KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).

HC Deb 22 February 1905 vol 141 cc911-64

Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Main Question [14th 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. Mount.)

Question again proposed.

CAPTAIN NORTON (Newington, W.)

, in bringing forward the Motion which stood in his name on the Paper expressed his firm belief that if it were not for the strength of Party ties a large proportion of hon. Members opposite would vote for it, and few, if any, of the Service Members would fail to give it their support. He made that statement because, for the last ten years, members of the Service Committee had year after year brought under the notice of the Government many shortcomings of the Army and many matters in which it was deficient as regarded its efficiency for the defence of the Empire. After these ten years the position of the Army was such that it had been described by the Secretary for War as being in a condition which constituted a grave danger to the Empire. It was in that condition, in his opinion, because professional advice had been disregarded in order to gain a Party advantage, and the result was chaos in the War Office and discontent in the ranks of His Majesty's land forces, and that in spite of the fact that they had had in succession as Secretaries for War three capable men, all of whom had had considerable experience in Army matters prior to accepting office. They also had been assisted by two of the most experienced and most distinguished of British officers, and the last Secretary for War had been aided and abetted by a. Council of distinguished soldiers.

He had said that this condition of affairs had been produced because the well-being of the Army had been made subservient to political considerations, and he now desired to show the result of continuous and continuing changes with respect to the Army, coupled with negligence and mismanagement. For the first four of the ten years to which he had referred a certain military policy was pursued, and it was held that we should always have two Army Corps complete in every respect and ready for service beyond the seas and, in addition, sufficient seasoned and trained men to supply our garrisons in India and elsewhere, and to furnish forces in this country to defend it against raids during the temporary absence of, or during temporary mishaps to, our Navy. The present Government were responsible for the well-being of the Army for nearly four years, and when the war took place what occurred? He was told personally over and over again by the Secretary for War that these two Army Corps were ready in every detail, though he pointed out several details in which they were defective, and when the war broke our and one Army Corps had been mobilised and a fraction of another, the remaining portion of the two Army Corps was found to be deficient in almost every respect. In this matter hon. Members who had seen a little mote in the eye of the Liberal Government with reference to cordite failed to see the beam in their own eye with reference to the shortage of guns. He need only instance one item to illustrate that point. The Inspector General of Ordnance said he found that there were 326 machine guns deficient in the authorised number. He hoped that no attempt would be made that day, as had been frequently done by politicians, to shelter themselves behind the soldiers, these unfortunate soldiers being absolutely under their thumb. What occurred in regard to that particular question? Lord Wolseley, a man who had done great service to the country in his time, for years prior to the South African War did all he could to induce the Government to bring the Army up to that standard which they themselves had laid down as necessary, and he had failed. In 1896 he pointed out the insufficiency of the garrison in South Africa, and his advice was ignored. In 1897 he proposed that the Army should be brought up to the standard which they themselves had laid down and he was refused. In 1899 he asked that some of the field artillery should be placed on the higher establishment, and again he was refused. A little later on in the same year he suggested that one Army Corps should be fully mobilised on Salisbury Plain in order that it might be completely ready for transport over the seas, and so that any defects found to exist might be supplied. No notice was taken of his advice for political reasons, because the foolish and despicable game of "bluff" was then being carried on, in order to suit political considerations. Then the Intelligence Department furnished the Government with very valuable and accurate advice with reference to the Boer Republics. That also was ignored, and, in fact, everything that could have placed the Army in a position to do its duty in the South African War was ignored. He would not refer to the humiliating period when disaster followed disaster and when many gallant young men went from this country like sheep to the slaughter because we had defective guns, because we were defective in material of all kinds. He would not refer to that period because, in his opinion, it was burnt into the hearts of all young men of this generation, and they would never forget the fact that the great Imperialist Party failed to think Imperially in reference to the Army, and left us in so sad a state that we had to put more than a quarter of a million of men into the field, and to spend nearly£300,000,000 of money, in order to fight 60,000 or 70,000 Boer farmers.

He would now proceed to deal with what followed after the South African War. They were then given to understand that they would have real Army reform, and they were told by the Secretary of State for War that two Army Corps had been found insufficient, and that in future we were to have three Army Corps completely ready, when mobilised, for service beyond the seas, and three other Army Corps to supplement them for home defence. That scheme was based upon the full and complete acknowledgment of the value and efficiency of the Auxiliary Forces. But before a very long period had elapsad the scheme vanished into thin air, and the same right hon. Gentleman came forward with a new scheme of Army reform based upon the destruction of our great constitutional force, the Militia, and the dismemberment and disorganisation of our great Volunteer force. This scheme was based upon the ignoring altogether of the Auxiliary Forces. It was a very extra-ordinary political somersault, and he would like to give one instance of that constant change which brought about both neglect and mismanagement He referred to the question of the arming of our artillery. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean stated in the House that we had no quick-firing guns, and pressed the necessity for those guns on the Government. The Service Members Kent a special deputation to the Prime Minister urging upon him the importance of this matter, and reminding him of the fact that France was at that time armed, and most of the other European countries were arming themselves, with guns which would fire from eighteen to twenty rounds per minute, as compared with the two or three rounds which our guns could fire. In spite of that fact, and in spite of the fact that the Government were offered by the French at that time a quick-firing pun which was almost equal to their present magnificent quick-firing gun, nothing was done, and the offer of the French was declined, the result being realised in the South African campaign. It was also shown in the course of that war that we had only 108 field guns in this country, or, in other words, not sufficient to arm a force of 40,000 men. Therefore we were deficient, during a time of war, both in the number and in the character of the guns. The late Secretary of State for War, in the House of Commons on March 9th, 1901, said it was obvious that our artillery was insufficient, and yet no more guns were ordered, nor were any steps taken to order them. He said further that they proposed to give guns to the Militia and Volunteers, and intended to rely on the Volunteer batteries in each of three large Army Corps. The Committee which was appointed in 1901 decided very rightly on having18½-pounder field guns and 12½-pounder horse artillery guns, but before making their Report they were allowed to delay its issue for the space of two-and-a-half years. He said advisedly they were "allowed" to do so. What took place on April 14th 1904, when it was shown that the guns were required? Were they ordered? No, nine months were allowed to elapse without their being ordered. Possibly some right hon. Gentleman would stand up on the Ministerial Benches and say they had ordered some guns. It was true that some horse artillery guns were ordered for India. Some twenty-one batteries were ordered, but they were for India, and had nothing to do with the gunning of our troops in this country and elsewhere. The Prime Minister had had the audacity to state that there had been no delay either in the designing or in the construction of the new gun. But, as against that, they had the fact that six years ago it was known that there was a great deficiency in the number of guns as well as in the quality, and four years were allowed to elapse before 160 batteries were ordered, and that was in face of the fact that the late Secretary of State for War had said that the Government would not shrink from their duty. But they had shrunk from ordering guns last year, because they knew perfectly well it would entail putting an extra£3,000,000 or £4,000,000 into the Budget, and because the great Imperialist Party shirked going to the constituencies. They were, in fact, afraid to face their constituents and let them understand that with our resources in coal and iron and skilled labour they had not only failed for four years to supply us with guns, but that for two years to come, as they acknowledged, we must remain in that degrading position. So it would take six years from the time they first acknowledged that we were short of guns before the Army was re-armed, whereas Germany was able to arm its entire army in two years. Was it to be wondered at, then, that the Commission reported they were not satisfied that enough had been done to place matters on a better footing in the event of any contingency?

As with the guns, so with the rifles—a subject which he hoped to find another opportunity of going into more fully. A Committee was appointed; but instead of the members receiving a free hand to produce the best rifle they could for the infantry, they were told to produce the best rifle they could, subject to its being five inches shorter in the barrel than the weapon used by the infantry of any other army in the world. It was something like telling a watchmaker to produce a watch that would be, a good timekeeper under all climatic conditions, with the proviso it should lack a compensating balance. These rifles, in consequence of the variety of experiments made in connection with, them, cost the country£14 apiece. The rifles which were knocked about in South Africa were being converted at a cost of£5s. They originally cost £2 12s., so that now the country was paying£4 17s. for a second-hand rifle, when a brand new one of the best quality could be obtained for about£3 10s. With all these extravagances, was it to be wondered at that the Army Expenditure amounted to£46,000,000? Yet the present state of the Army, as the Secretary of State for War said, constituted a danger to the country.

The same waste of money took place with regard to barracks. Close upon a million had been spent on barracks on Salisbury Plain, about another million would be required, and when they were finished we had no troops to go into them. Then, again, there was a shameful waste of money in connection with the Indian reliefs and with the silly and senseless system of recruiting. He hoped some hon. Member who knew more about finance would develop the argument as to our immense expenditure without value. For four Years there had been "Teat neglect, on the part of the Government. That was followed by mess and muddle for two years, then came the Army Corps scheme, by which the Prime Minister said lie would stand or fall, although, incidentally, he might mention that the right hon. Gentleman did neither. Following that was the "clean slate" policy in 1903, and now a further fifteen months had elapsed the Prime Minister, who was an expert juggler in these matters, had made the discovery that the problem of the British Army was the problem of the defence of Afghanistan. The Prime Minister stood convicted out of his own mouth of what he might call an unpatriotic neglect of duty with reference to the Army. Never in the history of the nation had the Army been in a worse position to defend Afghanistan. The Secretary of State for War once told them that troops required two years home training in order to fit them for India. But never was there a period when men were so difficult to obtain for Indian service, year 4,000 men were sent out under a three years term of engagement. The Indian military and civil authorities protested against that on in account of the excessive expense, and the Home Exchequer agreed in consequence to pay a portion of the cost. The highest military authorities agreed that, in the event of war on the North-West Frontier, in addition to the 70,000 British troops already in India, we should require to send 150,000 men from this country; and while the war lasted we should have to send 200,000 men annually to meet the wastage of war. How did the Cabinet intend to meet this difficulty? Did their scheme provide for the necessary number of long-service men, matured and trained, to meet the requirements of the striking force and the, Indian reliefs? They could not get the necessary recruits. In 1902 they obtained something like 51,000 recruits, and there were lost during the first year by death, desertion, discharge, and so forth, nearly 50 per cent. As 50 per cent, were lost, the payment per man, instead of £94, became in fact£188. That, was an instance of direct wastage. What did the Government scheme propose, to do to meet the difficulty? It proposed to reduce the Army Expenditure by about £1,000,000 sterling out of£46,000,000, and to reduce the Army by 140,000 men! That was how the Prime Minister was going to solve the question of the defence of Afghanistan!

Then there was the question of these huge barracks; the idea that they could not have discipline without barracks was a very fallacious one. In the Metropolitan Police they had a splendid force and the railway workers were, a fine body of men, all well disciplined, and yet they did not live in barracks. The proposal now made meant the reduction of the Volunteer force by 50,000 men in order to save£300,000. It was proposed to practically destroy the Militia, and the Auxiliary Forces were to be almost wiped out under this scheme of Army reform, although their total cost was only £4,500,000. He did not know what hon. Member opposite thought of such a state of things. For ten years the Party opposite had had the management of the Army, and they had made two or three attempts at Army reform. Were they now prepared to give the Government another chance this matter? He hoped the facts he was putting before the House were not unpleasant to the Secretary of State for War, for he noticed that he was covering up his ears. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] During the past ten years the expenditure upon the Army had been unprecedented, and even now they were to remain over two years longer with obsolete guns and defective rifles, and at the same time the Reserve and Auxiliary Forces were dwindling to such an extent that they were becoming the by-word of all the countries of Europe.

MAJOR SEELY (Isle of Wight)

said that he seconded this Amendment in no Party spirit, because he believed that the state of the Army at the present moment was a danger to the country, and his only desire was to get this matter put right as soon as possible. The mover of this Motion had laid down three main propositions. In the first place, he said that the state of our artillery was a national danger, and therefore it behoved the House to express its condemnation of those who were responsible for this state of things. In this matter of the guns the responsibility rested with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and not so much with the Secretary of State for War. The second proposition raised by his hon. and gallant friend was that nothing had been done to remedy the defects brought forward by the hon. and gallant Member for Whitby, namely, the fact that the chief danger was not the administration of the question of how many generals or Army Corps they should have, but the more important question of how they were going to get the best men of the nation to serve in the ranks of the Army instead of getting only that part of the population which was incapable, of withstanding the hardships of a campaign. The third proposition put forward was that for lack of sympathetic treatment they had allowed the Volunteer force to dwindle away. The hon. and gallant Member also laid down the proposition that upon the Volunteers alone could they rely for the defence of this country in the event of war.

With regard to the guns, ho contended that it was impossible for this country to go to war with any European Power at the present time without almost the certainty of defeat. A war involved a battle preceded by an artillery duel. During the next eighteen months as, far as our forces wore concerned, a battle would not mean an artillery duel but a massacre, for it would end in our gunners being shot without the least possibility of their replying. It was no good the right hon. Gentleman saying that he was not responsible, because the crime that had been actually committed was one which was capable of very exact condemnation. The difference between quick-firing guns and the guns which this country had got was a difference not of degree, but of kind. The quick-firing gun was quite a new thing, and it was invented in 1897 by the French. By its use they could fire twenty shots a minute, whilst the guns this country possessed would only fire two or three shots a minute. Certain definite changes in artillery had come about with the introduction of the quick-firing gun, which had made as much difference in guns as the difference between a motorcar and a four-wheeled cab. They would have just about as much chance of winning an artillery duel with their present guns against the quick-firing guns of a Continental Power as a four-wheeled cab would have of winning the Gordon-Bennett Cup. This country alone, of all the nations in the world, allowed this matter to drift until December 29th last year. The Secretary of State for War would no doubt say that he had given the order for these guns, but this would not save him or the Cabinet from their responsibility. What they required was a reply to the question why, if they had gone to war the other day, or if they happened to go to war during the next year and a half, they were bound to be smashed and pulverised by the Artillery of every Continental Power. Was it not a fact that they could have obtained a quick-firing gun, firing twenty shots a minute, from private firms in this country or on the Continent so long ago as five and a half years. He defied contradiction of that statement. No, they had still eighteen months to wait during which they must submit to every insult from every foreign Power or risk defeat in every single battle It might be said that the guns having been ordered there was nothing more to do in the matter, but the House possessed the function of condemning those who had not done their duty in this matter. The Prime Minister had landed them into this extraordinary position of un-preparedness, and if the House wished to retain its power and see that its money was well spent hon. Members should express their condemnation of those who had so grossly abused the power which had been given them in regard to this matter. He would like the right hon. Gentleman to tell them why they were defenceless and why every foreign Power, including such Powers as Roumania, Bulgaria, Norway, Sweden and Argentina, had armed themselves with quick-firing guns before they were adopted by this country.

With regard to the Regular Army nothing had been done to cure the grave mismanagement resulting from our present system of enlistment. Two years ago the, Member for Whitby pointed out that there were two British armies, one which went to war and the other which stayed behind because it was inefficient, and he pointed out that they were almost equal in size. The reason was apparent, because if they enlisted men under the present system and in the present state of the labour market, all they were able to get was the residuum of the population and the unsuccessful. He had been told by recruiting officers that 50, 60, and 70 per cent, of the men who presented themselves did so because they were hungry. He had heard it said that it was desirable that an occupation should be found for the less efficient, but, after all, the worst thing to do was to take them into the Army, because they were not, only a curse to the more efficient, but also a curse to the country. Disease and sorrow flowed from this method of enlistment, and until the elimination of this method took place those struggles and sorrows must continue. Nothing had been done to face the real problem of enlistment. What they ought to do was to devote their minds to the real problem of how to get the best men into the Army.

There was an indictment he wished to make, not only against the Government, but also against the present Secretary of State for War, who had done a great disservice to this country, because there had recently been a culmination of the follies perpetrated by them with regard to the Volunteers and the Auxiliary Forces. The Volunteers were dwindling away, and why was there shortage of officers and men in the Volunteer corps? Why was it that this shortage existed? Principally and mainly as the culmination of the folly of discouraging these people. The Secretary of State for War said he desired to reduce their numbers and that statement seemed to him to be a condemnation of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. What did it amount to? Why were hon. and gallant Members Volunteer officers? It was not because they liked it, but because they conceived it to be their duty. If they were told that there were more Volunteers than were necessary, every officer would begin to wonder why he should take all this trouble in the matter. Every officer, since the moment the Secretary of State for War made that extraordinary statement, had found it difficult to recruit men. The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition had laid down the principle that it was upon the Volunteers they had to look as the only school of arms they possessed, and that they must rely upon them in any war which was worthy of the name. In 1903 the Prime Minister pointed out that the Regular Army could do nothing but commence any campaign, and after that they had to rely upon the patriotism of the people. In the year 1894 or 1895 the Prime Minister said that the vigorous growth of Volunteers was one of the most encouraging signs of the times. They only needed to look back to the last time they went to war in order to see how true all this was. The South African War was the smallest war they were ever likely to be engaged in for it was a war against some 80,000 farmers. During that campaign he had to command men in the field who did not know one end of the rifle from the other, and there were other hon. Members of the House who had to command men who had never been taught to shoot. As a consequence of this they had to suffer the great humiliation of the loss of a British general and nearly all his men, who were captured by the enemy. They had to consider really whether in point of fact the Volunteers were really of any use. As to that point, he trusted that the hon. and gallant Member for Sheffield, if he took part in the debate, would read one or two extracts from a pamphlet he prepared giving the opinion of the Regular officers who served in South Africa. The best way to test whether men were valuable soldiers or not was the actual test of war and the test of an actual battle. He had in his possession the first order of one of the divisions of the troops in South Africa, issued after many months of an arduous campaign in which many thousand men were engaged on both sides and many losses were sustained. There were in the division to which he alluded about 1,000 Auxiliaries, the total number of men being about 10,000. The Lieut.-General's order was issued in the Orange Free State after four months of hard labour in the field. The first two names appearing on the list were two Guards belonging to the Grenadiers and the Scots Guards. For Distinguished Service in the Field the order contained eleven names, and the first four out of those eleven belonged to this despised Auxiliary Force which they were now going to reduce, and which it was said were not fit to meet Continental troops. Those names were put down not for publication or with any idea that they were to be quoted in the House, but simply in the ordinary way of routine military business as recommendations for Distinguished Service in the Field. He happened to know those four men, and he knew how they got their training, and if the Secretary of State for War had his way and was allowed to reduce the redundant units, two out of those four names would have been abolished as being redundant. If they looked facts squarely in the face they would see that what they wanted was to be able to obtain vast numbers of men. It was possible that they might require 500,000 men, and how were they going to get them under the present system? In an Answer which the right hon. Gentleman gave to a Question two days ago he said that he did not now propose to reduce the Vote for the Volunteers. He had, however, already achieved this result, and the numbers continued to dwindle. The Volunteer service was a very delicate thing, and if this force was told that their services were not required, or that they only wanted a smaller number, the whole force might vanish like a dream. The true function of the Secretary of State for War was to take from every man what he could give in the way of military service, encourage every man to give something, and pay as much as they could afford to the men for their loss of time. Above everything they ought to encourage every man to give something, however little. He commended that principle to the Secretary of State for War, who, by his action, had ignored this principle. The Prime Minister stated that he relied upon the skill and patriotism of the people in the last resource, but the action of the War Office and the Secretary of State for War tended to reduce the military skill in the country, to sap their patriotism and discourage their military endeavours by telling them that they were not wanted. In the matter of guns they had undoubtedly left the country defenceless for another eighteen months. He hoped the House would look this matter fairly in the face and realise how great were the evils which might arise from this negligence. He hoped the House would assert its power and take away from the Government in this matter the power which they had so grossly abused.

Amendment proposed— At the end of the Question, to add the words, 'But humbly to represent to Your Majesty that the continuous and continuing changes in the War Office are destructive of the best interests of Your Majesty's Army, have gravely disordered the system upon which the regular forces at Home and Abroad are raised and trained, have discouraged the Militia and Volunteers, and disclose negligence and mismanagement on the part of Your Majesty's Ministers, more particularly as to the armament of the Artillery, whereby, in spite of the increased cost of the Army, its efficiency for the defence of the Empire has been diminished'"—Captain Norton).

Question proposed, "That those words be there added."

SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)

said there was a great deal in the speech of the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight with which he cordially agreed, especially with regard to the Volunteer force, to which branch of the service he intended to confine his remarks. It would be difficult to put the matter better than it had been put by the seconder of the Amendment. Everybody knew the difficulties with which the Volunteer force had had to contend since its re-establishment in1851—difficulties which had been put in its way, not by one Government more than another, or by one set of military advisers more than another—and it was entirely by the perseverance and determination of the Volunteers themselves that the force was still alive and had been able to render to the country services which had been recognised by every Commander-in-Chief and by all the generals who had Volunteers under them in the recent campaign in South Africa. That war entirely dispelled any illusions which might have prevailed as to whether or not Volunteers would be fit for service in the field should the necessity arise, as over 36,000 came forward in one capacity or another, and, so far as he had been able to ascertain, not a single unfavourable report was made upon their conduct in the field. That they rendered considerable service in a time of great necessity could not be disputed.

CAPTAIN JESSEL (St. Pancras, S.)

asked whether the hon. and gallant Member was referring to Volunteers pure and simple, or included also the Yeomanry.

SIR HOWARD VINCENT

said he was speaking more especially of the Volunteer force, and, if desired, would place at the disposal of the hon. and gallant Member for St. Pancras a number of extracts from General Orders on the subject. What had been their reward for all these, services? First of all, there were the new regulations of 1901, issued without the knowledge of or consultation with General Turner, the Inspector-General of Auxiliary Forces, who saw them for the first time when published in The Times. Those regulations, which were very offensively worded and naturally created great consternation in the force, were so impracticable in their character that they had to be at once suspended, and were, after inquiry, materially modified. The fact that such regulations could be drawn up and thus issued showed the confusion of mind which existed at the War Office with regard to the Volunteer and Auxiliary Forces. That the officer mainly responsible for those regulations was still retained m his position at the War Office was very extraordinary in view of the regulation that officers on the Headquarters Staff must return to regimental duty on the expiration of a certain period. Then came the advent of the present Secretary of State for War, whose great industry and desire to discharge his duties to the utmost of his ability none could deny, and who undoubtedly had been an earnest student of military affairs. The first speech of the right hon. Gentleman after his appointment, delivered at Liverpool on January 21st, 1904, gave the greatest hope and encouragement to every member of the Volunteer force. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman said— There are some men, not necessarily the best, who can give a great deal of time to their military duties; there are others who, because of their serious and constant occupation, can only give a certain amount of time. Do not for a moment think that the Volunteer who cannot give a large amount of time to Volunteer work is the less valuable Volunteer of the two. Whether I am in this office a short or a long time, the Volunteers will find in me a most sympathetic person. I cannot believe that among the 250,000, more or less, young Englishmen and Scotchmen anxious to give their service, to the country in time of war we cannot get a force of enormous value. I do not think the problem is solved yet; but, believe me, it requires a great deal of sympathy and a considerable dose of common sense. That speech gave rise to the hope that as soon as the right hon. Gentleman got fairly into the saddle he would do his best to encourage and develop the Volunteer force. A Royal Commission appointed shortly before to inquire into the question held a large number of sittings and examined over 130witnesses, and the fact that the Secretary of State repeatedly pressed for their Report gave colour to the assumption that he was anxious to deal with the problem as soon as possible. The Report, when issued, contained the following paragraph— The Volunteer force owes its origin and continuance mainly to the energy and goodwill of its officers and men, and the fact that it is not maintained at war conditions is in no way attributable to them. It was attributable to the War Office, and therefore it was for the War Office to set to work to remedy the defects as rapidly as possible. Unfortunately the Report contained recommendations of compulsory service—

MR. LEWELLYN (Somersetshire, N.)

said the Report recommended, not compulsory service, but compulsory training—a very different thing.

SIR HOWARD VINCENT

accepted the correction, seeing that the hon. Member was a member of the Commission. The Report, at any rate, recommended compulsory training, and that recommendation attracted the attention of the country and gave the idea that the Commissioners were in favour of compulsory service, with the result that many excellent recommendations in other directions had been practically lost sight of. The Commission made valuable suggestions with regard to both Militia and Volunteers, but although several months had elapsed nothing whatever had been done. The Volunteers did not know where they were, and he appealed to the Secretary of State not to keep them longer than was absolutely necessary in the present condition of uncertainty and suspense. A Director of Auxiliary Forces was appointed, but on the re-organisation of the War Office he was made a mere officer of the Adjutant-General's Department. It was not proper that the head of the Auxiliary Forces should be a mere adjutant of the Adjutant-General; only by having a separate department could satisfaction be given. His right hon. friend had now assured them that the Director of Auxiliary Forces should have direct access to himself. He thought the Director of Auxiliary Forces had done all that was expected of him, for he had attended an enormous number of prize distributions, where he had stated that he wished something could be done to solve the mystery which existed in regard to the future of the Volunteer forces. He had told the Volunteers as lately as last night the same thing, and under those circumstances no wonder that there was great uncertainty, suspense, and apprehension prevailing in the mind of every deserving member of the Volunteer force.

What was the reason for all this? The Secretary of State for War met a large number of Members of both Houses of Parliament last summer connected with the Volunteer force. His right hon. friend was exceedingly accessible but he was very anxious to impress his views upon those he received, and not quite so anxious to hear the views of those he honoured by an interview. That was somewhat the case upon this occasion. They all liked to read the right hon. Gentleman's speeches, but when they met him in this way they liked to have an opportunity of expressing their views instead of listening so much to his orations. So far as he was able to form an opinion he thought there was no subject upon which all hon. Members were agreed that no parsimony should be shown as that of the support granted to the Volunteer forces. His right hon. friend took a different view and was bent upon cutting down the cost, which amounted only to £6 per man, of the Volunteer force. He hoped hon. Members connected with the Volunteer force would impress upon the right hon. Gentleman that it was necessary to have generous treatment in this matter. What had been the result of this extraordinary action as regarded the Volunteer force. Only the day before yesterday his right hon. friend said there were 2,700 officers short. But this was explained by a statement that it was due simply to decline after the war fever. He would give an instance when there was no war fever. In the year 1898 nobody had any I idea that the Volunteer force would be wanted for active service. At that time there were 1,300 officers deficient. At the present time, seven years after that, the deficiency was more than double, for they were 2,700 officers deficient at the present moment. His right hon. friend knew that the one great lesson which ought to have been learned in South Africa was that men were forthcoming in large numbers provided they opened the door wide enough, and by doing that they could get any number of men. There was, nevertheless, the greatest difficulty in getting competent and thoroughly efficient soldiers. With regard to the United States, the American Government had very closely followed this question of the great want of officers experienced by us in South Africa, and since the war they had adopted legislation providing for the establishment of a large, corps of officers for the Volunteers. This country had done nothing whatever of that kind, and they had allowed the Volunteer officers to dwindle away simply because they had received no encouragement. They did not want flattering words or after-dinner speeches, but he thought they were entitled to be treated fairly and justly and encouraged. Why were they 2,700 officers short? Simply because in the present condition of affairs it was impossible to tell what shape the force might take. They did not know what the new regulations would be. They knew nothing as to the time of camping, and they did not know whether it would be inconvenient or not. He was aware that in some parts of the country this matter operated differently. In some districts there was a regular suspension of work at Whitsuntide, and then the men could manage to leave their employment without loss. If the time was well chosen in country districts there was not much difficulty about arranging for the camps after the harvest. But in cases like the Metropolitan Volunteer Corps, which consisted largely of clerks in banks, insurance officers, and other commercial institutions, the question of the camp operated in a much more difficult way. The system of making the man undertake that he would go to camp debarred from the service a very large number of men who might otherwise be very useful. He was not arguing that class corps were better than the others, but he thought it was desirable that they should get men of intelligence and education into their volunteer Army, because they were the men, when they wanted a large number of officers for the Regular Forces, who were likely to prove exceedingly valuable and useful in that direction. Therefore, it was a very great pity to do anything which prevented this class of men from coming forward.

He had in his possession a return of the Metropolitan Volunteer Corps for January, 1902, and they represented 8,000 in that year. Now, in February this year they only numbered 5,000, or a falling-off of no less than 3,000 men in three years. Altogether they were seventy-one officers and 5,000 men short of their establish- ment. In the middle of October last year he wrote a letter to his right hon. friend, impressing upon him the necessity of letting the Volunteer force know what was going to be done. He pointed out to him that this was the time that the men made up their minds whether to leave the force or to remain in it. Now they found themselves at the end of February and still nothing whatever had been done. The consequence was that the force was thoroughly discouraged, and he could not conceive why something had not been done. They had been in possession for some time of the recommendations of the Duke of Norfolk's Commission, and many of those recommendations were of a very simple character and were not very costly, in fact, the whole of them would not cost more than about £200,000. He believed in economy, but not at any price, and if for £200,000 they could put the Volunteer force in the state recommended by that Commission, then he thought it would be money well expended. His right hon. friend proposed to reduce this force from 250,000 to 180,000. The reason why so many Volunteers were leaving was because naturally they would not stay on in order to be turned out. He called upon the right hon. Gentleman that afternoon to make a clean breast of it, and to solve this mystery and let the Director of Auxiliary Forces know what the future of the Volunteer force was going to be.

His right hon. friend, speaking at a dinner on February 1st, said— It was his opinion that money could only be got by reducing the total of the Volunteer force and applying the savings to the perfection of the remainder. Until the Volunteer force accepted that view of the situation what they all desired would not be done. He was sure his right hon. friend did not intend to threaten the Volunteer force, but that statement could only be read as a most deliberate threat. "Unless you accept my scheme you shall have nothing at all," If that was a view which his right hon. friend allowed to escape him in the heat of the moment he was sure it would not commend itself to his earnest desire to benefit and to put on a better footing the whole military forces of the country. To say to the commanding officers, who had done their utmost in the face of great discouragement to improve their regiments and to improve the force, that unless they accepted the whole of the ideas of the Secretary of State for War, who, however able, industrious, and persevering, had no real practical experience of the force, they should have nothing at all and that everything should be hung up until they came into line—that was a view which was quite unworthy of his antecedents and of his great desire to benefit the force. This was a matter of very great urgency and importance. He earnestly hoped that they would have an end now to the mystery, and that before many hours were out they would hear from the Secretary of State for War exactly what he intended to do in regard to the Volunteer force. The right hon. Gentleman stated that he knew what he wanted and that he knew how to get it. Those Members of the House who spoke as representing the Volunteer force knew what was wanted in regard to the Auxiliary Forces, and he thought they were determined to get it if they possibly could, not from any selfish motive but because they knew that by the encouragement of these the military forces of the Crown would be put on a better and surer footing. It was only by this means that the country could be rendered safe against invasion, and that forces could be furnished in adequate strength in times of necessity.

MR. McCRAE (Edinburgh, E.)

said it was not too much to say that the question before the House that afternoon was the most pressing they could discuss. The Fiscal question and Home Rule would become very secondary matters indeed if the state of the Army was allowed to continue as it was at present. He did not intend to deal with the Regular Army. He would devote his remarks to the Volunteer force. The question which he would submit to the Secretary of State for War was this—What is the object of the Volunteer force? It existed for the purpose of national defence. He should like to say that it was to the credit of the Secretary of State for War that he had taken the Volunteer force as a serious factor in the question of national defence. He would also say that he admired the courage and ability with which the right hon. Gentleman was maintaining the struggle—he thought all in the House would admire the determination he had shown, with perhaps the exception of a few of his colleagues in the Cabinet—to place the Army on a better footing.

He wished first of all to examine the position of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the Volunteers. In a speech in that House the right hon. Gentleman said— The defence of these islands against hostile raids must therefore be left very largely to the Volunteers. That was very sound policy indeed. The Volunteers themselves, he thought, were quite prepared that that responsibility should devolve upon them, but he should like to point out to the right hon. Gentleman that it was not perhaps the view of those who were not so familiar with military matters. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman had heard of Lord Esher. That noble Lord had evidently had a good deal to do with the reform of the War Office, though according to all accounts confusion had been succeeded by chaos. He must admit that his belief in the ability of Lord Esher to formulate military schemes, without, as he understood, any military training, had been somewhat shattered by a speech which he made in Scotland with regard to the Volunteers. Speaking in August at Callander, Lord Esher said— Well, he supposed they had often asked themselves what the uses of the Volunteers might be, and at the first glance it was generally supposed that the Volunteers existed for the purpose of repelling invasion. Well, he thought that, according to modern ideas of military and naval strategy, that was an illusion. That was the view of a good many of our military authorities, and he was afraid that the Secretary of State for War had been subjected to a good deal of cross-pulling on the question what the Volunteers were to do. With regard to the quality of the Volunteers the right hon. Gentleman had said in the House that he believed the Volunteer force contained the best material we had in the whole Army, and a divisional commander in South Africa at the time of the war said that the only decent fellows sent out were the Volunteers and the Militia. There was no doubt at all about the quality of the men and their capacity to perform the duties which the right hon. Gentleman said he wished to devolve upon them. He believed the intentions of the right hon. Gentleman were very good, but in this case he was afraid they were paving-stones to perdition. How did he propose to fit the Volunteers for the task which he was going to lay upon them? First of all by reducing their number. He proposed to reduce the establishment of the Volunteers by 147,000 men—from 347,000 to 200,000—and he proposed to reduce the actual strength from 240,000 to 180,000. He next proposed to divide the force into two distinct classes. What he would call for convenience of phrase the first-line Volunteers were to be put into a class amounting to 60,000 men, and the remainder were to be put into the second class of 120,000 men. Then the right hon. Gentleman proceeded to reduce the expenditure on the Volunteers. All were agreed with regard to national expenditure that a crisis had really come and that something must be done to reduce it. The Secretary of State for War himself bad said that the annual Estimates showed that the cost of the Army was excessive. They all agreed with his main proposition. The present expenditure on the Army went to show that large expenditure was no guarantee of efficiency. The Army Estimates for the present year amounted to £28,900,000. Under the new scheme, the Secretary of State for War proposed to make a saving on these Estimates of £1,092,000. Where was he going to get this reduction? Excluding the Militia proposals, which the hon. Member thought had gone by the board and need not be considered, the right hon. Gentleman proposed to reduce the Army Estimates by £1,000,000, and of that sum £300,000, or a third part, was to be taken off the Volunteers, and yet the total cost of the Volunteers was only £1,200,000. The right hon. Gentleman was simply going back to the old policy of attempting to starve the Volunteer force. When the present Government came into power the expenditure on the Volunteer force amounted to £800,000, and in four years they had managed to reduce that sum to £628,000. In the year after that came the war in South Africa and the expenditure suddenly went up to £1,700,000. What the Secretary of State for War was now attempting to do was to bring back the expenditure on the Volunteers to the amount at which it stood in 1895–6. Was the, right hon. Gentleman prepared to apply the same test to the Army Estimates? Was he prepared to reduce the Army Estimates from £29,000,000 to £18,000,000, the figure at which they stood in 1895–6? The whole position in regard to this was untenable. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to a Question the other day, told them that there was to be no reduction in the Volunteer force for the current year. On behalf of the commanding officers he must thank him for that answer.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,) Belfast, W.

On the Volunteer Vote.

MR. McCRAE

said he was very glad of that at any rate. The answer allowed the commanding officers to know how they stood for at least one year. He asked the right hon. Gentleman to state whether it was only for one year that there was to be no reduction on the Vote. Was it a reprieve, or was it merely a postponement of their sentence? He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was in full retreat and going to give up the proposal for a reduction of the force. Out of the reduced expenditure on the Volunteers the right hon. Gentleman proposed to spend £50,000 per annum on rifle clubs, complete a system of transport for the Volunteers, a divisional staff for the Volunteers; and, in addition, he intended to make an increased grant for efficiency. His plan of finance was like the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham with regard to old-age pensions. It was so simple that anyone could understand it, but he confessed that he thought the right hon. Gentleman would find, when he came to the details in the Volunteer Estimates, that the position was one which he could not really maintain. Since the day when the Irishman attempted to lengthen his blanket by taking a piece off the top and sewing it on to the bottom, a more futile and indefensible proposal could hardly be conceived. Lord Esher evidently thought that the main purpose for which the Volunteers existed was to increase or to foster the military spirit of the country. He said there, as a commanding officer, that if that was the reason for the existence of the Volunteers the country was spending far too much money on the force. They wanted to be taken seriously, and if the right hon. Gentleman wished to put the force on an efficient footing, his only alternative was to increase the expenditure upon it rather than reduce it. They only asked for a few thousands out of the million or two which, it was generally conceded, could be saved in Army administration. Let him affirm that the Volunteer force had any objection at all to submit to increased efficiency, but there was one limit which must be placed to that demand, and that was that that efficiency must not mean the sacrifice of the men's daily employment. When the regulations were promulgated by the predecessor of the present Secretary of State for War, and for which the latter was therefore not responsible, in regard to attendance in camp, very many of the men had to choose between giving up their daily employment or resigning their position as Volunteers. The consequence was that a very large number of the best men in the force had to resign because they could not submit to the test. Not only that, even the numbers were kept up only by a reduced physique on the part of those enlisted. The fact was that for many years the War Office had been experimenting with the Volunteers. They had been subjected to the process of vivisection, and it was only their strength and inherent vitality that had prevented the force from being shattered beyond recuperation.

Now, the name of the late Inspector-General of the Auxiliary Forces had been mentioned, and he had great experience. He meant Major-General Turner, and he did not know why the Secretary of State for War should laugh. Major-General Turner was, he thought, an officer who had shown that at any rate he understood the Volunteers, which was more than could be said for the War Office. That officer said the other day that— He complained much of the treatment which the Volunteers had received. It was impossible that our Volunteers should fulfil the hard and fast conditions laid down for the Regulars. The result of attempting to impose upon them those conditions was that the best London corps were dying away. No doubt those regulations had now been modified or withdrawn, but after much mischief had been done, and he was quite sure of this—and he did not want to put the case too strongly—that the Volunteers had suffered a great wrong in consequence of those regulations. They did not apply equally to all the force. His own battalion was not affected, as it was composed principally of artisans, who could go into camp on the trades holidays, and moreover, they were over strength. But he was speaking for corps not so happily situated. What was wanted was elasticity of treatment in regard to the force. He would like to know who had advised the Secretary of State for War—for he must have had some expert adviser—to put the Volunteers into two distinct classes. Really that proposal was fundamentally wrong. He had for years advocated that every man in the country who was capable of bearing arms should get a course of training similar to that which was given to the Volunteer force. No doubt the country was against that being done-compulsorily, but it should be our aim to get as many men as possible, so that in the hour of need there should be a foundation to work upon. He believed that the secret of this muddle and the reason for this policy which he had described as unwise, uncertain, and erratic, was that our military administrators had lost faith in the voluntary principle. A great many of them had a hankering after conscription. He did not hesitate to say that the proposals of the late Secretary for War were intended, by smashing up the Volunteer force, to pave the way for conscription; and he was afraid that, with all his good intentions, the present Secretary of State for War was going in the same direction. The right hon. Gentleman might have different aims and a different policy, but the effect would be the same, and he would find that by reducing the Volunteer force he was cutting at the root principle of the voluntary system.

What was going to be done? There must be continuity of policy in the first place. It must be open to every Volunteer to o into camp for fourteen days and get the grant now earned by the selected battalions. They ought to have a transport service—an Army Service Corps for the Volunteers alone. He would ask the Secretary of State for War, who was so anxious to bring forward proposals which struck at the root, of the principles on which the Volunteer force was founded, to consider that there were various ways in which that force could be built up upon a system which would put it on a better footing. Whatever method was adopted by the Secretary of State for War the Volunteer force, if it was to be of any use at all, must have transport of its own. There was in existence a proposal approved of by the War Office, and recommended by the Royal Commission, yet no effort had been made to put it into operation. Much had been said of the efficiency of the officers. There, again, the officers were quite prepared to undergo training and pass the necessary examinations; but it must be kept in mind that the Volunteer who gave his time should not be called upon for such a drain, as at present, on his pocket for expenses. He emphasised the fact that the Volunteer officers did not shrink from any test in regard to efficiency short of that which interfered with their ordinary employment. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War to reconsider his proposal to reduce the number of Volunteers and to divide them into two distinct units. Grade, if he liked, the grant for efficiency, but do not make the second-line Volunteers feel that they were serving in a lower-grade corps, which would be the result of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal if carried out. He hoped they were to have an end of all this marching and counter-marching, orders and counter-orders. Let them have some definite policy. Even a bad policy was better than the sort of treatment they had been subjected to during the last few years. The Secretary for War should let them know where they stood, should give them a clear policy, and pledge himself to end a system which was a curious mixture of apathy, ignorance, and misunderstanding.

MR. WYLIE (Dumbartonshire)

said he intended to confine his remarks to that portion of the Amendment which dealt with the Volunteers. At the end of last Session 60,000 (a fourth) of the Volunteer Forces were under sentence of extinction and 120,000 were to be deprived of 30 per cent. of their grants, but he was glad to learn that in the meantime they had been reprieved. Since the end of 1901, when the very severe Order in Council by Lord Roberts and the War Office was issued, a large number of Members of this House had not ceased to bring forward the claims of the Volunteers for fairer treatment. The Norfolk Commission was appointed in 1903, and after very careful investigation and the examination of 134 witnesses, that Commission issued a Report last year which was admirably clear, concise, and comprehensive. It was with the utmost satisfaction that many of them found therein ample justification for the time of the House they had taken in pressing the claims of the Volunteers, for it thoroughly homologated the opinions they had advocated in and out of the House. There was amongst many Volunteer officers considerable misapprehension of the general terms of that Report. They had been so depressed with the sweeping criticism of the Report that the Volunteer force was not capable of dealing with a regular army in the field, that they construed it into an indirect intimation that their services would no longer be required. But the whole tenour of the Report was that until they obtained a larger and more comprehensive system of military training the Volunteers must not only be maintained in their present numbers but very much increased in efficiency. The Royal Commission very generously recognised the good services they had done, and held out encouragement to proceed to batter things. He pressed on the Secretary of State for War the necessity for carrying out the recommendations of that Report at the earliest opportunity. Now, during the late war, and for a short time after, it was thought that we could not have too large an Army, and the Volunteers were largely increased. But the fir for lavish expenditure and a very large Army was immediately succeeded by a cool mood for parsimonious retrenchment and wholesale disbandment. No one had had more severe experience of this fickleness in policy than the late Secretary for War. His right hon. friend was incited in 1900 and 1901 to form as large an Army as possible, and exposed to unmerited obloquy because of the failure of his scheme, some of the leading parts of which had not had the beginning of a trial. The present Secretary of State had had set before him the very difficult problem of increasing the efficiency of, and reducing the expenditure on, the land forces. His right hon. friend proposed to decrease the Regular Army, the Militia, and the Volunteers. He would not say anything about the Regular Army and the Militia, except that it was easier to disband men than bring them together again. His remarks would be confined to the Volunteers; and they would be founded in a great measure on the opinions of a number of very able Volunteer officers, and also principally on the Report of the Commission.

He would ask hon. Members to remember that the cardinal principle on which the Report was based was that no officer, non-commissioned officer, or private should be put to any expense, but that everything should be paid by the State. That had been opposed by the War Office in the past. The first thing that struck him in the proposals of the Secretary for War was that, although home defence was to rest on the Volunteers, the establishment was to be reduced by over 40 per cent., the effective strength by 25 per cent., and the expenditure by about as much—even the present expenditure, £1,200,000, was less than the cost of a single battleship—in connection with a branch of the service which was to be entrusted with the most important duty of all, home defence. He quite concurred with his right hon. friend in his expression of opinion as to the inefficiency of a considerable number of the Volunteer forces. Lord Roberts was just as frank; and explicit; and in 1901 he and the War Office authorities proceeded to reform the then existing state of affairs by the celebrated Order in Council demanding more arduous training, without increasing the grants. He believed that if the Order in Council then issued had been accom- panied by an increased grant, so that the Volunteers might be able to receive about £1 a week for their camp training there would have been no complaint. But the usual parsimony in connection with the Volunteers was exercised. The great success of his right hon. friend the previous Secretary of State for War in connection with the Yeomanry was due to a liberal apportionment of grants which enabled every Yeoman to return from camp with £5 or £7 in his pocket. He was very glad his right hon. friend recognised the necessity of increasing the efficiency of the Volunteers by means of an increase of grants, and intended to apply this principle to 60,000 of them; but he would be interested to know to what extent his right hon. friend was prepared to increase the grant. If his right hon. friend was as liberal as his predecessor was in connection with the Yeomanry he would predict a great success for his scheme. Its great defect, however, was that he proposed to carry it out at the expense of the other Volunteers. His right hon. friend proposed to dismiss 60,000 of the most inefficient Volunteers. That was a very drastic proposal. Why were they so inefficient? The Report of the Commission stated it was no fault of the Volunteers; but was principally the fault of the War Office because of the parsimonious policy which had been adopted. A great deal of the efficiency of some of the Volunteer Corps was owing to subscriptions from officers and from gentlemen resident in the district. A large amount of the inefficiency of others was due to the fact, that officers could not afford that expense; and that there were no gentlemen in the several districts who subscribed. Many of the Volunteers proposed to be dismissed had rendered splendid service to the country; they had guarded the country when the Regular Forces and the Militia were abroad in South Africa; and they had sent many of their members to the front. It would be much more judicious to give them a chance under the more liberal auspices proposed by the Commission, demand a minimum standard of efficiency and let those who would not come up to it quietly drop out He considered the other proposal, viz., to reduce the grants to 120,000 and form them into a second class even more objectionable. The Secretary for War relied upon them to act as second battalions to the efficient regiments, but with grants reduced by 30 per cent, they would melt away like snow in summer. In that he had the concurrence of every Volunteer officer with whom he had spoken.

The proposals of the right hon. Gentleman were quite contrary to the Report of the Commission, to the opinion of almost all Volunteer officers, and based on the supposed necessity for retrenchment. To listen to some hon. Gentlemen one would imagine, that this was the most overburdened country in the world; whereas, on the contrary, according to its wealth, it was one of the most lightly taxed. The taxation of France was £10,000,000 greater, though its population and wealth were smaller, and there was, therefore, no necessity to rush into a parsimonious policy. The policy which the Government should adopt lay in an entirely different direction. The growing necessities of the Empire and the need for improvement in the physical condition of our young men so impressed the Royal Commission that they recommended what might be called a modified form of conscription—universal military training. No form of conscription, however, was within the scope of present practical politics, nor need it ever be if we rightly utilized the Volunteer spirit and if we made use of our Volunteers. No country had so many young men and boys who were not merely willing but anxious and eager for military training. The policy to adopt would be to very largely increase the Volunteer forces, with a moderate increase in the grant not to exceed £10 per head, which would entail a proportionately small expense, through which would pass all the vigorous youth of our country, who would then form a reserve ready to be called upon in case of emergency. But this also was not at present within the range of practical politics. But he would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War that there was a scheme in accordance with the recommendations laid down by the Royal Commission which was within the scope of practical politics and which might be adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, viz., to maintain the present numbers and to secure much greater efficiency by a corresponding increase of grants and facilities. The amount of money that such a scheme would require had been computed by the hon. Member for Sheffield at £200,000, but in his (Mr. Wylie's) opinion that estimate was far too moderate. He believed the increase would be at least £500,000. The right hon. Gentleman had said, the expenditure upon the Army precluded any advance upon the estimate he had made, but the right hon. Gentleman had, he thought, entirely misapprehended the feeling of the House and the country so far as the Volunteer Forces were concerned. He believed that if the right hon. Gentleman would bring forward an Estimate for £1,750,000 for the voluntary forces he would get his Vote, if not without its being challenged, at least by a large majority. The right hon. Gentleman was himself an old Volunteer officer and in that capacity had acquired that practical military training which had proved of such service to him in dealing with military questions. Like many of his predecessors in the War Office he had apparently succumbed to the united influence of the Treasury and the War Office. The Chancellor of the Exchequer demanded retrenchment; the authorities at the War Office still retained their old professional contempt for the amateur and had no doubt insisted that the retrenchment should be at the expense of the Auxiliary Forces and not the Regular Forces, and the Secretary of State for War sought to restrict the already far too narrow basis on which our military strength rested by confining it to our very small professional Army and 60,000 semi-professional Volunteers. But, after all, the final decision rested with the House, and if the right hon. Gentleman would bring such an Estimate as he (Mr. Wylie) had ventured to suggest he felt confident the House and country would approve of it. For years the country had been recognising the necessity of improving the physique of our young men and the necessity for military training, and the Royal Commission had been so impressed that it had recommended universal military training. The right hon. Gentleman had now a great opportunity of taking not a retrograde but a forward step, and it was to be hoped he would not miss the opportunity.

SIR JOHN KENNAWAY (Devonshire, Honiton),

as a Volunteer for more than forty years, wished to try to face the salient points of the most difficult problem the Volunteers now presented. The Volunteer force, formed just sixty years ago, had had an excellent moral effect as a defensive force, and a great physical effect upon the youth of the country, and this system had trained hundreds and thousands of our young men into habits of discipline and obedience. But, after all, this military force must be tested by the question whether it was efficient for the purpose for which it was created and whether it was ready to do what the country expected of it. It was clear, from the findings of the Royal Commission to whom the Government did well in referring the matter, that the Volunteer force, excellent as it was, would not be able to resist the highly trained troops of any country that might invade our shored, because the officers had not the opportunity of being properly trained, nor had it sufficient equipment and commissariat necessary to take the field. The question to be considered was how to make the force a reality, equal to the conditions of modern warfare. Half-trained men would not do, and to make the men efficient a large sum of money would have to be spent on additional training. That was admitted on all sides. The only alternative was to reduce the force, and to spend on the smaller number of men the same amount of money as was now allocated. The country would not begrudge the money necessary to make the force efficient, but the present was not an opportune time to increase the Estimates. An additional £500,000 had been suggested, but if all the expenses of the Volunteers were to be paid so that the men were not losers by their patriotism the extra expenditure might easily amount to much more. Another question was as to the size of the force which could be usefully employed in defending our shores. Too large a force would become unwieldy, and the men would simply get in each other's way. The alternative of a reduction in numbers was not popular, but the only choice lay between an indefinite increase of expenditure and the making of a smaller force thoroughly efficient. It was a very difficult problem. The Volunteer force was so entwined with our national sentiment that it should be treated with the utmost consideration and allowed the greatest elasticity. He hoped that as a result of the efforts now being made there would be secured a continuity of policy, the lack of which had caused so much inconvenience in the past. The demand for them to go into camp for a lengthy period was outside the conditions on which the men had joined the Volunteers, and if the men were to be called upon to spend long periods away from home the country must be prepared to recompense them. He trusted the Secretary of State for War would be supported in his endeavours to deal with the matter on right lines, Salus populi suprema est lex. The country must have an efficient force for the defeance of these islands, ready to meet any emergency which might arise.

MR. FREDERICK WILSON (Norfolk, Mid.)

said that the House and the nation must remember that there were only two policies before the country. There was the policy of conscription, and, opposed to that, there was the policy of the encouragement of the Volunteers. It must come to one or the other. We had a nation full of fight; every schoolboy wanted to fight somebody, and we ought to be full of pride for our high-spirited race. Yet we could not get men for either the Regular Army or the Volunteers. They would not come. We were a fighting race, but our men would not go into either portion of the Army. There must be something wrong in the treatment by the authorities when they could not fill the ranks. There was no doubt in his mind which was the better policy, conscription or the encouragement of the Volunteers. Why should they encourage the dear Army at the expense of the cheap Army? Yet the policy of the Government seemed to be to expend money on the more expensive branch and to economise on the cheaper. The hon. Member for the Honiton Division seemed rather to disparage the Volunteers as a fighting force; but did they not do well in the Boer War, and did not the Boers themselves show what a race trained to shoot could do? He did not speak as a colonel of Volunteers, he had not been a colonel; he had never attained more than the rank of a full private, but he knew that among the private Volunteers there was a love of rifle-shooting, which was almost wiped out of the force to-day, for they had lost their ranges. When the long-shooting rifle came in, range after range was closed, and there was now no inducement of pleasure to be a Volunteer; there was now no fun in it. Volunteering in the old days was almost freemasonry; it was the best Saturday afternoon's holiday. At present, however, the English race was spending its energies in kicking a football about on Saturday afternoons. If they encouraged the grand old martial spirit of the English race they would soon fill their Volunteer ranks, to say nothing of the Army. The difficulty of the Army was different from that of the Volunteers. They had got to till their ranks, not so much as to find officers. If they began at the bottom of the ladder they would soon have men qualified to rise to the top of it; and he trusted this Government, or any succeeding it, would bear distinctly in mind that there was one way to escape from a vast expenditure on a large Army, and that was to encourage the Volunteer, who was ready for home defence and was prepared, as shown in the Boer War, on emergency to go abroad and light and die for his country.

MAJOR EVANS GORDON (Tower Hamlets, Stepney)

said the course of the debate would, lead one to suppose that we had no Regular Army at all, the speeches so far having dealt almost exclusively with the Volunteers. He feared that his remarks would be considered somewhat out of sympathy with the speeches of hon. friends with whom he had acted on Army questions on previous occasions, but he was glad to think that their personal relations were not affected. Reference had been made to the "useless quality" of great numbers of the men enlisted into the Regular Army. He quite agreed that that process should be stopped, and that the element which was admitted on all hands to be such as would never be of any military value should be got, rid of. But would it not be admitted that a similar element existed in the Volunteers? And if a reduction was to be made in the Regular Army on that ground, would not the same argument hold good with regard to the Volunteers?

Another point to be noted in this debate was the absence of any reference to the universal cry as to the necessity for economy in the expenditure connected with the armed forces of this country. Immediately a particular branch of the service was threatened with anything in the nature of reduction an outcry was raised and claims were put in for that branch. What the right hon. Gentleman had to consider was not so much what ought to be done, but what really could be done; and true economy must depend upon spending the money to the best possible advantage. If reductions were necessary they could only or mainly be brought about by the reduction in establishments and men, and if these reductions could be carried out, as he believed they could, without any material loss in the fighting power of the forces of this country, the Volunteers would have to take their share in the reduction. He knew the line he was taking was not a popular line, but he asked the House to believe that, though his views might be unpopular, he put them forward with the idea of doing the best all round for the armed forces of the country.

A good deal had been heard that afternoon about the utility of the Auxiliary Forces for keeping up the martial spirit of the country and providing a reserve, force to be called upon in case of emergency. But while that was true enough the House must beware of mistaking mere numbers for military strength. There was abundant evidence in the many voluminous Reports to show that we were maintaining in many branches of the service, boys who would not within a long period be fit to take the field, but who swelled the Estimates, and deceived the nation as to its military strength. Besides those there were numbers of men who would never become effective soldiers at all. That remark applied to the Volunteer Auxiliary Forces with even greater force than to the Regular Army, and if efficiency was desired, surely the proper thing to do was to fearlessly get rid of all those. Broadly speaking, that was what the scheme of the Secretary of State proposed to do. The right hon. Gentleman had the courage to look facts in the face; to get rid of useless material and to spend the money so saved in making the material which remained more effective and more efficient. It seemed to him that there had been in the Press a great deal of, if not unfair, at least ill-informed criticism of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme. They ought to look at the whole position. The military ideal could never exactly coincide with political exigencies, and the only course open to us was to make them coincide as far as possible. This was what the right hon. Gentleman had done. He did not believe any Secretary of State for War had ever been in closer touch with military opinion or had consulted his military advisers more freely and fully than his right hon. friend. If this scheme which was put forward, was rejected because in the opinion of some it did not reach perfection, and if they did not make the best use of what could be got and insisted upon what could not be obtained they would never reach any reform at all. The constant desire to pull up everything that was sown in order to see whether it was growing was greatly to be deprecated. As to the Volunteers, what did the right hon. Gentleman propose? There were three categories of Volunteers, first, there was the very good first-class material; men who gave a deal of time to their training. Then there was a second class composed of men who did not do so well but who gave what time they could towards making themselves efficient, and there was the third group which was classed as efficient but which was unfit for service with any mobile army. The scheme of his right hon. friend differentiated between these three classes and encouraged the first class, composed of the best material, by every means, and also the second class which would come to fill the ranks of the first and which would be stiffened by the men already in the first class. But that could only be done by the reduction of the third class which was known to be inefficient. He could not understand hon. Members saying that they must have enough money to make the Volunteer force as it now existed efficient. He did not believe that a sum sufficient for that purpose would ever be granted by Parliament, and if it were he did not think the expenditure would produce the desired result. The fact was it was impossible to get the money to keep the Volunteer force in its present state efficient, and so far from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State being an enemy to the force he was the best friend they had, because he desired to convert what in many respects was a sham into a reality, and to give us a force of 60,000 or 70,000 men upon whom we could depend in time of war. The question was essentially one of quality rather than quantity. As was well known, the Volunteers were lacking in nearly all the essential accessories without which an Army is incapable of taking the field. Surely it was better to provide these things for a smaller force fit to use them, than to waste money on the maintenance of a large force with only a paper value? At present the tares were choking the wheat, and the money urgently needed would never be forthcoming unless reduction of men known to be useless were submitted to. Such were facts upon which the House was asked to pass a vote of censure upon the Government for what they had done and proposed to do. He trusted the House of Commons, by an overwhelming majority, would say that the right hon. Gentleman had taken the proper course. When his right hon. friend replied to all the criticisms, which had now been going on since March last, he would be able to show that there was no foundation for them, and the country might be confident that a great step in advance had not only been taken with regard to Army reform but with regard to the reform of the Volunteers as well.

SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire. Ilkeston)

said one of the lessons of the South African War which ought to be taken to heart by every War Minister was that he should do nothing to discourage the efficiency and strength of the Volunteer forces, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would move in the direction of making that force not only more efficient but more numerous. He believed there was in this country an enormous amount of material for the Volunteer force, not for aggressive purposes, but for the highest of all purposes: the defence of our hearths and homes. Another lesson of the war was the importance of mobility in warfare and the necessity of creating in this country a mobile force after the fashion of our opponents in the Transvaal. The third lesson was in connection with the artillery. It was a standing disgrace to our land that we should be fighting a war with a force better armed than we were. That lesson had been taken to heart. Since the right hon. Gentleman had been in office he had given orders for putting us in possession of adequate artillery in the course of twelve or eighteen months. It was manifestly a danger to this country that we were supplied with artillery which was inferior to any great Continental Power. But a more serious lesson of the war was that from neglect of certain precautions we lost an enormous number of men. In the course of the war we lost 13,250 men from disease, mostly from a disease which of all diseases was the most preventable. He laid it down as a canon which every War Minister ought to regard, that while in a civil community an outbreak of enteric fever was a scandal, an outbreak of enteric fever in the course of a war was a crime. The Secretary for War"s predecessor in office, after the recommendations of more than one Commission, started a system in the Army Medical Service by which there should be a college for the teaching of science in London and also a large hospital where they could learn the latest methods of defeating and possibly preventing disease. How far had that scheme progressed? He saw or the Embankment a large hospital which had been completed for more than a year. It was still empty and unused. But where was the medical school in which officers were to be taught the latest scientific methods for preserving the physical efficiency of the general force? He believed the college was working in cramped buildings and without a sufficient amount of money. Was the right hon. Gentleman going to reform the present condition of affairs and develop the institution as it should be developed? The right hon. Gentleman had had the courage to approach the Treasury, and had obtained an increased grant. The institution wanted £30,000 or £40,000 to equip it adequately, and he hoped he would obtain sufficient money for the purpose. At the commencement of the Russian-Japanese War a distinguished Japanese officer said to Major Seaman, an American medical officer, who relates the story— Russia may be able to place 2,000,000 men in the field. We can furnish 500,000. You know in every war four men die of disease for every one who falls from bullets. That will be the position of Russia in this war. We propose to eliminate disease as a factor. Every man who dies in our Army must fall on the field of battle. In this way we shall neutralise the superiority of Russian numbers, and stand on a comparatively equal footing. The result had been that whereas it had been a canon on the part of medical departments in the past that four men were killed by disease for every man killed by the enemy, the Japanese had grappled with this problem, and they had found that instead of losing four by disease to every one killed, the rate had fallen to 1 per cent. of their forces because they had the science and knowledge to prevent it. That was one of the greatest triumphs in Army administration, and he wanted to know whether the Secretary of State was trying to imitate the Japanese, in order that when the British Army was again engaged in conflict, and he hoped that the time might be far distant, we might be able to deal with the pestilences that tracked every army, and that we should only have to deplore those losses, which were the legitimate losses of war, inflicted by the enemy. All the Reports of the Commissions and Committees that sat on the South African war converged on this point—that we wanted improved methods of sanitation. We wanted forethought in the Boer War to meet possible contingencies. There was no part where this was more apparent than in the administration of the medical department, which would not recognise the warnings of the terrible amount of disease they were likely to have among the forces in the field. The consequence was that men died like flies on the veldt in South Africa, and many a brave fellow lost his life and many a family was put into mourning on account of lives lost which ought to have been saved by the exercise of forethought. In solving this problem the Japanese had for the first time in the history of the world realised the true inwardness of the medical department of the army. It was instituted and constituted for the purpose of preventing disease. The Japanese knew that under the old theory and old systems 400 men were lost by disease for every 100 lost by the action of the enemy, and, recognising that, they had made their medical department not so much a department for treatment and operating, but a great department for looking after the health, the feeding, and the physical efficiency of their army. How had they done it? They had put a medical officer everywhere. Our system was to put the medical officer in the background and to keep him there. There was no respect for science in the British Army. It had never had the recognition it ought to have in the Army. Manchuria was a country where the sanitary conditions were very much worse than those in South Africa, but the Japanese medical officers went out behind the first screen of scouts, and made it their duty to attend to every detail before the advancing army. Every water-supply was tested by the medical officer, and a notice was put up in those cases where the soldiers must not drink, in other cases instructions were given that the water must be boiled before use. That was done as the army marched, and so good was the discipline of the soldiers that they never disobeyed the orders of the scientific advisers. When they visited towns where fever was epidemic, the soldiers were encamped under conditions where they were not likely to be infected. If we had done that in South Africa, hundreds of lives would have been saved in cases where the men were encamped on ground which had previously been occupied by patients suffering from enteric fever.

Throughout the whole department of transport the same care was exercised in connection with all the possibilities of the campaign, and by attending to that carefully day by day, with the highest scientific skill, this nation of the East had shown the civilised West how to preserve human life. They did not stop there. The medical officers of the Japanese Army, when the troops were in camp or in stationary positions, used these opportunities to teach the soldiers all the devices by means of which they could preserve health, what food to take, how it should be cooked, and how to avoid all those maladies which came from inattention to personal cleanliness and sanitation; and so the whole army was preserved in a state of efficiency and preparedness for warfare, which no other army ever had before attained. It was almost like a fairy tale to read the details recently published in regard to General Oku"s division—or left wing of the Japanese Army in Manchuria—an army about equal in numbers to what we had in South Africa. That record came to this: that during the first five or six months of the campaign they had only 40 deaths from disease. There were only 193 cases of enteric fever and 342 cases of dysentery. What was our record in South Africa in the first year of the war? We had no fewer than 3,774 deaths from typhoid fever alone, out of some 12,000 cases. And so it was with other diseases. The disease of beri-beri, familiar to this House in connection with the Chinese labourers in South Africa, had been overcome by the sanitary precautions of the Japanese medical authorities, and had ceased to be the scourge it used to be in Eastern armies. It might be said that all this was beside the question; that it happened in another country where; the climatic and other conditions were not the same. But the climatic conditions in Manchuria were worse than in South Africa. It was science that had done it, because the Russian Army had had a scourge which the Japanese had been able to avoid. It had been estimated that the total number of sick and wounded in the Russian Army, up to the time of the great battle on the Sha Ho, was 150,000, or 30 per cent. of the force. The central board at Kharbin registered 32,000 sick and wounded from June 15th to August 15th, of whom only one-fifth were wounded. Dysentery, enteric, and rheumatic fever prevailed. The Japanese system was an example which it would be well for the military heads of our Army to follow. They should take every opportunity of learning from this Eastern people the details of their methods, in order that when a British force was again placed in the field we should have the scientific administration which our allies enjoyed. The great marvel of it was that the Japanese had managed to overcome the ordinary scourges of an army with a loss of 1 per cent. of their men from all diseases, while we lost in our recent war more from enteric fever alone. This example of "knowing how to do it," which this people of the East were setting us, should be followed and imitated in the interests of humanity and efficiency by every civilised Power in the world. He hoped the Secretary for War, when he applied himself to this portion of his Army work, would try to bring about that efficiency which existed in the Japanese Army by insisting that the chief and most important duty of the medical staff was the prevention of disease among the soldiers and the looking; after them with the almost paternal care exercised by the Japanese medical officers. In that way, and in that way only our troops might be always kept fully efficient for the duties they had to perform in the field. New artillery, rifles, long or short, would not by themselves save us, but men strong and vigorous, able to face their foe, were the best defence for a civilized nation.

SIR HARRY SETON-KARR (St. Helens)

said it was impossible to follow in the same line the very interesting speech which the hon. Member had just made with so much ability. There was, however, one subject covered by the Amendment to which he desired to call the attention of the House. He referred to one of the great changes recently introduced into the Army by his right hon. friend—the re-arming of our infantry. The subject had been very briefly touched upon already by the hon. and gallant Gentleman who moved the Amendment, but not in any detail. He did not think it was necessary for him to apologise to the House for saying a few words upon it, because in spite of what the hon. Gentleman opposite had said, he was one of those who thought it was of the greatest importance that our soldiers should be armed with the best and most efficient weapon, without which they could not do themselves justice in a state of war. As the House was well aware, in December last a report was issued on the trial of a short rifle for the Army and Navy. He did not want to say anything that would be in the slightest degree offensive to the authors of that report, but he considered that it was in a certain sense—he did not say intentionally—misleading. It professed to be a report on the trials of the short rifle with which the Army—cavalry and infantry—was to be armed by a test called the figure-of-merit test up to a range of 1500 yards. The change from the long to a short rifle was not touched upon in the report, although it was true that there was a table of comparisons between the figure of merit for the long and the short rifle. It would not be contradicted that that was not a test between the merits and advantages of the long and the short rifle. Now the issue of the flew short rifle to the Army would cost something like £3,000,000, and it was now, in fact, being sent out to India. His contention was that the new short rifle, which was five inches shorter than the old rifle, had been insufficiently tested in comparison with the rifle at present in use. It was not his intention to go into scientific details, but the man in the street wanted to know whether this great change was being made without a proper test having been instituted between the long and short rifle—all other things being equal—to discover which was the best weapon. The War Office experts had carefully refrained from entering into this question. They had not endeavoured to find that out. They practically said that the Committee had examined the short rifles; they told how it shot in certain cases, but they had not tested the long and the short rifle under equal conditions. He did not pretend to be a scientific expert but he knew something of the practical use of a rifle. Everybody was aware that the question was a very important one, and had involved very serious differences of opinion between large bodies of experts of all sorts in this country.

It was an established fact that, other things being equal, a long-barrelled rifle would carry much further and shoot harder and straighter than a short-barrelled weapon. That principle had been already acknowledged in connection with big guns. The longer barrel, within reasonable limits, utilised more energy than the shorter one. It was also more accurate and easier for the private soldier to shoot straight and be nearer the mark, from the longer barrel, because the sights were farther apart. There were other details with which he would not weary the House, but these were the main factors which it was desirable to keep before the minds of hon. Members. It was perfectly easy, by altering the boring and the size of the cartridge, to make the short rifle shoot better than the old rifle up to a certain range. As a matter of fact that had been done, and according to the table in the report the test of the short rifle appeared to the casual reader to be far better than that of the long. But he should like to call attention to a report published in The Times newspaper a day or two ago, from which it appeared that five experts were taken down to Bisley on a sort of amateur trial of both the long and the short rifles. The competition was carried out by men who thoroughly understood the subject. He knew no more about the trial than he had read in the report in The Times, which he believed was perfectly authentic. These gentlemen tried three of the new short rifles and three old long rifles, and three old long rifles fitted with wind-gauge, sights, and some extra improvements in mechanism adopted in the short rifle. It was a remarkable fact that in this test the new short rifle came out last. Having regard to the serious discrepancy between, that test and the test published in the Army report, he asked his right hon. friend to reconsider his position with regard to the issue of this new rifle. The actual shooting powers of the new short rifle compared with the old rifle should be tested. If they took five inches off the barrel of the old rifle, our soldiers would to that extent be handicapped in a personal encounter with the bayonet. It was said that all that was necessary I was to increase the length of the bayonet. The answer to that was that a longer bayonet would alter the trajectory and the shooting power of the rifle. If our soldiers had to shoot with the short rifle with a longer bayonet fixed to it, he doubted whether they would hit a haystack. It was also stated in the report in The Times that with the short rifle there was a flash. That meant that a certain amount of energy was wasted. Moreover, the flash would disclose to an enemy the position of our infantry in the field. He could not see that the need for uniformity in the length of the rifle carried by the infantry and the cavalry was so great that they should compel the infantry to carry a rifle with inferior shooting power. They could not rest satisfied with this state of things. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman took the opinion of his experts on this matter, but he (Sir H. Seton-Karr) drew attention to it because it was one which, in his opinion, required explanation. The policy of shortening, the barrel of the most important weapon we possessed had been decided in a similar sort of way. There had been no direct tests of the short as against I the long rifle. The whole thing seemed I to have been decided in a very off-hand sort of way, and he applied to his right hon. friend to reconsider the matter.

In conclusion he would point out that this was a matter of Imperial importance. It might be that at some future time we might require the co-operation of our Colonies. Had the Colonial Governments pronounced upon this weapon? Their opinion was worth taking, because from the very nature of their environments our colonial fellow-subjects were better judges of a rifle than we could be in this country; they had a better chance of using them at long ranges, and that being so, the House would agree with him that if we were ever in a position to have to ask our Colonies to assist us with men, it was very important that they should be armed with a weapon in which they had confidence. He felt very strongly upon this subject, and could not help thinking that some mistake had been made; he therefore hoped that his right hon. friend would, if he thought the matter required further consideration, at once stop the issue of the rifles and have the matter considered by another body of experts.

MR. GUEST (Plymouth)

said misfortune seemed to dog the steps of the War Office whenever they tried to reform the military system. It appeared that in trying to level up the grade of the cavalry rifle they had only succeeded in levelling down the grade of the infantry rifle. He did not rise, however, to indulge in wholesale criticism of the policy of the Minister for War. Blunders there had been, and enough of them, but experience had been gained, and he thought that they were in a better position in regard to Army reform than they were two years ago. Advance had been made, even if it were by the humiliating process of eliminating blunders. They would be really on the threshold of some real improvement if the military authorities and the Secretary for War would divest themselves of one cardinal remaining misapprehension, which had been responsible for nearly all the difficulty, muddle, and confusion in which they were to-day. That misconception was that it was necessary for this country to have a large Regular Army. Until that idea was got rid of this country would make no substantial advance in Army reform. There were three considerations which rendered it desirable that there should be a small Regular Army. The first consideration was that the Army was limited by the number of recruits that could be obtained year by year without lowering the standard of recruits. There were also the considerations of cost and policy. A large standing Army was a menace to peace, whereas a large Auxiliary Force was a guarantee of peace. The Army should I simply exist for the purpose of garrisoning our possessions, providing a reserve, and creating a machine by which there might be in this country, to resist foreign aggression, a large number of people with some military training and military instincts. It was no part of the duty of the Army to go wandering over the plains and highlands of Central Asia to acquire fresh territory. In a democracy every war must be a popular war. If the country felt that it had been wronged, or that its honour was at stake, and through its representatives in the House undertook a war, the authorities could count on the patriotism of the Auxiliary Forces. But in every War Office there was a professional contempt for the Auxiliary Forces, a contempt which survived the most startling proofs of their worth under actual conditions of war. The flimsiness of the professional prejudice might be ganged from the fact that when professional soldiers and Volunteers found themselves side by side on the field it disappeared at the first brush with the enemy, or at the first puff of powder. But as soon as the war was over, the services, efficiency, and capacity of the Auxiliary Forces were forgotten, and the old feeling of dislike and contempt reasserted itself. Even Ministers, such as the present Secretary of State for War, the "blue-water school" themselves, were attacked by the same disease.

Volunteer effort was a delicate plant which could not be treated by artificial methods. If the authorities discouraged the patriotic efforts of people who, at great inconvenience, gave a great deal of their time to the service of their country, they would kill the force, there would be nothing of it left. If the Volunteer forces were not up to the standard of efficiency, let the Secretary of State for War set to work to improve and encourage them by spending more money on them. There were many economies which could be effected in the Regular Army which might provide means for the Auxiliaries. Let the right hon. Gentleman call upon the local authorities to assist him in his efforts. The Auxiliary Forces were the raw material, and one of the duties of the War Office should be to provide a machine capable in time of war of translating that raw material into an effective fighting weapon. For that purpose the military policy should have ill view the organisation of those branches of the service and those parts of the military machine which could not be improvised. They must train officers and have a general staff, stores, and, above all, arms and other things which could not be supplied at the last moment. Then, if they relied on the patriotic and military spirit which they would be able to keep alive and foster by means of the Auxiliary Forces, they would have a better fighting machine on the whole than if they tried to collect from the gutter and from among the unemployed what they themselves described as the dregs of the population. But all efforts in this direction were vitiated by the non-recognition of the fact that our Army was nothing but an amateur Army. Too many men took up a military career with the intention more of amusing themselves than of forwarding its interests or adding to its efficiency. This was largely due to the fact that officers were not paid sufficiently well to enable the authorities to exact the wholehearted devotion to the service which the country ought to expect. When an officer became a colonel it was idle to expect him to devote the whole of his energies for the paltry consideration he was to receive. If a colonel did his duty he would be worth £1,000 a year. There was too much inclination to suppose that they could demand from those in the Volunteer force very much more than they were prepared to pay for. He hoped they would have from the Secretary of State for War some statement that he had resolved to improve the Army without destroying the Auxiliary Forces. If he did carry out this policy of reducing the Auxiliary Forces he would be doomed to disappointment.

SIR CARNE RASCH (Essex, Chelmsford)

said he was only going to trouble the House with a few words about quick-firing guns and short rifles. He had never been an admirer of the War Office, but he thought the criticism of it had been more acidulated than it ought to be. The hon. and gallant Member for Newington had rather unduly piled on the agony as to one or two matters. As an object-lesson upon this question he would like to point to what was happening on the Continent, where two great Powers who re-armed the artillery five years ago were now about to re-arm it again, one at a cost of £2,000,000. During this time the War Office had been marking time and had adopted two stopgaps, namely, the sixteen batteries of guns bought from Austria and the equipment invented by Sir George Clarke. Fortunately the English batteries, with guns firing four shots a minute, had not been pitted against the French batteries with guns firing twenty shots a minute. He had been informed that on March 5th of last year the order for the quick-firing guns was given by the War Office. They were put in hand the following month, and in a month"s time the War Office would be in possession of fifty quick-firing guns, and in a year"s time something like 500 would have been delivered. It should not be forgotten that if the War Office had re-armed the artillery five and a half years ago they would have had to come down to the House and ask for £2,500,000 more to carry out the re-armament of the artillery a second time.

He could not help thinking that the attack which had been made upon the short rifle was somewhat belated, because they had been in possession of it for the last two years, and they had all had ample opportunities of examining it. Although he was an old instructor in musketry he did not consider himself an expert. What he would say, however, was that the Lee-Metford could not be regarded as a good weapon, because it was unhandy and heavy and did not come up handy to the shoulder. They wanted a rifle that came up handy to the shoulder and was well balanced. The trajectory of the short rifle and the Lee-Metford was practically the same up to 800 yards. He would rather have a short rifle and a short bayonet than an ill-balanced one and a long bayonet. The Times pointed out that in consequence of the shortening of the rifle the British soldier"s bayonet would be five inches shorter than his adversary"s. Surely the resources of civilisation were not exhausted, and it was within the competence of the War Office to provide a longer bayonet if it was necessary, and he did not think it was. With regard to the shooting at Bisley that was very different to what occurred on active service. The flash fire from the muzzle they could not help, and if they had a short rifle they would have to take the disadvantages as well as the advantages.

As to the Militia, he hoped the Secretary of State would stand to his guns in that direction, and that he would end or mend that force. He would rather that the right hon. Gentleman should mend it. After all, what was the use of a force which was short of officers, which had no staff, no guns, and no transport, and which was 50 per cent. below strength at the, present moment? Such a force, as his hon. friend the Member for Stepney had said, was a patent fraud. The other day The Times pointed out that the Militia was the backbone of the Peninsular Army. That was so; but at that time the Militia was recruited by ballot, and he should like to know what hon. Gentleman would bring in a Bill to restore balloting for the Militia. He brought in such a Bill once, but the five hon. Members who backed it withdrew their names before he could even bring it to the Table. Whether they acted under pressure from their constituents or not he could not say. During the last year or two the criticism of the War Office had been rather too acidulated. He thought his right hon. friend the present War Minister was doing well. During the last eighteen months more had been done for the Army than had been accomplished since the time of Lord Cardwell, whom, though execrated when he was in office, he regarded as the greatest military administrator the country ever had. But it was idle to talk of Army re-organisation unless the recruits were forthcoming, and the recruiting of an Army which had to serve in the tropics was by no means an easy matter. He had heard of a regiment which lately went marching through its territorial district beating up recruits. At the end of three weeks it got only one recruit, and he had a difficulty in passing the doctor. On the following Sunday the pastor of the village in which the recruit lived asked the prayers of the congregation for their erring brother, and opened a collection to buy him out. That was an example of the difficulties which the Secretary for War had to encounter.

MR. COURTENAY WARNER (Staffordshire, Lichfield)

said it was quite true, as the last speaker had said, that the Militia was weak, but everything had been done for years past to snub it, and do away with it as much as possible. The recruits had been taken out of it and put into the Army. It had been bled to strengthen the Regular Army. Militia officers had been snubbed to such an extent that there was not now the same desire, as in the old days, to join the force. It was not only in the Peninsular War that the Militia rendered good service; it also did a good deal in the late South African War, and we should have been in very great difficulty if we had not been able to send these men out there. The Militia was ready to be used at a moment"s notice whenever we wished to embody it, and it was a useful reserve in that sense. He was glad to learn from what had been said in another place that therewas a probability of the, Militia being taken a little more notice of in the future than in the past. He agreed with the suggestion that the Militia should be enlisted for foreign service in time of war. That was a view which he had repeatedly pressed on Secretaries of State for War. It would not affect the recruiting, but it would give us a valuable force, which could be used at much shorter notice than at the present moment. There was one thing which he hoped would be avoided, and that was the destruction of the Militia by trying to improve it by the imposition of conditions which could not be fulfilled. It might not be so good as we should like to have it, but it was to a certain extent a voluntary force, and we could not expect to get from its members what could be exacted from men who gave their whole time to the Army, and who got regular pay all the year round. It should also be remembered that Militia officers did not go into that force for a career. They sacrificed a certain amount of their time, and he hoped the proposal that they should be a year with the Regular battalion would be done away with. If that were to be put in force he was quite sure the deficiency of officers would be greatly increased. By all means give every possible opportunity to the officer to serve two or three months during the, period of his Militia engagement, but do not force him to go for a year at a time when, if he was not going into the Army, he would be at business or finishing his education. If they wished the local squires and men who could spare a certain amount of time, to become officers they must not be asked to give up that time from the careers on which they had entered.

There was some sort of new scheme and some of them in the House wanted to know where it was tending. He understood that the scheme put forward by the right hon. Gentleman last year was to be modified on certain points, beginning with the gradual abolition of the small depôts, which were expensive and inefficient. A large factor in any scheme at the present moment must be a considerable curtailment of expenditure on the Army Votes, and he was quite willing to see the Votes for his own favourite hobby cut down to secure economy. Unless economy was immediately introduced, even if necessary by the reduction of numbers, the demand in the country for economy would become so great that they would be obliged to cut down the Army to the non-efficient point. There was one part of the Army, and that the most expensive, on which economy could be directly exercised. He meant the staff and the Organisation Department of the War Office. The staff went on increasing in numbers under the new system, and yet these highly-paid higher officers were not compelled to become more efficient. The example of foreign nations on this point should be followed. There should be fewer general officers, colonels, and higher-grade staff officers, and they should insist that those retained should be more efficient, even if they were granted higher pay. The promotion of officers from the lower ranks should not be carried on simply to increase the flow of promotion, and only those should be promoted to higher ranks who were efficient.

Several questions had been raised as to the new guns. France had the best guns in Europe at the present time, but it was said that by the delay in the provision of new guns our Army would get a better weapon. If that argument were to prevail the old Waterloo guns might still have been in use. There would have been a great saving in life and expenditure if we had had proper guns in the South African War instead of obsolete ones. During the last seven years it had been pressed over and over again on the War Office that our artillery was obsolete, and nothing should be allowed to stop the re-armament of our artillery in the shortest possible time. With regard to the new rifle, it was by no means true that the present weapon was obsolete, yet the War Office had plunged into an expenditure of £3,000,000 on a new rifle, to which certainly half the expert opinion was opposed. He begged the War Office to wait before they spent this large sum on a rifle which was not accepted as an improvement on the one we had already by any large majority of expert opinion. Certain things, such as fouling and heating, could not be proved by the ordinary tests. But the increased flash and the detention of the bullet by the extra rifling showed that the short rifle would foul and get hot. He deprecated very much such an expenditure on a rifle which had not been proved to be absolutely necessary. But one thing had escaped the War Office; they were not in touch with the Auxiliary Forces. They did not understand them. He knew the present Secretary for War did understand them, but most people at the War Office were entirely ignorant of the Volunteer and the Militia systems and the way in which they were worked. It was quite true that some of the new officials put into the office did understand these forces, but they were in subordinate positions, and the War office as a whole should study more than hitherto the efficiency of these forces in the field.

And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening"s Sitting.