware of a single military authority who has been responsible for giving an opinion upon this question, whether that military authority has been Indian or English, whether he has studied it from the British or from the Oriental point of view, who takes the sanguine and optimistic view of my two hon. friends. I think we have been asked in the course of this debate by more than one speaker how it comes about that the force which presumably the Government six or seven or more years ago thought sufficient for Imperial needs, and, among other things, for the defence of India, is no longer thought sufficient. Events move rapidly in Central Asia, and we have necessarily to consider how far the strategic position of Russia has improved in that time.
    784
    It has improved year by year, I had almost said month by month, in the character of its communications between those great passes and the points at which, if unhappily, though I believe most improbably, hostilities were to break out, this force would be required. I do not pretend to give a final or considered judgment on this point. It is one full of difficulty—difficulty which I do not wish to minimise—and full of complexity. It is one of the questions which, of course, has been strenuously worked at by the Defence Committee. But I feel myself authorised, I feel myself bound, to go this far to-night—to repeat what I have already said to the House, that, whatever final judgment may be passed by the Committee of Defence upon this great strategic problem, no authority except my two hon. friends and the Russian and the Indian generals has, so far as I know, ever had the courage to say that in the unhappy, the improbable but, I suppose, in debates of this character we must say the conceivable, case of a war with Russia we should require not merely the force which we have in India at this moment, but a force much beyond what the Government propose to put at the disposal of the Sovereign. Well, Sir, if that be so, what becomes of the central issue, the central argument, the central debate which we are having to-night? It is not a question of this or that Minister. It is not a question of the organisation of the Army Corps. It is a question of the amount of forces which this country requires to do its Imperial work. After this debate I cannot help thinking how happy is the fate of the French, the German, or the Russian Minister of War, who has the magnitude of his Army settled for him by the magnitude of the population of the country to which he belongs, all of whose questions of strategy lie plain and simple before him, with

    785
    none of the perplexities and troubles which inevitably beset any Government dealing with military questions in this country, and which it has to settle as best it may. And, Sir, these difficulties, inherent in the complexity of our military problem are, I am bound to say, greatly increased by the changing tempers, the changing passions, of the public whom we serve, and of the House of Commons on whom we depend. I believe that mariners whose unlucky star brings them into conflict with a tropical tornado have first the unpleasant experience of facing a hurricane driving from the east. If they are lucky enough to survive it, they come for a short space into calm water, and. as they sail on, they cut into a hurricane equally violent which blows from the west. Well, one of those circular storms is being faced by His Majesty's Government at the present moment. Conceive a man who went into some Rip-Van-Winkle slumber in the middle of the controversy raised by the earlier stages of the South African War. He would go to sleep with ringing in his ears' "Organisation,'' "Numbers," ".More troops"—as the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke clamoured for them only two years ago—"More troops," "Better organisation." And I suppose his dreams would go on with these words ringing in his ears. He would awake two years after only to discover that the lessons of the South African war were that we were to have fewer troops and no organisation. However much his historical studies might have prepared him for these alternations between the hot and cold fit, I think both the rapidity and the magnitude of the change would give him sufficiently considerable cause for astonishment.
    786
    Now, Sir, I do not wish to blow the trumpet of the Government in this matter of Army reform. But I do think that we have deserved well of the country in circumstances which everybody must admit were circumstances of great difficulty. We had a war which required us to send out a body of troops incomparably greater than our present critics think the British Empire is ever going to send out again. The Reserve was heavily drawn upon and necessarily seriously impaired by the great strain of the long war. We had to face a heavy problem of recruiting; we had a great, many reforms of a minor character to carry out. I believe that in all these cases we have done everything that could possibly be expected from us. I have shown how much we have endeavoured to do to make the Volunteers all that they can be, and ought to be, and will be, as an element in our great citizen Army. The depleted Reserves are rapidly being filled by the measures that we have proposed. Recruiting is admittedly a difficulty. The difficulties of recruiting have not been surmounted—and who can say what the future of recruiting may be? I admit I cannot. It is the standing difficulty of all Governments and Ministers for War—but, at all events, so far as we can see, by our immediate measures the recruiting difficulty has been met as no one would venture to say it would be. The position of the soldiers has been enormously improved; armaments have been greatly improved; the Medical Corps has been greatly improved. I do not believe there is a single branch connected with the Army in which the beneficent action which we have taken in the last two or three years will not be felt for many, many years. But, Sir, do I claim that the decisions that we have

    787
    come to are final and irreversible? We have refused deliberately to lower the Army beyond what we think the proper strength required by the needs of the Empire; but, if we ourselves, on a more careful revision of the facts, or if our successors after us come to a different conclusion, there is nothing we have done which prevents us or them from making the necessary changes and introducing the consequent diminution in our expenditure. I greatly doubt whether any study we can give to the strategic problems of this Empire is likely to show that, in the future, any great diminution in our armaments, or of the cost of our armaments, is likely or possible. In any case, it will be for the future to judge. What has to be judged now by the House is whether or not they will continue to the Government—whose military policy I have just sketched, and whose policy on other matters it would be inopportune to touch on—whether they will continue to this Government their confidence or whether they will not. My hon. friend the Member for Plymouth, indeed, informed us last night that, in pressing this matter to a division, he and his friends have no desire to do an injury to the Government, or even to my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War. He acted for the good of his soul, not for the injury of his official career or the position of the Government of which he is an honoured Member. My hon. friend is not a very old Member of this House; had he been so I am sure he could not have advanced a proposition of that kind, which, to those of longer experience, is obviously from a Parliamentary point of view absurd. The vote of to-night is, and cannot but be, a vote of confidence. It is a vote of confidence from which I, at all events, do not shrink, by which I mean that the policy which is attacked is
    788
    one in which I believe. With us is the unpopularity of the heavy Army expenditure, and the taxation which that Army expenditure involves, and the financial difficulty and cost and criticism which it naturally provokes. Yes, Sir, that is so, and we do not shrink from that responsibility. If we see, and when we see, any reasonable ground for thinking that the financial burden may be diminished, the financial strain relaxed, we shall not hesitate to come down to the House and tell them with the utmost satisfaction both of the changed circumstances which have changed our opinion and the consequent relief to the taxpayer which the change of policy may bring with it. But until that time comes we should be utterly contemptible if in obedience to a natural, though I think an unfortunate, change in public opinion we were to admit for a moment that we did not believe that the forces we have asked for are forces necessary for the safety of the Empire; if we were to diminish by a jot, if, after having gone to the country and made Imperial speeches for four years, we wore to go back to them and say: "Imperialism was all very well when it was popular, was all very well before the public realised what it cost, but now that the cost has been realised and now that in consequence it is a little less popular, we will change our scale of demand for Imperial defence, and we will trim our sails to suit the changing gales of popular favour." That would, in my judgment, be utterly contemptible, and if the House desires that an Army scale should be adopted which we think inadequate to the needs of the Empire which we serve, it is to another Government that they must look.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes, 145; Noes, 261 (Division List No. 7.)

    AYES.

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

    Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

    Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbt. Hy.

    Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tyd)

    Robson, William Snowdon

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Harmsworth, R. Leicester

    Rose, Charles Day

    Barren, Rowland Hirst

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Runciman, Walter

    Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

    Hayne, Rt. Hon. Chas. Seale

    Russell, T. W.

    Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

    Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Chas. H.

    Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

    Bell, Richard

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitehapel)

    Black, Alexander William

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    Schwann, Charles E.

    Bolton, Thomas Dolling

    Horniman, Frederick John

    Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)

    Bowles, Capt. H. P. (Middx.)

    Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

    Shackleton, David James

    Bowles, T. G. (Lynn Regis)

    Joicey, Sir James

    Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

    Brand, Hon. Arthur G.

    Jones, David B. (Swansea)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Brigg, John

    Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

    Simeon, Sir Barrington

    Bryce, Right Hon. James

    Kearley, Hudson E.

    Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

    Burns, John

    Kemp, Lieut.-Colonel George

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Buxton, Sydney Charles

    Kitson, Sir James

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Caldwell, James

    Lambert, George

    Speneer, Rt Hn. C. R. (Northants)

    Cameron, Robert

    Layland-Barratt, Francis

    Stevenson, Francis S.

    Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

    Leese, Sir Jos. F. (Accrington)

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Causton, Richard Knight

    Levy, Maurice

    Tennant, Harold John

    Cawley, Frederick

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

    Churchill, Winston Spencer

    Lough, Thomas

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorggn, E.)

    Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark)

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

    Cremer, William Randal

    M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

    Thomas, F. Freeman (Hastings)

    Crombie, John William

    M'Kenna, Reginald

    Thomas, J. A. (Glamorgan Gower)

    Dalziel, James Henry

    Malcolm, Ian

    Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.)

    Davenport, William Bromley

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Tomkinson, James

    Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Toulmin, George

    Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.)

    Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Dickson-Povnder, Sir John P.

    Morley, Rt. Hn. John (Montrose)

    Wallace, Robert

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Monlton, John Fletcher

    Walton, John Lawson (Leeds, S.)

    Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

    Newnes, Sir George

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Duncan, J. Hastings

    Norman, Henry

    Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

    Dunn, Sir William

    Norton, Capt. Cecil William

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Edwards, Frank

    Nussey, Thomas Willans

    Weir, James Galloway

    Ellis, John Edward

    Palmer, Sir Charles M. (Durham)

    Welby, Lt-Col A. C. E. (Taunton)

    Emmott, Alfred

    Parker, Sir Gilbert

    White, Luke (York, E. R.)

    Evans, Saml. T. (Glamorgan)

    Partington, Oswald

    Whiteley, George (York, W. R.)

    Farquharson, Dr. Robert

    Paulton, James Mellor

    Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

    Fenwick, Charles

    Pemberton, John S. G.

    Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

    Perks, Robert William

    Wilson, Fred. W. (Norfolk, Mid.)

    Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)

    Furness, Sir Christopher

    Price, Robert John

    Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

    Gibbs, Hn. Vicary (St. Albans)

    Rea, Russell

    Woodhouse, Sir J. T (H'ddersf'd)

    Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert J.

    Reckitt, Harold James

    Yoxall, James Henry

    Gordon, Maj. Evans (Tr. H'ml'ts)

    Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries)

    Grey, Rt. Hn. Sir E. (Berwick)

    Rickett, J. Compton

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Rigg, Richard

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Beckett and Major Seely.

    Grest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

    Roberts, John (Eifion)

    Gurden, Sir W. Brampton

    Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

    NOES.

    Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

    Barry, Sir Fras. T. (Windsor)

    Cayzer, Sir Charles William

    Aird, Sir John

    Bartiey, Sir George C. T.

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Allhusen, Aug. Henry Eden

    Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benj.

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J A (Worc)

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Bignold, Arthur

    Chaplin, Right Hon. Henry

    Archdale, Edward Mervyn

    Bigwood, James

    Chapman, Edward

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Blundell, Colonel Henry

    Charrington, Spencer

    Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

    Bond, Edward

    Clare, Octavius Leigh

    Arrol, Sir William

    Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

    Clive, Captain Percy A.

    Atkinson, Right Hon. John

    Bousfield, William Robert

    Cochrane, Hon. T. H. A. E.

    Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.

    Brassey, Albert

    Cohen, Benjamin Louis

    Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

    Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

    Collings, Right Hon. Jesse

    Bailey, James (Walworth)

    Brown, Sir Alx. H. (Shropsh.)

    Colomb, Sir John Chas. Ready

    Brain, Colonel James Robert

    Bull, William James

    Colston, Chas. Edw H. Athole

    Baird, John George Alexander

    Rurdett-Coutts, W.

    Compton, Lord Alwyne

    Balcarres, Lord

    Butcher, John George

    Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

    Baldwin, Alfred

    Campbell, Rt Hn J. A. (Glasg.)

    Crobett, A. Cameron (Glasg.)

    Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Man'r)

    Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

    Corbett. T. L. (Down, North)

    Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

    Cautley, Henry Strother

    Cox, Irwin Edwd. Bainbridge

    Balfour, Rt. Hn. G. W. (Leeds)

    Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lxncs.)

    Craig, Charles C. (Antrim, S.)

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Cavendish, V C W (Derbysh.)

    Cranborne, Lord

    Cripps, Charles Alfred

    Jessel, Capt. Herbert Merton

    Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

    Cross, H. Shepherd (Bolton)

    Johnstone, Heywood

    Renwick, George

    Crossley, Sir Savile

    Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop)

    Ridley, Hn. M. W. (Stalybridge)

    Cubitt, Hon. Henry

    Keswick, William

    Ridley, S. Forde (BethnalGreen)

    Denny, Colonel

    Kimber, Henry

    Ritchie, Rt Hn. Chas. Thomson

    Dewar, Sir T. R. (Tr. Haml'ts)

    King, Sir Henry Seymour

    Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

    Dickinson, Robert Edmond

    Knowles, Lees

    Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

    Dickson, Charles Scott

    Lambton, Hon. Fredk. Wm.

    Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

    Dimsdale, Rt. Hon. Sir Jos. C.

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow

    Rothschild, Hn. Lionel Walter

    Disraeli, Goningsby Ralph

    Lawrence, Sir Jos. (Monm'th)

    Round, Rt. Hon. James

    Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon

    Lawson, John Grant

    Royds, Clement Molyneux

    Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir J. E.

    Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

    Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

    Doughty, George

    Llewellyn, Evan Henry

    Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

    Lockie, John

    Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

    Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

    Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

    Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

    Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

    Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir Wm. Hart

    Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham)

    Saunderson, Rt. Hn Col. Edw. J.

    Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

    Long, Rt. Hn. W. (Bristol, S.)

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

    Fardell, Sir T. George

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

    Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Ed.

    Lowther, Rt. Hon. Jas. (Kent)

    Sharpe, William Edward T.

    Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

    Loyd, Archie Kirkman

    Shaw-Stewart, M. H. (Renfrew)

    Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

    Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

    Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

    Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

    Lucas, Reg'ld J. (Portsmouth)

    Skewes-Cox, Thomas

    Fisher, William Hayes

    Macdona, John Gumming

    Sloan, Thomas Henry

    Flannery, Sir Fortescue

    M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

    Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

    Flower, Ernest

    M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

    Smith, H C. (North'mb Tyneside)

    Forster, Henry William

    Majendie, James A. H.

    Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.)

    Galloway, William. Johnson

    Martin, Richard Biddulph

    Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)

    Gardner, Ernest

    Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

    Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich)

    Gibbs, Hn A. G. H (City of Lond)

    Maxwell, W. J. H (Dumfriessh.)

    Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk)

    Godson, Sir Augustus Fredk.

    Melville, Beresford Valentine

    Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

    Gordon, Hn. J. E. (Elgin & Nairn)

    Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

    Stock, James Henry

    Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

    Middlemore, John Throgmorton

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Gore, Hn. G. R. C. Ormsby (Salop)

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Strutt Hon. Charles Hedley

    Goschen, Hon. Geo. Joachim

    Milvain, Thomas

    Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

    Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

    Mitchell, William

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Greene, Sir E. W. (Bury St. Ed.)

    Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

    Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.)

    Greene, Hy. D. (Shrewsbury)

    Montagu, Hon J. Scott (Hants.)

    Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

    Gretton, John

    Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

    Thorburn, Sir Walter

    Greville, Hon. Ronald

    More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Guthrie, Walter Murray

    Morgan, David J (Wakhamst'w)

    Tollemache, Henry James

    Hain, Edward

    Morrell, George Herbert

    Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

    Hall, Edward Marshall

    Morrison, James Archibald

    Tritton, Charles Ernest

    Halsey, Rt. Hop. Thomas F.

    Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

    Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

    Hambro, Charles Eric

    Mount, William Arthur

    Tuke, Sir John Batty

    Hamilton, Rt Hn Ld. G. (Midx)

    Muntz, Sir Philip A.

    Valentia, Viscount

    Hamilton, Marq. of (Londondy)

    Murray, Rt Hn. A Graham (Bute)

    Walker, Col. William Hall

    Hanbury, Rt, Hn. Robt. Wm.

    Myers, William Henry

    Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

    Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashfd)

    Newdegate, Francis A. N.

    Webb, Colonel William George

    Hare, Thomas Leigh

    Nicholson, William Graham

    Welby, Sir Charles G. E. (Notts.)

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Nicol, Donald Ninian

    Wharton, Rt. Hn. John Lloyd

    Haslett, Sir James Horner

    Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

    Whiteley, H. (Ashtonund, Lyne)

    Heath, Arthur H. (Hanley)

    Peel, Hn. Wm. Robt. Wellesley

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

    Heaton, John Henniker

    Percy, Earl

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Helder, Augustus

    Pilkington, Lieut-Col. Richard

    Willox, Sir John Archibald

    Henderson, Sir Alexander

    Platt-Higgins, Frederick

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Plummer, Walter R.

    Wilson, John (Glasgow)

    Hickman, Sir Alfred

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)

    Hobbouse, Rt Hn H. (Somerset E.)

    Pretyman, Ernest George

    Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R. (Bath)

    Hogg, Lindsay

    Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

    Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart

    Hope, J. F. (Sheff., B'tside)

    Purvis, Robert

    Wrightson, Sir Thomas

    Horner, Frederick William

    Pym, C. Guy

    Wylie, Alexander

    Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

    Randies, John S.

    Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

    Hoult, Joseph

    Rankin, Sir James

    Houston, Robert Paterson

    Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

    Howard, J. (Midd., Tott'ham)

    Ratcliff, R. F.

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Alexander Acland Hood and Mr. Anstrather.

    Hudson, George Bickersteth

    Rattigan, Sir William Henry

    Jameson, Major J. Eustace

    Reid, James (Greenock)

    Jeffreys, Rt. Hn. Arthur Fred

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Main Question again proposed. Debate arising; and, it being after Midnight, the debate stood adjourned. Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

  LIGHT LOCOMOTIVES (IRELAND) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till This day.
  Adjourned at live minutes after Twelve o'clock.