Commons Sitting of 13 July 1905

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Southend and Colchester Light Railways Bill [Lords] (King's Consent signified). Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Tees Valley Water Board Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Whitby Urban District Council Bill [Lords] (King's Consent signified). Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. l2) Bill. Real the third time, and passer.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 14) Bill. As amended, considered; to be read the third time to-morrow.
Public Schools Act (1868) Amendment (Vincent Square) Bill. Ordered, That the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bill; do examine the Public Schools Act (1868) Amendment (Vincent Square) Bill with respect to compliance with the Standing Orders relative to Private Bills.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP L).
Sir ALEXANDER HARGREAVES BROWNreported from the Committee on Group L of Private Bills; That the parties opposing the Humber Conservancy Bill [Lords] had stated that the evidence of Captain J. Whitley Dixon, R.N., was essential to their case; and, it having been proved that his attendance could not be procured without the intervention of the House, he had been instructed to move that the said Captain J. Whitley Dixon do attend the said Committee to-morrow. at half-past Eleven of the clock.
Ordered, That Captain J. Whitley Dixon do attend the Committee on Group L of Private Bills To-morrow, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
Gas and Water Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords]. Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time Tomorrow.
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill [Lords]. Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply Bill [Lords]; Workington Harbour and Dock Bill [Lords]; Shepton Mallet Gas Company (Electric Lighting) Bill [Lords]; South Lancashire Tramways Bill [Lords]. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Metropolitan Electric Supply Company (Acton District) Bill [Lords]. Reported, with an Amendment; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Formby Township Bill [Lords]. Reported, with Amendments, from the Police and Sanitary Committee; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, etc., Continuance Bill; Millport Piers and Burgh Extension Order Confirmation Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 8) Bill, without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade, under the Tramways Act, 1870, relating to Bradford Corporation Tramways, Gorton Urban District Council Tramways, Keighley Corporation Tramways, Leeds Corporation Tramways, Liverpool Corporation Tramways Extensions, and Pudsey Corporation Tramways." [Tramways Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords.]
Tramways Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 272.]

ADMINISTRATIVE COUNTY OF LONDON AND DISTRICT ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY BILL.
ME. REMNANTasked leave to withdraw the Resolution he had on the Paper to commit this Bill to a Select Committee of nine, the present order of committal to be discharged. He said he took this course in view of the fact that the Committee had already commenced its inquiry.
MR. LOUGHsaid he had a similar Motion on the Blue Paper, and wished to move it.
MR. SPEAKER: It is not down by Order, and could not, therefore, be moved to-day.
MR. T. W. RUSSELL: As the hon. Member had not withdrawn his Motion, it ought to have been put down. Whose fault was it it was not?
MR. SPEAKERsaid he would inquire.
MR. LOUGH: I propose to move it.
MR. SPEAKER: On Monday.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  NORTH SEA FISHERIES INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE.
  Copy presented, of Report on Fishery and Hydrographical Investigations in the North Sea and Adjacent Waters, 1902–3 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  CROWX AGENTS.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated 10th July, 1905, requiring the Comptroller and Auditor - General to extend his audit of the Accounts of the Crown Agents for the Colonies, hitherto restricted to the Office Fund, and to verify the Quarterly Certificates of Cash and Securities held by them in trust for the Colonies [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Naval Barrack Theatres.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state the number of theatres open to the public within the walls of barracks in the United Kingdom, and whether such theatres are controlled by the commanding officers; and, if so, under what regulations.
  (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The theatres within the barracks at Eastney, Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Deal form part of the recreation buildings provided for the use of the Royal Marines, and are under the control of the officer commanding the barracks. These theatres are regulated under Section 174 (a) of The Army Act, 1881, and are not

  533
  open to the public except that there is nothing to prevent the men introducing civilian friends to a limited extent. The naval barracks have no theatres, but they have a stage in their canteens for sing-song performances.

  Fines in the Sasine Office, Edinburgh.
  MR. CALDWELL: To ask the Lord-Advocate if he will furnish a list of the fines or deductions made from the earnings of engrosing clerks in the Sasine Office, Edinburgh, during the last five years, the reason for these deductions, and the authority under which they are deducted; and state to which of the public accounts they are credited.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) The total fines and deductions during the last five years were £18 9s. 6d. out of a total sum earned of £57,503. The fines are imposed on account of irregularities in writing, under authority of the Act of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session of 10th July. 1811, and are accounted for by His Majesty's Treasury under Register House Vote.

  Scottish Congested Districts Board's Funds.
  MR. AINSWORTH (Argyllshire): To ask the Lord-Advocate whether he will consider the advisability of providing the funds required for the additional powers proposed to be conferred upon the Congested Districts Board by the Bill now before Parliament from sources other than the funds already allocated to the Board in connection with the duties imposed upon it by existing legislation.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) If additional powers are conferred upon the Congested Districts Board and the funds at their disposal are found to be inadequate, the Secretary for Scotland will endeavour to obtain such addition to the income of the Board as may be shown to be requisite.

  Pauperism in Poplar.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAR: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to recent
  534
  statistics in regard to pauperism, which show that while in East London the proportion of pauperism to population is 1 in 39, the figures for Poplar reach 1 in 15, while in the matter of out-relief the proportion in the eastern districts is 1 out of 200, whilst in Poplar the proportion reaches 1 in 25; and, seeing that these figures are attributable to lack of employment last winter, will he state what action he proposes to take before the House adjourns for the holidays with a view to allay the distress in these districts next winter.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I am aware of the recent statistics as to pauperism. According to my information the figures are not quite as stated in the Question, the most important difference being that as regards out relief in the eastern district of London, the proportion of persons relieved to population is 1 to 75, and not 1 to 200. Without admitting that the figures are wholly attributable to the cause referred to by the hon. Member, I may point out that the Government have not given up the hope of passing the Unemployed Workmen Bill now before the House, which is concerned with the difficulty arising from distress due to want of employment.

  Tuberculosis (Animals) Compensation Bill.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he will endeavour to obtain facilities for the Second, Reading of the Tuberculosis (Animals) Compensation Bill, which passed Second Reading last session without a division being taken.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) As I have already stated, I sympathise with the object of the Bill, but I am afraid that at this period of the session facilities could not be given for the further progress of any private Member's Bill which is not entirely uncontroversial.

  Aged Paupers in Scottish Poorhouses.
  MR. BLACK: To ask the Lord-Advocate if he can state the number of paupers over sixty-five years of age in the poorhouses in Scotland in

  535
  1881, 1891, 1901, and 1904 respectively and what proportions these numbers bear to the total individual poor over that age receiving relief as at these respective dates; and also the number of persons in these years who, being over sixty-five years of age, applied for but were refused relief unless they accepted admission to the poorhouse but who declined relief in that form.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) I have no information as to the ages of paupers in workhouses in 1881 and 1891, In 1901 it is shown on page 255 of the Census Returns that the total number of poorhouse inmates over sixty-five was 4,502. No later information on this point is available, but steps will be taken to ascertain the facts for the current year, which will then be given in the next Annual Report of the Local Government Board. On the general question as to the ages of poor persons in workhouses, I may refer the hon. Member to the Report on the Methods of Administering Poor Relief in certain large Town Parishes, recently laid upon the Table [Cd. 2524]. No information is available in regard to the latter part of the Question.

  Motor-Cars in King's Park, Edinburgh.
  SIR LEWIS McIVER: To ask the Lord-Advocate what are the reasons for excluding motor-ears from the use of the upper road past Dunsappie Loch, in the King's Park, Edinburgh.
  (Answered by Lord Balcarres.) The road is reported to be dangerous, and has been closed to motors pending a visit by the First Commissioner of Works in the autumn.

  Adrianople Refugees in Bulgaria.
  SIR A. HAYTER: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state what number of refugees who fled from the province of Adrianople in 1903 still remain in Bulgaria.
  (Answered by Earl Percy.) The list furnished early in the year by the Bulgarian Government to the Turkish Government showed that about 300
  536
  families were awaiting repatriation to the vilayet of Adrianople. According to a Report from His Majesty's Consul at Adrianople, dated 2nd June, the Commissioners appointed by agreement between the two Governments to assist the work of repatriation had commenced regular sittings at two villages on the frontier, and up to that date about 130 refugees had presented themselves.

  Throwing Dogs in the Thames—Alleged Cruelty.
  COLONEL LOCKW00D: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the cruelty of continually throwing dogs into the river from the steps in front of St. Thomas's Hospital; and if he will give directions to the police to put a stop to this practice, which is especially prevalent on Sundays.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) The police report to me that dogs are frequently taken to the steps near St. Thomas's Hospital to enter the water, being as a rule enticed to do so by the throwing in of a stick. The police have not hitherto observed any act of cruelty on the part of persons in charge of dogs, and failing this they have no power to take any action.

  Allowances to Provincial Postmen.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is now in a position to announce particulars of the promised system of allowances to postmen in the provinces.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) I am not at present in a position to do more than refer the hon. Member to an Answer which I gave on the 5th † instant to a Question on this subject asked by the hon. Member for South Belfast.

  Alien Immigration Returns.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucester-shire,): To ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether the new monthly Return of Passengers to Places out of Europe, which has been presented but not circulated, and of which the
  † See (4) Debates, cxlviii., 115.

  537
  title has been altered in another place, is the promised Return which it was understood would be circulated monthly along with the Alien Immigration Return.
  (Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) The Answer is in the affirmative.

  Irish Education in Extra Subjects.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the portion of the circular of instructions issued by the Board of National Education to their inspectors, dated January, 1904, relating to the standards in which results fees are payable for extra branches, which formed the subject of a debate in this House on 14th March, 1904, resulting in the defeat of the Government, has been either modified or withdrawn in subsequent instructions; and, if modified, will he say in what way.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long): The original circular was modified in the manner outlined by my right hon. friend the Member for Dover on 8th March, 1904. I have now sent to the hon. Member copies of the original and amending circulars.

  Irish Education Code.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many teachers classed 1 (1) have, under the new Code, got increments since 1900; how many such teachers have got increments on those reports marked good; what are the conditions necessary to warrant increments for such teachers; how many teachers receive the maximum salary of £175 per annum plus capitation; and how many teachers have, since the introduction of the new Code, been promoted to the maximum salary.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) Increments of "good service" salary are given triennially for good service, and all the teachers who received increments must have had "good" or "very good" reports. A good report, however, though an important condition, is not the only one necessary for the award of increment. On the 31st December, 1904, there were
  538
  eighty-one men principals in receipt of £175 and upwards, exclusive of capitation grant. It would be impossible to say how many teachers have been advanced to the maximum salary since the introduction of the new system without making an exhaustive and laborious investigation, which the Commissioners do not consider would serve any useful purpose.

  Public Libraries in Irish Rural Districts.
  MR. BOLAND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can stats how many rural district councils in Ireland have adopted the Public Libraries Acts; and can he give their names.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) In addition to the nineteen rural district councils set forth in the reply to the hon. Member's Question of 12th April, 1904,† the councils of North Dublin, South Dublin, Wexford, and Youghal No. 1 rural districts have passed resolutions adopting the Act, but the statutory requirements have been complied with in thirteen cases only, viz.: Balrothery, Cahirciveen, Cloneygowan, Dublin (North), Dublin (South), Dundalk, Kinsale, Mallow, Rathdown No. 1, Rath-down No. 11, Rathkeale, Wexford, and Youghal No. 1.

  Floods at Westport, County Mayo.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the flooding of certain lands near Westport, county Mayo, the property of the Congested Districts Board, owing to the salmon gaps in the Belclare River being kept closed and the sluices being kept down; and whether, in view of the amount of damage done to the lands of the neigh-bouring tenants by such floods, he will see that the salmon gaps and sluices are kept in order.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long). The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction have caused an inspection of this mill dam to be made, and the necessary steps are being taken to ensure compliance with the statutory
  † See (4) Debates, cxxxiii., 22.

  539
  regulations in connection with such mill dams.

  Evicted Tenants in County Waterford.
  MR. POWER: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he could state on what estates in the county Waterford have negotiations for the reinstatement of evicted tenants taken place, and or what estate is it hoped to obtain 456 acres for the restoration of three tenants.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long): It would be contrary to practice and undesirable to give details as to pending negotiations.

  South African Horse Disease.
  MR. POWER: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the horse disease, known as South African horse disease, has been practically stamped out among Army horses in Ireland; and will he say whether the disease exists among Army horses in parts of Great Britain; and, if so, whether Army horses before being sent from Great Britain to Ireland will be carefully examined; and whether every possible step will be taken to prevent the reintro-duction of this disease into Ireland by Army horses or otherwise.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long). The reply to the first inquiry is in the affirmative. For information upon the second and third points I must refer the hon. Member to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. With regard to the concluding inquiry, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland are in communication with the military authorities with a view to the maintenance of adequate precautions against the reintroduction of the disease into Ireland, and the question whether any, and, if so, what further provision in the matter is necessary is engaging attention.

  Lismore Show—Prohibition of Movement of Horses from and into County Waterford.
  MR. O'SHEE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that by Order of the Department
  540
  of Agriculture, dated 4th July, 1905, the Department has prohibited the movement of horses into the county of Waterford for exhibition at Lismore Show, and the movement of horses from the county Waterford for exhibition at any show, and has also prohibited the exhibition, of any horse located in the county Waterford at any show within the county without previous inspection by the Department, and that this Order came into force on the 6tb July, 1905, which was the last day of Cork Show; and whether, seeing that several horses from county Waterford were exhibited at Cork Show without restriction, and that horses are not restricted in their movement from the county Waterford to public fairs held outside it, and that disease only appeared in the eastern part of Waterford county and is now practically stamped out, the Department will withdraw this order so far as it relates to Lismore Show, provided an inspection takes place and a certificate is given by the Department's inspector prior to the admission of such horse to the show grounds.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The-reply to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative. The Cork Show commenced before the date on which the Order took effect, and exhibits of horses thereat from county Waterford were not interfered with. No restrictions have so-far been imposed on fairs. It is not accurate to say that epizootic lymphangitis has appeared only in the eastern part of the county Waterford. The last outbreak occurred at Dungarvan so recently as the 30th June. It is too soon to conclude that the disease has been practically stamped out, and the Department are not prepared to modify the Order so far as Lismore Show is concerned.

  Case of Mr. William Davies, of Dominica.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state the result of his inquiries into the case of Mr. William Davies, of Dominica, West Indies.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) A petition to His Majesty the King in Council from Mr. William Davies, praying

  541
  that a judgment of the Supreme Court of the Leeward Islands might be varied, was duty forwarded in May last to the Registrar of the Privy Council, who, Mr. Lyttelton understands, addressed a letter to Mr. Davies on the 25th of that month explaining the steps which he should take in order to bring his petition before His Majesty in Council.

  Labourers in South African Mines.
  MR. COHEN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies

  Transvaal Gold Mines.

  Whites.

  Kaffirs (coloured)

  Chinese.

  May, 1904

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  13,127

  77,519

  Nil.

  June, 1904

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  13,413

  74,632

  1,004

  December, 1904

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  15,023

  83,639

  20,885

  March, 1905

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  16,225

  105,184

  34,335

  Army Band Instruments.
  MAJOR EVANS GORDON: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is proposed to alter the pitch of the instruments in the bands of the Household Brigade; and, if so, whether he can state the object of the change, the cost of the alteration, and upon whom such cost would fall.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The King's Regulations lay down that, in order to insure uniformity throughout the bands of the service, the instruments are to be the pitch known as the Kneller Hall pitch. No proposal has reached this office to alter the pitch of the instruments of the Household Brigade.

  Non-Commissioned Officers and Plain Clothes.
  MR. COLSTON (Gloucestershire,): To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he could see his way to extend the permission already granted to non-commissioned officers in the Army to wear plain clothes when absent from duty with their regiments.
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  what were the respective numbers of whites and Kaffirs employed in the South African mines in May, 1904, before the arrival of the first importation of Chinese labour; and what were the respective numbers of whites, Kaffirs, and Chinese in June and December, 1904, and March, 1905.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) The following are the figures asked for; they are to be found at page 76 and page 96 of [Cd. 2401]:—
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster,) The King's Regulations already permit commanding officers to give permission to dress in plain clothes when on furlough or pass to non-commissioned officers and men of good character.

  Sleeping Accommodation for Soldiers on Guard.
  MR. COLSTON: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether any and, if so, what improvements have been made in the sleeping accommodation provided for soldiers when on guard; and, if such improvement has been made, will he state in what barracks it has been effected.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) A new pattern guard-bed, with steel spring mattress, has been approved and is being supplied to the following stations, viz.: London, Kingston, Guildford, Tidworth, Bulford, Plymouth, Portsea, Gosport, Netley, Portland, and Dorchester.

  Volunteer Musketry Regulations.
  MR. MOCRAE: To ask the Secretary of State for War under which paragraph of the Volunteer Regulations a Volunteer is asked or required to

  543
  qualify as a first-class shot; and if he can state the standard of musketry efficiency necessary to qualify under paragraph 4, Army Council Circular, of 20th June, 1905.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The regulations laying down the standard of efficiency for first-class shots of Volunteers will be found in the Provisional Musketry Regulations published in 1903; this standard is 100 points. It must be remembered that Volunteer corps can still fire under the old provisions contained in the Volunteer Regulations of 1901.

  Romford Volunteer Artillery.
  MR. LOUIS SINCLAIR: To ask the Secretary of State for War what reason, if any, the War Office has in not supplying the Romford battery of Artillery Volunteers with modern guns as promised, seeing that the battery is in every way equal in efficiency with the other batteries of the battalion, which are so supplied.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The stock of those modern guns has hitherto only been sufficient to supply companies of Volunteer garrison artillery which are allotted to coast defences on mobilisation, and the company mentioned is not so allotted.

  Naval Works Bill.
  MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the Naval Works Bill will be introduced.
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) As I have informed the hon. Member for East Perthshire, the Bill is ready, but I cannot yet fix a date for its introduction, I will give the best notice I can.

  Irish Parliamentary Representation.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can state what the Parliamentary representation of Ireland would have been ii determined on the basis of population at the time of the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 and in the years 1842 and 1852 respectively.
  544
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) It is not practicable to state what was the precise population in the years mentioned in the Question, but it is probably sufficient to take the figures in the Reports of the Census taken in the years 1831, 1841, and 1851 respectively. On this assumption, and taking the number of Members of the House of Commons as 658, the Parliamentary representation of Ireland in the years 1832, 1842, and 1852 would, on the basis of population, have apparently been 212, 201, and 157 respectively.

  Submarine Vessels in War.
  MR. BROADHURST: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will communicate with foreign Governments with a view to abolish the use of submarine vessels for purposes of war.
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) I think the proposal is hardly practicable.

  The War Stores Commission Act.
  SIR JAMES W0ODHOUSE: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in framing the Statutory Commission Bill, the Government have considered the fact that an officer cannot be tried or punished for any offence triable by Court-martial committed more than three years before the date fat which his trial begins; and how, in the event of it appearing from the evidence in the possession of the Government, or that may be adduced before the Royal Commission, or from the Report of the Commission, that any officer ought to be tried by Court-martial for offences arising in respect of the dealings with Government stores in South Africa in 1902, does he propose to deal with the matter so as to prevent such officer availing himself of a plea of statutory time limit arising from the delay in inquiring into and ascertaining the facts.
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) The question of the term within which an officer may be tried by Court-martial is entirely outside the scope of the War Stores Commission Act. That Act has been framed to secure the complete disclosure of all the facts, and for this

  545
  purpose provides for indemnity being given to witnesses; but it would have been altogether irregular to include in it provisions for altering the period of limitation for trials by Courts-martial.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Deal Barracks Theatre.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state whether the theatre situated within the barrack walls at Deal was built at the public expense; and, if so, at what cost, and under what Vote its maintenance is provided for; will he say under what regulations the colonel commanding sanctions the performance of plays to which the public are admitted; and whether any income is derived from the public notices which appear on the barrack walls announcing theatrical performances.
    *THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARTHUR LEE,): The building in question was built at the public expense at a cost of £3,622. Its maintenance is provided for under Navy Vote 10, Subhead L, and the average expenditure is about £20 per annum The so-called "theatre" is under she control of the officer in command of the barracks at Deal, and its general management, including admission, is arranged by a committee of officers, the object of such management being the amusement of the men in barracks together with their relations and friends. The reply to the last portion of the hon. Member's Question is that orders were issued some years ago that no public notices as to the performances at the theatre were to be posted on the barrack walls, and so far as is known no income ever was, or is, derived from this source.
    MR. WEIR: I have seen these notices on the barrack walls. Will the right hon. Gentleman see that the orders are in future complied with?
    *MR. ARTHUR LEE: I will inquire into the matter.

    Percentages of Marksmen.
    MR. MCCRAB: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state the percentages of marksmen, first-class shots, second-class shots, and third-class shots in the Volunteer infantry and Regular infantry forces respectively.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR(Mr.ARNOLD-FORSTER,): The percentages required are as follows:—

    Marksmen.

    1st Class.

    2nd Class.

    3rd Class.

    Regular Infantry

    9·6

    27·3

    41·6

    21·3

    Volunteer Infantry:

    Old Course

    37 0

    —

    62·6

    0·2

    New Course

    20·3

    44·2

    29·7

    5·6

    Volunteer battalions may elect which of these courses is to be fired. It must be pointed out that these figures do not serve for purposes for comparison, as the courses shot by Regular and Volunteer infantry are entirely different.

    Volunteer Marksmen.
    MR. FREDERICK WILSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether only first-class shots are now considered by the Army Council as fit for active service; if he can state what percentage of the British Army come under the designation of first-class shots; and if he can state what steps it is intended to take to in-crease the number of first-class shots among Regulars and Volunteers.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: As I have already informed the House, the possession of a first-class certificate by a Regular soldier is not a necessary qualification for active service abroad. The percentage of first-class shots in the Regular Army on the home establishment was 29·85 of the total of the men who fired classification practices. As regards the last paragraph of the Question, the General Staff of the Army is constantly engaged in endeavours to improve the shooting both of the Regulars and the Volunteers, and these efforts will not in any way be relaxed in the future.

    Bordon Military Camp.
    MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the sewaga

    547
    from the military camp at Bordon is flowing direct into the River Wey, and from thence into the River Thames, without being treated or disinfected in any way; and whether the War Office intends to take any steps to deal with the sewage before discharging it into the River Wey.
    MR. ABNOLD-FORSTER: Will the hon. Member kindly refer to my reply to a Question on this subject put by the hon. and gallant Member for Bath on the 10th instant.†

    Chinese Attacks on Whites on the Rand.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any information as to recent attacks upon the white population on the Rand by Chinese coolies; whether any steps are being taken to protect the white population against outbreaks on the part of the Chinese coolies; and what are the numbers at present on the Rand of the adult male whites and Chinese coolies, respectively.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): I am not aware that any attacks have been made upon the white population in general. There was a disturbance in the Crœsus Mine a short while ago when some white miners were assailed and a white miner lost his life. The full investigation of the proceedings has not yet reached me. I understand that the numbers at present on the Rand of adult male whites is about 50,000 and of Chinese coolies 44,000.

    Railway Development in Northern Nigeria.
    MR. EMMOTT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether any decision has yet been arrived at in reference to the question of railway development in Northern Nigeria; and, if no decision has been arrived at, whether, having regard to the impossibility of industrial progress on any large scale, either in cotton-growing or other industries, until a
    railway is
    † See page 76.
    548
    made, and the unlikelihood of the grant-in-aid being reduced until industrial development does take place, he can say when a decision is likely to be arrived at.
    MR. LYTTELTON: No decision has yet been arrived at, but the report of the survey for a railway from the Niger to Kano has now been received and is under consideration. I should add, with reference to the grant-in-aid, that the amount inserted in the Estimates for the current year is £320,000, which is £85,000 less than the amount which was voted in 1904–5.
    MR. EMMOTT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will lay a Paper upon the Table giving particulars of the various plans and estimates for alternative schemes of light and heavy railways in Northern Nigeria; and whether he will nclude in it the despatches of Sir Frederick Lugard on the question (if any).
    MR. LYTTELTON: A Paper will be laid giving the particulars asked for and including despatches from Sir F. Lugard and others on the question.

    Flogging of Chinese Coolies in the Transvaal Mines.
    *MR. BRIGHT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state the number, if any, of Chinese coolies who have been flogged up to date in the various compounds of the Rand respectively; what is the maximum number of lashes which has been inflicted; what has been the instrument used, and for what offences; and by whose authority such floggings, if any, have been inflicted.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The returns from July last up to the end of April of this year show that eight Chinese labourers have received the punishment of flogging; the maximum number of lashes inflicted was twenty; the instrument used is a cane; and the offence "assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm." The sentence is imposed by a magistrate and has to be confirmed by a Judge of the Supreme Court.
    *MR. BRIGHT: Is it the practice in the compounds for the Chinese police to inflict corporal punishment on the demand of the master of the compound, and are these cases included in the number given by the right hon. Gentleman?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have no such, information.
    *MR. BRIGHT: Will you inquire by cable?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I will if some reasonable prima facie cause is shown, but I cannot act on mere loose allegation.
    *MR. BRIGHT: I will supply the right hon. Gentleman with the information he requires.
    MR. BURT: Have the compound managers or any other officials authority to flog or order the flogging of Chinese in the Transvaal?
    MR. LYTTELTON: No flogging can be administered except on the sentence of a magistrate confirmed by a Judge of the Supreme Court?
    AN HON. MEMBER: It is done every day.

    Zionists in East Africa.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if any further offer of territory has been made to the Zionists in East Africa beyond that made by the Foreign Office in 1902; if he is aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that the House would have the opportunity of considering the matter before being finally determined; and if he will lay upon the Table of the House full particulars of the original offer, of the report of the Zionist expedition on the said offer, and also particulars of any additional or modified offer he may have made.
    MR. LYTTELTON: No additional or modified offer of territory has been made. I am aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated in the House on the 27th of June † last year
    † See (4) Debates, exxxvi., 1241.
    550
    that the Papers relating to the negotiations with the Zionists would be laid before a final decision was arrived at, and I shall, of course, bear that pledge in mind.

    Cruelty to a Native at the Crœsus Gold Mine.
    MR. LEIF JONES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has yet received the report asked for by him from the Governor of the Transvaal on the case of cruelty to a native at the Crœsus Gold Mine, Langlaagte; and whether the contractor, who was convicted and fined for the offence, has been removed from his post: and what are the steps recommended by the Transvaal Government with a view to preventing the occurrence of such offences.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have asked Lord Selborne, as I promised, for a report on this case, but I have not been able to receive a report as yet.
    MR. LEIF JONES: Is it coming by cable?
    MR. LYTTELTON: No, by mail.
    MR. LEIF JONES: Would it not be advisable to cable, seeing that this contractor is still in charge of the mine?
    MR. LYTTELTON: This man has already been fined. Lord Selborne has taken steps to prevent a recurrence of such acts, and there is ample evidence that neither he nor I are indifferent in the matter.

    The Banishment of Madho Singh.
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the petition presented to the House by the Member for South Down signed by 600 inhabitants, the former subjects of the Rajput chief of Pannah, Madho Singh, who has been banished on alleged false charges, praying that he may be restored; will the Government ascertain from the Viceroy of India before what tribunal the Raja was tried; what was the constitution of the Court; how the decision was received in the district; and what answer the Indian Government has to offer to the statements in the petition.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK,): My attention has been called to the petition referred to. I made a full statement on the subject in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for North Manchester on the 30th June,† 1904, to which I would refer the hon. Member. I then stated that a Commission had been appointed to investigate judicially charges of murder by poison in which the ex-Maharaja was implicated; and that the Views of the Government of India on the findings of the Commission, and the action taken thereon, were published in the Gazette of India in a Resolution dated the 21st April, 1902.
    MR. MACVEAGH: Before what tribunal was he tried?
    MR. BRODRICK: The whole question was gone into judicially by the Indian Government in the usual manner.
    MR. MACVEAGH: Was he not banished without any trial and without any charge being preferred against him?
    MR. BRODRICK: The whole matter was carefully considered.
    MR. WEIR: Several times, years ago, I asked a similar Question and never could get a satisfactory Answer.

    Consular Reports on Irish Trade.
    MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Foreign Office will instruct all its Consuls to embody in their Reports for the year 1905 a special Report as to the existence or non-existence, as the case may be, of trade relations between Ireland and the country or district to which they are accredited, with a view to determining whether the statistics as regards Irish trade shall be kept distinct in all future Consular Reports from those of Great Britain.
    THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY,): There is no objection to requesting His Majesty's Consuls to
    † See (4) Debates, cxxxvii., 159.
    552
    state in their Reports for 1905 whether, so far as they can ascertain, any trade is carried on between their respective districts and Ireland. But as the Secretary to the Board of Trade has already informed the hon. Member, Consuls are dependent for official statistics of the trade of their districts on the authorities of the countries in which they reside, and the question of keeping separate records of such trade is one solely for the foreign Governments concerned.

    Zervi Outrages.
    MR. LYELL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Sir Nicholas O'Conor made any representations early in April last to the Porte with regard to the outrages which took place at the village of Zervi on March 27th last; whether he urged the arrest and punishment of those responsible for the outrages; and, if so, whether any attention has been paid by the Porte to his representations.
    EARL PERCY: Immediately on receipt of the news of the outrages committed at Zervi Sir Nicholas O'Conor made most earnest representations to the Sublime Porte respecting the lack of discipline shown by the troops, and the necessity of taking effective steps to prevent such incidents. The Grand Vizier gave an assurance that an inquiry would be held and the officers punished, and promised to use his best efforts in the sense urged by the Ambassador. A Commission, of Turkish officers has proceeded to Macedonia to conduct an inquiry into the state of military discipline. The result of this inquiry has not yet been reported, but the accounts received of later encounters between the troops and the insurgent bands have shown a marked improvement in the conduct of the Turkish soldiers.

    Sale of Poisons to Agriculturists.
    MR. ALEXANDER CROSS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture when he proposes to introduce his Bill dealing with the sale of substances used extensively and in large quantity in horticulture and agriculture, but which are

    553
    technically included as poisons under the schedules of the Pharmacy Act, in view of the efforts made to monopolise the trade in such articles by retail druggists, to the injury of these industries of farming and gardening.
    *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. AILWYNFELLOWES,): The Bill in question falls within the province of the Privy Council rather than my own, but I am in communication with my noble friend the Lord President as to the advisability of its introduction at no distant date.
    MR. ALEXANDER CROSS: Is it in an advanced state of preparation?
    *MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: Yes, Sir.

    Canadian Cattle.
    SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he has seen that Mr. Fisher, the Canadian Minister of Agriculture, speaking officially on Friday in the House of Commons at Ottawa, pointed out that since the embargo was imposed a million and a half of Canadian cattle have been disembarked at British ports under the supervision of inspectors who could readily detect disease, and there had not been discovered the slightest sign of it; and whether the supposed danger of disease being introduced into Canada from the United States having, after several years experience, proved unfounded, he will now advise His Majesty's Government that the embargo on the importation of Canadian cattle may be safely removed.
    *MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: I have seen telegraphic summaries of the speech to which the hon. Member refers, from which I gather that a further official communication is about to be addressed to us by the Canadian Government. We shall, of course, give any such communication our respectful consideration, but it would be premature for me as yet to add anything to what I have already stated on the subject or to anticipate the reply to be given to any representations which we may receive.

    Plural Voters.
    MR. BLACK: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can state the number of individual electors in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales respectively, as contrasted with the number of voters in each of those portions of the United Kingdom obtained by a summation of the voters' rolls containing the names of voters entered in more than one constituency, including the University voters.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): I am unable to give the information desired by the hon. Member.
    MR. BLACK: Are we to understand that the Government formulated their Redistribution proposals without forming any estimate of the number of plural voters?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Certainly.

    North Eastern Railway—Accidents Caused by Electrically-Charged Rails.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he is aware that two more accidents have recently occurred on the North-Eastern Railway through contact with an electrically-charged rail; and whether the Board are taking any further steps to protect the public from the danger of accidents of this character.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,): The North-Eastern Railway Company have notified the Board of Trade of two recent accidents of this character to persons trespassing on their lines, and the Board are in communication with the company on the matter.

    Civil Servants and Members of Parliament.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer when he proposes to reoommend the Government to give effect to his proposal respecting the appointment of some permanent body or Commission, outside

    555
    the sphere of electoral pressure and Party differences, which might advise the Government on matters connected with the salaries and position of Post Office officials.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,: My proposal is not quite correctly stated in the hon. Member's Question. It was that if the suggestion was generally approved, a Committee of this House might be appointed to lay down the principles by which the wages of employees of the State should be fixed, and to consider whether it would be possible to create some permanent body or Commission, outside the sphere of electoral pressure and Party conflicts, to advise the Government of the day in the application of these principles to particular cases. I am now endeavouring to ascertain the opinion of Members upon this suggestion. It can only be proceeded with if it meets with general approval.

    Assistant Clerks in the Government Service.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, seeing that sorters and telegraphists on attaining the age of twenty-five years are granted an additional increment of 3s. per week by reason of their reaching a marriageable age, and seeing that assistant clerks (new class) at the age specified will have served for a longer period and passed a more severe educational test while performing work of a superior nature, he will consider the advisability of granting a similar increment to assistant clerks (new class).
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH,): The position and pay of the assistant clerks has been most fully considered and a decision thereon arrived at and communicated to heads of Departments, last May. I can see no grounds for reopening the question.

    Special Police Courts for Children.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he
    556
    proposes to issue a circular to the Courts of summary jurisdiction under his supervision in London and elsewhere, calling attention to the beneficial results in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and America attending the hearing of cases and applications in which children under sixteen are concerned apart from the adult criminal business and from the pernicious influence of ordinary night charges; and if pending the enactment of the Bill definitely legalising this procedure, he will recommend the extension to other places of the experiments made in this direction in Manchester, Birmingham, and Bradford.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS,): I have recently been in communication with the magistrates of the Metropolitan Police Courts on this subject, and, while, so far as these Courts are concerned, I am satisfied that the present arrangements are, generally speaking, sufficient to secure the desired end, I have, in consultation with the chief magistrate, laid down certain rules on the subject which will secure uniformity of practice. I am now considering what steps I can usefully take to encourage the adoption of similar arrangements in other Courts where they are not already in existence.

    Vaccination Exemptions.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that, although an applicant for a certificate of exemption from vaccination at Westminster Police Court on Saturday last based his objection on the ground that he conscientiously believed that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of his child, the magistrate proceeded to cross-examine him and refused to grant the certificate; will he state whether the circular containing the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice in regard to the manner in which magistrates should deal with applications for certificates of exemption has been sent to this magistrate; and will he direct the magistrate's special attention to that opinion. [The hon. Member, in putting the Question, complained that it had been mutilated at the Table by cutting out the

    557
    name of the magistrate, Mr. Curtis Bennett.]
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: The circular containing the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice, to which the hon. Member refers, was sent to all the metropolitan magistrates. Under the statute, which requires the applicant to satisfy the magistrates as to the conscientious nature of his objection, the magistrate has a discretion entrusted to him with which I have no power to interfere.
    MR. WEIR: Will the right hon. Gentleman again communicate with this magistrate? He, at any rate, appears to be obdurate.
    [No Answer was returned.]
    MR. MACVEAGH: AS names are frequently deleted from Questions at the Table, may I ask if there is any rule that protects magistrates from having their names given when they are accused of improper conduct.
    *MR. SPEAKER: It has been the custom to omit names where they are associated with allegations and are not necessary for clearness.
    MR. MOONEY: Should not the Member be communicated with before a Question is altered?
    *MR. SPEAKER: It is the custom for the Clerk at the Table to put himself in communication with an hon. Member when his Question is not in order, but the difficulty is that often a Member hands in notice of a Question, then goes away, and it is not possible to communicate with him.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Is it not the rule that the Clerks at the Table should not alter a Question without the authority of Mr. Speaker?
    *MR. SPEAKER: Every Question is not brought to me; only those in which the Clerk at the Table has any doubt.
    SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: Is it not desirable to make a rule
    558
    that no Question should be altered and printed without the Member putting It being informed? It would save a great deal of annoyance.
    *MR. SPEAKER: It might not be possible to see the hon. Member, who might be annoyed if the Question were not printed.

    Assaults on the London Police.
    MR. HAVILAND BURKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the statement recently made by Sir Ralph Littler, in passing sentence at the Middlesex Sessions, to the effect that more than 3,000 policemen are incapacitated from duty every year as the result of violence done to them in the execution of their duty, and to complaints made by Judges, magistrates, and the police as to bands of persons who raise hostile mobs against the police, actively assist in assaults committed upon them, and by terrorism make the obtaining of evidence in arty subsequent prosecution difficult or impossible; and whether he will introduce legislation for providing the police with special powers in such districts, and for enlarging the maximum penalty which it is now within the power of Judges and police magistrates to inflict in such cases.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I have not seen the particular remarks referred to in the Question; but I am, of coarse, well acquainted with the great number of cases in which the police are injured by assaults, and I and my predecessors have repeatedly had to consider what action could be taken to protect them. The number of Metropolitan Police injured by assaults while on duty during the year 1904 was 2,799, and of these 276 were incapacitated for a week or more. I do not think, however, that any such legislation as the hon. Member suggests is necessary. The punishment which can be imposed under the existing law is already very severe—for an ordinary assault on a constable, a magistrate can impose a sentence of six, or, if it be a second offence, of nine months imprisonment with hard labour, and the Court of quarter sessions can impose two years; while for wounding or inflicting grievous

    559
    bodily harm far heavier sentences can be passed. I find that the maximum sentence which the existing law allows is very rarely imposed.
    MR. HAVILAND BURKE: Is it not the fact that Sir Ralph Littler, in sentencing a man who had nearly murdered a policeman and had been helped in the attempt by a crowd, deplored the fact that he could not give him more than four years penal servitude.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I have not seen the report of that case.
    MR. MACVEAGH: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the number of policemen incapacitated by violence from duty last year in London was exactly a hundred times more than the number in Ireland?
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: When the right hon. Gentleman says he does not propose to introduce legislation does he mean he dare not, or that it is not desirable?
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the desirability of assimilating the laws of England and Ireland on this point?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I have said I think the law in England on this matter is satisfactory.

    Compensation to Injured Policemen.
    MR. HAVILAND BURKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is prepared to introduce legislation whereby an English policeman, who under the present law gets no more than his pay and medical expenses while incapacitated from duty by violence, will be placed on a level with the Irish policeman, who in a similar case has a claim on the local rates for compensation.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: A police officer who is injured in the execution of his duty receives, it seems to me, liberal treatment. He has full pay and free medical attendance till he is able to return to duty; or, if he has to retire, he is awarded a pension on a high scale. The
    560
    charge on local rates for the non-effective pay of the police is already a heavy one; and I do not think that I should be justified in proposing, or that Parliament would be willing to accept, legislation which would have the result of increasing it.
    MR. HAVILAND BURKE: My Question is not what the Englishman gets, but will he be placed on a level with the Irish policeman by being allowed to claim compensation from the ratepayers? The right hon. Gentleman has not answered that.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I thought I had done so, at any rate by inference. I think the scale allowed in this country is a liberal one.
    MR. HAVILAND BURKE: It is not a question whether it is liberal or illiberal. Is it not the fact that the Irish policeman, when incapacitated by violence, gets not merely full pay and free medical attendance, but, in addition, a handsome sum by way of compensation which is levied on the rates? Will the right hon. Gentleman put the English policeman on the same footing?
    *MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member has got a perfectly straightforward Answer to his Question, viz., that the right hon. Gentleman does not propose to introduce any such legislation.
    MR. FLAVIN: IS the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Irish policemen get thousands of pounds compensation at the expense of the ratepayers?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: That is under a particular statute.
    MR. FLAVIN: And in a particular country.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: Equal laws for all!

    Street Trading by Girls.
    MR. TENNANT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many and what cases by-laws prohibiting street

    561
    trading by girls under sixteen have been proposed to his Department; in how many and what cases have these bylaws been sanctioned; in how many and what cases has such sanction been accompanied by conditions; and can he lay upon the Table a Paper setting forth this information, accompanied by the conditions which he has imposed.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: Up to the present time thirty-four local authorities have drafted by-laws under the Employment of Children Act prohibiting street trading by girls under sixteen years of age. In fifteen of these cases the bylaws have been formally confirmed, and in six more they have been provisionally approved. The only modifications suggested by the Home Office have been the addition of a proviso exempting girls trading in the company of a parent, or in the company of a parent or guardian, from the operation of the by-law; and in one case, where the circumstances were exceptional, of a proviso exempting girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen who were already engaged in street trading at the time of the confirmation of the by-law. In the circumstances I do not think that any advantage would be gained by paying a Paper on the Table, as suggested by the hon. Member; but I shall be happy to furnish him, if he wishes, with particulars of the individual cases.

    Attacks on Warders at Princetown.
    MR. SPEAR (Devonshire, Tavistock): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the number of recent attacks on warders by prisoners in His Majesty's prison at Princetown; and if he will consider the advisability of seeking to prevent these attacks by providing warders with some more effective method of defence.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: There has been no special increase recently in the number of attacks on warders at Dartmoor Convict Prison; it is quite inevitable that, considering the character of the population (Dartmoor contains more than 1,000 of the worst criminals in England), outbreaks of bad temper resulting in actual violence should from time to time
    562
    occur, but there have only been six assaults on prison officers this year and seven last year. I see no reason for thinking that any special measures are necessary for the protection of officers beyond those which are prescribed in the existing prison regulations.

    Observance of the Lord's Day in Scotland.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate if he will take further steps to enforce the statute law in Scotland against the public desecration of the Lord's day by the closing of establishments for the demoralisation of young people.
    THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. SCTT DICKSON,): I am not clear as to what the hon. Member means by "establishments for the demoralisation of young people." According to long - established practice proceedings under the statutes referred to by the hon. Member fall to be instituted by the Burgh Fiscal or by a common informer, and I am not prepared to make any departure from this practice.

    Beaufort Castle Shooting Outrage.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate if his attention has been called to a shooting case at Beaufort Castle, in Scotland; and will he say what steps are being taken to punish the offender.
    MR. WEIR: I beg also to ask the Lord - Advocate whether he is aware that one of the sons of Mr. Phipps, the occupant of Beaufort Castle, Inverness-shire, recently fired at the four occupants of a boat on a river on the estate, and shot in the face John Allan Eraser, an employee of Lord Lovat, wounding him so severely as to necessitate the removal of one eye, the condition of the other being almost hopeless; will he state whether Mr. Phipps, the assailant, has been placed under arrest; if not, will he explain why this has not been done; and whether it is proposed to hold a public inquiry into the circumstances of the case.
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: Beyond seeing the newspaper reports my attention was not specially called to the occurrence

    563
    until the hon. Members' Questions appeared on the Paper—nor was it necessary that it should, as such a case required to be inquired into at once by the Procurator-Fiscal in the ordinary course of his duty, and this was done. I regret to say that Fraser has lost one eye and the other has been seriously injured, though it is hoped it may be saved. Messrs. John and Henry Phipps were yesterday charged before the sheriff and committed for trial. The sheriff has released them on bail of £500 each. The precise form of the further proceedings in the matter are being considered by counsel.
    MR. WEIR: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that these men, who are certainly undesirable aliens, are kept under strict police supervision?
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: The hon. Member knows I have no power to place any one under supervision.
    MR. WEIR: I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take care to prevent a repetition of this outrage.

    Irish Land Judge's Court.
    MR. KILBRIDE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can say how many estates are now in the Land Judge's Court, showing the county and parish in which each estate is situated and the name of the solicitor having carriage of sale.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY POK IRELAND (Mr. WALTER LONG,): The Land Judge is unable to detach his staff from the proper duties of his Court for the preparation of this Return, the advantages to be derived from which would be quite disproportionate to the labour and loss of time involved in its preparation. Parliamentary Paper No. 182 of 1904 gives, by counties, the names and other particulars of estates then in the Land Judge's Court.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a continuation of that Return?
    MR. WALTER LONG: I have no objection, but I should first like to consult the Land Judge.

    Land Purchase Agreements.
    MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners are now empowered to inquire into the free and bona fide character of provisional agreements lodged with them in the cases of sales of estates direct to them, in order to ascertain whether tenants were compelled by the pressure of arrears or the withdrawal of turbary and other rights to agree to excessive prices when signing such agreements.
    MR. WALTER LONG: The jurisdiction conferred on the Land Commission by Section 10 of the Land Act of 1885, enabling them to relieve tenants who have been coerced to enter into agreements by duress, is unaffected by these regulations, which do not deal with the matter at all.
    MR. MURPHY: What is meant by the reference to intimidation in the new regulations? Is it intimidation on the part of the landlord or of the tenant?
    MR. WALTER LONG: It is any intimidation which seeks to bring about agreements which would not otherwise be made?
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: And who is to be the judge of it?
    MR. WALTER LONG: The Commissioners, I presume.

    Reinstatement of Evicted Tenants.
    MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the effect of the new regulation issued to the Estates Commissioners directing them to give consideration to the applications of evicted tenants* who lost their holdings in consequence of some general rent dispute will have the effect of preventing the Commissioners from doing anything in the interest of tenants who were evicted from estates in consequence of a particular rent dispute in their own cases; or

    565
    whether he will explain the effect of this regulation on the action of the Commissioners in regard to evicted tenants.
    MR. WALTER LONG: The regulation, which was designed to embody the present practice, should be read in connection with Section 2 of the Act. It was not intended to restrict, and does not restrict, the right conferred by that section on any evicted tenant, but merely directs, in effect, that in disposing of untenanted lands for the benefit of evicted tenants preference should, consistently with that section, be given to cases in which the tenants lost their holdings owing to a general rent dispute, that is to say, the Plan of Campaign cases commonly so called. This, I fancied, was desired by all parties.
    MR. MURPHY: Will the right hon. Gentleman make representations to the Estates Commissioners to do something for the evicted tenants in the South of Ireland?
    MR. WALTER LONG: I believe the Answer given embodies the view generally held at the time the matter was debated, and I am not prepared to go beyond that.
    MR. POWER: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, if it is pointed out to the Estates Commissioners that landlords of certain estates which have not been offered for sale under the provisions of the Land Act, 1903, have untenanted lands on their own hands suitable for the reinstatement of tenants whose former holdings have been let, or for the enlargement of uneconomic holdings, will the Estates Commissioners approach such landlords with the view of purchasing such lands for the purpose of providing evicted tenants with suitable farms, or enlarging uneconomic holdings.
    MR. WALTER LONG: No, Sir; the Estates Commissioners do not open negotiations with landlords who have not expressed a desire to sell.
    In reply to a further Question the right hon. Gentleman said there were an enormous number of cases already before the
    566
    Commissioners, and he did not think there was any necessity to go out of the way to invite further applications.

    Charge against Gurteen Constables.
    MR. REDDY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with reference to the conviction of Sergeant Dunphy and Constable Daly at Gurteen Petty Sessions on Friday for assaulting two civilians, whether the attention of the Lord Chancellor will be called to the fact that one of the adjudicating justices suggested to the defendants what witnesses they should call and how the defence should be conducted; whether he is aware that the resident magistrate afforded the justice of the peace an opportunity of retiring from the hearing of the case; whether any complaints have previously been made with reference to the political bias of the same justice of the peace; and whether he will advise the Lord Chancellor to remove this gentleman from the commission of the peace.
    MR. WALTER LONG: I have seen a newspaper report of this case, from which it appears that during the hearing Lord Ashtown, one of the magistrates, asked one of the defendants whether he intended to call a certain witness whom he had announced on the previous Court day he had summoned, but who had not appeared on that occasion. The complainants' solicitor at once objected to Lord Ashtown adjudicating in the case, whereupon the presiding resident magistrate said that he had not heard the remark complained of, but it was for Lord Ashtown to say whether he would adjudicate. Lord Ashtown replied that ha would continue to act, and he did so. I am not aware that any previous complaints in regard to Lord Ashtown's action as a magistrate have been made. The Answer to the concluding inquiry is in the negative.
    MR. REDDY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been directed to the proceedings before the Petty Sessions Court at Gurteen, county Gal way, on July 7th, when Sergeant William Dunphy and Constable Edward Daly of the Royal

    567
    Irish Constabulary were convicted and fined for assault; will he say whether Sheridan and Daly are doing duty at Cloncagh protection station; and, if so, whether, in view of the conduct of these policemen, he will take steps in the interest of public order in the district to have these policemen removed or reprimanded.
    MR. WALTER LONG: On two occasions the magistrates were equally divided in this case, and eventually, on the third hearing, the two policemen were convicted by a majority of the Bench and fined 2s. 6d. each. The policemen applied that the penalties should be increased with a view to an appeal, but the Bench, by the same majority, refused the application. The constables are not now stationed at Clooncagh. Their conduct on the occasion in question is under the consideration of the Inspector-General.
    MR. REDDY: Are these the men the right hon. Gentleman said he was dependent on when he arrived in Dublin to take up his office?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Public Accounts Committee's Report.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can now state when the House will be given the opportunity to discuss the Report of the Public Accounts Committee of July, 1904, and of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of January, 1905.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (MR. A. J. BALFOUR,): I do not think it would be desirable to add to the subjects to be discussed on the evening I have given to the Public Accounts Committee. The Auditor-General's Report which the hon. Gentleman wants to discuss is still under the discussion of the Public Accounts Committee, and I do not think it would be in accordance with precedent that we should, while a Committee of this House is by Order of the House discussing a subject, bring it down for discussion here.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he seriously
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    considers that three hours is anything like sufficient to enable the House adequately to discuss the many matters raised in the Report of the Public Accounts Committee?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have to make two observations on that. One is that the House of Commons has never had any opportunity before, under the universal practice of the House, of discussing this Report. The other is that if the difficulty which the hon. Gentleman feels in dealing with the whole subject is so great it will surely be greater if he adds to it.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I ask for another occasion.

    Evictions in the Island of Lewis.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will introduce legislation to prevent further evictions on the Matheson Estate, Island of Lewis, of persons who have erected their own dwellings, and who will be absolutely without shelter during the coming winter.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not propose to bring in any legislation on this subject.
    MR. WEIR: Why not substitute this for the Redistribution scheme which nobody wants? Will you do that?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir.

    King's Lynn and the Redistribution Proposals.
    MR. FREDERICK WILSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can take steps to prevent the weakening of the rural interest caused by taking away Members from counties where the electorate is comparatively large and retaining Members in boroughs where the electorate is inconsiderable; whether, by the Redistribution proposals, one of the county constituencies in Norfolk with a population of over 40,000 will be obliterated, whereas the borough o. King's Lynn, in the same county, with a population of 20,000, will be retained; and whether some modification can be made in the Redistribution proposals so that small

    569
    boroughs, instead of having an absolutely separate existence, are made the heads of county districts.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think perhaps the simplest way of answering the hon. Gentleman is to point out to him that, even if King's Lynn is merged in the county, the county will still, under the scheme of the Government, lose one seat, which the hon. Gentleman very naturally deplores.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the population of King's Lynn is not 20,000, as stated, but over 20,000; that ever since I have been the Member for King's Lynn the population has annually increased, and that it is still increasing.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I quite accept the hon. Gentleman's statement upon that matter.

    The International Conference
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether any further negotiations have taken place with regard to the International Conference proposed by the President of the United States; whether His Majesty's Government are prepared to acquiesce in the President's proposal to include, among the subjects of discussion, the question of making all private property, not contraband of war, free from capture or destruction by belligerents at sea; and whether any Papers can yet be laid upon the Table.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have nothing material to add to the statement made by Lord Lansdowne a short time ago in the House of Lords, that His Majesty's Government have cordially welcomed the proposal of the President of the United States, and that, in common with other nations, they have reserved to themselves the right to consider what questions shall be submitted to the conference.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: There have been no further negotiations?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir.

    The Unemployed Workmen Bill.
    MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury a Question of which I have given him private notice—namely, whether he has considered the appeal made last night, on the Motion for the adjournment, by the Labour Members, and whether he is prepared to grant facilities for passing the Unemployed; Bill by extending, if necessary for that purpose, the session beyond its ordinary length or by holding Saturday sittings.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In my view, the only possibility of passing the Unemployed Bill in the course of the present session is that it should pass as an uncontentious measure, which I hope might be arranged if both sides were prepared to make some concessions the one to the other. I ought to add that the task of the Government, or any Government, in dealing with this question has not been facilitated by the fact that some hon. Gentlemen opposite who are greatly interested in this measure have stated it to be one which makes it an obligation on the State to provide labour for the unemployed out of local funds and desire to extend it to public funds, and to be one intimately connected with the nationalisation of land. That is no description of the Government measure, and we do not, at all events, desire to carry out those principles. And if hon. Gentlemen consider that those principles are embodied in the Bill, it may well give other hon. Gentlemen, who do not agree with them in this, serious cause to pause. I believe that if more sober and wise counsels prevail, and if this Bill were treated as a machinery Bill, and amended so as to become a machinery Bill, it is not impossible that some arrangement might be made to pass it as an uncontroversial measure.
    MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON: Do I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to bring influence to bear upon those who are opposing the measure on his own side?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not propose to try to influence one side more than the other. It hon. Gentlemen opposite are prepared to treat it as a mere

    571
    machinery Bill, and if it be amended as a machinery Bill, I think it possible that we might be able to pass it in the present session. Otherwise, I have no hope of its being parsed.
    MR. SHACKLETON: When the right hon. Gentlemen says "a machinery Bill," what part of the Bill does he propose to drop?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think I ought to have notice of that Question; but I may say at once, without futher reference to the measure, that evidently that part would have to be dropped which enables labour to be paid for out of the rates.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE (Meithyr Tydvil)Is it not a fact that all the opposition to that part of the Bill which is now proposed to be dropped comes from some five or six Members on the Government side ["No"] headed by the Member for Chelsea; and will the Prime Minister bring his influence to bear on those Members to withdraw their opposition.
    MR. LOUGH: Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to put down the Amendments which he thinks necessary in order to enable the Bill to pass?
    MR. A.J. BALFOUR: NO, I have already stated that that must be a matter of arrangement between the contending critics of the Bill as it stands. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil has described the Bill, I think, or rather mis-described it, as one which makes it obligatory on the Government to provide labour for unskilled workmen, and said that we should always have the unemployed in our midst as long as private property in land is permitted. If those are the principles embodied or embedded in the Bill, I venture to think there is not the slightest chance of the Bill passing this session, or any session, in which the present Government, and I suspect other Governments, have control over the public business of this House.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: Is it because of opinions which I am supposed to hole or to have expressed that the Government is now going to drop the Bill? As s joint of personal explanation let meassure
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    the right hon. Gentleman that although I hold strongly that so long as land and capital are private property we are bound to have the unemployed with us, I have welcomed the Bill, not because it would compel the local authorities to provide work, but because it provides the means whereby the local authorities might provide work for those who would otherwise starve.
    MR. CROOKS: May I asked whether, as this is a Government Bill, the Prime Minister is prepared to use the power he possesses to push his own Bill through the House of Commons, and never mind what interpretation we put on it? If he does, we will lend him all the help we can.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman is one of those who have certainly not assisted the Government in pushing on their own Bills in the past. ["Oh!"] It will be found, for instance, that the hon. Gentleman voted against the closuring Resolutions of the Aliens Bill.
    MR. CROOKS: Yes, Sir.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman was quite right from his own point of view, and I am not quarrelling with him; but the hon. Gentleman can hardly complain that I do not necessarily welcome him as an ally on the point of public business.
    MR. CROOKS: The Government must remember that they would not have got the Second Reading of their Bill but for my intervention, and therefore they did welcome me as an ally. I ask the Prime Minister whether that miserable abortion the Redistribution Resolution—["Order"]—is to take the place of an important piece of legislation which has caused most of the labour men worry and trouble for the last twelve or fourteen years. Let me say publicly and openly—["Order."]
    MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must put what he has to say in the form of an interrogation and not of a speech.
    MR. CROOKS: Then will the right hon. Gentleman move that I be suspended from the service of this House if I object to every piece of legislation until we get satisfaction over the Unemployed Bill?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am sorry the hon. Gentleman thinks so ill of the Redistribution Resolutions I would remind him that at a meeting which he attended last Saturday the Bill was described as a Bill that was not worth much.
    ME. CROOKS: Not by me.
    MR. BROADHURST: Is it not reasonable that we should be told what portions of the Bill the Government now consider it necessary to omit in order to get the Bill?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have stated the lines on which, and on which alone, I think there is any chance of passing this Bill. Whether those lines will be accepted on both sides of the House I have at present no knowledge. I can only suggest the general principles on which an arrangement might be made.

    Redistribution.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: MR. Speaker, I wish to ask a Question with reference to order and procedure. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board has placed on the Paper a notice of a Resolution dealing with the question of Redistribution. That Resolution is a long and complicated one and contains within itself a scheme of Redistribution, and it is put forward with the intention of founding a Bill upon it if passed. I wish to ask you whether in cases such, as this the invariable precedent has not been for the Government to move that the House do resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House for the purpose of considering such Resolutions, the object being, of course, that on that Motion the general discussion shall take place. Then, when the House went into Committee on the Resolutions, they could be dealt, with clause by clause, just as on the Committee stage of the Bill. I am
    574
    aware there is no exact precedent, and I that the action of the Government in this matter is, in fact, unprecedented; but the nearest precedents I am aware of are, first, one in 1858 with regard to the Government of India Bill, when, under the Government of Lord Derby, a Resolution was moved that the House do resolve itself into a Committee to consider certain Resolutions upon which it was intended to found a Bill. Secondly, in 1868, in reference to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone's procedure was to move that the House do resolve itself into a Committee to consider several Resolutions, which were taken up seriatim..The particular point I have in my mind is this, that if the present unprecedented procedure is adopted it is quite conceivable that, after a general discussion on, say, the first Amendment possible, it may be impossible afterwards to take up the clauses of this long and complicated scheme in the Resolution clause by clause and discuss it, as we should in Committee on a Bill. I submit this, Sir, as a question of order and procedure and ask your guidance.
    *MR. SPEAKER: I was not aware that the hon. Member was going to raise this point, or I would have fortified myself with full information in advance. The rule of the House in dealing with Resolutions is quite clear—that is to say, the ordinary rule obtains, that each Member can only speak once, and no Amendments are reserved. The only cases in which Amendments are reserved are the cases of Bills in Committee, Bills on Report, or Resolutions dealing with the procedure of the House, taking the time of the House, so-called guillotine Resolutions, and the like. Therefore, if an Amendment were put down to leave out all the words after the word "That" in order to insert some reasoned Amendment against the Resolution, and if that Amendment were negatived, then the whole of the Resolution would stand, and no Amendments would be possible. That is the ordinary rule of procedure. Of course it is open to hon. Members whether they choose to take that particular method of meeting the Resolution or other methods. With regard to the question whether the Resolutions should be referred to a

    575
    Committee or not, I am afraid I have not got the first precedent which the hon. Member cited in my mind; but with regard to the second precedent—namely, the referring of the Resolutions relating to the Irish Church to a Committee—that was done under the old Standing Order which compelled all questions which dealt with religious matters to be considered in Committee of the Whole House. That Standing Order is now abolished, and for that reason it would not be compulsory, if any similar Resolutions were introduced, to discuss them in Committee.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: I ought to apologise for not having given you notice, Sir, but it was impossible to engage your attention during Questions. My point is, not that it is compulsory—I do not say at all that it is compulsory—on the Government; but I hope to elicit an expression of opinion from you that to follow a procedure which, according to what you have now said, will preclude the possibility of dealing in Committee with the complicated details of this scheme, and which will confine the discussion to a general Second Reading discussion, is a procedure not suited to a case of this kind, and one which ought not to be followed. Perhaps the Prime Minister will say something to relieve the House from the apprehension, which I think now will be general, that this House after a Second Reading discussion will have forced upon it, perhaps by the closure, a Resolution which is in effect a long and complicated scheme the details of which have not been considered.
    *MR. GIBSON BOWLES: On the point of order, Sir, if this Resolution be presented to the House, I submit to you that by the rules of the House it will have to be broken up into eleven separate Resolutions—for there are in it eleven separate, distinct propositions. This is according to the ancient rules of this House, beginning with the time when the Speaker himself formulated the Question and put it in his own words to the House. The same question arose, only in a much less acute form, with reference to a Resolution which my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury proposed in January, 1902, and which embodied two
    576
    distinct, separate propositions. I then appealed to the Speaker, without any notice, and claimed that the Resolution must be divided into two, inasmuch as it contained two separate propositions, and Mr. Speaker Gully ruled that I was right. Accordingly he did divide the Resolution into two, and he did put it in two Questions. I submit confidently that when there are separate and distinct propositions in a Resolution, the Resolution must be divided into as many Resolutions as there are in it separate and distinct propositions, and that each must be put separately to the House, in order that the House may be enabled to exercise its undoubted right to assent to one alone while dissenting, if it so desires, from all the others.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am not unwilling, of course, that there should be a general discussion on the Resolution. But I am unwilling that the forms of the House should be used to prolong that discussion to an impossible length.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: I did not say that.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am not making any charge against the hon. Gentleman. I am only explaining my own position. I should be glad to come to an amicable arrangement with hon. Gentlemen opposite if such an. arrangement is possible.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That hardly meets the point, which concerns us all. The right hon. Gentleman is willing, apparently, to make some arrangement whereby there should be no undue curtailment of the general discussion upon the Resolution as a whole. But what we require is the power, after such general debate, of discussing, if necessary, the details of the Resolution; because we are told that the Resolution will practically be a Bill, and that we shall be short of a large amount of our powers, when a further Bill is introduced to carry it into effect if we have committed ourselves to this extremely detailed Resolution. I join most cordially in the appeal to the right hon. Gentleman that, in a matter so enormously important as

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    this, so urgent and complicated, he should perhaps between this and Monday think of some way to give the House that liberty to which it is entitled, and which, in one form or another, it will insist upon having.
    MR. A. J. BALPOUR: I think the right hon. Gentleman is under some misapprehension. He supposes that it would be impossible for the House to discuss the subject of this Resolution in detail when the Bill to be founded on it is introduced. The House will have absolute freedom to deal with the derails of that Bill. No power is taken away from the House by this Resolution. All we seek now is the power to give such instructions to the Boundary Commissioners as that they will be able to prepare a Bill for the consideration of the House, and the House will have full freedom to reject that Bill or amend it or do anything they like with it. As regards the particular procedure to be adopted in the case of the Resolution, I am quits willing to see by Monday if I can meet the views of the House. I do not know with what kind of opposition the Resolution is to be meet. But I suggest that it is hardly fair, if I am to give up every instrument which I possess to press on the business of the Government, hon. Gentlemen opposite are to retain every weapon which they possess.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: We will give up no weapon, any way.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am not complaining. I am only saying that it is somewhat unreasonable that the hon. Gentleman should come forward and state publicly that there is no weapon of delay which he is prepared to give up, but I am to give up any weapon which I may possess for expediting business.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I thought the right hon. Gentleman was Leader of the House. He speaks now of the weapons he possesses as against the House. I am obliged to remind the right hon. Gentleman that, great as his position and powers are, the House is greater; and the House in a case like this, where we have a great constitutional change to consider, is entitled not only
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    to all the latitude of discussion and the powers of criticism which the rules allow but even to any extension of those rules that may be necessary in order to give us the power required.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman has reminded me of some thing. I will remind him of something It was only two days ago that he reproached me with not having forwarded the business of the House with more rapidity, by which, of course, he meant and could only have meant, that I had not used all the powers which, according to him, I possess.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: I have made no request to the right hon. Gentleman to give up any weapon, as he calls it; but I have asked that this Resolution should be treated, according to precedent, in such a way as that the House can discuss its details. It is no answer to tell me that the details can be discussed on the Bill next year. My objection is against the passing of a Bill in the form of a Resolution this year without discussion. The hon. Member for King's Lynn has made, as he always makes in these matters, a good point. He has submitted the question whether it is competent in the form of one Resolution to put to the House a number of separate and different propositions. Therefore, Sir, I have to ask you, on a point of order, whether these eleven propositions will be put separately from the Chair, or whether they will be put, according to this method, as a weapon in the hands of the Government in one Motion, thereby precluding the possibility of discussing the details. One word more, I did not use the words "weapon of delay" which the right hon. Gentleman put into my mouth. The phrase I would wish to use is "weapon of defence." The right hon. Gentleman's weapon is a weapon of aggression.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: On the point of order. Is it not the fact that, in the case of the Resolution alluded to by my hon. friend behind me, there were two-quite separate and distinct proposals therein contained, whereas in the scheme of the Government the general plan hangs together, and it is impossible to divide it?
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: May I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that instead of answering immediately this very grave point, in which I entirely agree with the hon. Member for King's Lynn, you should take steps to inform yourself from any memoranda existing of the private rulings on this question which have been given by previous Speakers? This is a matter which has seldom been ruled on publicly, because such points in doubtful cases have been submitted to the Chair in advance. I am aware of two cases, in one of which I was personally concerned, and in the other Mr. Gladstone, in which the Resolutions were divided, and in regard to which I know private rulings were given. Will you take steps to inform yourself of those private decisions?
    *MR. SPEAKER: This obviously is a very important question, and I think, if the House will permit me. I would rather take time to consider it. As the Question stands on the Paper it would seem to impose upon me, if I were to accept the suggestion which has been made, the necessity of drafting some ten or twelve fresh Questions. That is one of the points which I must consider, and I will take every available means of discovering what has been done when similar questions have arisen in the past.
    *MR. GIBSON BOWLES: May I remind you, Sir, that Sir Erskine May on this point says that, although one individual Member cannot perhaps claim to have a complicated Question divided into its component parts, the House can always order it to be so divided?
    The incident then terminated.

    SUPPLY [14TH ALLOTTED DAY].
    Considered in Committee.
    In the Committee.)
    [Mr. GRANT LAWSON (Yorkshire, N.R. Thirsk) in the Chair.]

    ARMY ESTIMATES, 1905–6.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £1,220,000,
    580
    be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge for Capitation Grants and Miscellaneous Charges of Volunteer Corps, including Pay, etc., of the Permanent Staff, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on March 31st, 1906."
    *MR. MCCRAEwelcomed this opportunity of considering the question of the Volunteers as a separate issue. The question of the treatment of the Volunteers by the War Office was not a Party question. The popular feeling which had been aroused by recent events in connection with the Volunteers showed that the country would not stand idly by if there was any further attempt at the extinction of the force which, in spite of years of ridicule and discouragement and intimidation, and notwithstanding what was stated in the circular of June 20th, had increased both in numbers and efficiency. The country wanted to know why these attempts were being continuously made to impose impossible conditions upon the Volunteer force. The object evidently was to pave the way for something else which might not be openly advocated or acknowledged. They were very glad of the help of the Volunteers in the dark days of the war. Nobly had they been rewarded for their services! No doubt the generals who saw them in the field had paid generous tributes to the services rendered by the Volunteers, but he made bold to say that the War Office and the Secretary of State for War had minimised the services which the Volunteers then rendered. The rewind had been that since that time they had been hustled and harried. This treatment was all the more galling and contemptible when they considered that, the process of strangulation was being carried on under the hypocritical disguise of increasing: their efficiency. The latest move was the circular to which be had already referred. It was a mere incident. It was simply a move in the game. When he put a Question to the Secretary of State for War a week last Monday he said there were no new regulations. Technically the right hon. Gentleman was right, but the Answer was rather misleading the House as to what had

    581
    been done. Since then there had been two explanatory letters of the circular, in one of which the right hon. Gentleman said the circular was quite clear, and last night they got a revised edition of the circular. Most people considered that the right hon. Gentleman had by that amended edition raised the white flag; but he had not surrendered.
    He should like for a moment to consider the circular. It was divided into two parts. It asked that the Volunteers should be divided into two classes. Paragraph 5, in the delicate language so characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman, asked commanding officers to divide their force into fit and unfit. He would like to point out that this definition was retained in the amended edition of the circular. He would also point out that there was nothing in the original circular as to service abroad. It was only after this matter had been referred to in the Press, and a reply had been given to a Question which he put to him, that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned service abroad. He made bold to say that when the circular was issued the conditions therein defined were meant for home service, and that obviously this question of service abroad was an afterthought. The right hon. Gentleman had availed himself of that to provide a means of retreat, but he challenged the right hon. Gentleman to ask each commanding officer what was the interpretation he put on that circular when it came under his observation. Commanding officers were, he thought, men of average intelligence, and he made bold to say that 99 out of 100 would reply that they read the circular in that light. He would go further and say that if this circular had not been disclosed to the public those conditions would have been insisted on and carried into effect. He could not understand the reason why the Government should so shrink from publicity in this matter. That document was marked "Confidential," but he said that the Press had done a national service in making its terms public.
    He would like the Committee for a moment to consider what it meant. The right hon. Gentleman said it was for information only. If this was an Order merely for information there need be
    582
    no secrecy at all about its issue. The returns undoubtedly ought to have been kept a secret, and would have been kept secret, but if it was merely an inquiry for information he did not see why it should be issued in the form of a confidential document. He asked the Committee whether anything could be more grossly insulting than to ask a commanding officer to divide his battalion into fit and unfit. [Laughter.] He did not think hon. Gentlemen would laugh when they considered the standard to be applied. He wanted to bring this home to the Secretary of State for War.
    *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD - FORSTER,): Where do you find that statement? The circular asked commanding officers to state all those who were fit for active service abroad.
    *MR. MCCRAE: Paragraph 5 says that the report should show the number of me in be each corps who were fit and unfit.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The hon. Member will see that that sentence relates to what has gone before.
    MR. MCCRAEsaid that in the original circular it could not relate to active service abroad. Supposing that for information only they wished to inquire as to the fitness or unfitness of Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench, that they divided them into two classes, and supposing that they applied the first standard, and said that, instead of having the physical equivalent of nineteen years, they should have the mental equivalent of nineteen years, and supposing that their capitation grant was to be cut down by one half in the case of hon. Members who fell short of the nineteen years, what would they do? He knew what the Volunteers would do. They would at once resign. He would like to point out that, notwith standing the amended form of the circular, general officers commanding districts were asked to report as to the Volunteer units they proposed to disband or amalgamate. If this circular was issued to find out how many men were fit to go on active service abroad, why should this be mixed up in the same circular with, other matters? The more the circular

    583
    was examined the more extraordinary it became. There were two conditions, first the physical test, and secondly expertness with the rifle. Paragraph 4 of the original circular said, "In addition to the above, men reported as fit for active service, should be first-class shots." That was the test applied to Volunteers, but not to the Regulars during the South African War. If this circular had any meaning at all it meant that that test was to be applied, and that the different battalions were to be divided into two classes. If it meant anything else, then all he could say was that this circular was as loosely drawn as any contract for the sale of surplus stores in South Africa. The physical standard which the right hon. Gentleman applied to the Volunteers was higher than that which he was going to apply to the home-service Army when brought into being. In regard to the shooting regulation, the Answer given today, supplemented by another Answer which was given to a Question which he put to the right hon. Gentleman, was that some of the Volunteer battalions had no first-class shots at all, because they were under the old conditions, and had only marksmen, second-class, and third-class shots. That was a mere technical point, but it showed how absurd the whole proceedings had been. He would go further and say that this circular was a breach of the Volunteer Regulations, which laid down definitely with regard to shooting that any regulation should not be in excess of the requirements for the soldier in the same arm of the service.
    But this circular, after all, was merely an eruption. It showed the bad state of the blood. It was symptomatic of the disease, and must be taken in conjunction with the declared policy of the Secretary of State for War in regard to the Volunteers. His policy was divided into two heads. The first was the reduction of the Volunteer force, altogether apart from the question of efficiency. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would not deny that, because on July 14th, speaking in this House, he said—
    "I propose, therefore, to fix the establishment of the Volunteers at 200,000 men and to reduce the strength by absorption, in the first instance to 180,000 men."
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    The present establishment of the Volunteers was 344,000, and if the original proposal had been carried out that would have meant a reduction of 114,000 men. The present actual strength of the Volunteer force was 245,000. The right hon. Gentleman proposed to reduce them to 180,000, a reduction of 65,000. Under the second head he proposed to divide the Volunteer force into two classes If the Committee had followed his argument they would find that tin circular conformed to both these conditions of the right hon. Gentleman's policy. He thought a very serious aspect of the question was that the House of Commons repudiated the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman both iv regard to reduction and classification and on the Army Estimates which were considered in this House on April 5th it was only by the intervention of the Prime Minister, backed up by the benevolent self-denial of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, that the Government was saved from defeat on this Vote. The Prime Minister on that occasion threw over the Secretary of State for War, who proposed to reduce the grant to the Volunteers by £300,000—a reduction of one-fourth the total amount. But the First Lord of the Treasury said, 'Oh no, we are going to spend that amount in extra efficiency grant." The fact of the matter was that the right hon. Gentleman dare not carry out his policy in the open, and, there fore, means secret and subterranean had been resorted to in this circular to carry it out. His policy was already condemned.
    This policy of gradual extinction was worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. It was initiated by the late Secretary o State for War, who nearly destroyed the British Army. The present Secretary o State for War said at Edinburgh last December that if the three years system adopted by his predecessor had been continued the British infantry as a fighting force would have ceased to exist. The late Secretary of State for War also "tried his 'prentice hand" on the Volunteers He produced impossible camp regulation; with regard to them. These were afterwards modified, if not withdrawn, but

    585
    not until mischief had been done, and after corps had been depleted of their best men. These camp regulations caused men of splendid physique to send in their resignations, and their places had not been filled in many battalions, notably the Metropolitan battalions. He understood the Artist Corps, which used to turn out 1,200 at inspection, only turned out 500 the other day. In other corps they had kept up the numbers by accepting men of a lower physical standard. Then came the present Secretary of State for War, who said they were going to introduce medical tests. The medical tests were for fitness for service abroad. What right had the right hon. Gentleman to apply that test to a force which had been raised for home service? It was an invidious distinction to classify any battalion under the heads of fit and unfit, with regard to service abroad—a condition which they never undertook to fulfil. He could not help thinking that this was an attempt to smash up the Volunteer force and pave the way for conscription. If this had been a medical test for home service it would have been a different thing. But, as the right hon. Gentleman knew, every recruit was medically examined before he was enrolled. But the right hon. Gentleman, in a letter to an hon. Member, gave utterance to this doctrine—
    "The law of deterioration is not confined to the Volunteer. It is common to mankind."
    That was a very profound doctrine. He did not know whether it would apply to His Majesty's Government. He knew that it had been a popular idea that when a young fellow got into the Volunteers they rather increased his physical fitness, and that he did not deteriorate. The Queen's Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers had a strength of 2,400 men. Was it a small matter to ask the whole of the regiment to be medically examined on the off chance of some men volunteering for service abroad? He found that an hon. Member of this House had been written to by a colonel commanding an English Volunteer corps who had received a letter of resignation from the medical officer of his battalion because the proposed examination would take so much of the medical officer's time. That medical officer refused to make
    586
    the examination unless he was paid. He regretted having to resign, but said there was no other course left open for him. All those things had evidently been under the consideration of the Army Council. Let the right hon. Gentleman make no mistake. The Volunteers did not object to serve under a high standard of efficiency, but the standard should be one for home service; and let it be limited by the demands of the Volunteer's daily employment. If anyone considered the progress which the Volunteer force had made during the past twenty years, he would acknowledge that the nation had no cause to complain, either as to efficiency or cost. The complaint had been made that the Volunteer cost £7 a year, and the War Office expected as much service and efficiency from him as from the ordinary soldier who cost £70 a year. But now they even demanded a higher standard from the Volunteers than from the Regular Army.
    He, and those who agreed with him, challenged the policy of the circular of the Secretary of State for War. Would the right hon. Gentleman assure the Committee that this circular had nothing to do with his scheme, first, to reduce the Volunteer force, and second, to divide the Volunteer force into two classes? And, further, would the right hon. Gentleman undertake that no reduction of the force, no division into classes, should take place, that no change whatever should be made in the conditions of service without the express sanction of this House? They did not want a renewal of the two abortive attempts to shatter, the Volunteer force. He used the words advisedly. Where did the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman now stand. What was wanted was a clear statement. They wanted to know what the right hon. Gentleman proposed to do with the Volunteers; what part he expected them to play in the scheme of home defence—not for service abroad. Was the right hon. Gentleman surprised at that? He put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman the other day as to service abroad, and the right hon. Gentleman gave him no Answer. They wanted to put an end, once for all, to this uncertainty. They wanted to put a stop to this policy of continual nagging. Changing conditions.

    587
    even if they were practical, were inimical to the efficiency of the force. And if anything was to be done, do not let it be done in the dark.
    Now, this recent policy of the War Office had done infinite harm to the Volunteer force; it had done much to sterilise that patriotic enthusiasm on which the nation must depend in the hour of danger. The War Office had neglected obvious reforms, such as the constitution of Volunteer divisions and the Army Service Corps scheme for the Volunteers. Money had been voted for the latter on the Estimates for the last two years; but it had not been carried out. On the contrary, the War Office had adopted a destructive policy instead of a constructive policy. What was wanted was to restore confidence in the Volunteer ranks, and they asked the War Office to withdraw the circular which had been promulgated without thought and framed without knowledge. The right hon. Gentleman's policy rested on an entirely wrong foundation. That policy—he thought Lord Roberts was the first to initiate it—was "a small, highly trained Volunteer force." That was altogether wrong. Our endeavour should be to encourage the Volunteer service, and to give as many men as possible a certain degree of military training. He should have thought that that would have appealed to hon. Members who were in favour of universal military service; and why did they not support it? It was because they realised that the Volunteers stood between this country and conscription. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War dilated in one of his letters, with unctuous rectitude, and at great length, as to the intentions and motives of the Army Council. They would judge the right hon. Gentleman and the Army Council by their actions; and it would be found—if the right hon. Gentleman had not discovered it beforehand—that the Volunteers, while giving valuable although gratuitous service to the State, were heartily sick of this treatment; and that they did not intend to be the shuttlecock of any War Minister. He begged to move.
    Whereupon Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding
    588
    £1,219,900, be granted for the said Service."
    SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid it was very important that this matter should be kept as free as possible from Party politics; and in rising to support the Motion of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh he truly believed that hon. Members on both sides of the House who would support that Motion were not animated by any feeling of hostility, personal or Party, to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion had drawn attention to the very serious condition of things, which had been going on for some time, with reference to the Auxiliary Forces. The incident which had called forth the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite was mainly the circular issued on 20th June last. He could not understand with what object that circular was issued, or what advantage it could possibly have when issued. It might possibly have been excused if some great war were imminent; but the ordinary man in the street did not think that there was such a lamentable state of things. Even if war were imminent, the information required by the circular would be out of date within three months, and the whole of the trouble which had been put on the officers of the Volunteer force and on the medical officers would be absolutely useless.
    Then, had the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War any authority or right to issue such a circular? Was it possible to give power to the Secretary for War to issue a circular, and within a fortnight withdraw it and issue another amending circular, which, though marked 'Confidential,' appeared the next day in the newspapers? What were the conditions of Volunteer service? They were that—
    "In case of imminent national danger or of great emergency (the occasion being first communicated to both Houses of Parliament, if Parliament is sitting, or declared in Council, unit notified by Proclamation if Parliament is not sitting) His Majesty may call out the Volunteer corps of the respective counties, or any of them, for actual military service."
    Evidently no such condition of affairs existed at the present time. The right

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    hon. Gentleman wanted a medical examination of the Volunteer force. Was he not aware that, under Regulation 119 for the Volunteer Force for 1901—
    "Every candidate for enrolment will be required to pass a physical examination by a medical officer of the corps."
    These returns were submitted to the War Office, and the right hon. Gentleman had only to ask for an analysis of these returns in order to give him all the information he required. Again, who was to pay the expense of this examination? Was the right hon. Gentleman to issue an order that the sergeant in charge of the battalion was to sound the bugle-call so that he might obtain the information? He had had a communication from the commanding officer of a Volunteer regiment, who said that it would be impossible to examine more than four men in an hour. Take a regiment of 400 men, that meant that the medical man would have to spend 100 hours in this medical examination for the information of the Secretary of State for War. He noticed that the circular had been put in much better terms in the version which appeared in that morning's papers; but it was a great pity that it had not originally been issued in these terms.
    He could not understand who it was that drafted the War Office circulars. He could not bring himself to believe that it was the military members of the Army Council who were responsible. They were the Adjutant-General, the Quartermaster-General, the Chief of the Staff, and others and he could not believe that they ever consented to the issue of such a circular. The Adjutant-General had been an adjutant of a Volunteer corps quite recently, and he might have known the extraordinary effect which that circular would produce in Volunteer circles. General Kitt had been connected with the Auxiliary Forces and had commanded in the field, and he maintained that, if a circular such as this was issued to the Volunteer and Auxiliary Forces without the Director of the Auxiliary Forces being called into consultation with the Army Council, it was a most unsatisfactory and unfortunate state of things. In 1901 600 officers and 20,000 Volunteers came
    590
    back from active service in the field in South Africa, and a circular was issued asking "If the Volunteers wished to be taken seriously!" He knew perfectly well who was the author of that circular, He was an officer who was retained, at the headquarters in defiance of all rules and regulations that had been made as to the headquarters staff since 1898. He had always refrained from mentioning his name before, but he must do it now. It was Colonel Adye. He did not say that that officer was the author of this circular; but he was the author of the circular of 1901 which had to be withdrawn. And that officer was the only officer of all those connected with the great disaster at Nicholson's Nek in South Africa who had not been punished. He did not say that that officer was the author of this circular; but, at any rate, the style of it was much the same as that of the circular of 1901. He was not going to labour this matter; but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War would be better advised in the future; and that he would withdraw the circular. Everybody made mistakes, and the right hon. Gentleman should admit that he had made one on this occasion.
    His hon. friend who moved the Resolution had rightly said that this circular was only an incident in the career of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. He, himself, was animated with the most friendly feeling for the right hon. Gentle man; indeed he was one of the first to congratulate him by telegram on his appointment to his present high office. The right hon. Gentleman had said recently that the Volunteers would always find in him a most sympathetic defender of the Volunteer force. But how cruelly had the Volunteers been disappointed in him! The right hon. Gentleman had shown an extraordinary method of exhibiting that friendship and sympathy. What was the position of affairs? The right hon. Gentleman had been in office for eighteen months or two years. He had had in his hands the Report of the Norfolk Royal Commision—a Commission which had called eighty-two witnesses and had held 130 odd sittings, and which placed in his hands

    591
    a series of propositions. What had the right hon. Gentleman done with that Report? It was common knowledge that the right hon. Gentleman had done nothing to give effect to the recommendations of that Royal Commission. There was not an officer or a private in the whole Volunteer force who was not willing to aid the Secretary of State in any reasonable manner to improve the condition of the force. What did the Royal Commission say?
    "The Volunteer force owes its origin and continuance mainly to the energy and goodwill of its officers and men, and the fact that it does not attain to this standard imposed by war conditions is in no way attributable to them."
    If the right hon. Gentleman had read that passage on page 9 he would at once have said that it depended on the War Office to put the Volunteer force into a proper state of efficiency. It was not possible, with the limited time at their disposal, to go into the whole of the Report of the Royal Commission, but there were one or two passages to which he would like to call attention; for instance the Report said—
    "The training of the Volunteers is carried on under considerable difficulties as to both time and space, and is in many cases especially hampered by the want of easily accessible ranges. The efficiency of the different units varies greatly, and some reach a high level, bu1 taking the force as a whole neither the musketry nor the tactical training of the rank and file would enable it to face with prospect of success the troops of a Continental army. The Volunteer Artillery lacks the requisite training and mobility. The transport, equipment, and artillery matériel of the Volunteer force are far from satisfactory."
    The right hon. Gentleman had dealt with that by taking away the only guns they had and sending down a whole army of artificers to alter and improve their until the result was that in the opinion of experts it was dangerous to fire them at all. The Report continued—
    "The only attempt at organising the Volunteer force in the cadres required for war has been the grouping of the infantry battalions in brigades. Certain battalions are picked out from these brigades to form other brigades ii the field army, and no less than twenty-six Volunteer battalions are shown in the Army List a belonging at the same time to two different brigades. These Army field brigades have no permanently appointed commanders. Of the others, some are broken up on mobilisation, and their peace organisation does not correspond
    592
    with their war duties. Some are under the command of the officer commanding the regimental district, who has many other duties, especially on mobilisation. Four are under officers commanding the regiments of the Guards, and the remainder are during the week's camp under the command of a brigadier who has no authority over them at other times. There is no divisional organisation, nor are any arrangements made for the command and staffs of large masses of Volunteers of the various arms told off to the defence of London, beyond the grouping of the infantry brigades as already mentioned."
    He submitted that, when this document came before him, his right hon. friend and the Army Council had a definite task to discharge. With very little difficulty and trouble they could have corrected this deficiency in the Volunteer force. But had anything been done in that direction? Absolutely nothing. And in his opinion this was attributable entirely to his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War making speeches in derision of the force and in derision of the contribution they made to the South African forces, and it was only natural in those circumstances that nobody under him would do anything. The hon. Member who brought forward this Motion spoke of the losses which the force had suffered in officers and men. From 1900 to the present time a large number of officers had sent in their resignations, and there had been a loss of 34,000 men, but had anything been done by the right hon. Gentleman or anyone under him to obtain officers for the Volunteer force? Had anything been done to give the force confidence or to reorganise it for war under officers who would not be taken away to other duties on the declaration of war, but who would be responsible for their brigades in times of peace and in the field in time of war? Nothing had been done. What had been done was to make declarations deriding the assistance given by the Volunteers in South Africa and deriding their efficiency. The inspecting officer saw every man individually at times of inspection, and it was the duty of that officer to make a report which ultimately came into the hands of the Secretary of State, who should communicate with the commanding officer upon the subject. If a regiment was inefficient, it was the fault of the commanding officer;

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    but nothing had been done in that matter. He had a letter from a commanding officer who told him that that sending out of a circular was merely furnishing the Secretary of State for War with ammunition for further sarcasms.
    The state of affairs was very serious indeed. The Prime Minister, as President of the Defence Committee, said only the other day that in 1899 and 1900 they had a great mass of Volunteers, but no means of organisation by which they might be utilised. Lord Roberts, in another place, recently said also that the condition of this force was worse than it was in 1899. The right hon. Gentleman was the only man connected with the administration of the Army who had not approved of the Volunteer force in the slightest degree. Lord Roberts in a letter said the lesson of the South African War had been learnt in America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and that legislative measures had been passed to deal with this matter-Had the right hon. Gentleman done anything to form a strong force? At the outbreak of the South African War 35 per cent. of the Regular Army were unable to embark either from being under age or from medical inefficiency. These were vital headquarter matters but why should the right hon. Gentleman waste his time and the finances of the country and upset the whole Volunteer force by retaining it in its present state of uncertainty. Unless there was some satisfactory information to-night and an undertaking from the right hon. Gentleman that he would not persevere in this ridiculous course, and that during the recess no attempt would be made to take any step with the object of cutting down the force, he would have to vote for this Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman had no right to carry out these ideas of his own against the will of the representatives of the people, and unless the right hon. Gentleman could give the assurance asked for he should vote for this Amendment, because he believed the Volunteer force was necessary to this country as a barrier between this country and that conscription which the right hon. Gentleman favoured. There had been no declaration so far on the part of
    594
    the right hon. Gentleman of his views with regard to conscription.
    *MK. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Yes. In this House I have made a public declaration that I am strongly opposed to it.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENTexpressed his gratification at the definite declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, and said he thought that this debate had well occupied the time of the House even if nothing else resulted from it. He earnestly hoped his right hon. friend would pardon him if he had used any expressions he should not have used in the heat of the debate. He was animated with the most friendly feelings towards his right hon. friend, and he was only urging him to take the course which he (Sir Howard Vincent) believed was best for himself, best for the Government, and best for the Party to which he belonged.
    *MR. C. R. SPENCERsaid he felt justified in asking the Committee to allow him to say a few words upon the Volunteer question, although he had spoken upon it on a previous occasion, because something very serious had recently happened and he felt bound, as a Member of Parliament, to express his opinion on the two circulars issued recently by the right hon. Gentleman's Department. The position of the Volunteers at present was a very serious one, and it was the bounden duty of everyone who had the interests of the force at heart to speak out with no uncertain voice and to say what he thought should be done to assist the Volunteer force. This was a question which, had a very great interest for the country at large, because it not only affected the, well-being of the constitution of the Auxiliary Forces but also the country as a whole for if these circulars were allowed to be continued there was a fear that this one great rampart which protected us from the evils from which foreign countries suffered would be removed. He, therefore, would oppose everything that might end in almost the ruin of the Volunteer force. The right hon. Gentleman would forgive him saying that he did not think the right hon. Gentleman had improved at all in his knowledge of the Volunteers. If the right hon. Gentleman

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    had learnt a little more of the feelings and the wishes of the Volunteer forces he would not have embarrassed them "with the circulars that had been referred to, and would not have allowed that force to be worried and harried until large numbers had been forced out of the force altogether.
    He himself believed that the Volunteer force could be brought up to a state of efficiency if regard was had to its conditions of service. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to have forgotten that the Volunteers were Volunteers, and that no amount of screwing, by circular or otherwise, could raise or, as he would prefer to put it, lower good Volunteers into sham Regulars. He disapproved of the harassing of the Volunteers, and strongly protested against the additional worry recently entailed by the medical examination. It was impossible for the medical officers, without extra remuneration, especially in country battalions, many of whose members lived at great distances from headquarters, to go about medically examining under the new circular. "Faulty teeth" were referred to in that document. Everybody, whether civilian or military man, knew that faulty teeth were a great hindrance to the comfortable carrying out of the duties of life, but in these days, when Volunteers were not required to bite off the ends of their cartridges, he thought it was really unnecessary to set up a difficulty about faulty teeth or the number of teeth possessed by Volunteers. If the Army Council or the right hon. Gentleman laid down the requisite number of teeth a Volunteer was to have to ensure proper mastication, the further difficulty would immediately arise as to who was to decide which teeth were thoroughly sound and which not. Then there Was the question of age. That was always delicate matter to discuss either in or out of Parliament. Doubtless the right hon. Gentleman, like himself, would gladly recall his forty-fourth birthday. Bui he did not consider that the fact of s man's being forty-five years of age was any bar to his performing good and efficient service as a Volunteer. The enforcement of that condition would deal a heavy blow to the Volunteer force because in many battalions the back-
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    bone of the regiment were men of forty-five who had been in the battalion fifteen or twenty years, understood the discipline, and encouraged the younger members to follow in the proper course.
    What was the object of the circular? It was said to be economy, Laudable economy was to be strongly supported, but there was such a thing as ill-judged parsimony, and he greatly feared that the action of the right hon. Gentleman would cost the country millions if hereafter—which heaven forbid—there was demanded from the population of this country an armed force to resist invasion. Was this the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to the Volunteers? Was the Government going to follow what he conceived to be the fatal guidance of the Secretary of State, and, ignoring the valuable services rendered, by them in the late war, regard the Volunteers as a force which could not be taken seriously? Was the Government going to support the Volunteers or not? It was time the Volunteers had that question answered. Already there were unmistakable signs that the force was getting discouraged. Some of the great London battalions, the pride of the Metropolis, had been considerably reduced, and an end ought to be put to the present uncertainty at once. Was it the policy of His Majesty's Government permanently to reduce the Volunteer force? If so, the Volunteers would know where they stood. The deputation of the National Guard of America which recently visited this country were horrified at the disregard and contempt with which the Volunteers were treated by the Government. Why was it the National Guard occupied the position it did in America? As far as he could understand, they were more or less the counterpart of the Volunteers here; they had taken across the Atlantic the hatred which we shared of conscription on European models; and, like our Volunteers, they regarded themselves as the strongest rampart against the adoption of a policy of conscription. In all sincerity and friendliness, he asked the Secretary of State to pause long before he enforced his immature schemes against the Volunteers. But if the right hon. Gentleman turned a deaf

    597
    ear to his cry, he would appeal with confidence to the House of Commons itself, from which all the power of the right hon. Gentleman was derived, to prevent the ruin of the Volunteers being consummated.
    *COLONEL DENNYsaid there had been many debates on this subject; but all the arguments which had been put forward for the benefit of the Secretary of State for War appeared to have been thrown away. There were two aspects of the question—the sentimental and the practical. Human nature, being what it was, was not expected to offer or to anticipate gratitude. Whatever was done for one's country or kin should be done spontaneously from high motives, and nothing expected in return—and it was astounding with what unanimity the Volunteers had been paid in accordance with that principle. The sentimental grievance was powerful, but the practical one could be brought in in such a way that the Committee would sympathise with the Volunteers in the one and help them in the other. For more than forty years this country had enjoyed the services of a force which had stood between it and conscription. He feared that sometimes they had stood too successfully between the country and a proper system of military training; at any Tate, they had given their best, and had proved that within the conditions of service of men who had to earn their living there could be given sufficient military training to render a War Office of any common sense whatever secure against the adoption of a policy of conscription. But for forty years what had they received? The same neglect, the same method of being ignored, the same statements in Parliament that whatever they did was not enough. However much they tried, they could not attain to the high standard of Pall Mall. He gave the Unionist Government the credit of having been the first to recognise the necessities of the Volunteers and to offer them the additional money they required, bat if the Government were so certain that Volunteers were of use as to give them that money, why had they not consulted them? He did not blame
    598
    the present Secretary of State any more than his predecessor or his successor; they were only ripples in the sand, and the tide swept them away. What he blamed was the permanent feeling that subsisted in those who really governed the military forces of the country in the War Office itself. Secretaries of State were friendly enough to the Volunteers before they went into office, but immediately they got there they came under influences which caused them to throw overboard their previous views on the matter.
    What had the Volunteers left undone for which they were condemned? They were said to be so puny that they could not compare with the "Sons of Anak" found in our Line regiments. The hon. Member for East Edinburgh, the hon. Member for Central Sheffield, and himself were fair samples, and they had given twenty or thirty years service free, gratis, and for nothing, to their country. Then the War Office asked as to their teeth. "Were the miserable stumps that adorned the gums of the Auxiliaries to be compared with the rows of ivories of our Regulars, one smile from which was supposed to be sufficient for the destruction of the foe?" In other words the foreign service conditions were to be applied to the inspections of teeth of a home-service Army. That was the sort of rubbish to which they were treated from the War Office! Would it not have been far better for the Secretary of State to have gone to the Association of Volunteer Commanding Officers and have said, "Gentlemen, I am not quite satisfied with you, but if you will come and reason together with me I think we can manage to make you better than you are?" Every single officer would then have placed his experience and knowledge at the service of the right hon. Gentleman, and he would have got exactly the information he wanted. But that was not the way the War Office did its work; it was the way business men would have done it.
    It was no use the War Office thinking they could do without the Volunteers. What happened in the South African War? Practically every available Regular was sent out of the country, leaving scores of thousands of useless

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    men behind whom the War Office dare not send, and then the War Office came on the Militia and Volunteers. The Secretary of State had never yet given the correct figures of what the Volunteers did for the country in that campaign. His own battalion, for instance, was credited with 115 men. The terms of service were made most difficult; they had to be not under twenty or over forty-five years of ago; they had to be unmarried, to have all their teeth, to be marksmen, to go out in companies. Instead of sending only 115 men his battalion sent 389 men to the front, the difference being accounted for by his men enlisting in the Regulars, Militia, and Yeomanry, of whom no notice was taken by the War Office in their calculations of the services rendered by the Volunteers. He repeated it was no use the War Office thinking they could do without the Volunteers. The South African War clearly proved that, and what would happen in the next war would be exactly what happened in the South African War—in less than six months the War Office would be begging for help from Auxiliaries, and they would get it again if they did not interfere and spoil the service now. What was going on at the present moment? They were to depend on the Regular Army, apparently, for the defence of these shores, and upon the Volunteers for foreign service. They were dealing with men who did not aspire to place themselves alongside the professional soldier; the Volunteers had to earn their bread and they did their training in their spare time. But were they, therefore, to be ridiculed? They gave their time to the country, and were they on that account to be despised and told that they were not being taken seriously. The Volunteers served a much bigger purpose than any mere training of men. He did not care whether a man were seventeen or seventy, if that man underwent regular training, was put under the discipline which a Volunteer regiment ought to give, and trained to shoot, he could not be the worse for it, and he was bound to be better. They served a great purpose in that they afforded an opportunity for that physical training which all desired, and for fifty years they had plodded on, doing their best in a quiet way for the benefit of their country, and,
    600
    while permitted, they would continue so to do.
    MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid that anybody who had listened to the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite and other hon. Members who had spoken in the debate, would very much regret that this was the first time for four years that the Volunteer Estimates had been put before the House, and the House had been able to give the Secretary of State any guidance. This was all the more important because the Volunteer force was essentially a civilian force dependent upon civilian officers, maintained by civilian efforts, and put under the control of the Secretary of State as distinct from the Commander-in-Chief in all particulars of its discipline and organisation. The present Secretary for War had told them that the only condition upon which he would grant the Volunteers any improvements in their organisation and their training facilities was dependent first, of all upon a reduction in their number. That was a most unfortunate state of things for the Volunteers. He did not wish to labour the point made by previous speakers that the action of the Secretary of State for War and his predecessor towards the Regulars and the Volunteers had been precisely the same. A circular had been issued which was afterwards condemned and then withdrawn, and that process had prevented people entering the Volunteers, and not only had it reduced the number both of men and officers, but it had also reduced the efficiency of the force.
    All this trouble had arisen be cause the Secretary of State for War would not listen to the advice and recommendations of the Commission who had considered this question. He believed that the answer which the Secretary of State must give to those who drew up the Report of that Commission would be the kind of exertion which would have to be exacted from the Volunteers in the future. That Commission had put a definite question which had never been answered. They asked for what purpose did the Volunteers exist. Was it for the defence of this

    601
    country, and, if so, was this country to be defended solely by their efforts or was it to be defended by the efforts of Volunteers plus a stiffening and strengthening by the Regular Forces? Upon the answer to that question must depend the Vote before the House and the sort of duties the country was going to exact from the Volunteers. To that question the Secretary of State for War, whatever his other shortcomings might be, had given them a frank, consistent, and constant answer. He had told them both by his own words and through the mouths of two or three other gentlemen that the Government looked for home defence against raids to the Volunteers. Lord Esher had stated that it would be an illusion to suppose that the Volunteers could repel an invasion. It was said that an invasion of this country was impossible, and that raids could only be attempted by a force of less than 5,000 men. It was further stated that 250,000 Volunteers were more than sufficient to deal with 5,000 raiders and therefore the Volunteers ought to be Gut down. That was the kind of argument which had been addressed to this House.
    He agreed that the right hon. Gentleman had been consistent and courageous in the arguments he had put before the House, and he would quote a phrase or two from the statements which he had made. He told them in the debates which took place at the beginning of this session that there were in the Volunteer force a large number of men who ought not to be in it, and that it was the intention of the Army Council to deal with them in such a way that they would not remain in it in the future. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that they wanted better officers, more efficiency and training, longer time in camp, and other things, and he stated that these could only be obtained after a reduction in the numbers of the force had been effected. That was the principle which animated the right hon. Gentleman in his action to-day and in the circular which he had issued. A similar statement had been made in another place by Lord Donoughmore, who had stated that the Volunteers were slightly more numerous than were
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    now required, and that by a reduction in their numbers they proposed to increase their efficiency. He had laboured this point because he anticipated from the right hon. Gentleman a defence which had already been set up that afternoon. He would no doubt reply that he meant nothing but good to the Volunteers, that he had their interest closely at heart and identified himself with all their aspirations, and that they had no more consistent supporter than himself. He thought it was important to pin the right hon. Gentleman down to his previous statements and actions.
    He wished to draw attention to the terms of the circular which had been issued. The first three lines of the original circular stated that it was a statement to the effect that the Secretary of State had been told that from various causes many Volunteer units were not in an efficient state to take the field. They attempted to find out where the right hon. Gentleman got that report from, but he noticed that it had now been withdrawn in the second circular, which read—
    "In view of the fact that during the South African War large numbers of Volunteers, offered themselves for service in the field and in view of the many expressions of readiness to take a similar step in the event of this country being engaged in a war—"
    In the first circular they stated that the Volunteers were unfit to take the field and in the second circular they call attention to their patriotic efforts in the past. That was no doubt owing to the fact that these proceedings had become very unpopular and that the Volunteers were sternly resenting the action which the right hon. Gentleman had taken. He agreed with the seconder of this Amendment when he said that the Volunteers recognised their short-comings and acknowledged their defects. They did not object to the Secretary for War pointing out these defects, but what they did object to, and what they would not submit to, was the attempt on the part of the Secretary of State for War, under the cloak of obtaining information which it was perfectly legitimate for him to ask for and proper for the War Office to have, to carry out desires which, so far as they operated at all, had injured and not benefited the

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    Volunteer force. While they did not object to criticism and acknowledged defects, and while they admitted their own shortcomings and wished to have them remedied, the War Office and the Secretary of State must remember that the work of the Volunteers in the past had been a labour of love. Valuable time had been given up by people who could not afford to give it, and money had been given by people who could little spare it, and all they asked was that the opportunity should be given to the Volunteers to improve themselves and make good their shortcomings. Those efforts could only be continued if the Government remembered that the Volunteers provided a reserve defence for this country wholly and strictly upon voluntary lines, and those people who provided that reserve defence, and who were saving the country an enormous sum of money, had to earn their livehood from day to day by their own exertions in civil life. Therefore, it was the duty of the Government to restrict their military demands on these people to the exigencies and the needs of these people, who, they had to remember, had to get their own living.
    Personally, he had for some years had the command of a Volunteer regiment, and he wished to put to the right hon. Gentleman what he thought was necessary to improve the Volunteer force. In the first place the Government must redeem the promise made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover in that House five years ago, when he under took on behalf of the Government to give them a separate department at the War Office. He knew the Secretary of State for War would say that they had got an Inspector-General of Volunteers. But they had not got an independent department at the War Office, and an independent officer who would act without the intervention of other high officials at the War Office. They ha dnot got a staff closely connected with the Volunteer force. It was true that I here was a Volunteer staff officer at the War Office who represented 250,000 Volunteers. If the rest of the War Office were run on the same principle the whole of the institution in Pall Mall could be abolished, and a great deal of expense saved to the
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    country. He would ask one other concession. There were different conditions of employment all over the country, but the War Office applied the same cut-and-dry regulations in regard; to camp to all forms of Volunteer corps. They could not make the same conditions apply in civil life all over the country. Why had the Metropolitan corps dwindled? It was because they could not go into camp every year, though other corps in other parts of the country could easily go into camp. As to the question of training, the Norfolk Commission admitted, and all Volunteers admitted, that if they had to face a. Continental force, whether large or small, they must be better trained, officers and men. If the Volunteers could not afford to go into camp for a longer period than at present, it was no use attempting to make them do so. Let the great mass of the Volunteer force have separate training on isolated field days throughout the year, and let the Government devote a small sum of money to taking the corps from their centres to some rural district where they could receive some military training in the course of an afternoon. If that proceeding were spread, over the whole year they would be able to get the whole length of time, which, under present conditions, they could not get in camp. He urged that the Volunteers should get a reasonable amount for musketry.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Both these things have been done this year; £15,000 extra has been voted for the purpose, and we have relaxed the regulations with regard to camp.
    MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid that any effort which the right hon. Gentleman made to meet the needs of the Volunteers would be gladly acknowledged. In regard to ammunition he would ask I the right hon. Gentleman if he expected the Volunteers to become marksmen unless they were allowed more than ten rounds for practice. He would beg the right hon. Gentleman, if he thought the Volunteers were of any real value, to make a further allowance to them for ammunition. He was not one of those who pressed the Government for further grants. Upon the ordinary grants now made to the Volunteers their expenses could be met and the men could be made efficient.

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    He knew that because he had proved it in the course of the last four years. There was no need of money, but there was need of encouragement. They did not want a bribe to do their duty. They were ready to do their duty if they could only get the War Office to encourage them. He remembered that the Prime Minister said that the great deterrent of invasion was the Volunteer force. It stood to reason that the larger and more efficient the force the greater the deterrent. He believed that the Secretary of State for War had either himself initiated, or permitted others to initiate for him, a policy that militated against efficiency. He would only add that the premium which the country paid to the Volunteers as an insurance against invasion was the least burdensome of all the sums devoted to military purposes.
    LORD BINGHAMsaid this was the first occasion on which he had ventured to intervene in a debate on the subject of the Volunteers. With regard to the question of the circular Which had been so much discussed, he was not in complete agreement with many of the opinions which had been expressed in regard to it. Most of the speeches on the Volunteers which he had heard during the time he had been in the House hid been made by Volunteers on behalf of Volunteers. He did not think enough regard had been had to another party in the transaction—the British taxpayer. He looked upon this circular as the logical method of fortifying the taxpayer in getting value for the money which was laid out on the Volunteers. He entirely agreed with what had been said on behalf of the individual who came worst off in the whole scheme, namely, the medical officer. While strongly sympathising with him, he would say from his knowledge of Volunteers that he did not think that the majority of them would have any objection to having this examination made At the same time, he must strongly urge the Secretary of State for War not to use this insidious form of reducing the number of the Volunteer force. He hoped it was not the right hon. Gentleman's intention to do so. He would urge him, if he wished to undertake any grave step of that kind, to do it boldly,
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    and say exactly beforehand what he really meant to do.
    He associated himself most cordially with the views expressed that afternoon on the subject of the regulations, and the way in which the Volunteers had been treated during the past four or five years. The Secretary of State for War had said that he had relaxed the camp rules. They were all most grateful to him for that indulgence. He would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that it was not merely the relaxing temporarily of camp regulations that was required. They must have some security that in future those regulations would be taken off entirely. The different corps must be judged on their merits. He himself had the honour of belonging to a London corps, and he knew that it was absolutely impossible, looking to the nature of their occupations, that the members of it could go into camp for a week in summer. The majority were clerks in offices in the City, or clerks in banks. A clerk in a bank had probably a fortnight's leave during the year, and if he was a junior clerk he had to take it in March or Apri1. Therefore, a man of that sort must find it absolutely impossible to go into camp in the first week of August with his Volunteer regiment. He would urge the Secretary of State for War to look at the question of the Volunteers in a broad-minded way. Although there were many regiments with men not physically capable of going through a hard campaign, they were yet perfectly well able to do much work that was required of them, and, in addition to their value in that capacity, there were a great many of them who were most invaluable in other ways by the example they set to young men to come forward and do their duty in defence of their country. The Secretary of State for War had always expressed himself in sympathy with the Volunteers, and they were waiting anxiously for practical proof of that sympathy. They hoped that that afternoon they would hear some more definite announcement as to the circular. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that if he could make it clear that it was not intended as a means of reducing the Volunteer force, he, for one, would see no reason to take exception, to it.
    MAJOR SEELYsaid he would like to defend the Secretary of State for War from the charge of ambiguity which the noble Lord the Member for Chertsey had attempted to put upon him. The noble Lord said that if there was any intention to reduce the Volunteers it should be done in a straightforward manner. The Secretary of State had stated in the most definite and emphatic manner that in his judgment—and he himself believed it was the opinion of some other members of the Government—the Volunteer force, irrespective of whether they were efficient or inefficient, was too large and ought to be reduced. He believed the vast majority of the Members of that House wholly dissented from that view. Therefore, the charge of ambiguity could not be levelled against the Secretary of State for War.
    He wanted to draw attention to the method by which the circular was issued, and the object with which it was issued. The hon. Members who had taken part in the debate that afternoon protested not only against the reduction of the force, which was a broad matter of principle, but also against the perpetual mistakes with reference to the Volunteer force. Reference had been made to the proposal to reduce the numbers, but it had been ascertained that that circular was issued without the knowledge of the Inspector-General of the Volunteer force, and that the first he saw of it was in the newspapers. If such a thing were done in business, the place would not last a week. What had happened in this case? The staff officers had never been consulted upon that Order, the issue of which had created a mighty stir. It would be as well to consult the staff officers before issuing such an Order. After the publication of the Order in 1901 no fewer than five of the Metropolitan Volunteer regiments lost 50 per cent, of their numbers by resignation. The Inspector-General was not consulted before the issue of that circular. They had now got into a difficulty regarding the issue of another circular which was causing the greatest concern. Again, he believed the staff officer of the Volunteers was never consulted about this circular at all. Even if the Order—he was referring to the first Order—had
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    been a wise one, the right hon. Gentleman would admit that it had created a mighty stir and it would have been well to have consulted the staff officer of the Volunteers before such an Order was issued. He thought they were entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman why it was that these perpetual mistakes occurred? They knew why the Volunteers were discontented; it was because they were never consulted. The Committee would hardly believe it, but a brigadier-general of Volunteers, who was a strong supporter of the right hon. Gentleman and his political Party, complained to him only two or three days ago in conversation that he had not got a copy of this Order although it had been published in the Standard. Not only was the opinion of these brigadier-generals not asked about this Order, but they had never seen it until they read it in the Press. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War how that was.
    He wished to draw the attention of the Committee to an entirely fresh aspect of the matter: of which this circular was an indication. It was an indication of the intention of the right hon. Gentleman to reduce the Volunteer force. The noble Lord said there was no ambiguity on this point; but he would direct the noble Lord's attention to a speech made by the right hon. Gentleman in July last, in which he said that it was proposed to reduce the establishment of the Volunteers from 350,000 to 200,000. The right hon. Gentleman afterwards said that he proposed to reduce the number of Volunteers by absorption to 180,000, the present strength being 245,000. The right hon. Gentleman could not be charged with doing a thing which had no method or meaning in it. He frankly said that the Volunteers could not be relied on to face Continental troops, nor could they be relied upon unless they had been through the mill.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid that he quoted that phrase from the Report of the Royal Commission.
    MAJOR SEELYsaid if the right hon. Gentleman quoted it he did so with approval. Did the right hon. Gentleman

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    say yet that the Volunteer force could not be relied upon to face a Continental army?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he quoted the opinion of the Royal Commission.
    MAJOR SEELYsaid he wished the right he a Gentleman to understand that they made no charge against him whatever, but they profoundly disagreed with his policy. The right hon. Gentleman believed that the Volunteers would not be able to repel an invasion, that they were not fit to meet a Continental army, and, therefore, he proposed to reduce their number and to put in their place a short-service home Army which had gone through the mill.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid that the whole point of a short-service enlistment in the Army was to build up a large Reserve in a comparatively short time.
    MAJOE SEELYsaid that that was perfectly true; but the right hon. Gentleman also intended to reduce the Volunteer force by absorption to 180,000 men. The position was perfectly clear, and one of those days it would be demonstrated which school of thought was right. He believed that this policy of reduction of the Volunteer force would be disastrous. The noble Lord said that the policy, at all events, tended towards economy. Probably it would do nothing of the kind. They could not, in a Volnnteer force which was unpaid, have reduction and efficiency at the same time. The thing was impossible. Experience had shown that in the case of the Yeomanry—a branch of the service which had been singularly successful of late—they had increased in number from 10,000 to 28,000, and with that growth there was a corresponding increase of efficiency. A Regular soldier was paid in money; the Auxiliary was paid in appreciation. If, therefore, they reduced that appreciation they reduced greatly the inducement to join.
    The only possible way to get efficiency in the Volunteer force was for the whole Ministerial Bench to say, "We
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    want to get every man to serve." The utmost it could possibly cost was but a trifling matter in comparison with the huge sums of money the country spent. If anyone said that it was unnecessary, he appealed to the recollection of only four years ago. The Financial Secretary to the War Office had had to command men in the field, against an enemy, who did not know one end of a rifle from another. He himself had been in the same position. These men were not trained to know. If the policy which he advocated had been upheld then, ail that would have been changed, and Lord Methuen would never have fallen a prisoner, wounded as he was, into the hands of the enemy. The right hon. Gentleman said that this was an argument for conscription. Not at all; it was an argument in the direction of asking the people to give all they could to the service of the State. That was how the Japanese succeeded. This vote was probably the most important that could be given on military matters, because the House was at the parting of the ways. It might be that the right hon. Gentleman was right in his opinion, and that the reduction in the Volunteer force was also a wise step to take. There were other persons, however, who believed that the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman were fatal to the military efficiency of the country, and by this persistent throttling of the patriotic aspirations of the people, the authorities would, by degrees, unless they were more fortunate than they had been in the past, stifle every patriotic desire on the part of the people.
    *MR. SEYMOUR ORMSBY - GOREsaid he did not desire to deal with the general question of the Government's treatment of he Volunteers, but to particularise as to that portion of the force to which he had the honour to belong, namely, the Volunteer artillery, and more especially the field or light artillery. No portion of the Volunteer force had received less consideration at the hands of this and previous Governments than had the artillery. The branch of which he was peaking comprised five brigade divisions, the 1st Monmouth, the 1st Lanark, the 4th Yorkshire, the 1st Lincoln,

    611
    and the brigade division to which he had the honour to belong, namely, Kent. The Committee would remember that successive Secretaries of State for War had promised an improvement in the armament of these light batteries. His right hon. friend the Member for Dover, as far back as 1900, said in reply to Questions in the House that it was intended to re-arm the Volunteer artillery with modern guns. But that was not a question he could enter into in detail because it would have to be settled almost battery by cattery in accordance with whether the corps was field artillery or position artillery. One of the grievances the field artillery had during the régime of the Secretary for India was that they beheld the absurd spectacle of artillery Volunteers in spurs doing infantry foot drill, but he believed that the present War Secretary had now altered that.
    What was the present position of the Volunteer artillery of which he was speaking? They were armed with 16-pounder guns which would be absolutely useless in case the force was called on to protect this country against a raid. It might be said that they had their mobilisation orders and their districts in which they were to operate in case of a raid were distinctly laid down. But what chance could they possibly have of efficiently performing their duties if suddenly called upon? Their guns would be just about as efficacious in case of a raid as the noted revolver loaded with Brummagem fireworks would be against the big gun of the foreigners loaded with brick-bats. He must therefore ask his right hon. friend for some explanation as to what he was going to do so far as the Volunteer artillery was concerned. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House some time ago that he had given the Volunteer artillery 15-pounder guns and shortly afterwards that they were to become different kind of gunners, and that they would be armed with the 4·7 gun. That was very subtle on the right hon. Gentleman's part, for the reason that alteration had been made in the experiment with the 4·7 gun, which had been prove to be the worst-shooting gun of any calibre in the British Army. He hoped his right hon. friend would give the most
    612
    careful consideration to this question, because there could be no use in having men to protect this country in case of a raid if they had not proper and efficient weapons with which to protect it. And he believed he was right in saying that his right hon. friend did not want to abolish the old field artillery Volunteers in the same way as the others. He urged him, therefore, to see to this matter as soon as possible, and to see that the artillery was properly armed in as short a space of time as possible.
    SIR A. HAYTER (Wakall)said the views of the Secretary of State for War were very plain, as could be seen from his own words in various speeches made in the House and elsewhere, and also in the Memorandum presented to the House with the Army Estimates. He sympathised very much with the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, who initiated this debate in so able a speech, and who said some information ought to be given as to the circulars. The first of those alluded to "active service in the field" and showed the intention of sending Volunteers abroad; the second introduced the South African War and referred to "active service abroad." In the concluding paragraph of both, circulars was to be found indication of an intention to draw a sharp distinction between distinction and non-efficients so as to distinguish between, the sheep and the goats and keep them distinct. The commanding officers were asked for information as to Volunteer units inefficient from any cause, and whether such should be disbanded or amalgamated, and also, in making those recommendations, what was proposed as to reduction of adjutants or staff. He rose chiefly to quote exactly the views of the Secretary of State for War. Some doubt had been expressed in regard to them; but he had no doubt whatever He would not say that the views of the right hon. Gentleman were right; in fact he thought they were wrong; but there was no doubt about what those views were. The right hon. Gentleman on March 21st said, in reply to a Question from the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight—
    "It is proposed to make a reduction in the strength of the Volunteer force."

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    He was then asked—
    "Is it to be a reduction in numbers or in establishment?
    and the reply was—
    "It is in both; it must take place very gradually."
    On March 28th he said—
    "We have 360,OOO men who are tied to the soil of the country in time of war. I have expressed the view, which I think is logical, consistent, and coherent, that we should consent to a reduction of that force in order to increase its efficiency. I want someone categorically to affirm that the maintenance of 360,000 men tied to the soil by law, is necessary for the defence of the country against any danger reasonably to be apprehended."
    On April 3rd he said—
    "I am an advocate, and a strong advocate, of the reduction of the establishment of the Volunteers."
    Again, in answer to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition he said—
    "You eliminate those who, after a medical examination, are found to be unfit. It is the fact that medical examination is the rarest possible event after entry into the Volunteers."
    From that it would be seen that there could be no doubt as to the views of the right hon. Gentleman. But if there were any doubt it would be dispelled by the words of the Memorandum issued to the House with the Army Estimates. If anybody entertained a doubt that these circulars were intended to give the right hon. Gentleman a basis upon which he could strike off the men, then he could only reply that the introduction of "foreign service" was intended to give him a lever by which he could do so. The view of those on that side of the House was exactly that expressed by the right hon. Member for Berwick, who on April 3rd said—
    "The Volunteers, I think, must be made to feel that their system is a real system of national training, by means of which, if this country is over attacked in a great war, either at home or abroad, the nation will be able to use all its forces and united energies for the defence of any part of the Empire. What I think the Government ought to do is, without any limit of numbers, to concentrate their attention on physical development and the elementary training of as large numbers of the population as possible as Volunteers."
    With that view, expressed on that side of the House, he Cordially agreed. He
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    hoped hon. Members would vote for the reduction.
    *MAJOR EVANS GORDONcomplained of the disproportionate amount of Parliamentary time given to the Volunteers, who would seem to be the only serious branch of the British Army. But there were other brandies of the military organisation of this country which were quite as important as the Volunteer force I to which more time might be devoted. There was no lack of suspicion as to anything concerning the Secretary of Stats for War and the administration of the War Office. It had town said this circular in some mysterious way was an insidious attempt to bring about conscription in this country. The right hon. Gen leman the Secretary of State had over and over again stated had that House in most unmistakable terms that he was opposed to conscription; that at all events was quite plain. Other hon. Gentlemen had said the right hon. Gentleman was not clear in his expression of his views, but the last speaker had to a large extent settled that point by quotations from, the right hon. Gentleman's speeches, which were clear beyond dispute. It had been stated with some justice that a portion of the Volunteer force might be utilised as a reserve for the Regular Army, to serve abroad in case of necessity, and when the right hon. Gentleman made an endeavour to find out what proportion of the Volunteer force would be for medical and other reasons fit to take part in service abroad, he had all these violent accusations and suspicions levelled against him. The constant charge against the War Office had been that it was lacking in prevision. Here was his right hon. friend making a perfectly sensible endeavour to find out what the real condition of the Volunteer force was as to service abroad, and immediately all this outcry was raised.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Is it for service abroad?
    *MAJOR EVANS GORDONsaid they would hear from the right hon. Gentleman what his view was, but personally he would be delighted to see such.

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    information collected, not only for service abroad, but for service at home. It was a perfectly reasonable and proper inquiry to make. It was information which ought already to exist at the War Office. [OPPOSITION Cheers.] Then what possible objection could there be to calling for that information? A good deal of ridicule had been cast upon the regulations as to the condition of men's teeth, but that was a very large element in the efficiency of men going on service. The attitude adopted by some hon. Members made one despair as to the improvement of the Volunteers in efficiency or as to the War Office getting possession of the information which every other staff required.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: These are Volunteers.
    *MAJOR EVANS GORDONsaid of course the Volunteers were exceptional. Nothing that applied to any other service applied to the Volunteers. They were to be treated as a force apart. Those were views with which he had no sympathy whatever, and he did not believe Volunteer officers generally in the least opposed such inquiries as had been made. If the enthusiasm of the Volunteer force rested upon so delicate and sensitive a basis, the sooner the fact was known the better, but he did not believe it to be so. He believed the discussions raised in that House were out of all proportion to the feeling which existed in the Volunteer force itself. He, therefore, hoped his right, hon. friend would not be influenced by such criticisms as those of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Sheffield.
    As regarded the general policy, the Report of the Royal Commission and other inquiries declared that there were numbers of men in all branches of the service, including the Volunteers, who not only were unfit for military purposes, but were never likely to become fit. In his opinion it was a wise policy to cease spending money upon matérid which could never be of any real military value, and to devote the money thus saved to providing those things which every Volunteer officer knew were urgently required to make the force efficient. As
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    the Secretary of State had over and over again told the House, the Volunteers were in need of many things the provision of which would cost money, and it was difficult to see how hon. Members could reconcile their constant cries for economy with their desire that, without any sacrifice on the part of the Volunteers, this enormous force should be provided with all that was requisite. Moreover, as far as his information went, the so called infamous treatment of the Volunteers by the Secretary of State had not resulted in a reduction of numbers. The last Return showed that, taking the whole force, there was actually an increase.
    MR. CHURCHILLpointed out that in an official Memorandum just quoted by the right hon. Baronet on the Front Bench it was clearly stated, that the reduction this year would be 15,000.
    *MAJOR EVANS GORDONsaid that at any rate in the early part of the year it was distinctly stated that the Volunteers had increased in number. A great deal too much had been made of these circulars. He cordially supported the idea with which those circulars were issued, and trusted the Secretary of State would persist in his policy of finding out as much as he could about the actual condition of the Volunteers. The criticisms which had been made seemed to point to the fact that the Volunteers were afraid of the true facts being brought I out. ["No."] If that were not so, all he could say was that the outcry raised about the circulars was very much out of proportion to the danger that had been, put forward.
    MR. FULLERsaid the opposition to the policy of the Government with regard to the Volunteers was due only in a very small degree to the circulars. What was complained of was that the circulars were an indication of the policy of the Government, that policy being directed towards the gradual reduction of the Volunteers, and the Opposition were prepared to challenge that policy both in Parliament and in the country. They disagreed with the policy of keeping a large Army for

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    Imperial defence across the seas, holding the proper policy for this country to be the maintenance of a small and efficient Army for the defence of the Empire over the seas, and the encouragement of the patriotic spirit of the people so that the Volunteers might he relied upon in time of national stress as a great school of arms from which recruits could be drawn for the Army over the seas. The Liberal Party were not alone in this view. In a recent debate in another place Lord Roberts said—
    "We do not want a large standing Army.…Behind that standing Array there must be a Reserve large enough to mobilise all the Regular troops, and to expand the Army to and maintain it at such a size as circumstances may require. … The Regular troops … can only provide a very limited portion of the Reserve, the main body of which must be formed by the Auxiliary Forces and by the man-hood of the country generally."
    Thus the opinion of so high an authority was diametrically opposed to the policy of the Government, and it was that policy the Opposition challenged.
    SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid that he held strong views, not as a Volunteer, but as a citizen, regarding the condition of the Army and the military system applied to the Army, and he profoundly disagreed with the basis upon which the Secretary of State was acting with regard to the Volunteers. He disagreed with the proposed reduction to a rigid 200,000. Various speakers had expressed the clearest views as to what the right hon. Gentleman meant and did not mean. Personally, remembering previous debates and utterances of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, he was not so clear regarding certain points. He was not clear whether the Government intended the Volunteers to be used only fir purposes of home defence, or whether they were to be used for home defence and also as a reserve behind the Regular Forces which would be expected to serve abroad in time of war. The Secretary of State on a previous occasion said—
    "The Volunteers to be really valuable must organise their training, their transport, and equipment, and arrange for these purposes on the basis of a foreign-going Army. … The Volunteers are rooted to the soil. … If they are really to go abroad in time of war, would it not be better to arrange in time of peace so
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    that they may fail into their places in time of war?"
    He took it, therefore, that under the present policy of the War Office the Volunteers were intended to be an efficient body for the defence of the soil—of which all would approve—and also that they should be a reserve to go abroad in time of war, if they were willing to go. This was where he differed so strongly from his right hon. friend. If we were ever engaged in a great war, 200,000 Volunteers would not be sufficient for our needs. If we were faced with a great orce on the frontier of India, the whole of the Regular Army would be thrown upon that frontier, and where would the Reserve be? Not only all the Regulars, but another 200,000 or 250,000 men would be required if ever we had to face a "Mukden" such as the Japanese and the Russians had fought. If we were to face such possibilities of disas er as the Russians had faced, if we were to be pitted against great armies, we must have great armies to pit against them. The Secretary of State very properly placed great stress upon quality. But quality alone was not sufficient. In the present war it had been proved incontestably that it was only when the Japanese were able to throw great numbers of men into the field that they were able to make their victories decisive and follow them up.
    The policy of the Government was unsound in that it did not give enough men. It was also unsound in that it appeared as though the Government thought it necessary to encourage the military spirit only in those who were physically fitted to go abroad. Others besides so-called amateurs had expressed themselves very clearly on this point. For instance, Sir J. Ardagh stated before the Royal Commission that he would prefer 300,000 imperfectly trained men to 100,000 well trained. In the vicissitudes of war it was not necessary that all the men, cither on the field of battle or on the line of communications, should be of the highest order of intelligence or military efficiency. Thus experts in whom the Government plated confidence disapproved of the whole War Office policy in this respect.

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    But there was a much higher attitude to take on the question. Did the House believe that the present Government were organising the military forces of the country to the best advantage of the Empire? A series of young nations within the Empire, with military problems of their own, and anxious to bring their military forces to as high a level of efficiency as possible, were watching us, and what could they think of our policy? He believed there was not one of those nations that was not profoundly unhappy, to say the least, when it looked at the confusion, dissatisfaction, and lack of definiteness which affected our Volunteer system, to say nothing of the Regular Army and the Militia. Those young nations, having gained experience from the South African War, were endeavouring to set their own houses in order. In The Times of yesterday appeared a telegram of great moment stating that the Canadian Government was proposing to adopt the principle of universal service, to compel every young man before he reached the age of twenty-one to serve three terms in the Militia, Those young countries were, as democracies, far more definite in their military arrangements than we were, and they were anxious that no particle of energy should be diverted from industrial into military channels if it was possible to avoid it.
    In this country he believed there was a real sympathy not with militarism, but with such military life as was absolutely necessary for safety; he did not think the Government really trusted this sympathy, but he believed that if the people were called upon for universal service they would readily respond to the call in time of need. The most democratic people in the world responded in this way in time of need, although they were anxious that their manhood should not be tainted by milinarism. In Canada and Cape Colony they had had tome experience of this kind of service. He thought they might trust the people of this country also to respond to the call if they only gave every man his opportunity, and although the people might not become a highly efficient body, they ought to give every man an opportunity of serving under the colours. As soon
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    as a man donned the King's uniform he acquired something of a national spirit which he had never known before. The average Volunteer had a year's start of any recruit, because it took a year to turn a recruit into a man. The Volunteer started at least with the advantage that he had been trained as a citizen, and as soon as they put him into the uniform he developed a national spirit. As Lord Roberts had said, the fault he found with the present system was that it did not link itself up with the national life. Those were not his exact words, but that was his meaning, and he thought the Committee would agree with him that it would be a good thing if the Government would change their mind concerning this attempt to reduce the possibility of not only not availing themselves of the man-hood of the nation but of providing those necessary military services in time of peace for the possible defence of the soil in time of war. He regretted that he was obliged to differ from the view of the right hon. Gentleman representing the Government, because on this matter he believed that the Government was absolutely wrong. What was more, he thought the whole Empire and the country would say they were wrong, if the people were asked. He had stated this before in the House, and he thought the time would come when the action of the Government and the action of the Secretary of State for War would be regretted because the country, when it was really roused to a sense of its possibilities and to the real danger, would immediately reverse this policy.
    *MR- CHURCHILLsaid the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had given the House various arguments of a far-reaching character dealing with the Volunteer force and its influence upon the defence and character and spirit of the nation. He thought the Committee would be very generally in agreement with the hon. Gentleman in the opinions he had expressed, and he wished to say a word in support of those opinions. They ought to remember that it was not right to judge the Volunteers as they saw them in time of peace. The Prime Minister had shown in the luminous and comprehensive statement which he

    621
    had made earlier in the session that it was probable that a certain amount of time would always intervene before any serious blow could be struck at this country, and even if that period only amounted to a few weeks or months, the Volunteer force at the end of that period would be in a very different condition to what it was in ordinary times of peace.
    The question they had to decide was really a very grave one. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War had defined his position in regard to the Volunteer force with much candour, and the views he held were formed with knowledge and experience and advocated with great conviction. The policy the right hon. Gentleman had put forward was a policy of reduction. Nobody who had listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman from the Front Opposition Bench (Sir A. Hayter) would doubt that the policy of the Secretary for War was a policy of reducing the Volunteers. To the right hon. Gentleman the improvement of the Volunteers was a secondary, and their reduction a primary, object. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the number of Volunteers was greatly in excess of what the general staff required for the mobilisation scheme they had in hand. The right hon. Gentleman had declared in the Memorandum upon the Estimates that he was enforcing a reduction of 15,000 men and that it would not stop there, but would be carried on until they reached an establishment greatly below anything they had known in recent times. They had been asked to absent to the policy on grounds of economy. The Member for Dumbartonshire had compared the cost of the Volunteers with that of the Brigade of Guards, and he showed the extraordinary cheapness of the Volunteers in proportion to the number maintained and the strength developed. The total cost of the Volunteer force in the Estimates was £1,200,000, whilst that of the other forces exceeded £30,000,000. Therefore the result of the economy the right hon. Gentleman proposed must be inconceivably small compared with the great scale of our military budget. Under these circumstances he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman a plain
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    Question. He invited him to turn his mind back to July 14th, 1904. On that date the right hon. Gentleman said—
    "I am going to ask the Volunteers to submit to the same scrutiny as I ask the Line to submit to, as I ask the Militia to submit to, and that is a sacrifice in numbers. I ask leave to reduce the establishment of the Volunteers to 200,000 men. I propose, therefore, to fix the establishment of the Volunteers at 200,000 men and to reduce the strength, by absorption in the first instance, to 180,000."
    That was a clear declaration of a most important and momentous decision. He wished to know if the right hon. Gentleman adhered to that statement which he made on July 14th, 1904. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would tell the Committee whether that was the policy which he now put forward and which he was endeavouring to carry out. The Committee would realise from the short quotation he had read that the right hon. Gentleman did not approach the question of Army reform solely in respect of the Volunteers. He had a scheme to reduce the Regulars, the Militia, and the Volunteers as well. No less than fourteen battalions of the Line were to be removed in the interests of economy. All those reductions had been abandoned and no attempt had been made to carry them out. One reduction alone remained and that was the Volunteers, and that policy was being carried out in a terribly effective manner. Whether the right hon. Gentleman meant his circular to be a step in the process of reducing the Volunteers or not it was idle to inquire. It had, undoubtedly, spread discouragement and dismay far and wide. Was this policy to go on? Having regard to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman had postponed all those other large schemes, or at any rate many of them, which he laid before the House last year, surely it would be better to postpone the reduction of the Volunteers until such time as he was able to deal with the whole problem of national defence.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: It is not an easy task for me to endeavour to reply be so large a number of valuable speeches, the greater portion of which have been speeches of criticism, and speeches which have dealt with the Volunteers only. I should like, if I can, to put this debate on a somewhat different plane and

    623
    to bring into the discussion some considerations which do not appear to have appealed to hon. Members who have spoken. Something has been said of suspicion attaching to myself and to the War Office. It is not for me to deprecate the opinions which hon. Members may have formed; but I sometimes think it would be better if it were possible for hon Members to believe that those who are charged with the very onerous duty of endeavouring to administer the War Office are as fair-minded as themselves and as truly desirous of solving the difficult problems involved. Those difficult problems will confront anyone who has this task to deal with. Whoever sits at that table at the War Office has to consider not one but many questions. He has to consider, in the first place, the efficiency of the Army as a whole—I mean the Regular Army, the Militia, and the Volunteers, the whole of our fighting forces; and he has also to consider the question of the financial ability of the country to bear the burdens the military defence of the country throws upon if. It has been the good or bad fortune of this debate that the discussion has necessarily turned exclusively on one very important branch of His Majesty's forces; but it is not possible for me to have in mind only that one branch of His Majesty's service, being responsible, as I am, for all.
    I must deprecate the suspicion that has been attached to me. I confess it came to me rather with surprise. I do not know why I should be suspected of bad faith in this matter. The Committee will remember that Mr. Forster, whose name I bear and who was long a distinguished Member of this House, was the founder of one of the first Volunteer corps in this country. I do not know how many of my relatives have been, or are now in the Volunteer force, and I have myself been through the ranks in every mood and sense as a Volunteer at school, at college, and in London as a private and as an officer. I count many of my friends among the Volunteers, and I have been in weekly consultation with Volunteer officers, individually and collectively, during my tenure of office. Therefore I do most emphatically protest, against
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    the suggestion that I can possibly bring to the consideration of this question the sinister motives attributed to me, or that I desire by stealth, or by any means I cannot disclose, to carry out the policy I have in view.
    I have to consider what is, after all, the first duty of my office. I happen to be Secretary of State for War. I have not the experience that some hon. Members in this House have of what war means, but I have been on the fringe of two wars. I have seen Bazeilles with only three houses left, the rest smoking ruins; I have seen Paris destroyed; I have seen the vast extent of territory devastated by the Turkish arms; I was in the middle of the war in South Africa; and I have seen almost weekly the reports of the operations in the great war in the East. And all this experience tends to convince me that some of the considerations, at any rate, which have been brought forward to-night are not those on which this problem ought to be settled.
    The overwhelming consideration is, what will be the fortune of this country if we are involved in a War at home or abroad with troops not capable of conducting that war to a successful issue and without the organisation and preparation they ought to receive to enable them to secure Victory? That is my sole motive in dealing with this question.
    Let me now explain to the House how I have translated my duty into action in this mutter. I should like to ask, first, what the situation is; secondly, what the steps taken are; thirdly, what the complaint made against the Army Council is; and, lastly, what is the justice of that complaint; and I hope I shall make it clear to some of my hon. friends that the motives they attribute to me are not correct, and that the intentions charged against me are entirely alien to my mind. We have before us the lessons of the South African War; and some say we have ill-learned, and others that we have wisely learned, those lessons. We have before us the great war going on in the East; and we have before us the change in the whole immediate outlook of this country which

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    has resulted from the definite adoption of the policy which was described in the recent speech of the Prime Minister. What has been the result? We have been led to realise that to a large extent we must look for our principal dangers outside the United Kingdom. I am not going to argue at this moment as to what is the extent of the danger to which this country is exposed from invasion. We are all agreed that there are dangers, and that those dangers have to be guarded against. We are all, I think, equally agreed that the more frequent, the greater, the pressing danger is the possibility of our being engaged in a foreign war, when we shall be in the position described by the hon. Member for Gravesend, without a sufficient number of men to carry on that war. Are we, or are we not, justified in looking upon our great Auxiliary Army as in any way capable of making a contribution on such an occasion as that? I think we are. I think all the House is of that opinion. I have before me a speech by my hon. and gallant friend the Member for Sheffield, who rather censured me for a crime I do not think I committed. He said that the South African War entirely dispelled any illusions which might have prevailed as to whether or not the Volunteers would be fit for service in the field should the necessity arise. The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight said the Volunteers would be ready in such an emergency to take the same part or a greater part than they had taken in South Africa. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick said that in a national emergency the Volunteers would come forward, in his belief, freely to serve. The right hon. Gentleman also said that he trusted that when we were engaged in another war, the conditions under which that war was waged, the conditions of unreadiness and want of preparation, would never be so discouraging on the part of our Government as they had been. So we have the frank admission that we can and ought to rely upon individual members of the Volunteer force for service abroad in time of emergency, and we have the injunction that we are to make some better preparations for their utilisation than were made in the case of previous campaigns. What have
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    we done? We have acted strictly on that injunction. We are not acting upon it with regard to the Volunteers only. The long experience of this country in war has taught us that you can only make war in the countries in which we have principally fought with men who are specially qualified for that arduous task.
    The hon. Member asked me if we had made the same inquiries about the men in the Regular Army. Of course we have. We are c instantly making them. I have told the House over and over again that in my belief there is far too large a proportion of men in the Regular Army who are unfit for this purpose and ought not to be put in the Regular Army at all. Have we put our belief to the test? Of course we have. We have raised the physical standard for the Army; we have increased the number of rejections. Within the last three months the rejections of men as physically unfit have increased from 35 to 42 per cent. We have introduced a new course of physical training for the whole of the Regular Army. We have greatly diminished the number of soldiers who were taken as special recruits, and we have introduced long-service enlistment, which must give us a much larger number of mature men in the Regular Army. What happened in the South African War? We had to leave behind thousands and tens of thousands of men, because they were either physically unfit or under age. It is now suggested, and I agree with the suggestion, that we ought to look to the Volunteers to furnish us with a contingent for foreign service. Are we to apply to them a less test? No one would suggest it.
    But the Regular Army is not the only branch; the Yeomanry his been consoldated in a way which I think has been to the satisfaction of everybody.
    MR. CHARLES HOBH0USE: Reduced.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Exactly, reduced. The Yeomanry has been reduced, and with what result? That the Yeomanry is now reported as being better than ever before in its history. Every single report about the Yeomanry is to the same effect. The officers tell me with on a accord—the very officers who protested

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    most strongly—that this is the case, because they can choose for their regiments, because they are not bound to retain in their regiments men whom they do not consider desirable from a physical standpoint. Are we right or not right to endeavour to ascertain beforehand what men we can rely upon? I will refer again to the circular. One part refers to the question of active service abroad. We desire to know how many men in the Volunteer battalions are fit under the ordinary conditions of active service abroad. What are these conditions? Are they reasonable or unreasonable? We have already decided that no man shall go to India with the Regular Army under twenty years of age. Is it unreasonable that we should know that the Volunteer who comes forward to serve us is over nineteen years of age? We ask that in general physique he shall not be below the standard laid down in Appendix 13 of the Volunteer Regulations. We ask that he should have a sound constitution, that he should be free from organic disease, that he should possess a sufficient number of sound teeth for efficient mastication—a very important matter—and lastly, that he should have no defects which are likely to interfere with marching or with active exercise. I agree with the comment made by a Volunteer officer the other day, who said that this circular vas perfectly right and ought to have been issued ten years ago.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Who said that?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: We are making this inquiry and ought to have ill is information, and I think we should be open to the accusation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick if we did not make the inquiry now. It is a perfectly bona fide and simple inquiry. It affects no man in the Volunteers. No man who is allowed to go into the Volunteers row, no man who is in the Volunteers, will be excluded on account of this inquiry. It is simply an ordinary military precaution which I think we ought to take.
    Another part of the circular asks whether there are any battalions
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    which in their present condition are inefficient from any cause. I was twitted by an hon. Member the other day for not disclosing what were my reasons for believing that there were any such inefficient battalions. I do not think that was a very fair taunt. I think we have had brought to our notice facts that cannot be overlooked; we have had a very important Commission, on which not only the Volunteers were represented, but before which many Volunteer officers were heard. I have sometimes been told in this House that I have said unsympathetic things about the Volunteers. I entirely fail to recognise the justice of that charge. I have never entertained that sentiment, Not one single word have I said about the Volunteers which has not been quoted from Volunteer testimony itself. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that we have a very large number of statements, by commanding officers of Volunteer regiments and officers who are brought into contact with Volunteers, to the effect that the condition of some battalions is not what it ought to be, that there are large numbers of men who ought not to be in the battalions at all. I do not want to weary the House or lay myself open to the charge of saying bard things about the Volunteers. I will not quote the very large number of passages that I might cite, unless hon. Members desire it. But their general tendency is uniform—that there are large numbers of battalions in which there are men who ought not to be in them.
    A Volunteer officer of one of the best battalions in this country told me the other day that were it not for the pecuniary loss he could dispense with advantage with no less than 400 men in his regiment. What is the meaning of that? It means that the incidence of the capitation grant is now such that the Volunteers are not in the same position as the Yeomanry, that they are compelled in their pecuniary interest to take men who are not men whom they would select on physical or military grounds, but who have been taken simply for financial purposes to keep up the finances of the corps. I do not blame the officers concerned, but I

    629
    have had that testimony from officer alter officer. There are hundreds of officers who, if they were made secure, as I think they may be made secure and ought to be made secure, against pecuniary loss, would welcome this opportunity of dispensing with these men on whom they cannot rely, even though it meant some small reduction of the total of their regiments.
    COLONEL DENNY: Who are the men you refer to?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTSR: We are asking now that we shall have a report from the regiments themselves as to whether there are any men who come within the terms of the Report of the Volunteer Commission and who ought to be out of the regiments.
    Now I want to meet, if I can, this charge which has been brought against, me, that it is my desire to reduce the Volunteer forces. Let me give a perfectly frank answer. I have to deal with the whole of the Army, with the finance of the Army; and I am quite confident that if the House of Commons is going to insist, as it has insisted over and over again, not only upon there being no increase in the Army Estimates, but upon a reduction of the Army Estimates, then the only way in which you can give the Volunteer force that which, I believe, they ought to have, that which the Commission reports they should have, that which the Army Council desires they shall have, is by a reduction of those men who ought not to be in the force. I will admit that, if the House likes to increase the Army Estimates by £300,000 or £400,000, they can go a great way towards keeping up the whole of the present Volunteer establishment without a great sacrifice of efficiency. It will not do, however, merely to add £400,000 to the Army Estimates. If you gave me that to-morrow for the purpose, I would not accept the offer. Four hundred thousand pounds, applied under the present capitation grant regulations, would simply increase pro tanto the number of men who ought not to be in the force at all. If you change the incidence of the
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    capitation grant, then I admit that a large addition to the Army Estimates would enable you to keep the force at its present strength and at the same time increase its efficiency. But I am not in a position to make additions to the Army Estimates. We are making large reductions. The hon. Member for Oldham asked about reductions in the Regular Army. We have already made a much larger reduction in the Regular Army than we have made in the Volunteers. I am in the recollection of the House when I say that if there was one doctrine more constantly preached to the House than another in regard to the Army it was the necessity for a reduction in the Estimates. My point is this. If I have only to deal with the present amount for the Volunteer force, I cannot give some £300,000 or £400,000 more, which is the minimum sum required, according to my valuation, to provide those things which I think ought to be provided. I believe, therefore, that it is common sense and common reason, as long as I am limited to that amount of money, to apply it in the best way; and if I am right, and my advisers are right, and those Volunteer officers who have given me their counsel are right, there is room, by a judicious adjustment of capitation allowances, to give all that is wanted, and, at the same time, reduce the force. That is the extent to which I have always wanted to go, and I never wanted to go further. I entirely take issue with the hon. Member for Oldham. It has never been my desire to put reduction before efficiency. It is because I could not get efficiency without reduction that I went in for reduction.
    MR. CHURCHILL: To 180,000?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I took that figure because, after going line by line through the recommendations of the Norfolk Commission, I calculated the sums which we should require in order to give the benefits which we think the Volunteers ought to have.
    *MR. McCRAE: The right hon. Gentleman said that that was only to be the beginning.
    *MR. ARNOLD - FOESTER: No; I think the hon. Member has misunderstood me. I was dealing with the question of reform, whether we should being with absorption or not.
    *MR. MCGRAE: Will the right hon. Centleman allow me to quote his words?—
    "I propose, therefore, to fix the establishment of the Volunteers at 200,000 men, and to reduce the strength by absorption, in the first instance, to 180,000."
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Yes; but that has nothing to do with the immediate point. There is no intention whatever of suggesting any lower figure. But I am further very strongly of opinion that, if we have to expend so much money on the Volunteers, it is far better to get rid of those whom, by almost universal admission, we do not require, and to spend the money for the benefit of those who remain. I can assure my hon. friend the Member for Sheffield, who is naturally anxious about this matter, that there is not the slightest intention of reducing the Volunteer force during the recess in any way, except by the application of the ordinary regulations. That has never been the desire of the Army Council or the intention of the circular. The reason why this circular is published now is that if we are to introduce, as I hope we may introduce, these improvements in the Volunteer force to which I attach so much importance, including the addition to camp allowances, we must know to what numbers we are going to apply them. I am told that I have acted in this matter in a headstrong manner, without counsel, without assistance, and in total contradiction to the views of the Volunteer force itself. Well, I am bound to say that I do not agree with that charge. I do not think the Volunteer force takes that view. I confess I find sometimes an atmosphere among the representatives of the Volunteer force in this House—of whom I desire to speak with the utmost respect—which is not always reproduced at those gatherings of Volunteer officers which I have met in every part of the United Kingdom. I have found among Volunteer officers rather a different spirit. I saw that there was an expression of
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    regret the other day on the part of a Volunteer officer that this circular had been given to the Press. I do not myself object to its contents becoming public property—as far as I am concerned it might be plastered all over St. Paul's—but the officer I refer to thought that it was a disadvantage that documents sent for the purpose of seeking information from commanding officers should immediately be sent to the newspapers, and I confess that I agree and that I appreciate the spirit of that officer. As I say, I think there is a very good soldierly spirit among Volunteer officers as a whole, and I do not plead guilty to this charge, that what I have done or what the Army Council has done has shaken the confidence or impaired the value of Volunteers.
    Of course it will it will be said, as it has been said, that this is driving officers out of the force and diminishing the number of the men. Well. I should like in my own defenee to tell hon. Members what the facts are on this question. This disturbing element, which is represented at the present moment by myself, has had this effect or Volunteer officers. The last year, my first complete year in office, they diminished by fourteen. That is the smallest reduction in the number of Volunteer officers since the war ended. The number of officers now is 1,000 more than it was in 1895. I do not think that a reduction by fourteen is so vast that I ought to be charged with being a disturbing element.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Is the leakage not double what it was in 1898?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Well, I will give the hon. Member the figures I have here. The number of officers in 1898 was 8,354; the cumber in 1904 was 8,955. I should like now to say a word about the men. I do not think I have had a much more sinister influence on the men than I have had on the officers. The Volunteers now are 24,000 more than they were in 1899. But my hon. friend the Member for Kilmarnock said truly that good men had gone out of the Volunteer force, and I think he meant that they had gone out on account of the pressure of the camp regulations. That to a certain very

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    limited extent is true. But what has happened is that the camp regulations did not drive men out of the Volunteer force in the sense that less men went into camp last year than before. Last year we had more Volunteers under canvas than we ever had before. The fact is that no less than 175,000 men went under canvas in Volunteer camps. That cannot be taken as an absolute proof of the unpopular and dangerous nature of the regulations. But there has been a relaxation this year, because I believe it is desirable to give some elasticity. The point my hon. friend refers to is this. There must be, especially in the large towns, a certain number of men who are of a class higher than that of the ordinary Volunteers, whose avocations do not permit them to spend a fortnight or even a week in camp. There are four or five battalions in London known popularly as "class corps," which have found these regulations very serious, and there has been a diminution in the corps which was quoted to-day, the Artists corps, and probably in three or four others. That is not common to the London corps, quite the contrary, but it has been the case with some of these regiments; and it is one of the problems connected with the Volunteer force to arrange regulations which shall suit the whole force and at the same time also suit certain battalions working undo peculiar conditions. I do not in the least believe that it is right to make the whole of the force after the pattern of these four or five battalions, nor do I think it is judicious to select battalions and label then as "class battalions." I think possibly it may be possible to make some equivalent in musketry or exercise of some kind for those men who, as we all know, would form excellent soldiers in time of war, but who cannot contribute this amount of time in peace. But I believe, as I have said that what we are aiming at is no objectionable to the Volunteer force as a whole.
    I have been told, and, of course I know it, that the Volunteer force is a great voluntary force whose idiosyncrasies must be remembered and whose peculiar position must be considered. I do no think that I have ever made the mistake of forgetting it; and it would be idle to suppose that you can attempt any great
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    change in the organisation of the force without a great amount of goodwill among those who are its leaders, I believe that we have that goodwill, and shall have it in an increasing measure when a great deal of this misrepresentation has been dispelled. I have before me here one of the Manchester papers, in which there appears a very severe article con-demningme and my plans, and I find side by side with this article a report of what is actually happening in Manchester. The article condemns the circular root and branch. It says the usual things about the thoughtless way in which it was issued, and so on; and I find, on the very next page, the statement that—
    "Some of the commanding officers of Volunteers in Manchester have told Mr. Arnold-Forster that they were really anxious to mike the force a fighting machine, that redundant material must be sacrificed, and the whole of the citizen army brought up to a uniform standard. The commanding officers of the Manchester corps have already begun to make the order effective. The commanding officer of the 3rd Lancashire Royal Engineers has shown such care in selecting his men that very little fear is entertained of the working of the now order. When in camp at Ilkley, all the men in the battalion were examined by an officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and only two were in the least suspected of being under measurement."
    I turn again to the paper and I find that the officer commanding the 4th Battalion of the Manchester Eegiment—
    "Fully sympathised with Mr. Arnold-Forster in his efforts to raise the Volunteer Force to the standard of fighting efficiency. All commanding officers he said, are, of course, anxious to have a sound and efficient body of men under their command, and he, with others, intended doing his best to meet the requirements of the Army Council."
    In the case of another great town I find an officer commanding a regiment in Middlesex says—
    "It is deplorable that any commanding officer should have the credit of the force and the welfare of the country so little at heart as to tolerate the presence of such men (the physically unfit) in their regiments. Unfortunately the financial pressure and the need for numbers to satisfactorily swell the amount of the capitation grant, must, at times, dim the acuteness of vision of commanding and medical officers."
    The commanding officer of another, a country battalion, says—
    "I think the War Office is fully justified in asking for information as to the number of Volunteers who are fit, from the physical point of view, for active service. It is useless, and

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    worse than useless—because it gives a false idea of strength—to have men enrolled as Volunteers who would be unequal to the strain of active service."
    He oontinuus—
    "It seems to me that the information asked for in the Circular is entirely reasonable Personally, I have no objection to a medical examination of my battalion, and it will take place during the August camp. If there are any men in my battalion unfit for active service, I should like to knew it."
    I have received communications from all parts of the country showing that the Volunteer officers are not only ready to obey any reasonable order, but that they are as anxious as we are to have this examination in order to make the work of the Army Council in time of war easier than it would otherwise be. I have endeavoured to work with the officers. I only regret that this debate has taken place to-day, because in a few days I am to have a fresh consultation with the Volunteer commanding officers from all parts of the country—a consultation that was arranged long before this Vote was put down. I believe entirely in working these matters in harmony with the Volunteer officers, and I repudiate the idea that this action was taken without reference to them. But what I have said would be quite in ufficient to convince hon. Members that they ought not to vote against this reduction if I could not add something constructive to it. The only possible ground on which we can ask the Volunteers to consent to any reduction is to give them something in exchange which they will value and which the country will also value; and this is what I propose. They are proposals that, if carried into effect, will enormously increase the efficiency of the Volunteers, and will meet definitely the difficulties of the Volunteer officers and men. But they will cost money. We want to change the incidence of the capitation grant. At present, practically every Volunteer, good, bad, or indifferent, is worth 35s.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: A third-class shot is worth only 10s.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The return we have received indicates that the number of third-class shots has been reduced to the exiguous proportion of 02.
    636
    If, therefore, my hon. friend will deduct 02 from my calculation the rest of it will remain. But while every Volunteer is practically worth 35s., there is no reason why a commanding officer should cease recruiting. Every Volunteer officer tell me that a fortnight's camp is not merely twice as good, but three or four times as good as a week's camp; but many Volunteers cannot do a fort-night's camp. We want to give those who can, however, a large inducement to do so. We want to give, not only to the selected "Field Army" battalions, but to all battalions, the opportunity o going, as far as their men are able to do so, into a fortnight's camp I made one mistake last year, of which I have repented. I thought the large amount of the camp grant we originally proposed would be adequate to recoup what the corps would lose if we took 15s. from the capitation grant for every Volunteer who did not go into camp. I was wrong; for, as I have been told, the camp grant is spent in camp, and the deduction would, therefore, be a net deduction from the sum available for the working expenses of the corps. That is true; and I think it ought to be met by increasing the capitation grant in respect of men who do go into camp. It might be accomplished by giving an extra 1s. a day for those who go into camp for a fortnight, deducting 15s. from the capitation grant for those who do not. The corps would then have the means of replacing by its merits what it would lose by its demerits. I have talked to many officers, and I believe that that arrangement would be very acceptable, though it may require to be modified by the grant being spread over those who go into camp for a week as well as those who go in for a fortnight. But, mark the result. You will, for the first time, put the Volunteer force on the same basis as the Yeomanry. You will give commanding officers the power to choose. The better your men the better your financial position will be.
    I have been talking to Volunteer officers lately as to what may best be done. I have found that there is an expense falling on Volunteer officers for camp outside of that

    637
    which ought to fall on them, as the expense is really incurred in the service of the country. We do not want to pay-Volunteer officers, but we do not want them to be out of pocket, and we should like to give them camp special allowances for a fortnight. It has been represented to mo that the pay of a subaltern would meet the case. As regards transport, it is perfectly true that we ought to have more transport for the Volunteers; I do not know that there is entire agreement as to how it is to be done. It is a moot point whether we should encourage such experiments as that recently made by an enterprising regiment in the South of England of starting a transport corps, or whether we should encourage battalions to find transport for themselves. I attach enormous importance to schools for non-commissioned officers. The question of men for the Volunteers is nothing to that of the officers and non-commissioned officers. You can train men in a hurry, but you cannot train officers. If I were given the money I would first of all relieve the officers I of their out-of-pocket expenses, and would enable the non-commissioned officers to attend schools. A divisional organisation for the Volunteers is to my mind a very important experiment to make, but whether it would be altogether what hon. Members suppose I do not know. Of course, the whole method of utilising the Volunteers at home must be affected by the principles we have adopted, which definitely exclude the maintenance of a great intrenched camp round London, and there must be a redistribution of our forces in accordance with the policy which we now think is the right one to adopt, and whether that will lend itself to a divisional organisation I do not know. But we ought to have some higher organisation for the Volunteer force.
    I would say in conclusion that if I have gone against the opinion of any Volunteer officer in advancing the view that more training is necessary, I have erred in good company. Reference has been made to the sacrifices made by Japan in the present campaign. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen wish to convey the impression that
    638
    Japan's victories have been won without effort, organisation, or preparation. I am led to believe that those victories are above all due to organisation, training, and preparation, and not principally to accurate shooting or to numbers, though those are important factors. There has, practically, not been a single man in the Japanese armies who has not passed through the regular training under Regular officers. That is an example we need not follow, but it is one we must not forget. I cannot recall more than one single instance in the history of modern warfare where a really untrained force has held its own against a trained army. ["The Boer War."] There could not be found a worse example; for the conditions of that war the Boers were most highly trained. But the only instance I can recall of success gained by untrained troops against a European army is the brief success of Andreas Hofer against the French in 1809.
    LORD HUGH CECILreferred to the case of the French revolutionary forces under Dumaurrez in 1792.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I admit that that is another case, but that was a very brief and a very peculiar campaign.
    I can assure hon. Members that there is no concealment whatever in the circular which has been under discussion. It was prepared originally as a confidential document for the information of commanding officers. I believe that it was comprehended by them. It was published in a newspaper, and it was criticised on the point of form. When I found that it was a document published urbi et orbi, to be read by every one, I thought it should be made clear to all who studied it, and I caused it to be redrafted. But I assure the House that there was no ulterior motive in the circular except to ascertain now what is the material to be relied upon in time of war. We are making no new demand on the Volunteers, neither are we throwing any reproach upon them. I have explained as fully as I can what is the state of mind of the Army Council and myself with regard to the Volunteers. I have never spoken of the Volunteers in this House or out of it without expressing my appreciation of their military

    639
    value, and I do not propose to do anything to diminish their value. I desire the reduction to be limited to that portion of the force not available for the purposes of war, but that is a matter of the future; there will be no serious reduction at the present time. I can only say that if we could be shown a means of carrying out these beneficial reforms without any reduction of the force I, at any rate, would welcome the information. I trust that I have dispelled the feeling apparently entertained that we have done something which was not desired in an endeavour to do what we believe to be in the interest of the Volunteer forces.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,)appealed to the Committee to come to a decision on the Vote, because there was not much time to discuss the Secretary of State's Vote.
    LIEUTENANT-COLONEL PRYCE-JONESasked whether the £300,000 or £400,000 which would be saved by the reduction of the Volunteers would be spent on the remainder of the force. [Cries of "Certainly."] They had to make that perfectly clean. If that were the case the House of Commons would establish the principle that the Volunteers were worthy of greater consideration. He hoped they would have some assurance on that point.
    *SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman at the end of his speech mentioned a great many good things that he said could be done and which he desired to see done for the Volunteers; but I understood from him that he had no money to do them with, and that was his position. He has given us purely a Barmecide Budget, and I do not think there is any prospect of it being realised. Therefore, if that is so, it is hardly a satisfactory Answer to the undoubted, grievances and suspicions with regard to the Volunteers. A second Question I would ask is this. Do I understand that the right hon. Gentleman repeats the expression that he formerly made as to the reduction of the
    640
    Volunteers? What he said has already been quoted, but it is very difficult to get an explicit Answer. He said—
    "I propose to fix the establishment of the Volunteers at 200,000, and to reduce the strength, by absorption in the first instance, to 180,000.
    That is an implication that the process will go on beyond the 180,000.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: No; that is not so.
    *SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Then what does it mean?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: It means that this will take place in the first instance by absorption. The reason for that limit is that I had to calculate with the funds at my disposal what was the sum necessary to carry out the whole of the proposals which I desired to carry out. That sum represents the capitation grant and expenses and other items for that number of men, namely, 180,000. I have since said that the reduction is to be exceedingly gradual unless a much larger sum is available. It must absolutely depend upon the Army expenditure of this year. The War Office cannot spend the whole of the money in the next year, but they have already made a beginning. The Answer to the Question addressed to me by my hon. friend was that the consideration referred to must depend on the Army expenditure of the year. We have had forced upon us the necessity of a large reduction in the Army expenditure My hon. friend the Member for the Isle of Wight has proposed that we should cut off forty battalions of the Regular Army.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Leader of the Opposition is in prossession of the House.
    *SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Are we to understand that the right hon. Gentleman adheres or does not adhere to the statement—he speaks for himself and seldom speaks of the Government—that it is his intention to reduce the strength of the Volunteers in

    641
    the first instance to 180,000? If he is not going to reduce them below that number at any time, what is the meaning of those words?
    *MR. ARNOLD - FORSTER: The words seem to me to bear no obscurity. There never has been, and there is not now, any intention of reducing the number of the Volunteers below 180,000.
    MR. COURTENAY WARNER: Does the right hon. Gentleman adhere to the statement that
    the reduction is to be to 180,000 men or not?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid that they had no further funds available for the Volunteers than were available now, and they could only secure the benefits intended to be conferred by that reduction.
    Question put—
    The Committee divided:—Ayes, 206; Noes, 232. (Division List No. 280.)

    AYES.

    Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.

    Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

    Lamont, Norman

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Emmott, Alfred

    Langley, Batty

    Allen, Charles P.

    Evans, Sir Francis H. (Maidstone

    Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.

    Ashton, Thomas Gair

    Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

    Lawson, Sic Wilfrid (Cornwall)

    Asquith, Rt. Hn. HerbertHenry

    Eve, Harry Trelawney

    Layland-Barratt, Francis

    Austin, Sir John

    Fenwick, Charles

    Levy, Maurice

    Baker, Joseph Allen

    Ferguson, R. C. (Munro Leith)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Barlow, John Emmott

    Findlay, Alexander (LanarkNE

    Lloyd-George, David

    Beaumont Wentworth, C. B.

    Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

    Lough, Thomas

    Black, Alexander William

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    Lundon, W.

    Boland, John

    Flynn, James Christopher

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Bolton, Thomas Dolling

    Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Brand, Hon. Arthur G.

    Fowler, Rt. Hon, Sir Henry

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Brigg, John

    Freeman-Thomas Captain F.

    M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

    Bright, Allen Heywood

    Fuller, J. M. F.

    M'Kean, John

    Broadhurst, Henry

    Furness, Sir Christopher

    M'Kenna, Reginald

    Brown, George M.(Edinburgh

    Gladstone, Rt. Hn.HerbertJohn

    M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

    Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

    Goddard, Daniel Ford

    Mansfield, Horace Rendall

    Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

    Grant, Corrie

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

    Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

    Mooney, John J.

    Burke, E. Haviland

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

    Burns, John

    Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

    Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

    Burt, Thomas

    Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

    Morley, Rt. Hn. John(Montrose)

    Buxton, N.E.(York, NRWhitby

    Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B,

    Moss, Samuel

    Buxton, Sydney Charles(Poplar

    Harcourt, Lewis

    Murphy, John

    Caldwell, James

    Hardie, J. Keir (MerthyrTydvil

    Newnes, Sir George

    Cameron Robert

    Harmsworth, R. Leicester

    Nolan, Col. John P.(Galway, N.

    Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

    Hatch, Ernest Frederick Geo.

    Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

    Causton, Richard Knight

    Hayden, John Patrick

    Norman, Henry

    Channing, Francis Allston

    Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

    Norton, Capt. Cecil William

    Cheetham, John Frederick

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Nussey, Thomas Willans

    Churchill, Winston Spencer

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    O'Brien, Kendal (TipperaryMid

    Condon, Thomas Joseph

    Higham, John Sharp

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark)

    Hobhouse, O. E. H. (Bristol, E.

    O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

    Cremer, William Randal

    Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C,

    O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

    Crombie, John William

    Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

    Crooks, William

    Hutton, Alfred E. Morley

    O'Dowd, John

    Cullinan, J.

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Dalziel, James Henry

    Jacoby, James Alfred

    O'Malley, William

    Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

    Jones, David Brynmor(Swansea

    O'Mara, James

    Delany, William

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

    Parrott, William

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Joyce, Michael

    Partington, Oswald

    Dobbie, Joseph

    Kearley, Hudson, E.

    Paulton, James Mellor

    Donelan, Captain A.

    Kennedy, Vincent P.(Cavan, W

    Pearson, Sir Weetman D.

    Doogan, P. C.

    Kitson, Sir James

    Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

    Labouchere, Henry

    Perks, Robert William

    Duncan, J. Hastings

    Lambert, George

    Philipps, John Wynford

    Edwards, Frank

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

    Power, Patrick Joseph

    Elibank, Master of

    Ellice, CaptEC(SAndr'ws B'ghs

    Price, Robert John

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Ure, Alexander

    Priestley, Arthur

    Sinclair, John (Forfarahire)

    Villiers, Ernest Amherst

    Rea, Russell,

    Smith, Samuel (Flint)

    Wallace, Robert

    Reckitt, Harold James

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Walton, John Lawson(Leeds S.

    Reddy, M.

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

    Redmond, John E. (Waterford

    Spencer, Rt Hn C R (Northants

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Reid, Sir R. Threshie(Dumfries

    Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

    Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

    Rickett, J. Compton

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

    Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

    Sullivan, Donal

    Weir, James Galloway

    Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

    Taylor, Thoedore C. (Radcliffe

    White, George (Norfolk)

    Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

    Tennant, Harold John

    Whiteley, George (York, W.R)

    Rose, Charles Day

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.

    Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

    Runciman, Walter

    Thomas, Sir A. (Gfamorgan, E.

    Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

    Russell, T. W.

    Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr

    Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

    Samuel, Herbert L, (Cleveland

    Thomas, JA(Glamorgan,Gower

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

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

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

    Woodhouse, Sir J.T(Huddersf'd

    Shackleton, David James

    Tillett, Louis John

    Yoxall, James Henry

    Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

    Tomkinson, James

    Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

    Toulmin, George

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

    Sheehy, David

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Mr. MeCrae and Major Seely.

    NOES.

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Chamberlain, RtHn. JA. (Wore.

    Gruville, Hon. Ronald

    Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

    Chapman, Edward

    Guthrie, Walter Murray

    Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

    Clive, Captain Percy A.

    Hain, Edward

    Allsopp, Hon. George

    Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

    Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

    Hambro, Charles Eric

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

    Hamilton, Marq.of(L'nd'nderry

    Arnold-Forster, Rt.Hn.HughO

    Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

    Hardy, Laurence(Kent, Asbford

    Arrol, Sir William

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Hare, Thomas Leigrh

    Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

    Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

    Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

    Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

    Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Bailey, James (Walworth)

    Dalkeith, Earl of

    Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

    Bain, Colonel James Robert

    Dalrymple, Sir Charles

    Heath, Sir James (Staftords.NW

    Baird, John George Alexander

    Davenport, William Bromley

    Heaton, John Honniker

    Balcarres, Lord

    Dickinson, Robert Edmond

    Henderson, Sir A (Stafford, W.

    Baldwin, Alfred

    Dickson, Charles Scott

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Balfour, Rt. Hn. A.J. (Manch'r

    Dimadale, Rt. Hn. SirJoseph C.

    Hickman, Sir Alfred

    Balfour, Capt, C. B. (Hornsey)

    Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

    Hill, Henry Staveley

    Balfour, Rt. HnGerald W.(Leeds

    Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

    Hoare, Sir Samuel

    Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

    Doughty, Sir George

    Hogg, Lindsay

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Hope, J.F.(Sheffield, Brightside

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Hoult, Joseph

    Barry, Sir Francis T.(Windsor

    Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

    Houston, Robert Paterson

    Hartley, Sir George C. T.

    Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

    Howard, John (Kent, Faversham

    Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

    Faber, Edmund B. (Hants. W.

    Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham

    Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Hozier, Hn. James Henry Cecil

    Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

    Fellowes, Rt. Hn. Ailwyn Edw.

    Hunt, Rowland

    Bignold, Sir Arthur

    Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

    Jameson, Major J. Eustace

    Bill, Charles

    Finlay, R. Hn Sir RB(Inv'rn'ss

    Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

    Bingham, Lord

    Fisher, William Hayes

    Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred.

    Blundell, Colonel Henry

    Fison, Frederick William

    Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

    Bond, Edward

    Flannery, Sir Fortescue

    Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.

    Bousfield, William Robert

    Flower, Sir Ernest

    Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T.(Denbigh

    Brassey, Albert

    Forster, Henry William

    Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Col. W.

    Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

    Foster, PhilipS. (Warwick, S.W.

    Keswick, William

    Brotherton, Edward Allen

    Gardner, Ernest

    King, Sir Henry Seymour

    Brymer, William Ernest

    Garfit, William

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

    Bull, William James

    Gibba, Hon. A. G. H.

    Lee, Arthur H.(Hants. Fareham

    Butcher, John George

    Gordon, MajEvans- (T'rH'mlets

    Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

    Campbell, J.H.M.(Dublin Univ.

    Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-

    Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

    Carson, Rt, Hon. Sir Edw. H.

    Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

    Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S.

    Cantley, Henry Strother

    Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

    Lewellyn, Evan Henry

    Cavendish, V.C.W.(Derbyshire

    Green, WalfordD.(Wednesbury

    Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

    Cayzer, Sir Charles William

    Greene, Henry D. Shrewsbury)

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

    Long, Rt. Hn. Walter(Bristol, S.

    Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich

    Grenfell, William Henry

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    644

    645

    Lowe, Francis William

    Pretyman, Ernest George

    Strntt, Hon Charles Hedley

    Lucas, Col, Francis (Lowestoft

    Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Lucas, Reginald J.(Portsmouth

    Purvis, Robert

    Thorburn, Sir Walter

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

    Pym, C. Guy

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Macdona, John Gumming

    Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

    Tollemaehe, Henry James

    M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W.

    Ratcliff, R. F.

    Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

    M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

    Reed, Sir Edw. James (Cardiff)

    Tritton, Charles Ernest

    Malcolm, Ian

    Reid, James (Greenock)

    Tuff, Charles

    Manners, Lord Cecil

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

    Maxwell, Rt. Hn. Sir H.E.(Wigt'n

    Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

    Turnour, Viscount

    Maxwell, W.J.H.(Dumfriesshire

    Ridley, S. Forde

    Walker, Col. William Hall

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

    Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir WilliamH.

    Milner, Rt. Hon. SirFrederickG.

    Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

    Warde, Colonel C. K.

    Milvain, Thomas

    Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

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

    Mitchell, William (Burnley)

    Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

    Welby, Sir Charles G E (Notts.

    Moles worth, Sir Lewis

    Round, Rt. Hon. James

    Whiteley, H.(Ashton und. Lyne

    Morgan, DavidJ (Walthamstow

    Royds, Clement Molyneux

    Whitmore, Charles Algornon

    Morrell, George Herbert

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

    Morrison, James Archibald

    Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

    Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

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

    Mount, William Arthur

    Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

    Wilson, John (Glasgow)

    Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

    Saunderson, Rt Hn. Col. Edw. J.

    Wilson-Todd, Sir W. H. (Yorks)

    Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

    Scott, Sir S. (Marleybone, W,

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

    Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

    Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

    Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

    Myers, William Henry

    Sharpe, William Edward T.

    Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson

    Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

    Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Renfrew

    Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Skewes-Cox, Thomas

    Wyndham, Rt. Hon George

    Pease, HerbertPike (Darlington

    Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

    Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

    Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

    Smith, Rt Hn J Parker(Lanarks

    Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

    Pemberton, John S. G.

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

    Percy, Earl

    Spear, John Ward

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

    Pierpoint, Robert

    Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

    Sir Alexander Acland-Hood

    Pilkington, Colonel Richard

    Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M

    and Viscount Valentia.

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Original Question again proposed.
    And, it being after half-past Seven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again this evening,

  EVENING SITTING.

    SUPPLY [14TH ALLOTTED DAY].
    Considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    [Mr. GRANT LAWSON (Yorkshire, N.R., Thirsk) in the Chair.]

    ARMY ESTIMATES, 1905–6.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £545,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge for the War Office and Army Accounts Department, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1906."
    *MR. ARNOLD - FORSTER: I am very glad that the discussion on the Volunteer question which we have already had has terminated in time to allow me to say a word upon a subject which has even a greater importance than the subject of the Volunteers; and that subject is the administration of the Army as a whole, of which the Volunteer force, important as it is, is only a part. I have been long anxious for the opportunity of laying before the House Commons after a year and a half of very onerous work some account of what the Army Council has been able to accomplish during that time. I may say we have had a long and difficult task; and I should like to make it clear that every task that the Army Council or Secretary of State undertakes is made, I think, more difficult than it need essentially be by the fact that in relation to the great service over which we are called upon to preside the task is not to the same extent assisted, as is the administration of the sister service, by the stimulating influence of that popular interest which goes so far

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    to make the work of a Minister and a Department effective. I have been associated with both Departments, and I should be loth to say that the one is more or less important than the other; but I am quite certain, having had the almost unique experience of having served in both, that the greatest boon that can be bestowed in the service of a great Department is a sane and reasonable public interest in its administration. I cannot pretend that in all cases the interest that the public or the House of Commons have displayed in the work of the War Office has been altogether sane or reasonable. I think it is not true to say that individual Ministers, whoever they may be, cease to be reasonable beings, cease to be patriotic statesmen when, they come to undertake the task set before them at the War Office—my belief is to the contrary; but their difficulties are, I sometimes think, increased by the unreasonably critical attitude of the public and the House of Commons. I think sometimes that a little sympathy, a little consideration of the vast difficulties of those who are charged with administering a voluntary army required for the service of this great Empire, and dealing with problems which have no parallel among the many interesting military problems with which various States have to deal, ought to excite a little more intelligent sympathy than the work of the War Office appears to excite in the minds of those who are its ready, invariable, and inexorable critics. I have been anxious for this opportunity for a long time, because I have made many promises to the House of Commons, and I am anxious to convince the House of Commons and the country that I have not forgotten those promises, and that I have done the best I can, With the assistance of my colleagues on the Army Council, to redeem those promises.
    I suppose no Army authority has ever undertaken this arduous task without having to deal with many difficult problems; and I suppose that there have been few Army authorities that have come to that task with greater problems to deal with than those placed before the present Army Council. Not only had they to deal with what I may call the recon-
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    struction of the Army after a long and arduous war had produced the effects it was calculated to produce in the Army, out they had, in obedience to what I think was the general wish of the country, to undertake the difficult task of the remodelling of the constitution of the War Office and also to a large extent of the Army. Here was no easy task, and one beset with many difficulties; and, heavy is those difficulties have been to every member of the Army Council, on none lave they fallen more heavily than on the Secretary of State for War.
    There was a very scanty attendance in the House, and at this point an hon. Member called the Chairman's attention to the fact that there were not forty Members present.
    THE CHAIRMANsaid a count could lot be moved before ten o'clock.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I think the situation has been made in some respects more difficult by a pronouncement made in another place by a member of the Legislature, a great and distinguished soldier, and I think it is due to the House of Commons and the country that the Secretary of State should be called upon to give an explanation when this Vote is asked for and to say something upon the condition of the Army.
    When I first had the honour of addressing the House as Secretary or War I was compelled to tell the House that the condition of recruiting was of a very serious character; and I lad also to point cut many other deficiencies in the constitution of the Army, some of which I believed, and still believe, are inherent in the Army system and entail the inevitable consequences of the disorganisation arising from a great war. It is our business to try to repair those ravages and deficiencies, and I want to tell the Committee how far we have advanced in the duty assigned to us. A great difficulty which met us was the condition to which the Army had been reduced by the introduction of the short-service form of recruiting. Now the short-service recruitment when adopted vas one well adapted to the needs of the situation. We were suddenly called

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    upon to meet the exceptional demands of a great war and had to adopt the machinery best calculated to produce the men who would enable us to pass through that war. But I think it will be obvious to every man who has studied the problem that the machinery was not adapted to the permanent needs of the Empire and cannot be accepted as a solution of the problem. I want to point out what would have been the position had short service continued. I am myself familiar with the figures; they have been my daily study for years past. The result would have been this. I used a strong expression in regard to the infantry in a speech I made at Edinburgh, and it was no exaggeration. Short service was adopted on the supposition that 75 per cent, of the infantry would extend their term of service; but that has not been justified by what has actually taken place, and in the result we found ourselves face to face with extensions at the rate in some battalions of an average of 4 to 5 per cent., and, taking the whole of the infantry, of 20 per cent. That, of course was a very serious state of things. I do not know whether the Committee realise how serious was the position, we having to send drafts to the tropics and the Colonies and being unable to find the men unless we resorted to men with only a year or less in the service. Even less efficient, than the infantry was the garrison artillery. They have more than half their strength abroad, and it was obvious that unless some 100 per cent, of the men extended their service the drafts could not be furnished. Here was one of the first difficulties the Army Council had to meet. We had to take prompt steps to put an end to a state of things that if continued would have involved the Army in disaster. The temporary measure had ceased to be suitable. Many opinions were expressed to the effect that the measures we ultimately adopted could not possibly succeed; but I ventured to press my view, and we did adopt the system of long-service recruiting for nine years, which, if it succeeded, we calculated would extricate us from this great difficulty. There were many sinister and alarming prophecies in regard to the effect of a project; but I maintained my opinion that it would be a success, and
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    it has been, and the result I will now give to the Committee.
    In October last we began recruiting for the infantry for nine years service, and we have already taken some 17,000 infantry recruits, of whom 15,000 have been for long service, and by doing so we have apparently removed the danger which threatened the Army. We have added 15,000 long-service men to the Army, and we have at the same time taken the necessary and corresponding measures, we have been discharging short-service men from the Army. We have discharged no less than 12,000 from the Army and we have taken in their place some 15,000 long-service men.
    MR. BUCHANAN: 12,000 men since October?
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Yes, since October. They have all passed into the Reserve. I believe that to have been an entirely profitable operation. The men we have discharged into the Reserve were useless for the purpose of furnishing Indian drafts. They could only be sent to India for a few months, and they involved expense both for their passages and for their maintenance while in India. Very alarming statements have bean made, for which there is not a particle of foundation, to the effect that the recruiting for the Army has resulted in a very serious deficiency. But we have still more than three months of the recruiting year to expire, and I have no reason to doubt that, before the end of the recruiting year, we shall have taken at least 18,000 long-service recruits for the infantry alone. I should like the Committee lo remember what the real value of this contingent of long-service recruits is. The years 1903–4 were absolutely abnormal years with regard to recruiting for the infantry. For those two years 28,000 in each year were taken for infantry recruiting, but the average recruiting for the four years 1899–1902 was only 23,446. In 1895 it was 19,000; in 1896 17,000; and in 1897, 21,000; and I have the sanguine expectation that before the end of the present recruiting year we shall have taken 18,000 men, or something equivalent to twenty battalions of long service infantry under long-service

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    engagements. I have spoken of the infantry only. Let me now speak of the garrison artillery, which is a force with peculiar recruiting conditions. The larger portion of the garrison artillery being abroad, we must rely upon having an extension at any rate of 100 per cent. What has happened? We have already taken from January 1st, the date on which we began the long-service recruiting for the garrison artillery, 554 long-service men, and we have lost a considerable number of short - service men. The upshot of it is this, that the garrison artillery, one of the arms which gave us the most anxiety, has now been placed on a sound footing, and we have no further anxiety with regard to recruits.
    I think I ought to add one fact which I think will be of interest to the Committee. We were speaking this afternoon of the question of the medical qualifications of men for the Volunteers, I should like the Committee to understand that, pari passu with this introduction of long-service men, there has been a steady improvement in the class of men taken. The rejections for medical unfitness have greatly decreased, and within the last few months alone the percentage of rejection as between June, 1904, and the present date has gone up from 35 per cent, to 41 per cent. That is to me a very gratifying fact. I have for years pleaded for the elimination of the unfit men. It is the most uneconomical method of taking recruits that could possibly be imagined. These men come in. They are accepted, paid for, fed, drilled, and clothed—and they go out, they leave us. The enormous waste for the first two years of a soldier's life has been one of the most unsatisfactory features, to my mind, of the whole of our Army recruiting. The result has been exactly what I anticipated. We have had far fewer rejections, and. what is even mere satisfactory, we have had an enormous reduction in the number of desertions. For the first time for many years the desertions have fallen below 1,000 a year, and the rate of desertion has gone down to an extent which it was absolutely impossible to anticipate a few years ago. It may seem that these are very ordinary figures; but for those who have studied as long as I have the recruiting figures of our Army they
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    will be extraordinarily satisfactory, I believe that, until we are able to get over this problem of the waste in the first few years, we shall not have mastered the recruiting problem at all; but I believe that never have we had a more satisfactory state of things than we have at present with regard to rejection for physical unfitness or the amount of desertion from the Army.
    MR. FULLERasked whether these desertions were from the long-service recruits.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: No, Sir, for the whole of the Army. The interruption of the hon. Member enables me to give an actual figure with regard to desertions which, I think, the House will approve and which, I hope, the public will appreciate. Desertions have fallen between 1901–3 from 12·51 to 3·7 in the last twelve months. We have not got over the difficulty, but we are making great progress to getting over it. There will be great difficulty in finding the drafts for India for the next two years. Any recruiting that we can undertake now will not remove the draft difficulty within the next two years. It will ameliorate it, and I am confident that we are now on the road towards the satisfactory solution of this difficulty, which is the great and unique problem of the British Army.
    Lord Roberts has declared in round terms that the Army is no better now than it was in 1900. It would be absurd for me to bandy opinions with so distinguished an officer as Lord Roberts as to what, after all, must be a matter of opinion. It may be that in Lord Roberts' estimation the condition of the Army in the year of which he speaks was equal or superior to the condition of the Army at the present time. That is not my opinion, I do not attach any value to my own opinion upon this matter; but I think I can give facts which will satisfy the Committee, and which, I think, will go far to satisfy the public, that the very strong dictum of Lord Roberts requires some modification, some examination. I was not responsible, Lord Roberts was responsible, for the Army in 1903. I

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    have been responsible for the Army since that time. I do not pretend to know whether the Army improved or whether it deteriorated between the date to which he referred and 1903; but of this I am quite certain—that since 1903 there has been a rapid, a great, improvement in the personnel and in the organisation of the Army. I ventured to say earlier this evening that I have never been a prophet of smooth things. I know perfectly well that we are very far from the condition which we ultimately ought to reach and which I hope we shall reach; but I think I can say enough to prove that there has been a steady progression in the direction which we all wish to travel. I am going to prove to the Committee that in every branch of the Army we have made and are making progress. The proof does not rest on any assertions of my own which cannot be identified and checked by any member of the Committee who cares to examine for himself or consult the authorities.
    There is that important branch of the Army, the cavalry. For years I have been a strong advocate of an entire change in the organisation of the cavalry. The cavalry has been linked together three regiments at a time, then two regiments at a time, and all these schemes have involved drafting men from one regiment to another—a measure as obnoxious to the officers and men themselves as it was, in my opinion, deleterious and dangerous to the efficiency of the regiments. We have now, with the full approbation and consent of the cavalry officers who have been consulted on this matter, devised a scheme for the organisation of the cavalry which, I venture to believe, is calculated to prove an enormous improvement to the cavalry. I have the most positive assurances from those officers beat qualified to judge, and from the Inspector-General of Cavalry himself, that never was the cavalry in a more promising state than it is at the present time, never were they better horsed, that the efficiency of men and horses and their individual training is satisfactory, and that they are now more ready than they have bean for many years past to take part immediately in any campaign in which they may be called upon to act. I have long expressed the opinion
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    that we ought to have a striking force. Circumstances over which I have had no control, or very little control, have interfered with the realisation of that ideal; but already it is reported to me that a cavalry striking force has been formed, that the First Brigade, and the Second Brigade, and the Third Cavalry Brigade are almost all quite ready for service, that provisional skeleton regiments have been abolished, and that all regiments are now on a working establishment. The cavalry has been practically entirely remounted, and, owing to the efforts of the Remount Department, which have been very considerable and most creditable, the remounting of the cavalry leaves very little to be desired. There is a difficulty, no doubt, with regard to finding an adequate number of cavalry officers. It is a very serious difficulty, and a very complex question, but we have taken measures, and are taking measures, to ascertain the views of cavalry officers in regard to it. Difficult as the problem is, involving as it does important considerations which have nothing practically to do with the military efficiency of the regiments, we are not altogether without hope that we see and sue from this difficult situation.
    I suppose, if I were to choose the branch of the Army which was most important, I should say the infantry. Next to that is undoubtedly the artillery. Well, Sir, we have made very great progress with the artillery. As I think I have already explained to the Committee, the draft difficulty with a most important branch of the artillery, the garrison artillery, has been practically overcome. That difficulty has not arisen with regard to the Royal Horse Artillery and the Royal Field Artillery, but the difficulty which has forced itself on many Members of this House has been the difficulty inseparable from the inferior armament of the artillery. That difficulty has been got over. As I told the House on a former occasion, on the very day that I got the Report of the Committee authorising me to proceed with the manufacture of the new gun, I gave orders that the gun should be manufactured. I was told in this House and out of it that we were not providing enough money for the

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    manufacture of the guns. I said then, and I have said at every subsequent stage, that I would pledge myself that we would find the money faster than the manufacturers would find the guns, and my prophecy has proved correct. At every stage of the manufacture of these guns I have watched them and checked them, and I have done my best to accelerate their manufacture. If, in every particular as to the day and the hour our anticipations have not been fulfilled, we have still made progress which, I believe, is exceedingly creditable to the manufacturing resources of this country, and we ought to be grateful to the members of this Committee. We have delivered or have under inspection no less than thirty-two of the 13-pounder guns and 169 of the 18-pounder guns. We hope by the end of this year to have no fewer than 182 of the 13-pounder guns and 206 of the 18-pounder guns—that is to say, some 388 guns complete, with limbers, wagons, ammunition, and all their appliances. I wish that progress could have been made at an earlier date; but all I can say is that there has been no failure due to the War Office to supply funds, and for the rapidity of this manufacture I think we may fairly give credit to the ordnance factories and to the firms who have taken part in the manufacture of the guns.
    MR. COURTENAY WARNERasked whether the guns were being made for India.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The guns, that are being delivered at present have been entirely for India. The guns up to the end of the year include guns both for India and for the United Kingdom. But I make no distinction. We have deliberately elected to send the guns to India because we consider there are contingencies which might make them more important for India than they are here. But I can assure the hon. Member that the manufacture of these guns is going on in a satisfactory way, and I believe that every promise I have given—I have given no promise which has not been the result of minute personal inspection and careful inquiry on the spot of those who are responsible for the
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    manufacture of the guns—will be fulfilled.
    Sir, there is another important subject. The House, shocked and alarmed, if I may say so, by the deficiency in certain stores in years gone by, has insisted upon the accumulation of a vast amount of military stores for various branches of the service. The Committee known as the Mowatt Committee stated what those reserves ought to be; and I laid down as a very natural and obvious business corollary that I should receive from time to time from the heads of the departments responsible positive signed statements that these stores were in existence on the authority of those who were responsible for their maintenance. Well, Sir, these stores are in existence; they are maintained, and they are available to an extent which, I believe, has never before been the case in the history of the British Army.
    The Royal Engineers are a branch of the Army which, I think, is not largely represented in this House; but it is a very important branch. I am not sure that the Royal Engineer, as at present constituted, are entirely appropriate to the important task they have to perform. The Royal Engineer officers are probably the most distinguished in many respects in the Army; they are an important element which the Army cannot afford to lose. But I am sometimes inclined to think that the intelligence and zeal of the Royal Engineers are devoted to subjects which perhaps might be more appropriately dealt with by persons less eminently qualified. We have now an important Committee sitting under the presidency of one of our shrewdest and ablest officers, Sir Evelyn Wood, which is going into the whole question of the organisation of the Royal Engineers. I am most anxious not to lose a single officer of the calibre of the Royal Engineers out of the Army. We want that type of officer. But I have studied this question so long that I think the Committee will pardon me when I say I have come to the conclusion that we are not applying the great talent the Royal Engineers place at our disposal in the most satisfactory manner.

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    The Army Reserve is in one sense the keystone of our Army organisation. We have heard to-day that a great Reserve is the one thing the country requires in time of war and I agree with that "dictum." During my term of office the Army Reserve has risen from 66,000 to 91,485—the largest figure at which the Reserve has ever stood—and I believe before the end of the year it will probably reach the figure of 100,000 men. I think that is satisfactory. It is not altogether satisfactory, because I believe the Army Reserve ought to be liable to training at certain specified intervals. That is an ambition that may some day be realised.
    I believe that there is no force in His Majesty's service from which we obtain better value for money expended than the Imperial Yeomanry. The reports which I have received from the inspecting officers are uniformly favourable. The class of officers in the Yeomanry is probably unique in Europe. We are getting, as we are certain to get in these circumstances, the willing services of capable men. I only hope the Yeomanry may continue to be in the future what they are at the present moment. I should like to say this in justification of my own administration. Both inside and outside this House I was taken to task for reducing the establishment of the Yeomanry regiments; but officer after officer who condemned me at the time I made that reduction has now had the kindness and generosity to acknowledge that that step was the wisest step that could be taken in the interests of the Yeomanry, and to it the Yeomanry owe some measure of their present excellent efficiency.
    I have been trying to combat, not in an aggressive way, but quietly and by facts which no one can dispute, the assertion that the Army is retrograding. No one attaches more value than I do to the opinion of such a distinguished officer as Lord Roberts. But when we are asked to accept a sweeping condemnation of the Army as it is, we are entitled to take the opinion also of officers who are actually serving in the Army and are Seeing the troops from day to day. I think I may be permitted to quote from the remarks of a very distinguished officer
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    who devotes every hour of his day and all his great ability to the service of his important command. Sir John. French, speaking early in this year, said—
    "There were many drags on the military coach. Making full allowance for that, he believed that the Army Council and the Headquarters Staff had made extraordinary progress along the road which led to efficiency. A few days ago he met Sir Evelyn Wood, a soldier of great experience and distinction, who told him how happy he was in the thought that during his fifty years in the service he never knew the Army so efficient from a training and inspection point of view as on the day he left it. He could fully corroborate what Sir Evelyn Wood had said. He did not believe there ever was a time when the officers and men alike made greater sacrifices or tried to make themselves more efficient as they had done between the time of the late war and the present moment. He did not wish to say they were by any means perfect. But he believed, in spite of great drawbacks, that they were making steady progress, and when next called on to take the field he felt absolutely certain that the British Army would uphold the splendid traditions which it had earned in the past."
    I think I am entitled to quote that statement, and I quote it more readily because I so entirely associate myself with the phrase which Sir John French used about the Army being by no means perfect. But I think the views of all these officers and civilians who are working at the War Office testify to the work that is being done, and show that there has been progress, that there is progress, and that we are going forward. That speech was made on March 1st of this year at the Associated Chambers of Commerce. I think that is an earnest of progress. I want the Committee to consider that we are dealing with an Army which went through an ordeal which no Army that I can remember has ever gone through before. We are dealing with a voluntary Army which went through the ordeal of a great and prolonged war. Every other army which has gone through a great war has been able at the end of that war to recuperate itself by the aid of conscription. Our Army has not only had to repair the waste and ravages of war, but also to replace the enthusiasm and the voluntary efforts of those officers and men who, having borne the burden and heat of the day for two or three long years, have given up the service and gone to other fields. That has been no slight task, and I believe we have made a great deal of progress.

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    The Committee cannot fail to be interested in the fulfilment of the promise I gave as to the financial side of the Army. We have made an entirely new accounts branch of the Army; that has been a most onerous task, and it has been made more onerous because those who were responsible for the financial control of the Army in the War Office have almost without exception been taken away from the office either by ill-health, by the effluxion of their period of service, or by promotion to other offices. The work was left almost entirely to the present Director of Army Finance serving under my hon. friend the Financial Secretary; they have had to recreate the whole financial branch of the Army. It is too early days to prophesy what will be the result of that new departure; but my belief is that we have acted on sound principles, that in carrying out, with some modifications, The recommendations of the Esher Committee we have made it impossible that the difficulties, and to a certain extent the confusion, which beset the financial branch of the Army during the South African War can recur. I speak in the presence of many business men, and I think they will agree with me that we have taken the right course. We are now training in their daily work of life the very men who in time of war will have to carry out 1he financial work of the Army. What would happen if, by some unhappy chance, we had a war to-morrow? When our new organisation is complete, the officers and the civilians who are carrying on the contract work and the finance work at Aldershot, on the Curragh, and on Salisbury Plain will transfer their activities to the field, and they will have precisely the same work to do in the field which they have been doing at home. The contracts will be made by the same officers who make them at home; the accounts will be rendered by the same officers to the same persons, and over and above all that, the Financial Adviser to the War Office will be at the side of the Commander-in-Chief to aid him in those extraordinary, special, and technical problems which always must beset the Commander-in-Chief, and which certainly did beset the Commander-in-Chief in the South African campaign. It is early days, I say, to speak; but I ask
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    any business man to examine—and I speak in the presence of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and an old member of the War Office administration, knows a great deal better than I do what are the chances of success of this reorganised branch—still I make bold to say that we are acting on the right principles, and in accordance with ordinary business methods, in the change which we have made. Everything must depend, of course, on the personnel: but we are doing our part, I think, to provide the machinery.
    I hope I have said enough to show that the sweeping generalisation that was made in another place was not altogether justified. I believe that we are progressing, that our progress has been uniform, and that it has been directed towards an absolutely certain end. I could not help feeling that that generalisation so condemnatory, so discouraging, was a little animated by the conviction which I know the distinguished soldier to whom I have been referring holds with regard to what is the true remedy for all our Army disorder. I know that he holds, in common with many soldiers who are working with and advising me, that conscription is the only remedy for our military ills. Well, neither Lord Roberts nor I have any commission to impose conscription upon the people of this country; and I think it is not wise, if I may say so, to plan your remedies upon the supposition that this particular method of filling up your Army will be adopted by the people of this country. Whether that be so or not, I am sometimes taken aback by the want or consideration which is given to this question by those who make general statements with regard to it. We have had cases quoted of other countries which have adopted conscription. I have been a student of the military history of other countries, and I say that with one solitary exception there is not a single country in the world which has adopted conscription for the kind of work which our Army is called upon to do. There is an exception—perhaps I may say two exceptions. The French tried conscription for a war in a tropical country, they sent the conscripts in one of their southern army corps to Madagascar, and the horrible mortality which

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    ensued terrified the French nation. That experiment has never been repeated. I have myself stood on the quay at Bremerhaven and seen the German troops returning from an over-sea expedition, and not one of them was a German conscript, they were all voluntary soldiers from the German army. I believe there is no such case in the world, with the single exception of the Japanese army, which, in a climate similar to their own, and on territory a continuation, or their own, has a large conscript army abroad.
    But I would remind the Committee that our problem is entirely different from that of other nations, and we must consider it on its merits alone. It has sometimes been suggested that conscription is economy. That is a grave error. We have to keep up in India and in the Colonies a regular long-service Army, year in and year out, of some hundred and odd thousand men. We have to provide at home reliefs for that Army, we have to provide the turnover for that Army; that is a constant in our military organisation, and everything you add to that must be in addition. And that constant will remain—whatever you do you will have to provide that Army. And I am confident that the moment you come to put into figures this question of a conscript Army for this country, in addition to this great regular permanent Army which we are obliged to keep on a war footing in time of peace, you will have an addition to the Army Estimates that will startle people who advocate it. But I do not desire to dogmatise about this matter; my own feeling is that conscription on the Continent of Europe is becoming less and not more popular. I believe that the bow is being very tightly drawn. I do not know, and I do not wish to speak about, the view of foreign countries. But I see nothing which makes me believe that conscription is to be the accepted principle in the future. As far as my own office is concerned, I have to deal with another state of things. I have no commission at all to deal with the Army as a conscript Army, still less have I got to deal with the Army as a conscript Army for service in the tropics, and until I receive that commission I am compelled to follow out
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    this problem on lines which depend on voluntary enlistment, and on that only. It is on those lines that I have attempted to deal with the problem.
    One word with regard to recruiting. I have never varied by one jot the expression of my opinion as to what is the way out of our difficulties with regard to the recruiting and maintenance of our Army. They say that in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom; well, I have had a multitude of counsellors, but I am not altogether certain that I have derived an immense amount of wisdom from their counsels, because all these counsels have been contrary as well a3 contradictory. And I still go back to those principles which I ventured to put before the House a year and a half ago; I find them true now as then, and every successive Administration that has to deal with this problem will find them true too. You will have to find, on a long-service basis, your oversea Army, and the drafts for it, and the reliefs for it. You will have to find for the reinforcement of that Army in war, a very large Reserve, and that Reserve can only be formed by short-service enlistment.
    MAJOR SEELY: No, no!
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Between my hon. friend and myself there is a difference of form, but not of substance; he and I disagree, I believe, and I regret it, as to the exact terms of service in that short-service Army. I think we shall eventually be agree. But these facts are absolutely certain. The only way you can reinforce your Army in time of war is by the Reservists of a large short-service Army. I have been told that I was wrong in suggesting that we should recruit this Army on a two years basis, or on a one year basis. I have received many recommendations from many men, but I have never seen alternatives to that proposition. I still look forward to a future when the great territorial Army of this country, the Militia, will be the nucleus of this home-service Army. I do not agree with the view that with any increase of service for the Militia recruit less than one year you can possibly achieve those results; and I am certain

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    that the moment you come to put it to the test, and ask Militia officers whether they are willing to undertake service for five or six months in the year and then return to civil life, you will find exactly the same answer as I have got. You will find it is impossible. I do not wish to dwell upon that complex and difficult question; but I do wish to say this, that I have had no reason whatever to abandon any of the opinions I have stated to the House, and I see no other way out of this difficulty than by the recruiting on long service of the men you require for service over-sea in time of peace and recruiting on a short service basis those you require to furnish the Reserve in the time of war. I have already indicated to the Committee that we have got a large contingent of long-service men. We have not got enough, but I hope very soon we shall have enough. I hope in this year we shall have got at any rate enough to warrant us in opening the short-service recruiting. When that time comes we shall make the attempt. We shall try the principle of depots. We shall open a depot which will give the same kind of training as the Guards depot and the 60th Rifles depot. We shall make some small contribution to the formation of a Reserve, and when we have got sufficient short-service men for our purpose we shall revert to the long-service recruiting until we have got enough long-service men to relieve us of the difficulties in regard to the drafts for the troops.
    I have spoken, I am afraid, far too long, but if I have made it clear that we have progressed, and are progressing, I have done something. I believe, in spite of the criticisms which are heaped upon the War Office and its representative, that what the Army is suffering from, as was pointed out recently by my hon. and gallant friend the Member for Mid. Essex in one of his pregnant and epigrammatic sentences, is a lack of intelligent public interest and enlightened criticism. I am not sure that all the criticism which is indulged in is really intended to help the Army or those who are responsible for its administration. I see far too little disposition to praise or to help; I see far too great a disposition to find fault. I have now worked for nearly
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    two years in my great office, and I know the character of the men there, and I say that nothing has discouraged me more than, I will not say the criticism, but the indiscriminating criticism to which they are subjected. They are men who have devoted their lives to the service of their country, and a little encouragement and a little trust would help them enormously. But they never receive either help or encouragement, and I cannot help feeling that if for once a trial was made for extending to the administrators of the Army some measure of the goodwill and confidence which are extended to the administrators of the Navy [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh"]—I mean exactly what I say.[MINISTERIAL cheers.] I have heard all sorts of generalisations made in regard to both officers and men, and I say that if some kind consideration was extended to them we should have made far greater progress than we have made under this adverse and, as I think, sometimes unjust criticism. I fool it is only just that I should say.so much for my colleagues in the War office. Still I believe their work during the past year and-a-half has not been unprofitable. I believe there has been progress, and that we are still progressing.
    MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid that at the risk of being considered an ignorant critic he wished to express his disagreement with some of the theories which had just been placed before the Committee. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the most bitter and constant criticism of the War Office and its methods came not from the politicians or from the man in the street, but from the officers of the Army in private conversation. It was curious that all the critics who disagreed with the right hon. Gentleman, and whom he described as ignorant, should be men who had a special training and special opportunities for understanding the subject. The right hon. Gentleman said that since he had been in office the Army had greatly improved, and he mentioned the case of recruiting, of which he was so very proud. The right hon. Gentleman talked of how immensely desertions had diminished, but he did not point out that in 1903

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    men could buy their discharge, whereas in 1901 they could not, and the only way they could get out of the Army was by deserting; and besides, the conditions of service being improved, of course desertions were less in consequence. The important question, however, was what was the right hon. Gentleman going to do with the Army? The right hon. Gentleman talked about long service and short service, and then they were given to understand that the whole of his scheme was not to be carried out. What they wanted to know was how much of that scheme was to be carried out. How much destruction of the present system was going to take place before we had a territorial Army? He pressed most strongly that they should not begin by destroying the Militia and then the Volunteers before the territorial Army was ready. Most hon. Members on that side thought the Militia would be destroyed find the Volunteers injured by the threat which was hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles. More than that, there was an enormous injury done to the military spirit of the nation. This territorial Army was a shadow which would be like the Army Corps of the late Secretary of State for War, appearing on paper only, an imitation of a foreign army without conscription. These changes had produced nothing but cost, and even the new guns we could not pay for. India had to do that this year.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I do not know why the hon. Member says that. It is entirely incorrect. There is £1,200,000 on the Estimates.
    MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid that only a very small proportion of those guns would be supplied to batteries at home, towards the end of the year. Only a small portion of the sum named would be needed for those guns.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERIt will all be spent.
    MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid he was very glad to hear it, but he could not understand that in view of the right hon. Gentleman's state-
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    ment that the greater number of those guns were going to India. He was dissatisfied with the changes made, which only destroyed one system without giving them another, whilst increasing the cost. He moved a reduction of the right hon. Gentleman's salary by £100.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item A (Salaries and Allowances of the War Office) be reduced by £100"—(Mr. Courtenay Warner.)
    MR. BUCHANANsaid he wished to support the Amendment of his hon. friend. He thought it was most unfortunate that there was such a small number of Members present when the right hon. Gentleman made his statement. It was certainly a great mistake that they were not told that the right hon. Gentleman was going to make a statement, practically in reply to what Lord Roberts had said, at the commencement of the evening sitting. The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by quoting Lord Roberts, and he added that Lord Roberts' speech had compelled a reply from him. The Secretary of State for War then proceeded at some considerable length with what he considered was a full and complete reply to the very serious statement made by Lord Roberts in another place. Lord Roberts contrasted the condition of the Army in 1899 with its condition at the present time, and he said that it was no better now than it was in 1899. What was the right hon. Gentleman's reply to that statement. It was twofold, one part was that Lord Roberts at the end of his speech had shown a desire to urge the adoption of conscription for this country. But his Lordship did not stand alone amongst Army reformers in urging the adoption of conscription. The chief of the staff, General Lyttelton, was an open advocate of conscription. They all welcomed the right hon. Gentleman's words when he said that few people really recognised the enormous increase of expenditure that would be entailed by the adoption of conscription, and how wholly unsuitable it would be for the exigencies of our Army in India and other parts of the world.

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    The right hon. Gentleman had complained a little unfairly of the criticisms which had been made outside this House, but it hardly lay in the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman to complain of criticisms in regard to the Army, because the right hon. Gentleman himself had made his position by vigorous writings and criticisms upon the Army and Navy, and the position he had achieved he owed very largely to those writings and criticisms, which were not always couched in the most gentle terms. Therefore, he did not think the right hon. Gentleman ought to complain of others adopting a somewhat similar line of conduct to that which he himself had adopted with considerable effect in days gone by. The other general line of argument which he took was the old line which children took when they were found fault with: "Please, sir, it wasn't me," and he said that Lord Roberts was responsible.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: No, I never said anything like that.
    MR. BUCHANAN: The right hon. Gentleman certainly took the line that Lord Roberts was responsible from 1899 to 1903, and that he was only responsible from 1903 onwards.
    *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I certainly did not make any such statement.
    MR. BUCHANANsaid he could not accept the right hon. Gentleman's interpretation of what he had said, because he undoubtedly stated that Lord Roberts was the man responsible from 1899 to 1903, and he drew a great distinction between the responsibility from 1903 onwards. The right hon. Gentleman particularly asserted that it was in 1903 only that he assumed the direction of the War Office and became responsible. He did not think that was the right line for the responsible Minister for War to take in reply to a very serious charge made by Lord Roberts. It would be within the recollection of hon. Members how constantly they had had the right hon. Gentleman telling them that such and such a proposal or scheme was made in the time of the Secretary for India
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    who was responsible and vice versa; and for what the Secretary for India was responsible the present Secretary for War always disclaimed any responsibility. He did not think that attitude was quite fair to the House of Commons or to the country. After all, the occupants of the War Office ought to present a solid front so far as their responsibility was concerned to the House of Commons and the country, and one man who succeeded another in such an important office ought to take full responsibility for all the actions and policy of his predecessors. They could not admit that the right hon. Gentleman was entitled in any way to minimise his responsibility as a member of the Government for the conduct of affairs in the War Office during the time the Government had been in power.
    The right hon. Gentleman tried to show how very much things had improved since he came into office in 1903. Perhaps he might be permitted to summarise what the statement of the right hon. Gentleman was. First of all in regard to the infantry. The right hon. Gentleman told them that they were short of men in the cavalry and that they were short of officers, but that he was not without hope that this deficiency might be remedied. He further stated that as regarded artillery they were short of guns, but he hoped by the end of the year that this deficiency would be remedied. As for stores he said they had been short, but they had now insisted upon having regular reports as to the condition of the stores. He hoped the War Office would insist upon having those reports regularly delivered, because in another department those reports had not been regularly furnished or demanded by the War Office. Than the right hon. Gentleman went on and spoke of the Royal Engineers, and he said that he was not quite sure that their present condition was entirely appropriate or suitable for the service expected from them. The Imperial Yeomanry was the only branch upon which he would give a clean bill of health and of which he spoke in unqualified terms of praise. He hardly thought that the War Office could take the major share of the credit

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    for the efficient condition of the Imperial Yeomanry, because he remembered that they made merry over that force some time ago, and its efficiency was largely due to the activity of those who directed the force rather than those in authority at the central Department.
    To hear a speech such as they had heard from the right hon. Gentleman that night brought upon the ordinary Member of the House of Commons who had no connection with the Army a feeling of despair. He had listened for many years to the debates, and he had taken a certain interest in Army and Navy matters, and the way in which they were connected with the financial interests of the country; and over and over again he had heard with regard to the Army one Secretary of State after another proceed to discuss the fundamental principles upon which the Army rested, but which never appeared to be settled for more than a couple of years. What possible confidence could the country have in the administration of a great and important public Department like the War Office when they were treated to exhibitions such as they had heard in the House that evening? He admired the right hon. Gentleman's ability and persistence in the pursuit of the objects and ideas and schemes which he had at heart, but, after all, what had been the result of his occupancy of the office of War Minister? Two years ago they had the upsetting of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor. Then came the Esher Committee, and part only of their recommendation was adopted. Then the right hon. Gentleman himself propounded a scheme, but he was obliged to say that he had the authority of the Government only to carry, out part of it, and consequently the scheme had never been carried out. Again, the right hon. Gentleman had been obliged to tell them that he was not empowered to do what he admitted was essential for the good condition of the Army. The Secretary for War had told them what he would like to do to improve the Volunteers, but he did not tell them that he was going to do it. He informed them that there was not sufficient money in the Exchequer to carry out those pro-
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    posals and, therefore, he was in the position of pointing out a more excellent way and saying that the exigencies of the Government prevented him carrying these essential measures into effect. They could not receive such a statement with anything like satisfaction, and disagreements between such authorities as Lord Roberts and the Secretary of State for War were very much to be deplored. The statement the right hon. Gentleman had made was by no means reassuring, and the least the Committee could do that evening was to show its want of confidence in the policy of the War Office and the need for a continuous and settled policy. For these reasons he thought it was incumbent upon the Committee to support the Motion for a reduction.
    *COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYapologised to the Committee for venturing to say any-thing about the Army, but he had been very much struck with the description given by a recent historian, who said that the defeat at Spion Kop was not to be traced to Buller, or Warren, or Thorneycroft, but to Aldershot, and Pall Mall, to the House of Commons and the nation. He was afraid that the House of Commons had to bear a very large share of responsibility in all the difficulties which concerned the administration of the Army. They had heard that evening the case of the Militia put forward. The sad thing that struck him in connection with the discussions in that House was that, while they talked, sometimes rather bitterly and acrimoniously, about the Volunteers or the Militia, or the Regular Forces, they forgot that which was of paramount importance—namely, the constitution of an efficient Imperial service. He thought that every Regular, Yeoman, or Volunteer, should concentrate his mind upon the creation of an Imperial service. To achieve that it was necessary that they should all resign something. They did not find that spirit reflected in the debate I they had just listened to. He was very much struck with the canon of military administration which had been laid down by the hon. Member who preceded him,

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    namely, that the Minister of War ought to adopt as his own the policy of his predecessors. What would a Liberal Minister for War say if he were asked to defend the policy of the present Secretary for War. An enormous step would be taken for the safety of the Empire if the War Office could be taken out of the hands of Party administration, and made an Imperial branch of State.
    Allowing for all the circumstances, he thought that on the whole the Secretary for War was to be congratulated on a satisfactory statement. As to the Volunteers, it had occurred to him that perhaps the best encouragement would be to give them a more definite and certain part in the scheme of the defence of the country, in connection, he would suggest, with the meeting of raids or anything short of a general invasion. With regard to deserters he would suggest that commanding officers should be empowered to deal with those who had deserted and wished to return to the force. In this way they would get rid of a good deal of the cost of keeping these men in prison and the trouble and expense of holding so many Courts-martial.
    He wondered whether hon. Members realised what advances had been made in the conditions of the soldier's life during the last few years. To take only the question of feeding and general comfort: at 7.30 the recruit received besides his ordinary ration for breakfast something allowed by the administration of the depot; at 11 o'clock every man, if he chose to ask for it, could get a bowl of soup for nothing; from 12.30 to 1.30 dinner was served; the men need not go in together, but could take it when they liked between those hours, just as Members might go into their clubs, and they had a choice of four sorts of meat, two puddings, and often something extra which, they could take away and eat in their own room; and then at 4.30 came tea, frequently with some little luxury thrown in. All this had been rendered possible by the good management of the large depots, and the curious thing about the system was that it was accompanied by very little drinking; in fact, the canteen was used much less than it used to be. If only hon. Members would spend less time in criticising things
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    they did not like and a little more in understanding things as they were, they would do far more to help recruiting than by the present practice of indiscriminate criticism. It might be said that these were small matters, but they went to make up the popularity of the service, and the fact that the service was more popular and recruits were coming in better was largely due to the commonsense administration of the large depots. The experiment of giving furlough more freely had been tried by some commanding officers with the most excellent results. A common-sense system of administration was gradually being brought into the Army, and the old cast-iron rules were being gradually supplanted. But was not some credit due to those who administered the War Office for the gradual introduction of these reforms? Never within his time as a soldier had so much been done in the direction of progressive reform as had been done within the last few years, and he hoped that Army debates in the future, instead of being made mere Party discussions, would tend more and more to increase the general interest in Army matters, and to the consideration of military questions from a broad national point of view.
    *COLONEL NOLANsuggested that the hon. Member for Shropshire would make a good recruiting sergeant in view of the glowing pictures he was able to paint of the life of a soldier. There was no doubt a good deal of truth in what the hon. Member had said. Personally, he was not one of those who said that everything connected with the Army was bad. The officers were good; the non-commissioned officers, as compared with those in Continental armies, were distinctly good; and nearly all the men would be good if there was a better system of recruiting. He could not honestly say that the present Secretary of State was worse than other late Secretaries for War, but it must be confessed that the right hon. Gentleman was a little disappointing. Kemembering the brochures on various subjects written by the right hon. Gentleman, Members thought when he was appointed that at last reforms would be forthcoming, but

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    he appeared to have allowed himself to be overwhelmed by his circumstances and by the War Office. Doubtless, finance was a most important subject. The late war cost from £100,000,000 to £150,000,000 more than it ought to have done. But there were many difficulties connected with the new system the right hon. Gentleman had outlined. After all, the men would only be practising in these matters, and he doubted whether there would be any really good results. Secret contracts were a great mistake; they left open the door for great waste, and provided a strong temptation to more objectionable practices. The existence of a similar system for a couple of years would debauch practically any public body. He did not for a moment suggest that the lowest tender should always be accepted, but he did think that the practice adopted by the London County Council and almost every other similar body of publishing the amounts of the tenders was a good one. The present practice of the War Office in this respect provided an opportunity of swindling which in time of war was almost certain to be taken advantage of.
    As to recruiting, conscription was impossible for the kind of Army we requited, the American system provided good men, but our system was unique. We took a boy at seventeen, made him swear he was eighteen, gave him as much as he was worth at that age, and then kept him on that small pay until he was twenty-four, when he was worth more. If the Secretary of State was a private manufacturer he would probably got a couple of years imprisonment for keeping men against their will, seeing that they made their contracts at the age of seventeen. Possibly that criticism hardly applied under existing circumstances, but it had applied in the past, and it would apply again as soon as the nine years enlistment had been a few years at work. The Government had done a great deal for the private soldier, but he did not think they had done enough to make his pay and allowances equal to the wages he would get in private employment. As to guns, in a few years there would be a demand for guns of a higher velocity, and then in another four or five years
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    the field artillery would have to be rearmed with guns of 2,000 feet velocity.
    *COLONEL WELBYsaid that in January of this year there was issued a scheme for the reorganisation of the home commands from which great things were expected. It was believed to be the outcome of long and careful consideration on the part of the military advisers of the Secretary of State, and was taken as the deliberate pronouncement of the Army Council. It was, therefore, supposed that everything in the way of military needs and possibilities had been considered. Taunton was given as the headquarters of the grouped regimental districts of the Western Command, but in less than three months Exeter was substituted. He immediately communicated with the Army Council and the Secretary of State, and was informed that the main reason for the alteration was that Exeter as a railway centre afforded better facilities than Taunton. It was quite possible to imagine a mistake being made with regard to the accommodation possible in a local town, but to put forward the railway facilities as the reason for the change was a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of the Army Council, as the question of railway communication was one of the first matters that should be considered in connection with preparations for war. If Exeter had been selected in the first place, probably no question whatever would have been raised. It was a small incident, but it excited some doubt as to the foresight and knowledge of military advisers of the Secretary of State. If they made such a mistake with regard to the railway facilities of our own country, how could they be trusted to consider the railways in any other country in widen our Army might be called upon to operate? If more foresight, common sense, and knowledge had been shown the misunderstanding with regard to the two towns might have been avoided.
    *MR. CHURCHILLsaid the hon. Member opposite had referred to a dispute between the two towns of Taunton and Exeter, and the Secretary of State for War on the other hand had plunged into a wide field of military policy, military

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    history, and strategical considerations. The Committee must be recalled to the practical issue involved in the Amendment. The hon. and gallant Member for Shropshire had deprecated Party feeling in the discussion, but ii discussion on Army matters during the past three years had proceeded Without Party bias and the interposition of the Government Whips there would to-day be a very different disposition of power, not only in the Army, but in all other Departments of State. The reduction had been moved, not because his hon. friend wished to make any personal imputation against the right hon. Gentleman, or because he thought the Secretary of State had been lacking in zeal, industry, or ability in the execution of his great responsibilities, but as a censure, definite, deliberate, and complete, upon the Army administration of the last ten years. These matters had a cumulative effect. The right hon. Gentleman might not be personally responsible for what his predecessors had done, but the Committee of the House of Commons was bound to look at the history of military policy during the whole of the period that it had been in the hands of one particular Party in the State.
    Much had happened in the last ten years. During that period the Government had done what they listed, and whatever they had demanded from the public had been conceded. During that period there had been numerous changes in the Army system. Those changes had been so numerous and kaleidoscopic that he would almost challenge any hon. Member of this House to detail them in their regular order without omitting two or three important changes. The Committee would remember the important changes made before the war, under the Lansdowne administration. Other important changes were effected under the stress of the war, and then there was the immense revolution which was to be effected in Army policy by the great scheme of the present Secretary for India in 1901. The Committee would also remember the second scheme under which a revolution was made in the conditions of service in 1902, and this was followed by the publication of the Esher Report. Then followed the declaration by the present Secretary of State for War of his entirely
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    new policy in the autumn of 1903. All these successive changes had taken place during the last ten years, and they had all taken place on the authority and on behalf of those members of the Government who ruled the country from the Front Bench opposite.
    But all this had not been done without some cost to the general taxpayer. What could be more impressive than the fact that the Army now cost between £10,000,000 and £11,000,000 more in ordinary peace time than it cost in the year 1898. What ordinary arrangement of language could do justice to such a fact as that? The sum of £10,000,000 or £11,600,000 extra was now being charged to the public, involving as it did increased taxation accompanied with its necessary impediments to commerce and the perpetual diversion of funds urgently needed by the State for other purposes. What greater disaster could the Committee have than that simple arithmetical statement that the Army by which the Empire was defended in time of peace was costing the country between £10,000,000 and £11,000,000 a year more than it cost six or seven years ago. Having regard to the power which had been exercised from the Treasury Bench opposite, and having regard to the schemes which they had put forward and the cost which they had involved; remembering the fact that in order to carry out those schemes it had been necessary three or four times to revolutionise the entire personnel of the War Office; having regard to all these facts, which must be considered one at a time as well as in their cumulative bearing, he asked the Committee what had they got for it all. They were, of course, divided by partisan opinions and they could not pretend to speak on these matters with export authority. Let them, however, go to the heads of the Army and to the great leaders of Military opinion upon whose names the Government had so often been able in the past to place the responsibility. Let them go to the Secretary of State for War, who had himself said that this machine was ill-equipped, not organised for war, and one of the most costly military instruments ever devised. General Sir

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    Ian Hamilton wrote home to this country that the present condition of the British Army constituted a danger to the very existence of the British Empire. Lord Roberts stated in the House of Lords that the condition of the Army was not more suited to actual war than it was in the year 1899. That was the justification of the Motion which his lion, friend had made. That was the most tangible and effective of all the indictments which had been made against the Government.
    What was the condition of the Army at the present time? If they might judge by the evidence of experts, it was in a very bad condition and wholly unsatisfactory. They had abandoned the old system which had existed before the war by which their levies for India were maintained and by which a great Reserve was created which was available when an emergency arose. They had gone back to a system which was previously rejected, namely, a system of long service which, although it might be necessary to meet the exigencies of the moment, nevertheless had failed to provide that very Reserve which the right hon. Gentleman had told them over and over again was vitally necessary for the military purposes of this country either in regard to home defence or in time of war. There was a general feeling of disquiet that extended to every rank in the Army—from the greatest officers down almost to the humblest subaltern in the Line regiments. The artillery of the British Army was, without any single exception, unless it might be the artillery of Servia, the worst in Europe. The right hon. Gentleman had told them what he had done with regard to the provision of guns, and he had pointed out that he had taken money in the Estimates for guns amounting to £1,200,000. It would cost something like £5,000,000 to rearm the artillery, and consequently the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman was less than one-third of the sum required. But while he was contributing less than one-third of the sum required for guns the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly ready to take the whole of the credit.
    *MR. ARNOLD - FORSTER: The amount will be £3,500,000.
    *MR.-CHUKCHILLsaid that did not affect his argument that only one third of the cost was now defrayed. Even in regard to this niggardly contribution for guns he wished to point out that in the early stages the expense of the principal part of the experiment was to be borne by India. Then there was the story of the short rifle. There was a marvellous scheme by which the rifles of the British Army were to be cut down in order that a rifle of equal length might be used suitable for both cavalry and infantry. He should have thought that a rifle of equal bore was a matter of infinite importance, but nobody in his senses would have troubled about having a rifle of equal length both for cavalry and infantry. The old long rifle might have been inconvenient, but at any rate the cavalry had found a way of carrying this. But this could not be said of the new rifle, which could not bi carried by the old method, and no satisfactory method of carrying it had yet been adopted, even by the very troops for whose sake it was invented.
    There was the case of the Militia. The tales that reached them of the Militia, principally from the right hon. Gentleman himself, but supported, he was bound to admit, by evidence from every other quarter, were of the most gloomy character. The right hon. Gentleman told them that the Militia was being murdered. Four years ago the Militia was given a bounty of £3 a man, which was to have raised it to 150,000. It had not done so. There were fewer Militiamen to-day than there were before the bounty was given at an extra burden to the taxpayers of something like £300,000 a year. It was the most expensive form of homicide ever known. Then there were the Volunteers. He would not say anything further with regard to the Volunteers than this—that if the right hon. Gentleman ran his eye over the division list to-morrow he would see how very small was the balance of opinion, even in that House of Commons—if, indeed, there was any balance—in favour of the policy of a wholesale reduction of the Volunteers. They had heard a great deal about improving the knowledge and instruction of the officers of the Army, and the first step taken towards

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    this end was to admit a quantity of officers without troubling them to go through the formality of an examination. If there was one principle which had kept our Civil Service and public service free from corruption it was the test of a competitive examination, but that test they had abandoned. There were many real schemes of organic reform whereby economies and efficiency might be effected which had been neglected altogether. Very little progress had been made towards establishing a corps of officers so that they should be easily changeable between their different regiments. A general staff existed in name, but not in fact. The development of a system of double companies in the infantry, and of schemes for the improvement of the Militia and Volunteers, had made no progress.
    The Secretary for War had, however, made a momentous announcement—he had declared that he was going forward with the scheme he laid before them a year ago, but which he had not advocated very much during the Parliamentary session. His plan for a double Army was to be carried out, and when they were separated for the winter months they would not know what steps were taken to carry out that great and surprising revolution in our Army system. This scheme was unsupported by any expert military authority. Knowing what he did of Army officers, he could assure the Committee that the right hon. Gentleman in his scheme as detailed to them had not got the support of the Army Council. It might be said, if that were so, Why did not the Council resign? But people did not always resign when they were expected to, and he put no faith in the statement that the scheme had the support of the Army Council because they had not resigned. He earnestly submitted that the progress of the scheme would not only injure the Army, but would block the way to further treatment of the Army problem which might be entered upon at a future date.
    It had never been considered incumbent upon a private Member to state any alternative propositions, and he had always observed a praiseworthy prudence in that respect. He asked the
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    indulgence of the Committee to say in four or five sentences what he thought ought to be the policy which the Secretary of State for War should adopt. The policy of the Secretary of State ought to be to stiffen the standards of recruiting, by raising the physical and character tests in every way. That would cause recruiting to fall off, and their those battalions which could not be filled with effective soldiers, probably from fifteen to twenty-five in number, should be disbanded. The right hon. Gentleman should return to the old system of seven years with the colours and five years in the Reserve, which, on the whole, was the best system to meet the varying and often conflicting military requirements of the British Empire. But, whatever was to be done in the future, time was the essence of the solution. There was no magic word that could be spoken which would restore order in the War Office or economy in military administration. Five or six years of thrifty administration were required in order to retrieve the waste of wild experiments, and to repair the ruin of a profligate and fertile incapacity.
    *MR. HUNTsaid that the hon. Member for Oldham had not only made an attack upon the Government, but he had also told them that if the Party of which he was a Member had been in power they would have done very much better. He would remind the hon. Member that the last time the Party opposite was in office they could not even, in a time of peace, keep a supply of powder, and during their Boer War they got out of the expense by running away. He wished to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War that there were a great many complaints being made amongst Army officers that they were continually being worried for no good purpose. In consequence officers would not stay in the Army, nor was it possible to get officers to go into it. The Army was already very short of officers, and if the conditions were not altered, we should soon be even worse of for officers than at present. In the regiment to which he had the honour to belong, out of about 1,100 rifles there were at least 120 rifles which were practically useless. They

    681
    might possibly be sent out to war in a month's time, and how were they going to supply the rifles? As far as he had been able to make out, a great number of the other rifles were sighted so as to shoot crookedly. [OPPOSITION laughter.] This might be considered a small detail, but he thought it was most important, and he would suggest that the Secretary for War should appoint somebody to see that these details were put right. No doubt the House would recollect that the same thing occurred during the Boer War. A great number of their rifles had got no foresight protectors, and these were absolutely necessary if
    the accurate sighting of the rifles was to be preserved. In regard to the mounted infantry, the Secretary for War had adopted altogether a wrong sort of saddle, which was about twice as heavy as it ought to be, and in war time it would continually want stuffing. They had a class of saddle in South Africa which was only about half the weight and half the cost and which never wanted stuffing.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes, 132; Noes, 169. (Division List No. "281.)

    AYES.

    Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Price, Robert John

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Higham, John Sharp

    Rea, Russell

    Ashton, Thomas Gair

    Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

    Reddy, M.

    Baker, Joseph Allen

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    Redmond, John E. (Waterford

    Barran, Rowland Hirst

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion

    Beaumont, Wentworth. C. B.

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

    Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

    Black, Alexander William

    Joyce, Michael

    Rose, Charles Day

    Boland, John

    Kearley, Hudson, E.

    Runciman, Walter

    Brigg, John

    Kennedy, Vincent P.(Cavan, W

    Russell, T. W.

    Bright, Allan Heywood

    Lambert, George

    Samuel, Herbert L.(Cleveland)

    Brown, George M. (Edinburgh

    Lamont, Norman

    Seely, Maj. J.E.B.(Isle of Wight

    Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

    Langley, Batty

    Shackleton, David James

    Burns, John

    Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall

    Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

    Buxton, NE.(York, NR Whitby

    Layland-Barratt, Francis

    Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

    Caldwell, James

    Levy, Maurice

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Sinclair, John (Forfarshire

    Canston, Richard Knight

    Lough, Thomas

    Slack, John Bamford

    Channing, Francis Allston

    Lundon, W.

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Cheetham, John Frederick

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Spencer, Rt Hn. C.R.(Northants

    Churchill, Winston Spencer

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

    Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark

    M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Cremer, William Randal

    M'Crae, George

    Sullivan, Donal

    Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

    M'Kean, John

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe

    Cullinan, J.

    M'Kenna, Reginald

    Tonnant, Harold John.

    Delany William

    M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John p.

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr

    Dobbie, Joseph

    Mooney, John J.

    Thomas, JA(Glamorgan, Gower)

    Doogan, P. C.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

    Tomkinson, James

    Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

    Moss, Samuel

    Toulmin, George

    Duncan, J. (Hastings)

    Murphy, John

    Tuke, Sir John Batty

    Elibank, Master of

    Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

    Ure, Alexander

    Ellice, CaptEC.(SAndrw'sB'ghs

    Norton, Capt. Cecil William

    Villiers, Ernest Amherst

    Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan

    O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary,Mid

    Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

    Eve, Harry Trelawney

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny

    Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

    Findlay, Alexander(Lanark, NE

    O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W)

    Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.

    Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

    Freeman-Thomas, Captain F.

    O'Dowd, John

    Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

    Gladstone, Rt. Hn. HerbertJohn

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    O'Kelly, James(Roseommon, N

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

    Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

    O'Malley, William

    Woodhouse, Sir JT. (Huddersf'd

    Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

    O'Mara, James

    Harcourt, Lewis

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

    Hardie, J. Keir(MerthyrTydvil

    Panlton, James Mellor

    Mr. Warner and Mr. Bucahanan.

    Harwood, George

    Pearson, Sir Weetman D.

    Hayden, John Patrick

    Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

    Power, Patrick Joseph

    NOES.

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Gardner, Ernest

    Pierpoint, Robert

    Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

    Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

    Gordon, Maj. Evans(TrHimlets

    Pretyman, Ernest George

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

    Pryee-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.

    Purvis, Robert

    Arnold-Forster, Rt Hn. Hugh O.

    Greville, Hon. Ronald

    Pym, C. Guy

    Arrol, Sir William

    Hambro, Charles Eric

    Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

    Atkinson, Rt, Hon. John

    Hamilton, Marq. of(L'nd'nderry

    Ratcliff, R. F.

    Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

    Hardy, Laurence(Kent Ashford

    Reed, Sir Edw. James (Cardiff

    Bailey, James (Walworth)

    Hare, Thomas Leigh

    Reid, James (Greenock

    Balcarres, Lord

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A.J.(Manch'r

    Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

    Ridley, S. Forde

    Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

    Heath, Sir James (Staffords. NW

    Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas, Thomson

    Balfour, Rt. Hn. GeraldW(Leeds

    Henderson, Sir A.(Stafford, W

    Roberts, Samuel (Sheffied)

    Balfour, Kenneth R, (Christch.

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Hill, Henry Staveley

    Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Hogg, Lindsay

    Round, Rt. Hon. James

    Bartley, Sir George C. T.

    Hope, J.F. (Sheffield, Brightside)

    Royds, Clement Molyneux

    Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

    Hoult, Joseph

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire

    Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

    Howard, John(Kent, Faversham

    Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

    Bignold, Sir Arthur

    Hunt, Rowland

    Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

    Bill, Charles

    Jameson, Major J. Eustace

    Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

    Bingham, Lord

    Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred.

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

    Blundell, Colonel Henry

    Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Col. W.

    Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

    Brassey, Albert

    Keswick, William

    Sharpe, William Edward T.

    Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

    Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

    Brymer, William Ernest

    Lawson, Hn. H.L.W. (Mile End

    Smith, Abel H.(Hertfosd, East

    Bull, William James

    Lee, ArthurH.(Hants. Fareham

    Smith, Rt. Hn. J. Parker (Lanarks

    Butcher, John George

    Lees, Sir Elliot (Birkenhead)

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

    Campbell, J.H.M.(DublinUniv.

    Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

    Spear, John Ward

    Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

    Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S.

    Stewart, Sir Mark J.M'Taggart

    Cautley, Henry Strother

    Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

    Stirling Maxwell, Sir John M.

    Cavendish, V.C.W.(Derbyshire

    Long, Col. Charles W.(Evesham

    Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

    Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

    Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Chamberlain, Rt.Hn.J.A (Wore

    Lowe, Francis William

    Talbot, RtHn. J. G.(Oxf'd Univ.

    Chapman, Edward

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

    Thorburn, Sir Walter

    Clive, Captain Percy A.

    Macdona, John Cumming

    Thornton, Percy M..

    Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

    M'lver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh, W

    Tollemache, Henry James

    Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

    M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire

    Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Marks, Harry Hananel

    Tuff, Charles

    Cubitt, Hon. Henry

    Martin, Richard Biddulph

    Turnour, Viscount

    Dalrymple, Sir Charles

    Maxwell, W.J.H(Dumfriesshire

    Walker, Col. William Hall

    Davenport, William Bromley

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

    Dickson, Charles Scott

    Milvain, Thomas

    Warde, Colonel C. E.

    Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

    Molesworth, Sir Lewis

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

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Montagu, Hn. J. Scott(Hants.)

    Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

    Whiteley, H.(Ashton und. Lyne

    Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

    Morgan, DavidJ.(Walthamstow

    Whitmore, Charles Algernon

    Faber, Edmund B. (Hants W.)

    Morrell, George Herbert

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Mount, William Arthur

    Wiloughby de Eresby, Lord

    Fellowes, Rt HnAilwyn Edward

    Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

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

    Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

    Nicholson, William Graham

    Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

    Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

    Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

    Finlay,Rt. Hn, SirR. B.(Inv'rn'ss

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

    Fisher, William Hayes

    Pease, Herbert Pike(Darlington

    Sir Alexander Acland-Hood

    Flannery, Sir Fortsecue

    Peel, Hn. Wm. RobertWellesley

    and Viscount Valentia.

    Forster, Henry William

    Percy, Earl

    Foster, Philip S.(Warwick, S.W

    Original Question again proposed.
    And, it being after Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair make his Report to the House.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.
    Adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock.