§ Considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§ [Mr. EMMOTT (Oldham) in the Chair.]
§ Clause 28:—
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield Central)said it was extremely necessary in all transfers that the feelings of the individual regiments should be considered in every possible way and that transfers should not be made in an arbitrary manner. The insertion of the words contained in the Amendment he desired to move would oil the wheels considerably, and therefore facilitate the carrying out of the measure.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 19, line 18, after the word 'Order,' to insert the words 'and the commanding officer of which has signified in writing his consent thereto.' "—(Sir Howard Vincent.)
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. HALDANE, Haddington)replied that the reasons put forward by the hon. and gallant Member were hardly sufficient for the acceptance of his Amendment. Sub-section 1, Clause 28, only proposed to entitle the King by order in Council to transfer units.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTbegged, leave to withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ MR. ASHLEY, (Lancashire, Blackpool)in moving to insert after the words "every such unit or part thereof," in. Sub-section (1) the following—
Shall continue to be officially described in such a manner as to preserve any national or special description of the said unit, and,said that his object was to continue the old names of the corps, which meant a great deal to the Auxiliary Forces. The right hon. Gentleman knew what esprit de corps meant to the 10th Legion and the Old Guard. Anything which would; lead to a discontinuance of their old names would be strongly resented by men in the old corps of the Auxiliary Forces and by the nation at large. For instance, there were the Honourable 1103 Artillery Company—a corps which had a glorious history—and Lovat's Scouts, and the King's Colonials; it was to be hoped the names by which they were known all over the world would not be abolished. A man who knew that his father had belonged to the Honourable Artillery Company would be much more likely to enlist in it under that name than if it were called the 4th Middlesex Artillery. Retaining the old names would continue the glorious traditions of the corps and considerably help in getting recruits.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 19, line 18, after the word 'thereof,' to insert the words 'shall continue to be officially described in such a manner as to preserve any national or special description of the said unit, and' "—(Mr. Ashley.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that, wherever he could keep up the characteristics and traditions of a corps he hoped to do so, and that would be done in a great many cases. But this Amendment was imperative and would impose a statutory duty upon the military authorities to continue the old names in official descriptions. The sympathies of the Government were with the general policy of the Amendment, and they would endeavour, whenever circumstances permitted, to give effect to it. They laid great stress on preserving the continuity of traditions, but he thought there would be cases in which it would not be possible, having regard to the organisation as a whole. There were points at which it was imperative to draw the line in every scheme of organisation, and they must be left free to carry out their arrangements. He did not object to nine-tenths of what the hon. Gentleman had said, but he did not wish the insertion of a cast-iron provision of this sort.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid there was one thing the people of this country had confidence in, and that was in the honour of the House of Commons. If a provision was in a statute, it was regarded as were the laws of the Medes and the Persians, and there was no doubting it. As the hon. Member for Blackpool had said, there was nothing to which the Regular Army and the Auxiliary Forces attached more 1104 importance than to old titles and old associations. The Westminster Volunteers, with which he had been for many years associated, was always looked upon as a Parliamentary regiment and associated with the Palace of Westminster and the City of Westminster. At the present time there was great interest and anxiety us to what would be the fate of that regiment and of others, and if anything could be done to preserve them it ought to be done. The right hon. Gentleman had chosen the territorial element as being a very powerful factor in the success of his Bill, as was shown by its title. He evidently desired to connect each regiment with a locality, and that had been the desire of all military reformers for the last thirty or forty years. Lord Card-well began it and Lord Wolseley continued it. If ho accepted the Amendment, the right hon. Gentleman would only carry out his own intention, and prevent any tendency in a contrary direction on the part of a less friendly successor.
§ *MR. CARLILE (Hertfordshire, St. Albans)said he would venture to call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that when regiments were at work in brigades the title of the individual regiment formed part of the word of command, and every commanding officer knew that he could appeal to his men by that title, and obtain a smart response which might be quite absent if there was no such condition present. Anyone who had commanded a battalion at any time would agree that the mere fact that the title of the battalion constituted an essential portion of the word of command was of vital importance. It could not be the same thing if battalions were numbered from one to 100 in the Territorial Force, and if the old characteristics associated with the old names as far back as men could remember were done away with. If this change were made the military spirit might disappear and the efficiency of their military work be destroyed. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that they were unreasonable in asking that this provision should be embodied in the Bill, but he thought that they on that side of the House had already received from Ministers so many promises which 1105 had not in any sense been fulfilled that they were justified in making the request. All the right hon. Gentleman had said was that he would do his best and see if it was possible, but they were not satisfied; they wanted what ho undertook put down in black and white. Last year on the Education Bill they were again and again promised all sorts of things which they never got because they were never embodied in the Bill, and he had no doubt that if under this Bill titles of battalions were wiped out they would be told, "Well, I did my best, but I could not manage it." That was not enough, and he hoped his hon. friend the Member for Blackpool would go to a division on the subject. Nothing would go further to destroy the right hon. Gentleman's Bill than that it should be left an open question whether battalions or brigades or other military units were to be left without those essentially individual and personal titles with which they had always in the past been associated. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see his way to adopt the Amendment.
§ *MR. REES (Montgomery Boroughs)said that if he thought the insertion of these words would interfere with the right hon. Gentleman's plans or create confusion in his scheme he would not vote for them, but he was bound to say, so far as his own personal observation and inquiry into the matter went, there was ample proof that an intention to preserve the existing designation of each unit would be very favourably received. Ho remembered when Lord Card well's scheme was introduced what a feeling arose about the incorporation of the Monmouthshire Light Infantry regiment with the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, and how the Monmouthshire men resented the suppression of the name of their regiment. As far as regarded the county part of which he had the honour to represent, there was, he was sure, every desire to retain the present titles, which were greatly appreciated. Ho would not oppose the right hon. Gentleman if he objected, because he recognised that the Amendment, as drafted, tied his hands very tightly, and was certainly an unusual sort of insertion in a Bill, but if he could see his way to accept the Amendment he would be grateful to him, and be believed that the retention of present titles would 1106 be found of very great service in recruiting.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKER (Gravesend)said that if the right hon. Gentleman did not accept the Amendment he would plainly show that he did not appreciate how strong local patriotism was. The King's Colonials, for instance, had grown in the last two years; the title made an appeal to a great number of Colonials who were in this country either temporarily or permanently, and they were very proud of the position to which the force had attained. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would agree that it was a good thing to absorb into the force any Colonials in the country, and through their assistance be able to complete a Volunteer organisation. In the same way the different local regiments wished to retain their distinctive designations. Let hon. Members imagine what effect would be produced upon the London Scottish if the right hon. Gentleman tried to do away with the name and the distinctive garb of the corps. He thought there would be a revolt of a kind which would startle the right hon. Gentleman, who would do well to cultivate that spirit of local patriotism He hoped the right hon. Gentleman did not think he was supporting the Amendment for the sake of obstructing the Bill; he was urging the point with absolute sincerity because he believed it to be of national importance. If these distinctive titles were not preserved the right hon. Gentleman, in the future, would have to contend with a good deal of disaffection and ill-feeling. The whole conduct of the Bill by the right hon. Gentleman had been most conciliatory, but he had been full of resistance in regard to concessions and had made none. In this case his yielding would be not a concession but an act of justice and wisdom, and he would not sacrifice anything. Did the right hon. Gentleman intend this Territorial Army to be all of one dull colour, and to deprive it of anything of a distinctive character? Such a course would be very unwise, because the different corps of Volunteers coming under the County Associations valued their distinctive character and dress. It seemed a very small thing, but he urged the right hon. Gentleman to consider it, because ho believed that behind 1107 it lay the secret of success in recruiting. The right hon. Gentleman would have quite enough of the dull drab in his special contingents.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he much appreciated the considerations which had been put forward, but when he came to look at the clause and the rigidity of an Act of Parliament, he thought the wisdom of the advice he had received was against it. It was not a case of resisting pressure so much as a lapse from virtue. He was afraid of what the effect might be. He was anxious, like Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress," to reach the end of his journey without falling into a precipice on the one hand, or being stuck in a quag on the other, and this Amendment looked something like a quag.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid he had not gathered from the right hon. Gentleman's answer whether he was in sympathy with the Amendment or not.
§ MR. WYNDHAM (Dover)thought they were entitled to know what was at the back of the right hon. Gentleman's mind. What was he afraid of? There was no rigidity in the Amendment. They were not asking the right hon. Gentleman to do the impossible. There wore two points involved, and he wanted to know whether the right hon. Gentleman was afraid of the Militia, the Yeomanry, or the Volunteers continuing to be known under his scheme by those names, or was he afraid of the local names being retained, as for instance, the Kentish Regiment being called the Buffs, and so forth. Was he afraid of either, or both of those things? If he was afraid of the first, the second would give him a ground of defence, because all those regiments had been affiliated to some line regiment, and if he allowed them to be called by their local names that fear would be got rid of, because the units in the field were numbered in a particular way. In the field they became the first battalion of the second division of the third brigade, and so on.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the right hon. Gentleman had asked him what he had at the back of his mind. It was not 1108 what was at the back of his mind, but what was in front of his eyes. The units
shall continue to be officially described in such a manner as to preserve any national or special description of the said units.He did not know what the latter words meant, and on those he did not propose to commit himself. But he did know that the first part of the Amendment took away all latitude from the authorities. The Government were disposed to carry out the views which had been expressed, but declined to tie their hands. General considerations must prevail. They desired to be free in carrying out their promises, and could not tie their hands.
§ MR. ASHLEYthought the right hon. Gentleman had a certain amount of sympathy with the Amendment. There could no doubt that if they went to a, division on the question it would tell very greatly against the Government in the country. They did not want in the least to interfere with the right hon. Gentleman's organisation. All they desired was to insure that the units should retain their old names. They were not asking that the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers should still be called the Yeomanry, Militia, and Volunteers, but that the regiments should retain the names they had in the past. If the right hon. Gentleman could not accept the Amendment as it stood, would he accept it if after the word "continue" the words "wherever possible" were inserted? It would not tie the hands of the Government to accept it in that form, but it would put into the Act what he believed was the desire of every Member of the House, namely, that when these forces were transferred to the new Territorial Force they should be allowed to retain the local names which they had had ever since they were brought into being.
§ VISCOUNT MORPETH (Birmingham, S.)said he did not gather from the answer of the Secretary of State to the right hon. Member for Dover whether there was to be any connection between the Territorial battalions and the Line battalions, or whether they were to be numbered separately.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that all these matters he proposed at a later stage to refer to a representative Committee of the Territorial Force.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER (Croydon)said that this was a matter as to which the Committee ought to be thoroughly assured, because the proposed practice had already been resorted to with very unsatisfactory results. The right hon. Gentleman had said he was going to consult a representative Committee. He remembered the House being assured that the loading questions contained in the Bill were to be referred to an influential Committee, and they wore so referred. The House had heard a good deal of that body of gentlemen, but they had heard nothing of their conclusions; they had never had a report from them, and they had never heard what their opinions were. They were in this difficult position, that on a great many questions that had been raised in the Bill they had been told that the matter was going to be considered or had not been considered, but in no case had they been told that it had been considered and that they could be told the result. He would not be astonished at any hon. Member asking for some further assurance of the right hon. Gentleman's intentions. He had not won the confidence of the Committee in this matter. He had refused to give the information required. He had not even answered the last question put to him by the right hon. Member for Dover. He would advise his right hon. friend under the circumstances to put his question again and ask for a definite answer.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid the right hon. Gentleman could easily answer because now the Prime Minister was beside him, and the right hon. Gentleman, when Minister for War, made a very good reform in the Army when he linked the Auxiliary Forces to the Line. Was the Secretary of State for War now going to throw over the policy of the Prime Minister or adhere to it?
§ MR. ASHLEYsaid that as ho had had no answer from the right hon. Gentleman he would formally move as an Amendment the suggestion he had made. He only wished to have it put on record that that was the wish of the House of Commons.
§
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment—
After the word 'continue' to insert the words ' wherever possible.' "—(Mr. Ashley.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted in the proposed Amendment."
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the insertion of the words would be an example of thoroughly bad drafting. What was the meaning of "wherever possible"? The words imposed no legal obligation, and would merely disfigure the drafting. The Bill was carefully drawn, and it would be much better to accept the assurance which he had given on behalf of the Government that they recognised the point which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen were raising, and he would do his best to gather opinion upon it. The words suggested by the hon. Member would simply leave the matter to the discretion of the Government, and after the declaration he had made on their behalf it would not be right to accept the words.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid the drafting of the Bill was not like a picture in the Academy, which was to be framed to show its artistic effect, and have the name underneath of the master who had introduced it into the House of Commons. It was purely a matter of convenience. If the right hon. Gentleman was a perpetual Secretary of State for War, they might rely with confidence on his statement, for his words had been taken down, and they would always be able to point to them if there was any departure from his declaration. But as Lord Elgin said at the Imperial Conference, a Minister of State was purely a will o' th' wisp, a passing shadow, and what his hon. friend wanted to do was to put into the clause words which would show successive Secretaries of State for War that it was the desire of the House of Commons which passed this Bill to retain the old territorial distinctions of regiments. He did not think the Secretary of State did himself justice when he said that the Amendment would disfigure the drafting. The right hon. Gentleman had expressed the intention of consulting a committee of officers. He was a member of the old Duma, as it was called 1111 —the right hon. Gentleman called it a Council—but it had not met since last July. They had never seen the Bill, and they knew nothing whatever of its provisions. What of the new Duma which the Secretary of State for War proposed to call into existence with a view to consulting it about these territorial distinctions? It might be called once, and, after a long speech or a few words, adjourned and never summoned again, just as in the case of the old Duma; he did not know whether the latter was in existence now or not. Surely the right hon. Gentleman could accept the Amendment, it would not tie his hands absolutely, but would simply act as a guide to the Army Council in the future, and to the successors of the right hon. Gentleman.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEY (Shropshire, Newport)said the right hon. Gentleman had expressed his intention of gathering from officers opinion as to the direction in which territorial feeling ran, but he would best gather that opinion from Members in the House who represented the districts concerned and knew their wishes.
*THE CHAIRMANsaid it would be better if they got rid of the Amendment to the Amendment, and they could then resume the discussion of the original Amendment.
§ LORD BALCARRES (Lancashire, Chorley)said the essence of the Amendment to the Amendment was that they ought to allow the latitude which was already allowed elsewhere in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the insertion of the words would disfigure the drafting, and that was the only real objection he had taken; he had not dealt with the point of the Amendment at all. But if the Secretary for War looked at his own Bill he would find in a dozen places words as indefinite as those of his hon. friend. The words "wherever possible" in the context clearly meant nothing else than" wherever possible" in the eyes of the central authority, namely, the War Office. In one part of the Bill appeared the words "definite or indefinite," and he supposed the period to be served must be "definite or indefinite"; why did the right hon. Gentleman put such disfigurements into his Bill? The fact was that the 1112 Government were determined to smash up these distinctions to which the regiments unquestionably attached incalculable value; and the right hon. Gentleman, if he rejected this and all similar Amendments, would greatly alienate the sentiment on which these distinctions were founded, and although he might gain from the financial point of view, from the Territorial Army point of view the result would be very serious.
§ Amendment to the Amendment agreed to.
§ Question proposed, "That those words, as amended, be there inserted."
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid that, as the right hon. Gentleman was going to rely on the territorial feeling for the recruiting of his Territorial Army, if he wished to make that force popular he ought to listen to those who represented the territorial case, and who told him that where he would get one recruit for a numbered battalion of the Territorial Force, he would get fifty recruits for such and such a battalion of the county regiment, because that battalion had its traditions and a name. Why should the right hon. Gentleman hesitate? He said that the Amendment would be a disfigurement. Instead of "wherever possible" the form "as far as may be consistent with" might possibly not be a drafting disfigurement. The right hon. Gentleman would recognise that they were not trying to drive him into a corner. What they were discussing were the particular titles and names to which territorially they attached great importance; and what they asked for was a definite promise that as far as possible those territorial titles should be preserved. He could not see why the right hon. Gentleman should be so coy and coquettish over the question. Surely, if he would not adopt the words "wherever possible," he could accept the form "so far as may be consistent" with his general scheme. That would not be bad drafting. If he would put into the clause some such words, they would do their level best to help the Bill when it became an Act; it was not their intention to throw cold water upon it. Would the battalions be 1, 2, and 3 of the Territorial Army, or would they be 1, 2 and 3 of such and such 1113 a regiment, with its title? They wanted to know, for those who represented counties were aware of the strength of the territorial feeling, and the right hon. Gentleman would never have a Territorial Force unless he consulted that feeling.
§ *SIR H. AUBREY-FLETCHER (Sussex, Lewes)said that, as one who had served as a Volunteer officer, and who assisted in the formation of the Volunteers, he would like to join in the appeal to the right hon. Gentleman. He could add to what others had said that the Volunteers attached great importance to the change which was made for the administrative battalions of the county to that of the battalions of their own county regiment. They were very proud indeed of the alteration. He had been for twenty years a commanding officer of one of those battalions, and he was one of those who approached the Prime Minister at the time the change was made. He was certain it would give the greatest satisfaction to those who joined the new Territorial Army if the Amendment wore adopted, and it would bring more recruits to the Territorial Force than if they simply had the battalions numbered.
§ *VISCOUNT MORPETHsaid it was really more than a more question of nomenclature. He had asked the right hon. Gentleman a point which was vital to the Bill, viz., whether the connection between the Auxiliary Forces and the Regular Army was going to be maintained and whether the battalions of the Territorial Force were to be known by their own special numbers, or whether they would be known as the 4th, 5th, and 6th battalions of their respective county regiments. They had received the astonishing answer that the matter was not settled and that it was going to be referred to a committee of those interested in the Territorial Army. He entirely objected to that way of settling the matter, because the question whether the Territorial Army was to remain in close connection with the Regular Army or whether it was to be an Army by itself was vital to the whole Bill. He would point out that the committee was to be appointed by the County Associations nominated by the Army Council. The Army Council would have the first and last voice in settling the matter, and it 1114 seemed to him that the right hon. Gentleman, as the representative of the War Office, might now tell them, instead of deferring it to a committee which would have no real voice in settling the matter at all, but which would be purely consultative, and whose opinion would not be accepted if it ran counter to that of the Secretary of State.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKERasked the right hon. Gentleman if he would, in view of his professed sympathy, undertake on Report to bring in an Amendment properly drafted embodying the policy of the Government on the point at issue. If they had that assurance he was sure his hon. friend would be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid ho did not wish to put into the Act all sorts of things which were inappropriate. He had given an assurance that the Government appreciated the general desire that these territorial designations should be maintained. Their present intention was that there should be, say the 4th, 5th or the 6th battalions of Territorial Regiments, and not separate organisations altogether. He thought that so far as territorial organisation was concerned he had given every assurance that could be reasonably asked for.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he could not vote for the original Amendment, because it would be unfair to impose a statutory liability on the right hon. Gentleman. But for the Amendment as modified he could vote. Let them notice what the position would be. His hon. friend had affirmed categorically that it was desirable to make it part of the duty of the War Minister to have regard as far as possible to the territorial divisions of the battalions of the new Army, and that seemed a very legitimate and reasonable proposal. That was met by a categorical negative on the part of the Government. They had refused to make it part of the duty of the Army Council and the War Office to have regard to the territorial traditions of the county regiments.
§ Mr. HALDANEYes, the statutory duty.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERYes, the statutory duty. Nothing the right hon. Gentleman could now state would have any weight with the Army Council in future. He hoped every Volunteer and every corps throughout the land would understand that the Government had met this reasonable and moderate proposal which had been put forward in the interests of Volunteer Corps with a categorical negative, and had refused to make it the duty of the Army Council to consider the territorial traditions of the battalions.
§ *SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER (Wiltshire, Chippenham)said the right hon. Member for Croydon had expressed in very inadequate terms the impression that was left on his mind and on the minds of his hon. friends around him. The Secretary of State for War refused to put anything into an Act of Parliament which would bind him or the War Office hereafter as to the designation of each branch of the Territorial Army. He gathered that as far as the Yeomanry were concerned the right hon. Gentleman had already given an undertaking that that designation would be maintained. As regarded the Militia to be transferred to the Volunteer battalions, it was quite impossible in debates of this kind for the light hon. Gentleman to undertake the designation of those battalions, because many of them would be extinguished, and others would be merged one into another, and therefore it was necessary that the authorities should be left a free hand. His right hon. friend had said in the clearest possible way that where battalions survived the territorial traditions would be maintained in the future as in the past. He thought that was as much as could be expected.
§ MR. ASHLEYsaid they might rest perfectly satisfied if the right hon. Gentleman was going to remain in his present position. They knew, however, that the present Government was not going to last much longer, and what they wanted was to put into the Bill something that would secure that these titles should be continued, and he would not be satisfied unless some assurance of the kind were given.
§ COLONEL KENYON - SLANEYsaid the hon. Member for Chippenham had assured the Committee that the right hon. 1116 Gentleman had given a distinct undertaking that that which they were now insisting upon had actually been promised in the case of the Yeomanry. Was that so? If that was the case, then they had a right to demand it on behalf of the Volunteers and the Militia. Surely the right hon. Gentleman did not imagine that the territorial feeling was confined to those who rode horses.
§ MR. COURTENAY WARNER Staffordshire, Lichfield)said that one difficulty in carrying out this proposal was that there might be a regiment called the Shoreditch Fusiliers, whom it might be necessary under this scheme to convert into artillery, and in that case how could they retain the old name? It would be ridiculous to tie the Army Council down by Act of Parliament to use the actual nomenclature of particular battalions. The Secretary of State for War had given a pledge on the point, and if the right hon. Gentleman went out of office, and the present Opposition formed a Government, they would have no difficulty in persuading the future War Minister to carry out what they were now asking for. He thought it would be a great pity to tie down the Army Council in the way suggested by the Amendment.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid the hon. Member for the Chippenham Division had made the case much more serious, because he had led them to suppose that he had been able to conclude some kind of arrangement with the Secretary of State for War that his regiment should be known as the Wiltshire Yeomanry, although he had sacrificed any such arrangement as far as the Volunteers and Militia were concerned. He was much obliged to the hon. Baronet for letting the cat out of the bag. That revelation made it all the more important that the right hon. Gentleman should accept the Amendment. They wanted something in the Act of Parliament which people could see, and read, and understand.
§ SIR SAMUEL SCOTT (Marylebone, W.)asked the right hon. Gentleman to state clearly to the House whether he had given the undertaking to which the hon. Baronet the Member for Chippenham had referred.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that what he did say was that he saw no reason why there should not be Yeomanry in the Territorial Force.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid that really was not the point. They wished to know what the Yeomanry were to be called. Were the Yeomanry to be allowed to serve under their special regimental territorial titles? He wished to have an indication whether that particular privilege would be given to them.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he thought the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had got enough information.
§ LORD BALCARRESasked the right hon. Gentleman to give a straight answer. There appeared to be a conflict of opinion between him and the hon. and gallant Member for the Chippenham Division.
§ *Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERsaid he thought it quite unnecessary to repeat what the right hon. Gentleman had said. The right hon. Gentleman had given an indication, but it was not to be put in the Act of Parliament. The indication was given in the clearest possible language which must be intelligible to anyone who desired to understand what the Yeomanry were to be called.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTWhat are they to be called?
§ LORD BALCARRESsaid he had heard nothing from the Secretary of State to indicate exactly what the Yeomanry were to be called. It was not a question whether they were to be called the Yeomanry, the Cavalry, or the men of the Territorial Force, but whether they were to be allowed to retain their old traditional territorial designations. The hon. Baronet opposite had stated that an undertaking had been given to the Yeomanry. The right hon. Gentleman had denied an undertaking to the infantry branch.
§ *SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDERsaid he did not suppose that the Wiltshire Yeomanry would be called the Yorkshire Yeomanry.
§ LORD BALCARRESsaid they might be called the Western District No. 6. The Yeomanry officers might be satisfied with the undertaking which had been given, but he extremely regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not complied with the request to give an undertaking for the infantry.
§ Question put.
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes, 85; Noes, 210. (Division List No. 223.)
1121| AYES. | ||
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn.SirAlex.F. | Craig,Charles Curtis(Antrim,S. | Lockwood,Rt.Hn. Lt.-Col.A.R. |
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Craig, Captain James( Down, E.) | Long.Col. CharlesW.(Evesham |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Craik, Sir Henry | Long,Rt. Hn. Walter(Dublin,S) |
| Arnold-Forster,Rt.Hn.Hugh O. | Dixon-Hartland,Sir FredDixon | Lonsdale, John Brownlee |
| Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon Sir H. | Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred |
| Balcarres, Lord | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness | M'Iver,SirLewis (Edinburgh,W |
| Baldwin, Alfred | Duncan,Robert (Lanark,Govan | Marks, H. H. (Kent) |
| Balfour,Rt.Hn.A.J.(CityLond.) | Faber, George Denison (York) | Mildmay, Francis Bingham |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Faber, Capt. W.V. (Hants, W.) | Moore, William |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Fardell, Sir T. George | Morpeth, Viscount |
| Baring,Capt.Hn.G.( Winchester | Fell, Arthur | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield |
| Barrie,H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hardy,Laurence (Kent.Ashford | Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend) |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Heaton, John Henniker | Roberts,S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. | Hervey, F. W. F.(BuryS.Edm'ds | Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter |
| Cave, George | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles |
| Cavendish, Rt.Hon. Victor C. W. | Hills, J. W. | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Hunt, Rowland | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Chamberlain,RtHn.J.A. (Wore. | Kennaway,Rt.Hon.Sir John H. | Smith, Hon. W. F. P. (Strand) |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Sir John H | Snowden, P. |
| Clynes, J. R. | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Lea,Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E. | Thomson, W.Mitchell- (Lanark) |
| Corbett, T. L. (Down, North) | Lee, ArthurH. (Hants. Fareham | |
| Valentia, Viscount | Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm | TELLERS FOR THE AYES— |
| Walrond, Hon. Lionel | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C.B. Stuart- | Mr Ashley and Sir Howard Vincent. |
| Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George | |
| Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) | Younger, George | |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas |
| Adkins, W. Ryland D. | Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Myer, Horatio |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Fuller, John Michael F. | Napier, T. B. |
| Alden, Percy | Furness, Sir Christopher | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Gardner,Col.Alan (Hereford, S. | Nicholson,Clarles N (Doncast'r |
| Asquith,Rt.Hon Herbert Henry | Gladstone.Rt.Hn.Herbert John | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Astbury, John Meir | Goddard, Daniel Ford | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Gooch, George Peabody | Nussey, Thomas Willans |
| Baker, Joseph A.(Finsbury,E.) | Gulland, John W. | Nuttall, Harry |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Baring,Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Barker, John | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Philipps,J. Wynford (Pembroke |
| Barlow,JohnEmmott(Somerset | Hart-Davies, T. | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Haworth, Arthur A. | Pirie, Duncan V. |
| Barry,Redmond J. (Tyrone,N.) | Hedges, A. Paget | Pollard, Dr. |
| Beauchamp, E. | Hemmerde, Edward George | Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh,Central) |
| Beck, A. Cecil | Henry, Charles S. | Price,RobertJohn (Norfolk,E.) |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Herbert,Colonel Ivor(Mon., S.) | Priestley. W. E.B. (Bradford.E.) |
| Benn,W.(T'w'r Hamlets,S.Geo | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Pullar, Sir Robert |
| Bennett, E. N. | Higham, John Sharp | Radford, G. H. |
| Billson, Alfred | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Holland, Sir William Henry | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Hope,W.Bateman(Somerset,N. | Rees, J. D. |
| Brace, William | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Renton, Major Leslie |
| Branch, James | Idris, T. H. W. | Richards, T.F. (Wolverh'mpt'n |
| Brooke, Stopford | Illingworth, Percy H. | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Brunner,J.F.L. (Lancs.,Leigh) | Jackson, R. S. | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Jacoby, Sir James Alfred | Roberts, John H. (Denbigh.) |
| Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Robinson, S. |
| Burnyeat, W. J. D. | Jones,William (Carnarvonshire | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Kearley, Hudson E. | Rose, Charles Day |
| Buxton,Rt.Hn. Sydney Charles | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Rowlands, J. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Laidlaw, Robert | Runciman. Walter |
| Cameron, Robert | Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Lamont, Norman | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Layland-Barratt, Francis | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Causton, Rt. Hn. RichardKnight | Leese,SirJoseph F.(Accrington) | Sears, J. E. |
| Chance, Frederick William | Lehmann, R. C. | Seaverns, J. H. |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Lever, W.H. (Cheshire, Wirral) | Shackleton, David James |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Levy, Maurice | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) |
| Cleland, J. W. | Lewis, John Herbert | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Clough, William | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John |
| Coats,Sir T.Glen (Renfrew, W.) | Lough, Thomas | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie |
| Collins,SirWm.J.(S.Pancras,W. | Lyell, Charles Henry | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Cooper, G. J. | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Corbett,C.H (Sussex,EGrinst'd | Macdonald,J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs) | Stanger, H. Y. |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Maclean, Donald | Stanley,Hn.A. Lyulph(Chesh.) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Steadman, W. C. |
| Crosfield, A. H. | M'Callum, John M. | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Stuart, James (Sunderland) |
| Dickinson,W.H. (St.Pancras,N. | M'Micking, Major G. | Sutherland. J. E. |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Maddison, Frederick | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley) | Mallet, Charles E. | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Dunne,Major E.Martin(Walsall | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Tennant.Sir Edward(Salisbury |
| Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Marnham, F. J. | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Elibank, Master of | Massie, J. | Thomas,Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.) |
| Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward | Masterman, C. F. G. | Torrance, Sir A. M. |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Menzies, Walter | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Evans, Samuel T. | Molteno, Percy Alport | Verney, F. W. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Money, L. G. Chiozza | Vivian, Henry |
| Faber, G. H. (Boston) | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) | Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) |
| Fenwick, Charles | Morgan,J.Lloyd (Carmarthen) | Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) |
| Ferens, T. R. | Morrell, Philip | Wardle, George J. |
| Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. | White, Luke (York, E.R.) | Winfrey, R. |
| Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) | Whitley,John Henry (Halifax) | Yoxall, James Henry ' |
| Wason,John Cathcart (Orkney) | Wiles, Thomas | |
| Waterlow, D. S. | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES— |
| Weir, James Galloway | Wilson, John (Durham, Mid) | Mr. Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Whitbread, Howard | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) | |
| White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the clause," put, and agreed to.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTmoved to leave out from the word "that" to the end of the sub-section, and to insert the words, "any person commissioned, enlisted, or enrolled in the Militia, Yeomanry, or Volunteer Forces before the passing of this Act will be entitled upon application, in writing to his commanding officer, to a free discharge from any contract, obligation, or undertaking he may have entered into." He said his object was to secure that any person who had enlisted in the Militia, Yeomanry, or Volunteers, and who did not see his way to consent to the new condition of affairs, should be entitled to a free discharge. There was nothing more unsatisfactory than to detain in the Army men who would not give willing service. He quite granted that there were many provisions in the Bill by which the penal clauses did not apply to a man without his consent. But that would establish two classes in every regiment, than which nothing would more militate against the efficiency of the force. The one class might be dissatisfied with the new condition of things and they would go about saying, "We cannot get our discharge; we never bargained for this, and it is unfair." All that would interfere with recruiting and would do infinite harm, and it would be bettor for the service if the men were out of the regiment. If the right hon. Gentleman accepted his Amendment he might be deprived of the services of a limited number of men; but, on the other hand, it would deprive those men of a very sound grievance.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 19, line 26, to leave out from the word ' that,' to the end of the sub-section, and insert the words, 'any person commissioned, enlisted, or enrolled in the Militia, Yeomanry, or Volunteer Forces before the passing of this Act will be entitled upon application, in writing to his commanding officer, to a free discharge from any contract, obligation, or undertaking he may have entered into.' "— (Sir Howard Vincent.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the clause."
1122§ MR. HALDANEsaid that the Amendment in its language was very startling. There was no limitation of the right of the Volunteer to be relieved of all obligations, including even a promise of marriage! He saw what the hon. and gallant Member meant, but the proposal as it stood would be absolutely unworkable. Moreover, it was really unnecessary, because subsection (2) section 28 provided that "nothing in this section or in any Order made there under shall, without his consent, affect the conditions or area of service of any person commissioned, enlisted, or enrolled before the passing of this Act." Anyone who said he did not want to go under the new conditions would be released. Consequently his discharge was absolutely certain.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTasked if there was any section which would enable the man to demand his discharge under the new conditions?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that it would be wrong to discharge a man who refused to give up his rifle, which was the property of the Secretary of State; but on giving up his rifle, if he did not want to take service under the new conditions he would be discharged forthwith.
§ COLONEL R. WILLIAMS (Dorsetshire, W.)said that the words of the Amendment might not be all that could be desired, but the point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Sheffield was worth considering. The men were often under other obligations than that of giving up their rifles. It was quite true that under a subsequent subsection the men might continue under the old conditions and also under the new; but, in his opinion, that would not work at all. There were a good number of men who would want to go on under the old conditions but who would not give a pledge under the new conditions to undergo a six months' training, and, therefore, he submitted that those men who could not go on under the new conditions were entitled to their discharge.
§ Mr. HALDANEsaid it was clear that as regarded an obligation to serve under the new conditions, if the men did not consent they would have no difficulty in obtaining a discharge. But in cases where the men had come under obligation to the corps, that was a matter of contract, and he thought it would be safe to leave that to be worked out by the associations.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid he would be satisfied if the Secretary for War could devise a form of words which would secure what he wanted. He had no pretensions to be a Parliamentary draftsman, and he might have made his Amendment too wide to carry out his own views.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he could draw his own clauses but not clauses devised by other people. He could assure the hon. and gallant Gentleman that there was no desire to retain an unwilling man under the new conditions, and there would be no great difficulty in his obtaining his discharge.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTasked leave to withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ MR. ASHLEYsaid that he wished to move an Amendment to subsection (c) merely to ventilate the subject, rather than to force a division.
§ MR. HALDANE, interposing, said he had considered this question, and he was prepared to accept an Amendment placed on the Paper by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Sheffield, subject to some Amendments which he had suggested. This would also cover the object the hon. Member for Blackpool had in view.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTthanked the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy for meeting the views of many regiments in this matter. Great apprehension had been excited, especially in the best administered corps, those which had economised their funds and resources, in regard to subsection (c). Those corps had erected buildings, constructed rifle ranges, and spent money in other directions. There- 1124 fore acting on the advice of a very eminent counsel he had put down his Amendment which he would move in the slightly altered form suggested by the Secretary for War, so that subsection (c) would read as follows:—" For transferring to the association any property belonging to or held for the benefit of any such unit so however that all property so transferred shall as from the date of the transfer be held by the association for the benefit in like manner of the corresponding unit of the Territorial Force or for such other purposes as the association with the consent of such corresponding unit, to be ascertained in the prescribed manner, shall direct; and any question which may arise as to whether any property is transferred to an association, or as to the trusts or purposes upon or for which it is or ought to be held, shall be referred for the decision of the Secretary of State, whose decision shall be final.'" If such a concession were made it would entirely meet the views of himself and others who had given the matter very long and careful consideration. He begged to move.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 20, line 2, after the word ' to,' to insert the words,' or held for the benefit of.' "— (Sir Howard Vincent.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
§ *MR. ASHLEYasked whether, if this property was transferred to the associations, it would be possible for them to borrow money upon the security of it. A provision had been put in Clause 4 that the Association should have power to borrow money. They could not borrow it upon the rates because they had no power to raise any, and the only security, he presumed, was the money which would come to them from the Volunteer Force. In the case of the drill halls under the Military Loans Act the remainder was vested in the right hon. Gentleman, and therefore there would not be any security at all.
§ MR. HALDANEwas understood to say that there would be a great deal of property upon which the associations would not be able to borrow money without the leave of the Army Council, 1125 but there would in the ordinary course of things be some property which they possessed, not affected by trusts, upon which they would be able to borrow money.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 20, line 2, to leave out all after the word ' unit' to the end of the subsection, and insert the words ' so however that all property so transferred, shall as from the date of the transfer be held by the association for the benefit in like manner of the corresponding unit of the Territorial Force or for such other purposes as the association, with the consent of such corresponding unit, to be ascertained in the prescribed manner, shall direct; and any question which may arise as to whether any property is transferred to an association, or as to the trusts or purposes upon or for which it is or ought to be held, shall be referred for the decision of the Secretary of State, whose decision shall be final.'"—(Sir Howard Vincent.)
§ Proposed words there inserted.
§ Clause 28, as amended, agreed to.
§ Clause 29:—
§ *MR. ASHLEYmoved the omission of subsection (1) which seemed to him far the most important part of the Bill, as it dealt with that portion of our land forces which was most likely to be used in the future, and enabled the Government to enlist men into the Reserve who would never serve in the Regular Army and make them special Reservists. There was no question which so vitally affected the future of the Regular Army. We had not had an invasion of this country for many hundreds of years, but in all the wars in which we had taken part during those years our Regular land forces had been engaged. It was not in the past our Volunteers who had been engaged, but our Regular Forces, and in all probability it was those forces who would be engaged in the future. Therefore this change as to special reservists was one of the most important which the Bill made in our Army system and one of the most momentous which had been made for a number of years. It must be remembered 1126 that this proposal as to special reservists was made concurrently with a reduction of the Army by 20,000 men and such a step must proportionately reduce the first class Army reserve. During the last administration the object was to increase as far as possible the first class Army reserve, but they now had before them a direct reversal of that policy, because it could not be denied that if the establishment was smaller, the length of service longer, and the units fewer, we could not get the same amount of reserves. A good many untrained reservists were to be invited to enlist. They were to come in at seventeen, be trained till they were twenty, and then be sent out to form the backbone of His Majesty's battalions when engaged in war. It was a most revolutionary proceeding. In describing the Militia in February last the right hon. Gentleman had alluded to the fact that that force was composed of youths of seventeen years of age, and that they could not be sent to the front until they were twenty. That he said was a deplorable state of things. Now however he proposed to setup third battalions composed of that very material which would be useless for war purposes. If the circumstances were not tragic they would be laughable. These boys would be formed into battalions under officers and non-commissioned officers under whom they would not serve in time of war. They would not be battalions but depots—if they liked, glorified depots under another name—the men enlisted would be the men who were now standing at street corners waiting for odd jobs, and would not belong to the class of men like telegraphists, medical officers, transport drivers and others who had to discharge the same duties in times of war that they did in times of peace. The present first class Army Reservist was usually a man of from twenty-five to thirty years of age and of good physique, because he was the survival of all those who had joined the Army. He had served abroad and had often gone through active service. He had knocked about the world and was imbued with all those traditions for which the British Army was celebrated. He loved his regiment as a sailor loved his ship; he served under the same officers in war as he served under in peace and with the comrades with whom he had been trained in the past. 1127 For such men the right hon. Gentleman was going to substitute, or supplement them by, youths of seventeen with seven months training who could not be sent abroad until they were twenty and would be useless till then. And these were the men who were to stiffen a battalion going on active service. What regimental traditions would these men have? They would not serve under the same officers or with the comrades with whom they had trained. He did not think either the House or the country sufficiently realised the gravity of the proposals made by the right hon. Gentleman. He thought it was almost a crime against the Army and the officers, non commissioned officers and men, that when they went to fight the battles of their country they should have, instead of men considerably older than themselves to raise the standard and physique of the regiment and lend it a hand, these waifs and strays to stiffen the battalion. After all was said and done, was not quality better than quantity? He himself, if he were in command of a battalion, would rather have twenty-five of the old first class Army Reserve than 100 of the right hon. Gentleman's special reservists. He felt very strongly on the matter and could not let the debate pass without raising his voice against what he regarded as a wrong and pernicious proposal. He begged to move.
§
Amendment proposed
In page 20, line 31, to leave out Subsection (1)."—(Mr. Ashley.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out to the word ' and ' in page 20, line 34, stand part of the clause."
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the hon. Member had spoken as though they had it in contemplation to substitute for the Reserve properly so-called the men of these training battalions. They had never proposed anything of the kind. The battalions would be mobilised with their own reserves. How the eventual normal strength of the Reserve, about 115,000, was arrived at, was made luminously clear in an article by the military correspondent of The Times last Wednesday. He admitted that they had made various changes in the terms of service, and, of course, they could not 1128 have as large a Reserve as under the three years system; but the three years system had broken down completely. It was, perhaps, the most dreadful blunder that had been made in recent years. It had gone as a principle; there were no three years service men in the Infantry of the Line. [Mr. ASHLEY: The Guards.] They had got rid of it in the Infantry of the Line. The Reserve they asked for was sufficient to mobilise a battalion and to leave something over. That being so, what was it that the men in these third battalions were wanted for? The hon. Member assumed that they were going out as units. They were not; nothing of the sort had ever been suggested. The only reason why they took young men of seventeen was that they might get the men who were now got in the Militia, and who went through the Militia to the Line. They would take them from that age and upwards in order to get a stream of recruits for the Line. They would prefer to take men of nineteen or twenty for training, and would try to take them at an age not less than eighteen. The third battalions did not exist for the purpose of going out as units; they existed simply for the purposes of drafts to provide for the wastage of war. It was no objection that a man enlisted in the training battalion when of tender years, for he was not used until he became of the proper age. The men of the training battalion were not intended to go out into the first line at the commencement of war; that was the function of the Reserve brought out at mobilisation. The men who went out from the training battalion would be men selected from that establishment, who were of sufficient age to go out as drafts to supply wastage. The Japanese military authorities supplied their wastage from drafts who had some times had three months' training and sometimes less, and they found it answered very well so long as they got drafts. To send out men of immature age was under any circumstances foolish, but as he had explained, such youths were taken in order to provide the machinery for drafts. The present condition of the Line was one of confusion. The Militia Reserve was destroyed in 1901, and no machinery was then supplied for providing drafts. What was the proposition of the right hon. Member for Croydon? He was going 1129 to create trained Reservists, but what sort of men were to go into it? Under the Government's system the men of the Reserve who mobilised the battalions were highly trained men who had served with the colours; but the right hon. Gentleman proposed to abolish Reserves and depots, and to do all the dreadful things of which the hon. Member had spoken. The right hon. Gentleman proposed to substitute for a large portion of the high class Reserve which we had at present, and which the Government meant to keep, men who had two years training. They, however, did not propose to disturb the function of the Reserve, nor to abolish Reserves; what they did was to fill up a gap that had existed up to now in the organisation of our forces in consequence of there being no machinery for providing drafts. That was the primary and only purpose of the organisation to which this part of the Bill referred.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he was glad that this was one of the portions of the Bill that the Committee was allowed to discuss, because in his opinion the clause which abolished the Militia was the most important in the Bill. He had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would have been able to give more comfort and satisfaction to the Committee than he had. This part of the Bill affected the fighting portion of the Army. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the clause was lucid, but it was not very lucid to him. It dealt with three distinct classes of Reservists. He was in the company of twelve very competent persons not long ago, and they were absolutely divided in opinion as to what the clause really referred to. There were three classes of Reservists who came within the purview of the clause. There were those who, enlisting in the Territorial Army, enlisted on a special basis, received a special training, and passed to a special branch of the Army in time of war. In the second place, there were the men who were now serving as special Reservists in the Army, and were called to form a striking force in the case of small wars. Lastly, there were the Reservists who, by the Bill they were now discussing, formed the special contingent. He proposed to discuss the question of the third class of Reservists. The right hon. Gentleman had criticised 1130 his hon. friend, thinking he had made the statement that these Reservists ware to act as units. He did not think his hon. friend had made any such statement, and he himself had certainly never done so. On the contrary, he thought the gravamen of their charge against the Bill was that there would be no units, and that it would actually destroy potential units by the creation of a force which could never be embodied in units until it was in the presence of the enemy.
It was absolutely impossible to discuss the clause without taking into consideration something which did not appear in it. Why was the clause necessary at all? It was necessary because the War Office knew perfectly well that in time of war the Army Reserve would be totally inadequate for the purpose of a great war. He maintained that what he had stated with regard to the Reserve, if it erred at all, erred on the side of moderation. They were now preparing, with their eyes open, for a state of things more serious than confronted the country in 1899. In that year the Army was mobilised. It was not mobilised for a great European War. The losses in the South African War were absolutely nothing to the losses which would unfortunately take place in great conflicts between large bodies of men armed with all the modern weapons. It was notorious, and it was the basis of all the efforts made by Army reformers, that the Reserve in the South African War was absolutely inadequate for the primary purpose for which Reserves were intended, that of bringing fighting battalions up to their war strength. That was not an assertion of his; it was a fact which came out before the War Commission, and which was recorded in a whole series of official publications. The regiments were mobilised, and many of the battalions actually went out 200 short, after taking every Reservist they could get. When the matter was brought to the right hon. Gentleman's attention, what did he say? He gave a strange explanation, which to his mind only made the matter more obscure. He said that nineteen of these battalions had already sent their lndian drafts. What did that teach? It taught them that if the mobilisation had taken place in March instead of October, every single battalion would have sent its Indian drafts, and 1131 that every single battalion would have been 200, 300, and in some cases 400 short of the number of men necessary to enable them to go to war at all. At that time the circumstances were very peculiar. India was not making great demands on this country for drafts; on the contrary, on the outbreak of the war the authorities stopped sending drafts to India, and they even withdrew men from India. The right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well that in any war such as they contemplated the chances were that India would be making very great demands for reinforcements. Yet. they were asked to reproduce not merely a state of things as bad as was experienced in 1899, but a state of things much worse. The right hon. Gentleman had challenged his statement that the Reserve would be greatly reduced. He still maintained that it inevitably would be. He would call attention to two arguments which had been used to refute what he had said on this point. It had been said in the first place that the Army Reserve would be greatly increased because there had been additions to the Army outside the Infantry. That was perfectly true as far as it went. Those additions which were made by the right hon. Gentleman, the Army Service Corps and the Army Medical Corps and other auxiliary branches of the Army, would produce a very small addition to the Army Reserve. Apart from that, they were told that the Army Reserve would be increased, because the number of extensions in the Army was decreasing. What did that mean? That was an excuse; it was nothing but simply an excuse. In the first place, the extensions had not diminished; on the contrary they had increased very heavily, until last year they were heavier than they had been for many years past. To go back to his original proposition, which had not been assailed, and which never would be assailed, they could not get a larger Infantry Reserve by taking off eight battalions from the Infantry, two battalions from the Guards, and reducing all the Home battalions by thirty men. That was not possible. Still less was it possible that, when they had made all these reductions, that they could have an Infantry Reserve nearly 8,000 larger than they had under the old state of things. He had ventured once before to refer to this matter in the House, and he then stated 1132 that there were two Returns emanating from the War Office, and both signed by the same actuary. He could have understood it had the right hon. Gentleman at once said that there was a discrepancy between those two Returns, owing to their having been founded on different bases. But that was not what happened. He did not believe the right hon. Gentleman had over soon the Returns before, but he suggested that those Returns differed in this respect, that the point dealt only with battalions at Home, and dealt with nine years instead of twelve years enlistment. He did not know why these suggestions were made to the House; on the face of the documents, it apparently was not so. Undoubtedly if those suggestions were true they would seriously affect the calculations. But they were both wrong. He had been happily able to give his authority at the moment, and what he had stated was entirely correct. Therefore, they had the fact that the calculations made in 1905 were repeated in 1907 on the same basis, with the exception that the material for making the Reserve in 1907 was much less than in 1905. The excess of Infantry alone as shown in the later return was over was 7,000. He had only had one explanation vouchsafed to him, and he challenged the right hon. Gentleman to sustain that explanation. It was no explanation at all, and he challenged the right hon. Gentleman to say that it had any validity whatever in this matter. It was perfectly true that it they had a larger number of men who were serving seven years, who took their discharge into the Reserve, and did not extend, the Reserve would be prota tanto increased, and the right hon. Gentleman's explanation would be to some extent justified. But even if that were true, the whole question would not be affected by 500 men one way or the other. The facts, however, were not as the right hon. Gentleman had supposed. The extensions were not decreasing, they were increasing, and therefore he had been compelled, in self defence, to repeat his conclusion, a very simple one by itself, that they were preparing smaller Reserves for the Infantry and the Regular Army than they had in 1899. They were also reducing the Reserve of the Guards. They knew how prolific the Guards were in producing Reserves. Perhaps hon. Members hardly realised that 1133 two battalions of the Guards produced 1,900 men as Reserves, and that the Reserve was capable of fitting up the whole Regiment to full war strength, and leaving a margin of over 1,000 men. If they reduced the battalions of Guards they seriously affected the Reserve; and when they destroyed eight battalions of Infantry they still further reduced the Reserve. He had given the result of the calculations, and he submitted that the fighting strength of the Reserve, after making the requisite reductions for Infantry of the Line, would not exceed, on classes A, B and D, 50,000 men. That was a very important fact, if true. It was a fact so important that it ought to be tested thoroughly from beginning to end to ascertain whether it was or was not the case, because, if it were the ease, the state of things would be as in 1899, only very much worse. That was why they had the proposal now to supplement the Reserve with this special contingent. The right hon. Gentleman in justification of his proposal had referred to the fact that the Japanese had sent a large number of men of three months' service only as drafts to their Army. Would it not have been a good deal better if the right hon. Gentleman had added the rest of the story? The Japanese who were sent to the front were men who had been two years in training under officers of the Regular Army, and they were all men of over twenty years of age. During the Russo Japanese War some of the Reserves sent out were in many cases used as drafts into different regiments. It was true that a certain number of men were sent with a vary small amount of training. Why? Because the Japanese thought that was a proper thing to do, and because they desired to do it? Not at all. It was simply due to the fact that the Japanese system was a comparatively new one, and that there were men in the Reserves who had not passed the initial stage of training for the Army. But that lesson was no lesson for us, and the right hon. Gentleman should have gone a little further and said that the Japanese were contented with the arrangement. It was only under the compulsion of circumstances that they allowed any of these men to go to the front, and for the future the whole of the Japanese army would receive this tremendous disciplinary instruction for two years in the 1134 ranks of the Regular Army and in the Reserve. The right hon. Gentleman said something about what the late Government had done in respect of the provision of a Reserve and the raising of men with two years' training. The training proposed was that which had been recommended by every soldier, and was, moreover, that which was given to every European Army without exception, and there were hundreds of these men in the Reserve who had received this training up to the present time. There was definite and specific training, and when the right hon. Gentleman spoke of men being unfit to serve in the ranks when they had only had two years training he was saying something which was remarkably incompatible with what he had asked the Committee to do under this scheme. Moreover, there was no intention of discharging men into the Reserve and of allowing them to remain without training; on the contrary, the training was specifically provided for. But if the men with two years training with the colours and under their own officers were unfit to serve in the Reserve at the age of twenty, how much more unfit would boys be who were enlisted at the age of seventeen and discharged straightway into the gutter, to be taken at the end of two or three years to servo in the Regular Army? What was this Reserve going to be? The right hon. Gentleman said that he would take any age he could get, and he had told the Committee that he proposed to take into this contingent the men who now went into the Militia. The Committee knew exactly what these men were like. They could be divided into two categories—(1) Men capable of going into the Line; and (2) men who were not capable of entering it. But the Line would make a demand upon these boys to the extent of 12,000 or 13,000 a year; so that out of 28,000 boys recruited for the Militia at least 12,000 over eighteen years must be taken from the contingent. It was obvious, therefore, that the bulk of the special contingent must be boy between seventeen and eighteen years of age. What was to happen then? Those boys went into the depots at the age of seventeen. In some cases seventy per cent. of the boys were only waiting their opportunity to pass from the depots into the Line. They were without moral or physical training, and 1135 they were not in any sense the material of which any Army could be composed. Two out of three of these boys died out of the Army before they came to the period when a man was qualified to enter the Reserve. They died out on being tested by the realities of the Army service—the hardships, the trials of campaigning, and marching. But after two months training in the depots these new Reservists were to be turned adrift, with no occupation, no help, receiving sixpence a day, or just enough to maintain themselves as loafers. At the end of a year, or a year and a half, they came back to the depot and remained for another four months. When they came back they found a new set of comrades, and having got six months training in two parts, they would be discharged. They were taken away from the influence of the officers, from association with their comrades; they never saw their regiments or their officers, and yet they were supposed to be first-class Reservists for the British Army. Within three months of the opening of any war the Infantry Reserve of the Army would be exhausted, and these boys would have to go to the front; nay, they would have to go into the ranks the moment mobilisation was decided upon. Battalion after battalion was sent out short in 1899, some as much as 200 men short. Under this scheme the War Office were putting these boys to bear the brunt of battle alongside the Regular troops on the very day war was declared. We had learned many lessons on this subject. In 1899, 80,000 or 90,000 boys were left behind because they were unfit to take their places in the ranks. They were attached by the thousand to the Militia. It was right to leave the boys behind, because they were unfit by every rule of common sense and medical hygiene to go to the front. But what happened to them? They were actually sent to the front to the number of 18,000 with the Militia battalions to which they were attached. That was the kind of risk we were now running again, and the time might come when that risk would be much greater than in 1899. The right hon. Gentleman had never been able to give information as to what proportion of those boys was likely to be available at any time. The total number was 72,000, including the Irish Militia. He had gone carefully into these figures, 1136 and he maintained that they stood. These boys as a rule would be enlisted between seventeen and eighteen, and they would be for one, two, or two and a half years drawing pay as soldiers of the Crown, and supposed to be part of the strength of the Army when they were absolutely forbidden by the regulations of the Army from taking part in any war. He wanted to know the proportion of the 72,000 who would be between seventeen and twenty, because, when they calculated on this Reserve, he said that such a reserve was never heard of in any other country. In the case of the German and the French armies the reserve could be called upon immediately, and the reserves could go the front. He would not dogmatise on the subject, as he had not the figures before him, but he ventured to suggest that the probability was that not fifty per cent. of these boys would be allowed to go to the front with their battalions. They would be here paying for a nominal reserve of 72,000, of which only 36,000 would be able to render the very modest services which the right hon. Gentleman expected. Was that common sense? Ought they to be told that this was a reserve on which they could rely in the event of war? The Irish Militia had been included in this force. That seemed to him another example of the extraordinary make-believe of the whole Bill. Why were eight battalions of the Irish Militia to be kept for this purpose? They would, he supposed, guard the lines of communication, reinforce the garrisons at Malta or Gibraltar. Why? Was it on military grounds that they were selected? Was it because they were specially good battalions, full of officers and full of men? Was it because their numbers were particularly large? It was a piece of pure political expediency, and nothing else the scheme would not fit Ireland. The Government were playing a game with regard to the Irish Militia battalions. It was unthinkable, in the case of war, that they should be compelled to rely upon the accident whether eight Irish Militia battalions, selected by a series of accidents, would be able to undertake the duty to be placed upon them. He thought it really approached the bounds of farce. He had talked to many officers about this special contingent, for he confessed it was the part of the whole scheme 1137 in the Bill which interested him most. He had asked them how they would like to lead these men in war, but he had not found one who would care to do so. At the time of the Crimean War we were not able to rely on the streams of patriotism which the right hon. Gentleman was relying on. At the end of two and a half years fighting we had 15,000 foreigners paid as British soldiers camped on Chobham Common.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid we had not then the Cardwell system.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he was sure that interruption meant something to the right hon. Gentleman, but it did not mean anything to him. What had the Cardwell system to do with the question whether they could rely on streams of patriotism to make up the shortage of the Regular Army in the Crimean War? We were then paying 15,000 Germans and Swiss to play at being British soldiers here in England. That was a lesson of some value, which should be remembered when considering this scheme. We never kept up an Army of 40,000 in the field, but we went into the open market and tried to buy up boys. We bought up a certain number of boys and sent them out, but they were unsatisfactory as to training. What happened? It was a melancholy story. Those boys could not be got out of the trenches in front of the Redan, and gave no support to the gallant men who formed the forlorn hopes. Was it any blame to the boys? He supposed that no boys in the world would have behaved very differently, looking to their physique and moral standard. The things which they did were not because of their lack of good will. The qualities which went to make up a soldier came from the power to face death in an emergency; they came from a variety of reasons which went to make up a human soul in time of war. He asked if that was to go entirely disregarded by the right hon. Gentleman. He submitted to the Committee that he had made out a prima facie case. He thought he had proved, in the first place, that even on the most sanguine estimate the Infantry Reserve would be insufficient. It would be totally insufficient to mobilise the Army. Whether that was so or not, it would be absolutely insufficient to 1138 keep it in the field, and then would come the time when we should have to fall back on two sources of reinforcement. We should have to fall back on the Territorial Army which had been discussed for the past few days. Who for a moment pretended that we were going to get out of the Territorial Army the necessary reinforcements for the Army in the field in a modern war? The other source of reinforcement would be the boys of the special contingent. All information as to that contingent had been refused to the Committee up to the present moment. They did not know the estimate of the numbers, they did not know where they were coming from, or how many were to be available for the purposes of war. If there were any hon. Members who were not satisfied with the accuracy of what he had said, they could easily by inquiry find out that it was true. He asked them to inquire, so that they might be prevented from relying on this force in time of war. The matter was deadly serious. The authorities might play with troops at home, but they could not afford to play with the Army they had to fight with in time of war. The matter was all the more serious, because, in his belief, they were doing almost irreparable harm by depriving themselves of one adjunct of the Regular Army which had stood the country in good stead in the past, and might be made to serve them again well in the future —he meant the Militia. He sincerely trusted hon. Members would refuse to pass this clause, or, if they did, would do all in their power to repair the evil which he much feared must result.
§ MR. COURTENAY WARNERhoped the Secretary of State would see his way to modify this clause. While he admitted that there would be enormous advantage in being able to embody a large number of men when war came, he thought there was some danger under the proposed new system in regard to the training of recruits. They were to be trained at depots under officers and noncommissioned officers whom they would not see again. He looked upon the special contingent clause of the Bill as somewhat dangerous, not only in respect of drafts for the Regular Army, but in respect of the whole military system throughout the country. Hon. Members 1139 might say that he was prejudiced in favour of the Militia, with which he had been a long time connected. He had recently seen the Militia and the Regular troops working together on Salisbury Plain, and he was convinced of the great advantage the country had enjoyed in the past from being able to reinforce the Regular Army by drafts from the Militia. It was the historical force from which drafts had been drawn. The Army was reinforced by Militia drafts at Agincourt, in the Peninsula, and at Waterloo. The men under this new scheme would only have the training in the barrack yard, or at most a little while on Salisbury Plain. They would not have the training of men who had been taught to look up to their officers, and who realised that they were part of a vast organisation in which each soldier felt that on his obedience to orders the fortunes of a whole brigade or division might depend. He did not attach the same importance as hon. Gentlemen opposite to the name Militia, or to the historical traditions which attached to it; but he thought the organisation of men in fighting ought to be that in which they were trained. When they had their recruits and got them trained, they ought to be able to take them with their regimental officers as a whole, instead of in drafts, because he thought it likely that in time of war the battalions would be wanted, not merely as drafts, but to form actual brigades, and battalions would be utterly useless unless the officers and non-commissioned officers knew each other. He hoped the men who formed third battalions would be trained as battalions, and as they would have been if they had been Militia. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman himself would consider whether it was possible to retain the old battalions of the Militia and make them into the third battalions which the right hon. Member for Croydon had called the special contingents. He hoped that these men who were to form the third battalions would be trained as battalions, as they would have been if they had been in the Militia. He did not think it was necessary to keep to the old name of the Militia or of the old battalions. He knew that it was not the senior officers who would be wanting. There were lots of old colonels who had served their time in the Army; and at present the Militia 1140 produced an enormous number of company officers, although that force could do with a great many more. They had been trained as Militia officers. He was not saying that they were good officers, but they were better than officers who had not been trained at all. More than half of the officers he had talked to would not join the Territorial Army, and he thought it would be a great pity if so many officers were lost. He did not think that they would lose the men who formerly joined the Militia. Then as to the establishment of the special Reservists, if they were trained only for six months they would be inefficient as Reservists, because, for one reason, they would go to the front with officers they did not know. He hoped the battalion system would be kept up. He was sure that if the system were tried in one or two counties, and if the Reservists so trained were to join the Regular Army, it would be found how inefficient they would be. He knew that the Duke of Wellington did not think much of the Militia, but in those days the Militia were not trained so well as they had been in recent years. The Militia, however, had always been useful for providing drafts to the Regular Army. He did not see how the opinion of Commanding Officers should interfere with that of the country. When the country demanded drafts for the Regular Army, it was the duty of the Militia to supply them. He hoped that the training would not be confined to two, four, or six months after the outbreak of war, but that it would be continued for a month every year, and that the Reservists would not be trained in depots, but in battalions.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid that the importance of this clause had been in no way exaggerated by the right hon. Member for Croydon. He agreed, in the main, with the observations of the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division, who was an expert on this branch of the subject, and whose views ought to have considerable weight with the Secretary of State for War. He himself did not think that the Militia colonels ever made any objection to the Militia being liable, and to the Militia units being made liable, for service abroad. What they objected to was being required to furnish all their best men at a time of crisis as drafts for the benefit of the Regular Army. He objected to the depot system 1141 of training the Reservists. It would involve a very large expenditure of public money if the depots were to be made capable of training even 250 men. What efficient training could be given to a battalion of 250 men? It would be absolutely useless. There would be casualities, guard duties, orderlies, servants, and the available strength for training could only be at most 150 to 200 men. It was not at all likely that good officers from the Regular Army could be got to enter that service, which would be extremely irksome. The only pleasure in instruction to a good officer was to see the results of that instruction; but if those officers were going to be nothing but drill sergeants, and never to see their men again, they would be little inclined to take a real interest in them. The depot system had always been a failure He quite sympathised with the view of the Secretary of State for War as to the necessity of his being able to lay his hands on a large number of men to serve abroad; but why was the organisation of the Militia to be put into the melting pot? Why should the right hen. Gentleman go in for this system of special reservists? There would be no esprit-de-corps amongst them; the officers would not know their men, who would do their duty in the most perfunctory manner they possibly could. He understood that an experiment of the scheme was to be tried in the counties of Lancashire and Northamptonshire; if so hew long would it be before this branch of the Territorial Force was established? He put it, at the minimum, at ten years. If any communications had passed between the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Lichfield, the Committee should be taken into his confidence in regard to this question of the special reservist battalions. He also urged thy right hon. Gentleman to reply in detail to the observations of the right hon. Member for Croydon, who spoke with great authority and knowledge on this difficult and complex problem. The observations which had fallen from hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, as well as from the Opposition, showed that the Committee, as a whole, felt that they were entitled to a more explicit declaration than they had yet received from the Secretary of State.
THE UNDER - SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (MR. CHARLES HOB-HOUSE, Bristol, E )said he did not propose to follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon into all the figures and statistics which he laid before the Committee; but he wanted to answer what he believed to be the gravamen of his charge against this clause, and to reply to the principle involved in it. He thought everyone who had spoken that evening ignored the reason why they were bound to have such a clause as this. If the Committee would accept for a moment the principle that they must have a system of special Reservists, they would see, he thought, why the clause was necessary. Under the Reserve Forces Act, 1890, men might be enlisted and enter the Reserve without any term of practical Army service. At the present moment a man could not be admitted for training into the Reserve without his first enlisting in the Army, and this clause would enable them to take the special Reservist and pass him at once into the Reserve Force, without going through the farce of first making him a Regular soldier. The clause was absolutely necessary in order to create the class of special Reservists. The pith of the speech of the right hon. Member for Croydon was that the proposal of his right hon. friend would leave the Army with a smaller number of Regular Reservists than were found available at the outbreak of the South African war. At the present moment the calculation of his right hon. friend, which had been very carefully made, and was supported by that most acute critic, the military correspondent of The Times, was that the Reserve would number about 115,000. When the war broke out in 1899 there were at the outside about 80,000 Reservists, and that number failed to bring all the battalions up to war strength. In some regiments there were not enough, and in others there were too many, and there was no power to transfer from one corps to another. In a very carefully prepared memorandum the right hon. Gentleman, when Secretary for War in 1905–6, told them that the condition of the Militia was very unsatisfactory, and said it would in some cases be necessary to reduce units, and that in others the only possible course would be to amalgamate units, getting 1143 rid of about one half of the Militia units. If the Militia was to be used as a purely draft producing force, it would never be able to go abroad in the form of units, and it mattered very little whether it was called Militia or training battalions. It was true that the old Militia Reserve produced at the outbreak of the war 2.8,000, but the special contingent of his right hon. friend would produce about 33,000, and the amount of training which they would have would be very nearly, if not quite, as large as that of the old Militia reserve. What was the position? The Militia, as now enlisted, went out for training foreighty-fourdays, but the special reservists would go out for practically twice that time, although it was true that in subsequent years the period of training was reduced. In this they were following the example of the Swiss Army. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had dwelt at considerable length on the supplies of reserves. He would point out that under the proposals of his right hon. friend sixty-six battalions would be mobilised, producing a force of about 160,000 men. No proposal to mobilise so large a striking force was ever contemplated before. There would be no more of that hurrying immature men to the front, and he hoped that those members of the Committee who looked at the question from an impartial point of view would not forget the extraordinary advantages to be gained from the great increase in the striking force.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid those who had listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had been greatly impressed by the tragic seriousness of this part of the Bill, and he wondered what attitude the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken would have taken if he had been sitting on that side of the House. The other day the hon. Gentleman used some rather contemptuous terms with regard to certain remarks he had made in reference to a reform of the Militia. But there opposite to him sat a Militia reformer in the person of the hon. Gentleman himself, who evidently believed in the reform of that force. The hon. Gentleman had suggested that his right hon. friend had stated that he himself would have reformed the Militia, and indicated in what way he would have reformed it. He did not think his right hon. friend 1144 did anything of the kind. He had turned up an admirable article written two years ago by the hon. Gentleman on the question of how the Militia could be reformed, and how the Militia and the Rifle Brigade could' be increased by 40 per cent. if certain suggestions were adopted. Throughout these debates, however, the hon. Gentleman had done nothing but pour contempt upon all their suggestions as to the reform of the Militia.
§ MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid that in what he stated about the Militia he was quoting from a memorandum issued by the Secretary of State for War.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid that that might be so, but the hon. Gentleman did not quote himself as one who had taken considerable part in Army debates. His right hon. friend had expressed no intention to abolish the Militia, although he had pointed out the weakness of the force, as it was his duty to do when he was War Minister. It was now, however, proposed by the present Secretary for War to wipe out the Militia, and instead to put in its place this new force.
§ MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEI did ' not say so.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid it appeared from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the Government proposed to take their men from a training battalion, and so provide a regular scheme of drafts for the Army in time of war. But what different scheme of drafts? The men were taken between seventeen and twenty years of age to provide those drafts. Was not that the whole point? To his mind the basis of the whole scheme was wrong. The training battalions had no prestige, no traditions, and nothing which would attract men to them, and even after they had been trained they would have no feeling about them. He had made a note of two or three points which struck him as to these training battalions as distinguished from the Militia. The men would not be trained near their homes, or in special battalions, and they would not have any service together to give them cohesion and smooth working as arose under the system of training adopted by the Militia. In the training battalions 1145 there would be no comradeship and no traditions. There was no esprit de corps and there was no common danger or service with their colleagues which would draw the men together. The men would be men from a training battalion and nothing more. There was no idea of regimental prestige or of attachment to the colours and none of the allurements of a march-out as a body of men attached to the same force. They could not disregard all these things which had gone to make up a body having traditions which were loved. Probably the best class of young men who joined the Militia had been attracted in the first instance by outside show, but there would be nothing of that sort; moreover, outside show had a power to make a man. He ventured to say that three-fourths of the "corner boys "who enlisted in the Militia had no idea of patriotism or national service. They were after a job, and this was a job which allured them from certain aspects. It was after they had enlisted in the Militia that there grew up in the minds of the men some conception of what the game was and what soldiering meant to himself, his fellow countrymen, and the nation. There was no Militiaman who had been long in the service who did not feel that the Militia did not exist alone, but as a part of a machine under the control of the officers, the non-commissioned officers and the colonel, who was to the youug soldier a kind of demi-god. All those qualities which went to make up a soldier were found in the Militia to a far greater degree than would the case in special contingent. His hon. and gallant friend had said it would take ten years to produce the Army which the Secretary of State for War was looking for, and the right hon. Gentleman had expressed the same opinion himself. He always read the right hon. Gentleman's speeches with admiration, because he had a way of protecting himself by means of glittering generalities which attracted for the moment but conveyed no idea to the mind of the listener. The right hon. Gentleman often relied upon a fine theatrical and sometimes a dramatic speech. For instance, the right hon. Gentleman had said he had been thinking for a year, and a year was not sufficient to deal with the great problem of the British Army, nor ten years,—indeed he thought twenty-five years could not 1146 effectively solve that great problem. For himself he thought the Bill proved that very conclusively, and this part of the Bill more clearly than any other, because it was just on this clause that the Bill broke down. With the hon. Member for Lichfiold he believed that the Militia could have been reformed and could have supplied effective drafts, but instead of reforming it the right hon. Gentleman offered them this special contingent composed of young men seventeen years of age who could not provide efficient drafts nor be sent abroad. This proposal would lead to the lowest class of men in point of physique and citizenship joining the special Reserve because they were driven to it by want. A totally different class of men would thus be passed into the Reserve, and when they went to the front they would go really as infants in training for war, and what would be left would be the Territorial Army. If war broke out on the frontiers of India it would not be only the 160,000 men that would be wanted. Before six months they would want not only the Reservists but every man of the Territorial Army. In the event of a big war, moreover, not only need the entire Army but 200,000 or 300,000 Volunteers would be needed as well. The Japanese to face the Russians had to have 750,000 men in the first eight months of the war. Clause 29 was to his mind the whole crux of the Bill, and under it the Secretary for War would have a class of Reservists such as had never been used in the past, and which after one experience would never be used again.
§ *MAJOR DUNNE (Walsall)wished to call the attention of the Committee to one aspect of the Special Contingent battalions which had received scarcely any notice, viz., their relation to what were now known as provisional battalions. He happened to be during the whole of the South African War employed on the General Staff of the Aldershot District. He might tell the Committee that the work of these provisional battalions was extremely unsatisfactory. In the exigencies of the campaign there was considerable difficulty in regard to officers, non-commissioned officers, and men. There was continual change going on in connection with the battalions. They were not there a month, 1147 not even a week, before they were sent off to the seat of war, and their place would be taken by Militia officers, and in some cases by Volunteer officers; in a very large number of cases there were Reserve officers. The result of it was that the training was very inadequate, and the whole object for which they were sent abroad was defeated. What they had especially to contend with was the very bad interior arrangements of the battalions. He knew that incertainly one battalion the public service lost considerable sums of money simply because of their inability to bring home responsibility for the maladministration of the different companies of these battalions to any officer. As soon as they tried to bring home responsibility to any officer probably he had already left for the seat of war. It was never possible to bring home to any one the loss on the accounts of a company, owing to the continual changes. He welcomed the special contingents, or third battalions as he preferred to call them, under the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman. They would provide a permanent organisation which would take all the masses of recruits who would undoubtedly come forward under the enthusiasm of war; they would get them from the depot and get them fully enrolled in the third battalions. He thought that there would be a very ample opportunity of training these men, who were of the same standard of training as the old Militia Reserve. They would be under permanent officers in charge of the different companies forming the battalions. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would allow him to make one suggestion, or give him one warning in connection with the establishment of the third battalions. Four captains were to be put in command of the companies forming the third battalions, and his suggestion was they should permanently remain in command of their companies. He would also suggest that the colour-sergeants should also remain permanently. He had no doubt that in time of war much pressure would be brought to bear on the Secretary for War to allow those officers to go out to the seat of war. They all knew that when war broke out every soldier worthy the name of soldier was anxious to go out. But it should be clearly established that the officers in command of these companies were to remain per- 1148 manently in command of their companies. In that way they would be of real service. Undoubtedly, it would be an invidious duty, and none of the officers would like it. If, however, it was shown that the duty which they performed was of great advantage to their country, though the situation was unpleasant, they would see that they were doing a great and good work here, and he thought that it should have its distinctions and rewards, as did the work of their more fortunate brother officers in the field. If such distinctions were conferred, he thought that they would get the right sort of officers to remain behind. He hoped that the War Office would heartily recognise the sacrifice that these officers and non-commissioned officers would make in retaining permanently command of the companies of these battalions, while other more fortunate officers were at the seat of war.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYasked the Secretary of State for War to realise what sort of officer he was likely to get if he adopted the suggestion which had just been made. The officer was to train the men and put spirit into them, and then he was to say to them, "I am not going out myself. I will teach you how to advance and attack, but I am not going out to advance and attack." Training of that sort would not be worth its salt; he did not admire it at all. He could not quite follow the hon. Gentleman in his idea as to the advantage that would accrue to the recruits in joining the third battalions of their own regiments. The third battalions were not going to be third battalions of their regiments. They would be a conglomerate mass of men coming from one regiment and another; they would not be trained by any officer attached to any particular regiment at all; and everything that was of value in a regiment would be remarkably absent in their training. He certainly agreed that the clause had for many of them, certainly for those who were or had been regular officers, a more intense interest than any other clause in the Bill. If the country would only recognise that all these schemes were not worth consideration, unless they led up to the effectual reinforcement of that part of the Army which had to do the fighting abroad, it would better realise what was required. All the rest was blether and 1149 nonsense and not worth wasting time about. It was in regard to that provision that the scheme unfortunately broke down. He asked the Committee to realise hew far that essential purpose was being met by the provisions of this clause. War on a large scale, and not on a small scale, was the essential fact before them. There were now no long wars. The enemy could not be persuaded to play the game according to rules laid down, it could not be postulated that there should be six months' notice and a large amount of warning before war broke out. If this scheme were adopted, on the sudden outbreak of war on a large scale the War Office would have to make provision for the mobilisation of the whole fighting line. Then they had to test the scheme by examining hew far it would support that fighting line in action. What had they got? They would mobilise the 160,000 men, and then they would take every single man of the first class Army Reserve, made up of men effectively trained with the regiment, who might be relied on to do their work well and to maintain to the full the fighting efficiency of the various battalions to which they were sent. But it should be remembered that even the men of the first-class Army Reserve were a little time before they fused absolutely with the other elements of the regiment. He acknowledged that they were good stuff, and rapidly became moulded into first-rate soldiers, as good as any they could have for their purposes. Let not hon. Members exaggerate or think that any men who were not fresh from training were as good as men fresh from training; they were not so good for the purpose of endurance or discipline. The right hon. Gentleman had said that he was to have the use of a number of his battalions; were they going to be an efficient part of his Reserve; was he still going to get a larger Reserve with a smaller amount of material?
§ MR. HALDANEIt will be larger than it was.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYpointed out that the right hon. Gentleman did not make his machine any larger to produce the supply; the machine was diminished in size, and yet it was said that they were going to have a greater product than the 1150 larger machine had been capable of. That was one of the most astonishing things to him, and he could not make it out at present. They had got the first-class Army Reserve, and so far he was satisfied. Then they had to fall back upon the amount of reinforcements provided by the special Reservists. The fact remained that the reserves drawn by these battalions were not going to be very valuable as reserves. They would lack a great portion of the most necessary training of a soldier, and when they were put into the ranks of the fighting force they would be without that which made a first-class Army Reserve valuable. If the authorities relied upon them they would rely on a broken reed. He did not say that, after several months with their comrades, they would not pick up all that was necessary, but that they ought to have all that was requisite when they joined, and they were first called upon to fight. The Committee must recognise that danger would lie in the fact that they might have to face a very severe action with troops a portion of whom were not reliable because they had not been efficiently trained. They did not provide under this Bill that one single man of the Territorial Force need go. Let them assume that the war was unpopular.
*THE CHAIRMANI really think we must adhere a little more closely to this clause which deals with special reservists and not with the Territorial Force.
§ COLONEL KENYON - SLANEYsaid that when the debates commenced he expected to find himself in agreement with the Secretary of State for War in regard to the Militia. At first he fancied that the right hon. Gentleman was proceeding on the right lines in reducing the Militia, but the whole course of the debate had shown that he was utterly wrong upon that point. In his opinion it would have been much better had the Government taken the Militia as it stood and made them the most effective part of the reinforcing portion of the new Army. The present training of the Militia might not be all they could wish, but it was four times better than that which they were now proposing. Those who were old soldiers were apt to attach far more importance to the training of the men than those who had not served in the 1151 Regular Array. He did not see how they were going to get effective reinforcements on the lines upon which the special Reserves were to be trained. How could they get an effective fighting force if the men had not the essential element of trust in their officers and that loyal spirit which impelled a man to go to the front instead of to the rear? They could not deal with soldiers on logical or mathematical lines; they had to deal with them as human beings affected by certain impulses. The country would be blind to its own interest if it relied on men so trained for forming any valuable portion of the reinforcing force. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would recognise the opinion of those who had probably not been slow in expressing their views behind the scenes. He regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not got the full benefit he ought to have got out of the Militia. He hoped the Committee would recognise that unless the Army scheme provided that the fighting line should be reinforced by a sufficient number of trained men the country would be running a very grave danger.
§ *SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDERsaid that this was one of the most important clauses in the Bill, and upon its maintenance in its entirety depended the whole structure of the scheme of Army organisation proposed by his right hon. friend. The scheme they were discussing depended largely upon the Militia, and it contemplated not the extinguishing of that force, but simply a transformation. That transformation was directed into two channels, the first of which had already been dealt with in a previous clause giving an option to the Militia battalions to transfer themselves bag and baggage to the Territorial Army. He was glad that the Amendments intended to upset that proposal were successfully resisted, and he hoped the Amendment now under consideration which was intended to upset the second channel of transformation would meet with the same result. The second channel was the establishment of these special battalions or draft-producing depots. It had been said that the right hon. Gentleman would not secure from these depots an efficient type of soldier because they would not be constituted under the same organisation as the present Militia. 1152 The importance of these depots was confined to securing an adequate number of drafts for the other units. The Militia as units would still exist; but, whereas there were now but some 94,000 Militia available in an emergency, in future there would be the whole 300,000 of the Territorial Army. These draft-producing depots offered a completely new supply for the Army. They were an advance on anything that had been in existence before. These drafts were over and above the present system of draft producing from the Militia and from the first-class Army Reserve into the Regular Army. The depots were purely for draft purposes. If these men were being asked to go out as units under the depot system without battalion discipline there would be some force in the opposition of hon. Members opposite, but as long as the depots were being established for draft-producing purposes there was no strength in their arguments. The present Regular first-class Reserve would be absorbed almost to a man on the outbreak of war upon mobilisation, and these depots would be asked to supply the first drafts of men two or three months after the outbreak of the war. The scheme which his right hon. friend had introduced was entirely new, and was in advance of anything which had been introduced in the Army before. The Committee would remember what happened to the immature ill-trained boys who were sent out to the Crimea. In the case of the South African War the first drafts sent out were the men who had been condemned and discarded by the Regular battalions upon mobilisation. They had been serving in the Regular regiments, but upon mobilisation they were not able to pass the standard. Later in the war the depot centres were filled up by recruits. Fortunately the infantry battalions at the front in South Africa were not called very much into requisition, but if they had been called upon to do much fighting, with the incomplete organisation in this country, great deterioration would have set in. The conclusion which he drew from these previous experiences was that the special reserve depot was a clear profit beyond anything the Army had enjoyed hitherto. It must be better than any substitute which would be casually raised in time of emergency to meet the demands which had not been met by previous arrangements. They must have drafts. The 1153 present Militia system would not provide those drafts. They could not be obtained from levies on the reserve of the Regular Army unless they were prepared largely to increase the Regular Army, and that the country was not prepared to do, or to revert to the system of short service of three years which was tried by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon and found to be a hopeless failure, because the drafts could not be provided for the garrisons and for service abroad. The short service system was right so far as the Guards were concerned, but it must be remembered that they did not provide drafts for abroad. It was said that under the new scheme they would not get the men. There had been many predictions about the Army in recent years which had been proved to be false. At any rate it was worth trying. It was bound to be somewhat of an experiment. The second criticism was as to the standard of efficiency. They were told that the necessary standard of efficiency would not be got from these men under the depot system. There would be great force in that argument if the men had to go out as units or battalions to fight in an incompletely trained state, but when they were sent as drafts he thought most modern scientific soldiers would agree that the position was quite different. The men would go into depots for six months, and be trained by highly trained officers and non-commissioned officers. They would get in that time somewhat of cohesion, and although naturally they would not be the same as if they were trained under the battalion system, there was no reason why they should not get as good training and as successful results as in the period of time allotted to Militiamen. In the opinion of modern scientific soldiers the usefulness of men as partially trained units as compared with men in unprepared units was as two to one. That was to say 2,000 ill-trained drafts fighting in well organised battalions would be more useful than 4,000 men constituted in ill-trained or partially trained units. Therefore, in regard to efficiency, these depots would provide all that was necessary in connection with this proposal. The men would be largely recruited at the ago of seventeen. He thought he was right in saying that after they had passed six 1154 months training they were to go into the Reserve for six years. He thought those who had practical experience in these matters were agreed that young men could, at the age of nineteen, be sent out to the front to all temperate climates. They had only to wait two years before these men became useful soldiers at the front. They could discard one-sixth of the men as undergoing training and another sixth as being too young. The remaining four-sixths would be available for all ordinary purposes abroad. The scheme was well worth trying, because it produced drafts and an organisation which was far less expensive than the present. It seemed to him that those who were arguing against the proposal had lost to a certain extent the true perspective of the scheme of Army reform now proposed. If the members of each branch of the Army came to the House and argued for maintaining the traditions of his own particular branch of the service, then it would be impossible for his right hon. friend to attempt any general scheme of Army reform. It was time for those who were interested in particular branches to sink their rather local feelings in regard to the distinctions between different branches and to look at the scheme from a broader point of view. Our voluntary system had great inherent difficulties and the Government were trying to make a large reform to meet the necessities of a wide spreading empire. He sincerely hoped the Committee would resist the Amendment and retain in its entirety the clause which, in his opinion, was the most important in the Bill.
§ *VISCOUNT MORPETHsaid he could not understand how the hon. Baronet opposite could imagine that the Militia in any proper sense would continue to exist after it had been torn asunder in the way proposed. He agreed that the different branches of the Auxiliary Forces should be prepared to make sacrifices for the general good, but that was a sentiment which should have been allowed to stand alone without any pretence that the Militia was going to be saved. What was really vital was the condition of the Regular Army, because the Territorial Forces in most cases would only come into play either to retrieve disaster or to avert it rather later in the day. It was to the initial success of the, 1155 Regular Army that the country must look for safety. The hon. Baronet had said that the men would be able to be sent to the front at nineteen years of age. Throughout the discussions on the Bill they had been told that different categories of troops would be able to serve in different parts of the Empire, some at home, some in Europe, some in the tropics, and some in India. The system which gave so many different categories of men was not a simple one. If some could be used in one place and some in others it was very likely that the whole of them would not be able to be used at the one point where they would be most required. Besides being too young the men were too little trained. The hon. Baronet had rather thrown cold water upon the regimental feeling which existed in the Militia, and had said there was very little distinction between that and the sort of loyalty that could be felt towards the depots, even going so far as to suggest that there might be a sort of depot tradition. He himself did not know what a depot tradition might be, but it would be curious if it could be a substitute for the feeling which existed in the Army and Auxiliary Forces now. If that was the feeling on which the hon. Baronet relied, he had the faintest hopes of what the second line of the right hon. Gentleman's Army was going to be. He did not wish to speak in praise of the product in the past. He thought it was in many respects very bad, but it was probably a great deal better than anything they were likely to see under the present scheme. The men who went into the Militia Reserve and were liable to be drafted into the Regular Army were men who had served a certain length of time in the Militia, had trained under their own officers, and had acquired to some extent the regimental feeling. That would not be the case with the boys who came from the depots. The men sent to the Regular Army from the Militia Reserve were better soldiers than those who would be sent under the new scheme, and who would have no opportunity of learning their duty or becoming acquainted with their comrades. It was perfectly true that when a large number of reservists rejoined the colours the machine did not work as smoothly as in the case of men who were serving with the colours. That was a difficulty in Continental armies when a large number 1156 of reservists were suddenly drafted into the regular army. That difficulty would be emphasised if they had only Reservists in name and not in fact. It had been said that the system was necessary because it was absolutely essential to keep the Regular Army filled up. Every hon. Member acknowledged that; it was only when that object had been achieved and when they had the Regular Army equal to the establishment and that establishment efficient, that they had a right to consider the Auxiliary Forces. The only way to keep the Regular Forces up to full strength was, he contended, to keep the Auxiliary Forces up to full strength. He submitted that the scheme put forward by the right hon. Gentleman would not in any case solve the difficulty. The strength of the Militia now was 90,000 men, and that number was a diminishing one. The strength which the right hon. Gentleman desired for his third battalions was 72,000 men, but what reason was there to expect that he would get them? The Militia was abolishing itself, because it was simply a drafting machine; and it was impossible to get men to join a force when the prospect was that they were to be drilled in the depots and afterwards to be drafted into regiments they cared nothing about? They were told that the Militia were going to be abolished because certain colonels objected to the drafting of their men into the Regular Army. He could prophesy just as well as the right hon. Gentleman, and he declared that the men for these third battalions would not be forthcoming. If they did come, they would be of indifferent quality, and if they did not come the right hon. Gentleman's scheme would break down. The hon. Member for the Abercromby division was very fond of saying that partially trained troops were better than the Regular troops who had had a fuller training. That was a paradox. His own belief was that the men belonging to the Auxiliary Forces were often superior in quality to the men in the Regular Army, and that superiority might make up to a certain degree for a want of training. But certainly no one would be able to maintain that the quality of the men of the third battalions would make up for the deficiency of the training, and to say that they would be more intelligent, better shots, and stronger men than the 1157 Regulars who had had a longer training was to court disaster. A system founded on such a basis must, in his opinion, break down.
§ *MR. REESsaid he was very far indeed from sympathising with that unreasoning and aggressive anti-military spirit which manifested itself in such an extraordinary fashion in certain quarters of the House; but he thought that the hon. Member for Gravesend was talking at large when he declared that 300,000 or 400,000 troops would be wanted on the North-West Indian frontier within a few months of the outbreak of a war with Russia. What we had to fear was a Russian approach by railway towards the Persian Gulf or a railway under German control through Mesopotamia. The danger point had shifted from the frontier hills to the inland sea. An invasion of India by way of Afghanistan was a most unlikely contingency, but war ships in the Gulf were necessary.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANsaid that the hon. Member was going too much into detail, away from the Amendment which the Committee were now discussing.
§ *MR. REESsaid he had been only following the argument of the hon. Member for Gravesend as to what number of men would be available and would be required for re-enforcing the Regular Army on the frontier of India in case of war with Russia. However, he would immediately drop the subject. He presumed he would be in order in saying that if by any compromise the character and composition of the Militia Forces could to any extent be preserved, it would be advantageous to the Territorial Army in his belief, and such preservation would, he was certain, be very acceptable to the Auxiliary Forces.
§ *CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.)said that the Secretary for War had stated in answer to a Question he had put to him that when the Committee came to this particular part of the Bill, he would give information on the points raised in the Question in which the people of Ireland were interested; but so far the right hon. Gentleman had witheld that information. In dealing with the first-class Army Reserve they required to go into every detail, and to examine closely not only 1158 the class of the Reserve but also the class from which it was drawn. At the same time, in order to enable them to judge as to whether the scheme proposed by the Secretary of State for War was good for the country, they were be und to compare the Reserves which he proposed with those that now existed. He failed to see why the right hon. Gentleman had taken such a risk as to do away with the class of men that had been hitherto attracted to the colours in order to secure the power to enlist in the first-class Reserves men who had not served before. It was a very grave risk and one which he did not believe the country was prepared to accept, and he feared if the clause was put into operation it would be found to be a far larger risk than anything which the Secretary of State anticipated. The right hon. Member for Croydon had stated that there were to be left as a sort of connecting link between the old Reserve and the new a certain number of Irish Militia battalions. That was one point on which the right hon. Gentleman ought to have enlightened the Committee He ought to have stated whether they were to be retained in their entirety or to be amalgamated and done away with as Irish battalions. The right hon. Member for Croydon had mentioned that eight battalions were not to be interfered with; but to show the state of chaos that existed in this matter there was a strong rumour in Ireland that it was twelve and not eight.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANsaid that all this had nothing to do with the Amendment under discussion, which was to leave out subsection (1) which simply authorised the enlisting into the first class Army Reserve, of men who had not served in His Majesty's Regular Forces.
§ CAPTAIN CRAIGsaid he only touched upon the point because of the way in which the Secretary of State for War put off the Committee.
§ MR. WYNDHAMpointed out that earlier in the afternoon there was a tacit understanding arrived at between both Front Benches that this would be an appropriate place to consider the two alternatives before them, either to keep the Militia to perform certain functions as at present, or to adopt the now scheme. 1159 He submitted it was rather difficult to develop the argument if it was ruled that these words did not alter the meaning that had been attached to them.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANsaid he did not wish to interfere with any arrangement that had been come to, but it did not appear to him that the observations of the hon. Member were in order.
§ MR. WYNDHAMquite admitted that the words of the Amendment did not suggest what he had said, but there had been a tacit arrangement that on this should take place the debate on the principles of the scheme.
§ MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid he could confirm what the right hon. Gentleman said in that respect.
§ CAPTAIN CRAIGsaid he only wanted to touch upon the question because of the way in which the Committee had been put off, and he would not carry it further. Passing from that he would ask whether they could rely upon the country off-hand filling up the blank left by the abolition of the Militia? Could they on the outbreak of war rely on the country furnishing the Reserves which were necessary to carry on a campaign? In all good faith he held out a solemn warning to the right hon. Gentleman that his Reserves would fail him. He did not say that the men would fail, but he simply said the scheme would break down. They had heard a great deal about the spirit of the depot and the associations which would be thrown around young men of seventeen who were to be brought to the depot to be trained, but he could scarcely imagine that any great amount of regimental enthusiasm could occur on the outbreak of war, when neither the commissioned nor the non-commissioned officers accompanied these boys to the front, and when the boys themselves, who had been trained and brought up in the barrack yard together, did not go out as a unit, but were drafted into different regiments—some to guard the lines of communication and others to go to the 1160 front. The regimental association, such as it was, would be broken into, and there could be no esprit de corps, and none of that tradition which was found under present conditions. There could be none of these things in the new Reserve, especially when they had regard to the fact that nowadays so much depended on the individuality of the various officers. When they considered the lack of inducements for a boy of the proper class to join the new Reserve it was impossible to discover anything which would overcome the difficulties he had mentioned. The pay was not such as would attract the best class of Reservists, and if the best class was required that class must be attracted by either the pay or the terms of service, or in some other way. But even supposing the men would volunteer for the Reserves from patriotic reasons, the training they would receive would be that which was least suited to enable them to perform the functions they would be called upon to perform. If men were to be trained for times of national emergency they must be trained with the troops by the side of whom they were to fight. Were these boys on the outbreak of war expected to go to a foreign land like India and to be drafted into the ranks of seasoned troops? The truth of the matter was that they were not. They were a Reserve on paper only, and on the outbreak of war there would be no Reserve to send to the assistance of the Regular Army at the front. If they were sent out he had no hesitation in saying that they would be a danger to those whom they were sent out to assist. If they were properly trained they would be quite ready to take their place in the ranks of seasoned troops, and would, no doubt, have a steadying influence on the battalion. It seemed to him almost hopeless to expect to get the best results from such an unbusiness like method. A first-class Army Reserve scheme should be thoroughly well thought out by the Government before the Committee was asked to consider it at all. Yet not one question put by the right hon. Member for Croydon had been answered. The speech of the Under-Secretary of State for India could not be considered as an answer in any way by anyone who knew the conditions of the Reserves at the present time. Was it the case, 1161 as the hon. Member for Lichfield inferred in the question he had put to the right hon. Gentleman, that the necessity for the scheme would never have arisen had it not been for the fact that the colonels of Militia regiments objected strongly to their men being sent out as drafts piecemeal? He hardly thought that that was the real reason for this Bill, because when a regiment was sent out to the seat of war it was immediately broken up for drafts; but if it was, the colonels of the Militia who refused to allow their units to be so treated were responsible for the present state of things. It was not possible to have an arrangement for Reserve purposes, whether it was a depot for sending out drafts, or a company raised by somebody in times of emergency, no matter how they were trained at home, by which they could expect to send out men to stand beside seasoned troops. He considered the Bill a retrograde measure, and that the Government were producing a force which was not convenient to handle or to get together. We had now a thoroughly well-trained Reserve which a postcard could call to the colours at any time, and if the right hon. Gentleman was going to destroy that it would be a great convenience to the Committee if he would give them some idea of whether his now Reserve force would be equal to the present; where he was going to draw his reserve from; whether it was going to be the good old Militia Reservist class, or whether a new race was to spring up to fit the coat which the right hon. Gentleman had made for it. The next point was as to the various classes of recruits which the right hon. Gentleman got under this clause. It was possible to raise a class of Reservists in one part of the country who certainly would not harmonise or go well with those from another part. For his part, he would very much have preferred if the right hon. Gentleman could have seen his way to establish a general depot for the training of the first-class Reservists gathered in the various recruiting districts throughout the country. If the units were to be scattered throughout the country where they would be of no use, they would not be worth talking about; there would be no enthusiasm about them. They might call it sentiment if they liked, but the 1162 country was dependent upon sentiment for its Volunteer Army, and not upon conscription or other enforced methods of service The right hon. Gentleman had not given the slightest indication of how he intended to foster that sentiment, nor had he said whether the first class Army Reservists were to be trained at isolated stations throughout the country or brought together at one general depot. He hoped that before the close of the debate the right hon. Gentleman would answer the Questions as regards the Irish regiments, and what was to happen to them.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid he rose to express the earnest hope that they had not heard the last word from the Government upon this all-important, and what he might call, this momentous subsection of the Bill. He hoped that the Committee would understand that he was casting no disparaging reflection upon the reply of the Under-Secretary for India to the heavy indictment delivered earlier in the debate by his right hon. friend the Member for Croydon. That was not the occasion for making scores, even if they could be made, off those who had spoken on the other side. They were not discussing a Party question, and they were not seeking a Party advantage. With the possible exception of the hon. and gallant Member for Chippenham, he was unaware of a single person in the House, or out of the House, in the service, or amongst the gentlemen who wrote the able Military correspondence, who had not expressed some concern as to the possible consequences which might ensue from this clause. The Military Correspondent of The Times had often been cited by be the sides of the House and by the Secretary for War. But the right hon. Gentleman knew that, if they read between the lines of the letters of that distinguished soldier and able journalist, they found great disquietude in his mind at the consequences which might ensue from passing this subsection. He gathered from his letters that the Military Correspondent of The Times would have preferred that the Secretary for War had taken some loss drastic steps in respect of the Militia. And certainly the correspondent of the Westminster Gazette, who had been supporting the right hon. Gentleman, had said more than once, in 1163 so many words, that he would be very glad if the right hon. Gentleman would reconsider the consequences of this sub-section in so far as they affected the Militia. It was not only the most important passage in the whole Bill, but it was of a character quite distinct from any other part. It had far-reaching consequences affecting the forces of the Crown as a whole, the Regular Army and every branch of the Auxiliary Forces. If the right hon. Gentleman had any hope to hold out to them, if he had another word to say upon the clause and the consequences which it would entail, he thought he ought to say it now. He ought to say it in the House of Commons; he ought to say it to the Committee, curtailed as their opportunities for debate had unfortunately been. Let him take for one moment the speech of the Under-Secretary for India. He would illustrate his contention that the clause was totally different from all the other clauses, and that it marked a great change of policy, or the possibilities of a great change of policy, really greater than anything that had happened since the time of Mr. Cardwell. The Under-Secretary for India, when he began his speech, made a very large assumption. He read out this sub-section, and said that if they were to have Special Reservists at all, that was the way to get them. He did not hold that to be a travesty of the hon. Gentle man's speech, and it was a very large assumption which they must examine. The speech of the Under-Secretary for India was, as he was sure it was intended to be, perfectly straightforward and sincere, and he could only have had in his mind that class of man who was now enlisted in the Army for the purpose of putting him into the Reserve, to per form certain definite functions—a man who might be called a trained soldier, a man who did administrative work in the Army as distinct from the fighting work of the Army. For that purpose they made a short circuit, so that instead of enlisting a man for the Army, giving him his shilling, and then putting him into the Reserve, they took the man at once for this purpose and this purpose alone. But they knew—because the right hon. Gentleman had dealt very fairly with them—they knew from the Minister in charge of the Bill that this sub-section 1164 covered no less than what he had called taking the whole substance of the Militia and putting it into the Reserve, which was a totally different matter. The one was an administrative device to get their Army Service Corps men into the Reserve so that they could call upon them in time of war on the embodiment of the Army. That was one thing. But to take the whole substance of the Militia and there by kill the Militia, without the possibility of resurrection, in order to make a new kind of Reserve which they thought, on the whole, compared unfavourably with the present Reserve, was a totally different affair. He thought he would be right in saying that these five lines of the Bill covered other purposes too. They took fourteen squadrons piecemeal out of the Yeomanry; they covered and took, too, Volunteers to serve in the ammunition columns of the Regular Artillery; they covered the taking of the Army Service Corps men into the Auxiliary troops, as they were called, of the Army. So that in these five lines they had several policies—the policy of substituting these 3rd training battalions for the Militia; the policy of extracting all that was best in the Yeomanry and putting it into the Reserve under the obligations of the Reserve Acts; and the policy of eking out the Regular Artillery by taking the Volunteers and putting them also under the Reserve Acts. Out of these three policies, on any one of which the House should have had proper time for deliberation, incomparably the most important to his mind, was the proposal to kill the Militia, and to take its substance and put it into the new training battalions. He noted, and he asked the Secretary for War to note, one phrase which the Under-Secretary for India had used in speaking for the Government. He said that the Bill passed last year enabled the War Office of that date to take in Reservists. Let them think what a flood of light that threw upon the possible consequences of this sub-section. Every man who went into the Reserve, whether he belonged to the substance of the Militia and went into the battalion, or to the Yeomanry and went into the squadron, or to the Volunteers and went into the ammunition column of the Artillery—every man abstracted from the Auxiliary Forces and put into the Reserve would, by the legislation of last year, be a 1165 contravontion of the power of the War Office. Surely they ought to be told what the clause meant. When the Bill became an Act and this clause was part of it, the intentions of the right hon. Gentleman would be matters of historical interest, but they would not shape and determine the lives of men in the Auxiliary Forces who went into this Reserve. The Under-Secretary of State for India had laid it down as an absolute proposition, to which apparently no exception was to be found, that if the Militia were to give drafts to the Regular Army they could not go abroad. That was what the hon. Gentleman had stated. It was a matter of common knowledge that the Secretary of State for War entered into negotiations with the colonels of the Militia to allow their regiments to supply drafts for the Regular Army, and, if the colonels of the Militia had not raised difficulties, amounting almost to a refusal, in the language of the military correspondent of The Times, the right hon. Gentleman's scheme would not have boon that under discussion, but a scheme under which the Militia would be preserved and be prepared to give drafts to the Line. Therefore, they could not accept it as an unalterable proposition that a body of troops which gave drafts could not, after giving those drafts, be used for the units. They knew that was not the case. What had happened in the past? What happened when the brigade of Guards went to the front, and when the brigade of Highlanders went to the front, and when the brigade of Irish regiments went to the front, or the regiments forming those brigades, which largely helped the other battalions in the first stage of the war? It was that spirit of patriotism to which the right hon. Gentleman was always referring which called the recruits into the second battalion, and that second battalion was reinforced as the units were called to duty abroad, although it had furnished drafts for the first battalion. It was far more preferable, after all, that all those who were going to fight, who were going to endure those trying experiences, those awful experiences described by his right hon. Friend—it was far bettor that those who had got to face the firing line should have been trained in a battalion rather than in a depot. It was better that they should be inspired by the traditions which that battalion had 1166 accumulated during two hundred years; it was better for them to feel that if they failed at the front, they failed, not as individuals, casting discredit on those who had gone before them, but as part of a battalion with great traditions. The advantages of that inspiring sentiment wore greater and not smaller simply because it was sentiment. There was nothing interesting in squad drill, if they looked to getting their drafts from among boys of seventeen who were to be got into shape by placing them in obsolete depots, to be trained under officers they had never seen before; and then probably sent out in little battalions jumbled together on one ship, attached to regiments they had never heard of, and put into the firing line to suffer death. The patriotism of the country was a force upon which the right hon. Gentleman could count, but let him train it into the proper channel. The right hon. Gentle man made a great point by saying that these training battalions would never go abroad as units. That was one of the deplorable features of the scheme. These battalions, according to the right hon. Gentleman, were simply to provide drafts to make good the wastage of war; but later on he added that they were also to supply that stream of recruits for the Line which the Line now received from the Militia. But did not the right hon. Gentleman feel that he had much better rely on the old force, which at present not only supplied drafts and recruits, but did garrison service abroad? What warrant had the right hon. Gentleman for telling the Committee that this new force would discharge at least two obligations which the Militia had discharged with a great measure of success? The right hon. Gentleman should say why he had thrown the Militia into the melting-pot, because he bad wedded himself to the force that could not be used as a separate unit to go abroad. The right hon. Gentleman would search history in vain in support of so sweeping a contention. The right hon. Gentleman turned the substance of the Militia into a Reserve which could not be com pared with the Reserve we now had, and thon he was forced to turn the Volunteers into a substitute for the Militia, a function for which they were not suited. But the right hon. Gentleman had left nothing between the Regulars-the 1167 sterling quality of which had been debased by this amalgam of boys of seven-teen—and the Volunteers who were to have no adequate training in time of peace and to be under no stringent obligation in time of war. He urged the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, to tell the Committee whether he definitely des paired of the Militia, and whether there was an irretrievable pledge to use these special Reservists in the place of the Militia. The right hon. Gentleman counted upon getting enough of the special Reservists to make good the wastage of war during six months. Even upon that reckoning he thought that the right hon. Gentleman was in error. This was a very important question. He would not repeat what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had said that afternoon as to the possibility of our Regular Reserve being made larger. It was clear that the right hon. Gentle man would not have as many men as ho would have had if he had not destroyed the machine for making the Reserves, or if he had preserved the modest, but at the same time very useful, expedient of having 100 three years men in every Line battalion. He was not accusing the right hon. Gentleman of taking steps to reduce the Regular Reserve. After a war there was always a great oscillation, and one of the first effects was to deplete the Reserve. But would the right hon. Gentleman get enough men by the device he had adopted? The military corespondent of The Times, who had supported him so brilliantly with his pen, said on 1st April, as to the supply of the new special Reservists during the first six months of a war, that—
these calculations excluded the whole question of the reinforcement of India or Egypt or the Colonies by drafts; we have little or nothing to draw upon in the shape of Regular troops when the field Army has left our shores.Those who defended the right hon. Gentleman's scheme, therefore, said that this expedient would not give him the quantities of men absolutely necessary. Whatever might be said about the quantity, however, no one pretended that the scheme gave the quality of our existing Reserve, or of that of any other army known to us. The right hon. Gentleman had criticised the provisions of having short service battalions, in which the men served two years. Did he allege that the Guards at three years service furnished a bad Reserve? In foreign armies the men 1168 were enlisted for two years, and men who had served for two years in a historic battalion had a different temper from the men whom the right hon. Gentleman contemplated putting in the Reserve. In respect of quantity the plan would fail. Why did the right hon. Gentleman expect to get a sufficient number of recruits? As things were now a boy entered the Militia at seventeen; perhaps he joined a Militia battalion which bore the name of a county regiment. They did not know whether it would continue to bear that name. He went into that battalion, he saw what battalion work was like, what soldiering was like, and he went on into the county regiment, and ultimately into the Reserve. That had a certain inspiring influence which under the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman would not be operative in getting recruits. The boy would join as a special Reservist, and then he passed under an uncertain obligation to be taken for any service for which the War Office chose to call him. Who was going to be attracted by the prospect of squad drill in a barrack-yard by an officer whom the man had never seen before and might never see again? And what would the quality be like? It was said that, after all, the boy of seventeen who went into the special Reserve was the same sort of boy who went into the Militia. But what happened to the two? In the case of the boy who went into the Militia, if he liked soldiering, ho wont into the county regiment. He was there for seven years, and then, at twenty-four or twenty-five, when he went into the Reserve, he was a man on whose character and quality they might depend. They were some times asked to consider the wastage; but was it not better to get what they wanted now rather than adopt the policy of the right hon. Gentleman? How did the right hon. Gentleman meet that? He met it by not exposing these boys to a process of medical examination. They might be consumptive or undermined with hereditary disease, but they could go into the Reserve for an indefinite period, and they would appear in the Estimates year by year as Reservists who wore to make up the wastage of war. For all the House knew, they might be wasted in peace. Don Quixote exposed his helmet to a great test. He struck it with a sword and made a hole in it. Then he mended it with cardboard, put it on his 1169 head, and was satisfied that it was a very good helmet indeed. So the right hon. Gentleman said that the boys who now went into the Militia would go into the special contingent, but he applied no test to them. The right hon. Gentleman asked the country to be satisfied that in the day of peril these men would be forthcoming and ready to do duty in a war on which, perhaps, might depend the existence of the country. This apparently innocent subsection had far-reaching consequences upon our first line, the Regular Forces, and it had no less far-reaching consequences on the second line, the Auxiliaries. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the whole Militia regiment might become one of the service battalions. If that were so, they would be absolutely under the thumb of the War Office of the day. How were they going to recruit the Auxiliary Forces under those conditions? Would it not be better to proceed under Clause 12, and allow men to take the foreign obligation? Under this clause, from the very start a man was to be asked," Are you for the special contingent or the special Reserve?" If he said yes, he was under an obligation which might last for twelve years. It was a ludicrous plan; it shattered the Auxiliary Forces; and it was an un necessary plan. It would take the pith and marrow of the Yeomanry to be drilled apart and to take a six years obligation to go into the Reserve and perhaps to be taken for a cavalry regiment. The purpose might be met by allowing young men to undertake the obligation, putting it upon the colonel to have at any time the quota that might be needed. That could be done by appealing to the generous emulation of the youth of the country without shattering the force past all redemption.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the Committee were fortunate in the concentration of the debate upon a particular point, and discussion had shed light on the position. A point which must have struck every body who had taken part in the debates was that the Government after all had—whether for better or worse was another question—a definite plan which they had put before the House. They had been some eighteen months in office, and, at all events, they had brought forward this definite plan. It had been 1170 subjected to criticism, but criticism upon the Government proposal to be effective should be accompanied by an alternative plan to meet the special circumstances of the case. The right hon. Gentleman opposite had been in office for ten years and his Government had been endeavouring to deal with the Army question. Plan had succeeded plan. Did the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon make no proposition to alter the Re serves? He made proposals, but his colleagues did not agree with him.
§ *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid there was no foundation for the statement that his colleagues disagreed with him. So far from that being the case, the scheme was put in force, and a considerable number of men were passed into the Reserves.
§ Mr. HALDANEThey raised very few under that scheme.
§ *Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTERI say that 52 per cent. of the men enlisted enlisted for short service.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the men joined the Reserves on an extremely small and microscopic scale. The plan was brought forward on 1st August, 1904. Why did it not make any further progress? That was one of those puzzling things which it was not for him to look into. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover made one observation with which ho cordially agreed, that the only use of a Reserve force was for a war purpose. It was for that purpose that reorganisation was proposed, it was for that purpose that he withstood the objections of Service men to the proposed changes. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the plan had caused general concern, and he suggested that few soldiers were in favour of it. Did he attach no importance to the fact that the Army Council had cordially endorsed it?
§ MR. WYNDHAMI am sorry to say I attach no importance to that.
§ MR. HALDANEasked whether the right hon. Gentleman attached no importance to the fact that the Defence Committee approved of the scheme. After all, the opinions of distinguished soldiers—men like General French—were not to be altogether despised in this matter.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid that the right hon. Gentleman was supporting his scheme as a whole, while he was protesting against this substitution of the third battalions as the worst form of Reserves.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that the right hon. Gentleman could not have taken a more unlucky illustration. The scheme had been worked out with all the skill that the best professional element in the Army could bring to bear on it. If there was anything in the Bill that was an Army scheme it was the third battalions and the Reserve they produced. The right hon. Gentleman could not have forgotten that Lord Elgin's Commission had said that the Militia was going from bad to worse. The force was 40,000 men short of its establishment, and 1,000 officers. Those were the reasons why the Government insisted that if something was to be done with the question of Army reform it must be approached in a serious way, and all other considerations which could not be intelligently applied must be brushed aside. With its present organisation the Militia was incapable of making an efficient adjunct to the Regular Army. Did hon. Members believe that the same unit could produce the drafts that were necessary, and at the same time be efficient in war? Why was it the late Government abolished the Militia Reserve, the most valuable thing the Militia produced? Why should they sweep that away? They were left at this moment without any machinery to provide for the west ago of war. The Government had surveyed the Line, and they had found hole after hole and gap after gap in its constitution, and their work was to make good those holes and gaps. It had boon suggested that the drafts they produced were not of the same quality as the Reserve, and that they were weakening the Reserve and deteriorating the quality of the force. The drafts they were creating they sought to create, not in substitution of the Reserve, but for the reason only that the late Government, having destroyed the Militia Reserve, had left the country without anything to make up the wastage of war. He agreed that Part III. was the most vital part of the Bill. Without it they could not make up the deficiency in the first line. The expeditionary force was of no account unless they could mobilise it, and they 1172 could not mobilise it unless they filled up the gaps. His hon. friend the Member for the Lichfield Division had said that this was an integral portion of the scheme, and that without it the plan of the expeditionary force would be incomplete, because otherwise no provision could be made for the wastage of war. In fact they could not keep it alive unless they provided the machinery to make up for the wastage of war. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had said that one of the startling features of Part III. was that it applied not only to the Militia and the wastage of war, but to the Yeomanry and artillery, and, he might add, to the Army Service Corps and the Army Medical Corps. The theory of the Bill was to organise two lines, and two lines only—that there must be a clear line of demarcation between the Regular expeditionary force on the one hand and the Territorial Force for home defence on the other. It was true that there were several services, the material for which could well be drawn from the Territorial Force, and he believed it would contain many men who would be keen about soldiering and willing to come over the line and bring themselves within Part III. of the scheme If they did they would belong to the first line. It was true that he hoped to get from the Yeomanry a certain number of men who would take engagements under Part III. and then belong to the Regular cavalry. It was true that they proposed to get a number of artillerymen belonging to what used to be the Militia class who would come over in training brigades and would form a reserve for artillery, for divisional ammunition columns, and, in time, for brigade ammunition columns. But the point was that it was absolutely true that Part III. was a vital, and per haps the most vital part of the Bill, for without it the deficiencies of the first line could not be made up. It was all very well to talk of the largeness of the expeditionary force: but that force would be of no account unless it could be mobilised, and in order to mobilise it they must provide for the wastage and the subsidiary services. There had been a good deal of discussion about the Regular Reserve, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had said it was being reduced. The units would now produce their own Reserve, and the Reserve was adequate to mobilise the 1173 units. Of course there was a smaller Reserve than there would be if there were more units; but an enormous amount of nonsense had been talked about the reduction in the Reserve. He had before him notes of the most careful description of the criticisms which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had made upon the Reserve which the Government proposed to constitute. He was not going to be so hostile as to quote all the hard things which the military correspondent of The Times had said about the right hon. Gentleman's calculations; but the right hon. Gentleman would admit that the military correspondent of The Times was perhaps not wholly without reason in saying that the right hon. Gentleman had slightly misrepresented certain propositions forming the foundation of his calculations. According to the latest figures, what was the actual state of the Reserve? With section D as low as 16,293 the total was 100,777. If section D were not below its normal—if it had not been closed down—its figure would have been not 16,000 but 25,000—a difference of 9,000. The actual Reserve on 1st April, 1907, was 117,070. His calculation was that the Reserve to be got under the terms of service settled with the view of getting this very Reserve which they considered adequate was 115,000; but this normal Reserve of 115,000 took section D at 25,180, which it would be on normal conditions on his terms of service, so that he had that difference in his favour. Few things were more misleading than to take the state of the Reserve at a particular date and compare it with the normal state of the Reserve. He had known a Reserve down as much as 2,000 in the course of seven or eight weeks. He had another table calculated in 1905, which, compared with the table calculated in 1907, gave the Reserve as loss, al though the establishments were larger. That table was calculated for infantry only, and on the hypothesis, which proved to be altogether misleading, that the number of extensions would be very much larger than they actually were.
§ *MR. ARNOLD FORSTERHow much larger?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the right hon. Gentleman's calculation was based on the assumption that the proportion of ex- 1174 tensions from seven to twelve years would be 30 per cent. on the average. They were nothing approaching 30 per cent. Ho had no interest in this matter but to get at the truth. The figures he had given to the Committee had been worked out for him by the best experts he could command, and he thought that in the light of the criticism of the military correspondent of The Times, and what he had himself said, the Committee would consider that the result remained un shaken. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to the Crimea, and no doubt the case of the Crimea was deplorable. That was because we had no provision to give us a Reserve, and we had to improvise recruits to be sent out, but the Commander-in-Chief asked us to send no more because they were so bad. To-day, thanks to the working of the Cardwell system, we had a magnificent Reserve in the Home battalions, and we had an establishment which, if it consisted of a smaller number of units, was in some respects better than the right hon. Gentleman had to deal with. The strength of the Colonial battalions had been increased by seventy-four men each. It was true they had reduced temporarily the establishment of the Home battalions from 750 to 720. That was owing to the shortage produced by the unfortunate three years system. As soon as the strength corrected itself and made the establishment correspond with the facts, one thing he would insist upon was that establishment and strength should henceforward correspond. He would like to know whether the Leader of the Opposition could give them, even in outline, a plan for making the Militia as efficient for the supply of drafts and units comparable in simplicity with the plan of these battalions. He agreed that they were taking the substance of the Militia battalions for the third or training battalions. But they were leaving more than sufficient of the units, and they would be able to mobilise more units under this plan than they could have mobilised before. What they proposed to do with the twelve battalions of Irish Militia who would not form third battalions was typical of what they were going to do under Part III. The Irish Militia without exception would pass under Part III. if this scheme was carried through. They would be en listed into the special Reserve and would belong to the special contingent. But as 1175 they would not be wanted for the third battalions of the Regular regiments, that was to say, beyond the production of the eight battalions which were required to form the third battalions of the eight Irish regiments, there would be a surplus; and the Government proposed to bring the battalions together, to bring up their establishment, and to deal with them in a fashion which, they hoped, would make them efficient and would produce twelve more battalions. These twelve battalions would be liable to furnish drafts in case of need, but their primary function would be, not to furnish drafts—they had enough in the eight battalions—but to serve as units unless the supreme necessity of the first line required them to form drafts. The principle might be extended by some future Parliament, but it was capable of a great deal of application even in present circumstances. It insured an expeditionary force of sixty-six battalions of the Line, and was capable of doing much of the work for which it was necessary to draw on all sorts of odd units, under the old, confused state of things. As to officers, one of the things which he had put most prominently forward was a plan for the creation of a Reserve of Officers. At present the miserable situation was that we were nearly 4,000 officers short for the first line, and more than that number short for the second line. That was the state of things which he had undertaken to attempt to remedy. The outline of proposals had been put before the House, and seeing that the Govern-had been at work for only eighteen months, it could not be said that they had allowed the grass to grow under their feet. He had shown why the Government felt bound to deal with the Militia, and why they attached vital importance to this third part of the Bill, in supplying the deficiencies of the first line, not only in regard to the wastage of war, but in regard to cavalry, ammunition columns, Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance, Medical, and Veterinary Corps. He had shown why the Government felt bound to this organisation in two lines, and how it was that Part III. of the Bill completed the mechanism necessary for the efficiency of the Regular line. No plan could be ideal. The Government had done their best, with the best assistance they could command, to get a work able machinery which would give the 1176 nation value for its money and make the best of the materials at disposal. They might have failed or they might have succeeded, but they were not open to the criticism of those who had experienced the enormous difficulties of the problem and who, after ten years, had been able to produce no other alternative.
§ Mr. A. J. BALFOURsaid that the right hon. Gentleman had imparted rather an unnecessarily polemical tone to his observations. The right hon. Gentle man asked for a plan, and left nineteen minutes for its explanation and defence. He would not attempt to copy a practice in which the right hon. Gentleman was indulging almost to excess—that of describing everyone from whom he differed as guilty of mixed thinking, and everyone with whom ho agreed as a master of the are. of clear thinking, and the plan which ho recommended as the one which alone deserved the name of scientific. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not think him worse than other people in the obscurity of his thinking or in the unscientific character of his suggestions if he rose to the right hon. Gentleman's invitation and pointed out where his plan might be modified for the better. He did not mean to touch on the controversy between the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. friend the Member for Croydon as to the amount of the Regular Reserve of the Army. It was impossible for those who were not actuaries and who were not inside the War Office to deal with that question. But it was sufficient for the Committee to remember that the source from which the Reserve sprang was the Regular battalions; that those were being diminished; and that the inevitable consequence was and must be that the Regular Reserve produced under this scheme must be less than before if the terms of service remained the same. The real question, and the only question they had to determine, was whether they did better by abolishing the Militia and substituting for them these so-called Third Battalions, which were not battalions at all, but depots, or whether they could not improve their Militia and make them subserve the double purpose of providing, or helping to provide drafts, at the same time leaving it open to them to provide, in case of need, separate units for service on the lines of 1177 communication, and ultimately, it might be, for service in the fighting line. He would earnestly suggest to the Committee that it was not inconsistent with the right hon. Gentleman's scheme that the existing Militia, with all their traditions, all their esprit de corps, all the organisation, which required improvement, but which was capable of improvement, should be used to carry out what, ho agreed with him, were the two great purposes which every Secretary of State for War must have regard to. If the right hon. Gentleman said, as he had said, that it was not only necessary to provide Regular battalions for service in the field, but also to provide machinery by which those battalions could be fed and the wastage of war supplied, there was no man in the House who did not agree with him. Could they not use their Militia battalions partly for that purpose? That was the first question he would ask. The second question ho would ask was this. The Militia battalions as they were at present constituted had proved them selves, even when depleted, most valuable units in the field. That was not a question of speculation. It was a certainty. It had been done within the last ten years. If they were all agreed, and ho thought they were, that drafts could be provided and that the units were also useful and had proved themselves useful, the question arose—Could the Militia, especially the Militia reorganised and improved, not carry out both the great functions of providing drafts and units? The right hon. Gentleman had told them that he did desire the Irish Militia to carry out those functions, and, when ho asked him what his plan was, his reply was to give to the English Militia the organisation which the right hon. Gentle man proposed to give to the Irish Militia, and to ask the English Militia to perform the duties which he was already prepared and determined to ask the Irish Militia to perform. The right hon. Gentleman had told them that he was going to ask the Irish Militia to provide drafts and fighting units. That seemed to be the moral to be drawn from the first part of his observations. The right hon. Gentleman had told thorn, rather cursorily, but in unmistakable terms, and with perfect lucidity, that he desired the Irish Militia to carry out both functions. And the scheme of the Irish Militia was that they were to provide both 1178 drafts and units. If that were true—and he did not think that it could be denied by those who had followed cither the right hon. Gentleman's speech or the scheme—if it were true that the Irish Militia were to fulfil both functions, then they asked why the plan was not applied to the English Militia or to the Scottish Militia. He proposed that they should give to the English Militia the organisation that it was intended to apply to the Irish Militia, and he asked that the English Militia should perform the duties which were already prepared and determined upon for the Irish Militia. He thought that was a very simple answer to the question of the right hon. Gentle-man; and he would venture very earnestly to point out to the right hon. Gentleman and to the Committee that if that plan wore carried out it would not violate the fundamental lines of the scheme. It was wholly consistent with the demands made upon the population for war purposes; it conflicted in no way with the general lines of the Bill. It was perfectly consistent even with Part III. of the Bill; and he was not in Committee going to commit the solecism of suggesting any plan for adoption which was inconsistent with what the right hon. Gentleman regarded as the fundamental principle of his Bill. He ventured most respectfully, and certainly in no controversial spirit, to press upon the right hon. Gentleman that, though he could not modify the main lines or the roots from which his scheme had grown, yet he could extend to England and to Scotland the Militia organisation which he had applied to Ireland. In Ireland the right hon. Gentleman proposed to retain a certain number of Militia regiments, and some Of those Militia regiments were to supply drafts and units in case of need. It was an excellent plan, which seemed to him to be admirably fitted to the exigencies of a Volunteer Army. He only asked the right hon. Gentleman to adapt that plan to England and Scotland. It could not be out of harmony with his general scheme. If it was good for Ireland it could not be wrong for the other two parts of the United Kingdom. If it were consistent with his general Army scheme, if it helped the Forces of the Crown as fighting units, if it wore useful in time of war when dealing with Ireland, then according to the canons of military policy it could not 1179 be a failure if they adopted it for England and Scotland. They did not ask the right hon. Gentleman to reverse the fundamental principles which he had laid down. They did not ask him to give up anything which could be regarded as an essential part of the Bill. It would be absurd to make such a demand; he did not make it; all he was asking him was to consider whether he could not extend wholly or partially his own plan for Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom. That was a consideration which he was sure involved no inconsistency on the part of His Majesty's Government, which certainly involved the giving up of no principle, and was in harmony with all the right hon. Gentleman had said and the admirable principles he had laid down; and if he saw his way at that stage, or a future stage of the Bill, to go further than he himself had marked out, he was sure that he would greatly facilitate the acceptance of his measure, and he would give it a degree of popularity, uncontroversial popularity, which in its present shape—he did not speak of its substance—it was hardly possible for it to obtain. That was his reply to the question put to him by the right hon. Gentleman, he hoped not couched in any controversial form. He did not ask the right hon. Gentleman for any statement at this stage, but he hoped that he would recognise that in what he had said ho had
§ done his best to fit his idea at all events to those which governed the right hon. Gentleman's advisers and the Party which he represented in this matter; and he was certain that if the right hon. Gentle man could see his way to meet him, not on his (Mr. Balfour's) lines but on his (the Secretary of State's) own lines, he was certain that it would do much to help the progress of the Bill through the House and through Parliament, and would make it what he was sure it could be made, a Bill generally accepted by all parties of the State, and one which would improve our military organisation.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he could only say that the speech which the right hon. Gentleman had made was a very important one, and he would consider it very closely. The proposition, he understood, was this, that a plan suggested with regard to Ireland was agreeable to him. Of course he could not pledge himself that anything would be carried out, but he would consider the substance of the right hon. Gentleman's proposition and what was the substance of his own proposition and give the matter careful consideration.
§ Question put.
§ The Committee divided:— Ayes, 302, Noes, 108. (Division List No. 224.)
1183| AYES | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Bethell,SirJ.H.(Essex Romf''rd | Cheetham, John Frederick |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) | Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. |
| Alden, Percy | Billson, Alfred | Clough, William |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Boulton, A. C. F. | Coats, Sir T. Glen(Renfrew, W.) |
| Armitage, R. | Brace, William | Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Bramsdon, T. A. | Collins, SirWm. J.(S.Pancras, W |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon Herbert Henry | Branch, James | Cooper, G. J. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Brigg, John | Corbett, CH (Sussex. E. Grinstd |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Brocklehurst, W. B. | Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. |
| Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.) | Brodie, H. C. | Cory, Clifford John |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Brooke, Stopford | Cotton, Sir H. J. S. |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Brunner, J. F. L.(Lanes., Leigh | Cowan, W. H. |
| Barker, John | Brunner, RtHnSirJ.T (Cheshire | Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) |
| Barlow,JohnEmmott(Somers't | Bryce, J. Annan | Cremer, William Randal |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Crombie, John William |
| Barnes, G. N. | Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Crooks, William |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone,N. | Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Crossley, William J. |
| Beale, W. P. | Burnyeat, W. J. D. | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) |
| Beauchamp, E. | Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan |
| Beck| A. Cecil | Buxton, Rt. Hn. SydneyCharles | Davies, Timothy (Fulham) |
| Bell, Richard | Byles, William Pollard | Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Dickinson, W.H.(St.Pancras,N. |
| Benn,SirJ. Williams (Devonp'rt | C'auston,Rt.Hn.RichardKnight | Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. |
| Benn, W.(T'w'r Hamlets,S.Geo | Cawley, Sir Frederick | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness |
| Bennett, E. N. | Chance, Frederick William | Dunn. A. Edward (Camborne) |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Dunne,-MajorE.Martin (Walsall |
| Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Leese,SirJosephF.(Accrington) | Robertson, J. M.(Tyneside) |
| Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Lehmann,R. C. | Robinson, S. |
| Elibank, Master of | Lever,A.Levy (Essex,Harwich) | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral) | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Evans, Samuel T. | Levy, Maurice | Rose, Charles Day |
| Eve, Harry Trelawney | Lewis, John Herbert | Rowlands, J. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Lough, Thomas | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Fenwick, Charles | Lupton, Arnold | Samuel, HerbertL.(Cleveland) |
| Ferens, T. R. | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Lyell Charles Henry | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Findlay, Alexander | Lynch, H. B. | Schwann, Sir C.E.(Manchester) |
| Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Scott, A.H.(Ashton under Lyne |
| Freeman-Thomas, Freeman | Macdonald, J. M.(Falkirk B'ghs) | Seaverns, J. H. |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Mackarness, Frederic C. | Shackleton, David James |
| Fullerton, Hugh | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford) |
| Furness, Sir Christopher | M'Callum, John M. | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) |
| Gardner, Col. Alan (Hereford, S. | M'Crae, George | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John | M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester) | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Glover, Thomas | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | M'Micking, Major G. | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John |
| Gooch, George Peabody | Maddison, Frederick | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie |
| Grant, Corrie | Mallet, Charles E. | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Stanger, H. Y. |
| Griffith, Ellis J. | Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln) | Stanley.Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.) |
| Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill | Markham, Arthur Basil | Steadman, W. C. |
| Gulland, John W. | Marks, G. Croydon(Launceston) | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) |
| Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Marnham, F. J. | Strachey. Sir Edward |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Massie, J. | Strauss, E. A.(Abingdon) |
| Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Menzies, Walter | Summerbell, T. |
| Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r) | Micklem, Nathaniel | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Hart-Davies, T. | Molteno, Percy Alport | Taylor, Austin(East Toxteth) |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Mond, A. | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Harwood, George | Money, L. G. Chiozza | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Montgomery, H. G. | Tennant, Sir Edward(Salisbury) |
| Haworth, Arthur A. | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Hedges, A. Paget | Morgan, J. Lloyd(Carmarthen) | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Helme, Norval Watson | Morrell, Philip | Thomasson, Franklin |
| Hemmerde, Edward George | Morse, L. L. | Thompson, J. W. H.(Somerset, E |
| Henry, Charles S. | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | Torrance, Sir A. M. |
| Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon., S.) | Murray, James | Toulmin, George |
| Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Myer, Horatio | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Higham, John Sharp | Napier, T. B. | Verney, F. W. |
| Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Nicholson, Charles N (Doncast'r | Vivian, Henry |
| Holden, E. Hopkinson | Norman, Sir Henry | Walker, H. Do R. (Leicester) |
| Holland, Sir William Henry | Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Walsh, Stephen |
| Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N | Nuttall, Harry | Walters, John Tudor |
| Horniman, Emslie John | O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) | Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) |
| Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Parker, James (Halifax) | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Hudson, Walter | Paulton, James Mellor | Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent |
| Hyde, Clarendon | Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek) | Wardle, George J. |
| Idris, T. H. W. | Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Waring, Walter |
| Isaacs, Rufus Daniel. | Philipps, Col. Ivor(S'thampton) | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) |
| Jackson, R. S. | Philipps, J. Wynford(Pembroke | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Jacoby, Sir James Alfred | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) | Waterlow, D. S. |
| Jardine, Sir J. | Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Watt, Henry A. |
| Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Pirie, Duncan V. | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Jones, Sir D. Brynmore(Swanse | Pollard, Dr. | Weir, James Galloway |
| Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central) | White, George (Norfolk) |
| Jones, William (Carnarvonshire | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) |
| Jowett, F. W. | Priestley, W. E. B.(Bradford, E.) | White, Luke (York, E. R.) |
| Kearley, Hudson E. | Radford, G. H. | Whitehead, Rowland |
| Kekewich, Sir George | Raphael, Herbert H. | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Kincaid-Smith, Captain | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer |
| King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' | Wiles, Thomas |
| Laidlaw, Robert | Rees, J. D. | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| Lamb, EdmundG. (Leominster | Rendall, Athelstan | Williams, Llewelyn(Carm'rth'n) |
| Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) | Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| Lambert, George | Ridsdale, E. A. | Williamson, A. |
| Lamont, Norman | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| Layland-Barratt, Francis | Roberts, G. H.(Norwich) | Wilson, John ('Durham, Mid.) |
| Lea,Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E. | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) |
| Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) | Wodehouse, Lord | TELLERS FOR THE AYES— |
| Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)' | Wood, T. M'Kinnon | Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A.Pease |
| Winfrey, R. | Yoxall, James Henry | . |
| NOES. | ||
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Forster, Henry William | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Nield, Herbert |
| Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. HughO. | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Parker, SirGilbert(Gravesend) |
| Ashley, W. W. | Haddock, George R. | Percy, Earl |
| Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H. | Hardy, Laurence( Kent, Ashford | Powell, Sir Francis Sharp |
| Balcarres, Lord | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Randles. Sir John Scurrah |
| Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J.(CityLond.) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Rawlinson, JohnFrederickPeel |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Remnant. James Farquharson |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Helmsley, Viscount | Renton Major Leslie |
| Baring, Capt. Hn. G.(Winchester | Hervey, F. W.F.( BuryS. Edm'ds | Roberts, S.(Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Barrie, H. T.(Londonderry, N.) | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Beach, Hn. Michael HughHicks | Hills, J. W. | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Hodge, John | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Houston, Robert Paterson | Seddon, J. |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Hunt, Rowland | Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H. | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hn. Col. W | Snowden, P. |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Keswick, William | Starkey, John R. |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | King, Sir Henry Seymour(Hull) | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Cave, George | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Talbot, Rt.Hn.J.G.(Oxf d Univ. |
| Cavendish, Rt. Hn. VictorC. W. | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Chamberlain, RtHnJ. A. (Wore. | Lee, Arthur H(Hants.,Fareham | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Clynes, J. R. | Liddell, Henry | Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard |
| Coates, E. Feetham(Lewisham) | Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) | Long, Col. Charles W.(Evesham) | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim, S. | Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin, S. | Wards, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Craig, Captain James( Down, E.) | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Wilson, W. T.(Westhoughton) |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Macpherson, J. T. | Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm |
| Dixon-Hartland, SirFredDixon | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | M'Iver, SirLewis (Edinburgh W | Younger, George |
| Duncan, Robert(Lanark, Govan | Magnus, Sir Philip | |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Marks, H. H. (Kent) | TELLERS FOB THE NOES— |
| Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia. |
| Fardell, Sir T. George | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | |
| Fell, Arthur | Moore, William | |
| Fletcher, J. S. | Morpeth, Viscount |
§ And, it being half-past ten of the clock, the CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 6th May, successively to put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the Business to be concluded.
1184§ Question put," That the clause stand part of the Bill"
§ The Committee divided:— Ayes, 310; Noes, 110. (Division List No. 225.)
1187| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Barnes, G. N. | Brace, William |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Bramsdon, T. A. |
| Alden, Percy | Beale, W. P. | Branch, James |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Beauchamp, E. | Brigg, John |
| Armitage, R. | Beck, A. Cecil | Brocklehurst, W. B. |
| Armstrong, W. C. Heaton | Bell Richard | Brodie, H. C. |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Bellairs, Carlyon | Brooke, Stopford |
| Asquith, Rt. Hn. HerbertHenry | Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp't | Brunner, J. F. L. (Lanes., Leigh) |
| Astbury, John Meir | Benn, W.(T'w'r Hamlets,S. Geo. | Brunner,Rt. Hn. Sir J.T. (Ches |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Bennett, E. N. | Bryce, J. Annan |
| Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E. | Berridge, T. H. D. | Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Bethell, SirJ.H.(Essex,Romf'rd | Buckmaster, Stanley O. |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) | Burns, Rt. Hon. John |
| Barker, John | Billson, Alfred | Burnyeat, W. J. D. |
| Barlow, John Emmott (S'mers't | Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Boulton, A.. C. F. | Buxton,Rt.Hn.Sydney Charles |
| Byles, William Pollard | Helme, Norval Watson | Morrell, Philip |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Hemmerde, Edward George | Morse, L. L. |
| Causton, Rt. Hn. RichardKnight | Henry, Charles S. | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick | Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon., S, | Murray, James |
| Chance, Frederick William | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Myer, Horatio |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Higham, John Sharp | Napier, T. B. |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Nicholson, Charles N.(Doncast'r |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Hodge, John | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S. | Holden, E. Hopkinson | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Clough, William | Holland, Sir William Henry | Nuttall, Harry |
| Clynes, J. R. | Hope, V. Bateman (Somerset,N | O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) |
| Coats, Sir T. Glen (Renfrew, W.) | Horniman, Eraslie John | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Paulton, James Mellor |
| Collins, Sir Wm.J.(S.PancrasW | Hudson, Walter | Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Lock) |
| Cooper, G. J. | Hyde, Clarendon | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Gr'st' d | Idris, T. H. VV. | Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton) |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Philipps, J. Wynford (Pembroke |
| Cory, Clifford John | Jackson, R. S. | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Jacoby, Sir James Alfred | Pickersgill, Edward Hare) |
| Cowan, W. H. | Jardine, Sir J. | Pirie, Duncan V. |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Pollard, Dr. |
| Cremer, William Randal | Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh. Central |
| Crombie, John William | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Crooks, William | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire | Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E. |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Kearley, Hudson E. | Radford, G. H. |
| (Irossley, William J. | Kekewich, Sir George | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Kincaid-Smith, Captain | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' |
| Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Laidlaw, Robert | Rees, J. D. |
| Dowar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster | Rendall, Athelstan |
| Dickinson. W. H. (St. Pancras, N. | Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) | Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Lambert, George | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness | Lamont, Norman | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Layland-Barratt, Francis | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Dunne, Major E. Martin (Wals'l | Lea,Hugh Cecil (St.Pancras, E. | Roberts, John H. (Denbigh^.) |
| Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accringt'n | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Lehmann, R. C. | Robinson, S. |
| Elibank, Master of | Lever, A. Levy (Essex,Harwich) | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral) | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Evans, Samuel T. | Levy, Maurice | Rose, Charles Day |
| Eve, Harry Trelawney | Lewis, John Herbert | Rowlands, J. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Lough, Thomas | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Fen wick, Charles | Lupton, Arnold | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) |
| Ferens, T. R. | Luttrell, Hugh Fowness | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Lyell, (Charles Henry | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Findlay. Alexander | Lynch, H. B. | Schwann, Sir C. E.(Manchester) |
| Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Scott, A.H.(Ashton under Lyne |
| Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Macdonald, J. M.(Falkirk B'ghs | Seaverns, J. H. |
| Freeman-Thomas, Freeman | Mackarness, Frederic C. | Shackleton, David James |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford) |
| Fullerton, Hugh | M'Callum, John M. | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) |
| Furness, Sir Christopher | M'Crae, George | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Gardner, Col. Alan (Hereford, S. | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester) | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Glover, Thomas | M'Micking, Major G. | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | Maddison, Frederick | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie |
| Gooch, George Peabody | Mallet, Charles E. | Snowden, P. |
| Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Griffith, Ellis J. | Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln | Stanger, H. Y.' |
| Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill | Markham, Arthur Basil | Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.) |
| Gulland, John W. | Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston) | Steadman, W. C. |
| Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Marnham, F. J. | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Massie, J. | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Menzies, Walter | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) |
| Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r. | Micklem, Nathaniel | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) |
| Hart-Davies, T. | Molteno, Percy Alport | Stuart, James (Sunderland) |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Mond, A. | Summerbell, T. |
| Harwood, George | Money, L. G. Chiozza | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Montgomery, H. G. | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Haworth, Arthur A. | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Hedges, A. Paget | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen) | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury | Wardle, George J. | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthn |
| Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | Waring, Walter | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) | Williamson, A. |
| Thomasson, Franklin | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| Thompson, J. W. H.(Somerset, E | Waterlow, D. S. | Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.) |
| Torrance, Sir A. M. | Watt, Henry A. | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough |
| Toulmin, George | Wedgwood, Josiah C. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Trevelyan, Charles Philips | Weir, James Galloway | Winfrey, R. |
| Verney, F. W. | White, George (Norfolk) | Wodehouse, Lord |
| Vivian, Henry | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) | White, Luke (York, E. R.) | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Walsh, Stephen | Whitehead, Rowland | |
| Walters, John Tudor | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax | TELLERS FOR THE AYES— |
| Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer | MR.Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) | Wiles, Thomas | |
| Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn. SirAlex. F. | Fletcher, J. S. | Moore, William |
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Forster, Henry William | Morpeth, Viscount |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Nicholson, Wm. G.(Peterfield) |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Nield, Herbert |
| Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh 0. | Haddock, George R. | Parker, SirGilbert(Gravesend) |
| Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt, Hon. SirH. | Hardy, Laurence(Kent, Ashford | Percy, Earl |
| Balcarres, Lord | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Powell, Sir Francis Sharp |
| Balfour,RtHn. A. J.(CityLond.) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Banbury,Sir Frederick George | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Rawlinson,John FrederickPeel |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Helmsley, Viscount | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Baring,Capt Hn.G(Winchester | Hervey,F.W.F.(BuryS. Edm'ds | Renton, Major Leslie |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.) | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Roberts.S.(Shcffield.Ecclesall) |
| Beach,Hn.MichaelHughHicks | Hills, J. W. | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Houston, Robert Paterson | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hunt, Rowland | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Jowett, F. W. | Seddon,J. |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H. | Smith, AbelH.(Hertord,East) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Col. W. | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Keswick, William | Starkey, John R. |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | King, SirHenrySeymour(Hull) | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Talbot, Rt.Hn.J.G.((Oxf''dUniv. |
| Cave, George | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Thomson,W.Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Cavendish, Rt. Hon. Victor.C. W. | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Lee, ArthurH.(Hants., Fareham | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Chamberlain,Rt.Hn.J.A.(Wore | Liddell, Henry | Valentia, Viscount |
| Coates,E Feetham (Lewisham) | Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt, -Col. A. R. | Vincent, Col. SirC, E, Howard |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.. | Long,Col.CharlesW.(Evesham) | Walker, Col.W.H.(Lancashire) |
| Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) | Long, Rt,Hn.Walter(Dublin,S.) | Walrond. Hon. Lionel |
| Craig, CharlesCurtis(Antrim,S.) | Lonsdale, John Brown lee | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent. Mid) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Dixon-Hartland,Sir Fred Dixon | Macpherson, J. T. | Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Duncan, Robert(Lanark, Govan | M'Iver, SirLewis(EdinburghW. | Younger, George |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Magnus, Sir Philip | |
| Faber, Capt, W. V. (Hants,W.) | Marks, H. H. (Kent) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES— |
| Fardell, Sir T, George | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Mr.Ashley and Captain Craig. |
| Fell, Arthur | Mildmay, Francis Bingham |
§ Clause 30 agreed to.
§ Clause 31:
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes, 286;Noes, 108. (Division List No. 226.)
| AYES | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Beck. A. Cecil. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Baring, Godfrey(Isle of Wight) | Bell, Richard |
| Alden, Percy | Barker, John | Bellairs, Carlyon |
| Allen, A. Acland(Christchurch) | Barlow, JohnEmmott(Somerset | Belloc, HilaireJosephPeterR.. |
| Armitage, R. | Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Benn, SirJ. Williams(Devonp'rt |
| Armstrong, W. C. Heaton | Barnard, E. B. | Benn, W.(T'w'rHamlets, S. Geo. |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Barnes, G. N. | Bennett, E. N. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Berridge, T. H. D. |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Beale, W. P. | Bethell, SirJ. H.(Essex, Romf'rd |
| Baker, Joseph A.(Finsbury, E.) | Beauchamp, E. | Bethell, T. R, (Essex, Maldon) |
| Billson, Alfred | Gulland, John W. | Micklem, Nathaniel |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Molteno, Percy Alport |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Mond, A. |
| Bramsdon, T. A. | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Money, L. G. Chiozza |
| Branch, James | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Montgomery, H. G. |
| Brigg, John | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r) | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Hart-Davies, T. | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen) |
| Brodie, H. C. | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Morrell, Philip |
| Brooke, Stopford | Harwood, George | Morse, L. L. |
| Brunner, J. F. L.(Lancs., Leigh) | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas |
| Brunner, RtHnSirJ. T(Cheshire | Haworth, Arthur A. | Murray, James |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Hedges, A. Paget | Myer, Horatio |
| Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Helme, Norval Watson | Napier, T. B. |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Hemmerde, Edward George | Nicholson, Charles N.(Doncast'r |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Henry, Charles S. | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Burnyeat, W. J. D. | Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon.,S.) | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Nuttall, Harry |
| Buxton, Rt. Hn. SydneyCharles | Higham, John Sharp | O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Hills, J. W. | Paulton, James Mellor |
| Causton, Rt. Hn. RichardKnight | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek) |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick | Holden, E. Hopkinson | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Chance, Frederick William | Holland, Sir William Henry | Philipps, Col. Ivor(S'thampton) |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Hope, W. Bateman(Somerset,N. | Philipps, J. Wynford(Pembroke |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Horniman, Emslie John | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) |
| Churchill, Rt, Hon. Winston S. | Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Clough, William | Hyde, Clarendon | Pollard, Dr. |
| Coats,SirT. Glen(Renfrew, W.) | Idris, T. H. W. | Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh,Central) |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.) |
| Collins, SirWm. J.(S. Pancras, W. | Jackson, R. S. | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) | Jacoby, Sir James Alfred | Priestley, W. E. B.( Bradford, E.) |
| Corbett, CH(Sussex, E. Grmst'd | Jardine, Sir J. | Radford, G. H. |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Jones, SirD. Brynmor(Swansea) | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Cory, Clifford John | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Jones, William(Carnarvonshire | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' |
| Cowan, W. H. | Kearley, Hudson E. | Rees, J. D. |
| Craig, Herbert J.(Tynemouth) | Kekewich, Sir George | Rendall, Athelstan |
| Cremer, William Randal | Kincaid-Smith, Captain | Renton, Major Leslie |
| Crombie, John William | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Laidlaw, Robert | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Crossley, William J. | Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) |
| Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan | Lambert, George | Robinson, S. |
| Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Lamont, Norman | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Layland-Barratt, Francis | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Dickinson,W.H.(St.Pancras,N. | Leese, Sir JosephF.(Accrington) | Rose, Charles Day |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Lehmann, R. C. | Rowlands, J. |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Cam borne) | Lever, A. Levy (Essex,Harwich | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Dunne, MajorE. Martin(Walsall | Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral) | Samuel, Herbert L.(Cleveland) |
| Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Levy, Maurice | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Edwards, Frank (Radnor | Lewis, John Herbert | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Elibank, Master of | Lough, Thomas | Scott, A. H.(Ashton-under-Lyne |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lupton, Arnold | Seaverns, J. H. |
| Evans, Samuel T. | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes | Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford) |
| Eve, Harry Trelawney | Lyell, Charles Henry | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Lynch, H. B. | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Fenwick, Charles | Macdonald. J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Ferens, T. R. | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | M'Callum, John M. | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Findlay, Alexander | M'Crae, George | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie |
| Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Snowden, P. |
| Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester) | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Freeman-Thomas, Freeman | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Stanger, H. Y. |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | M'Micking, Major G. | Stanley, Hn. A Lyulph(Chesh.) |
| Fullerton, Hugh | Maddison, Frederick | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) |
| Furness, Sir Christopher | Mallet, Charles E. | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Gardner, Col. Alan(Hereford,S.) | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln) | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) |
| Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John | Markham, Arthur Basil | Stuart, James (Sunderland) |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | Marks, G Croydon(Launceston) | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Gooch, George Peabody | Marnham, F. J. | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Griffith, Ellis J. | Massie, J. | Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury |
| Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill | Menzies, Walter | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) | Williamson, A. |
| Thomasson, Franklin | Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| Thompson, J. W. H.(Somerset,E | Waterlow, D. S. | Wilson, John (Durham, Mid) |
| Torrance, Sir A. M. | Watt, Henry A. | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Toulmin, George | Wedgwood, Josiah C. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S. |
| Trevelyan, Charles Philips | White, George (Norfolk) | Winfrey, R. |
| Verney, F. W. | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) | Wodehouse, Lord |
| Vivian, Henry | White, Luke (York, E.R.) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) | Whitehead, Rowland | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Walters, John Tudor | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) | |
| Walton, Sir John L(Leeds, S.). | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer | TELLERS FOR THE AYES— |
| Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) | Wiles, Thomas | Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A Pease. |
| Ward, John(Stoke-upon-Trent) | Williams,Llewelyn(Carmarth'n | |
| Waring, Walter | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Nield, Herbert |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Parker,Sir Gilbert(Gravesend) |
| Ashley, W. W. | Glover, Thomas | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt. HonSirH. | Haddock, George R. | Pirie, Duncan V. |
| Balcarres, Lord | Hardy, Laurence(Kent, Ashford | Powell, Sir Francis Sharp |
| Balfour, Rt Hn.A.J(City Lond) | Harris, Fredrick Leverton | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Rawlinson,John Frederick Peel |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Barrie H. T. (Londonderry.N.) | Helmsley, Viscount | Richards, T. F. (Wolverhmpt'n |
| Beach,Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks | Hervey, F. W. E(Bury S. Edm'ds | Roberts, S.(Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hill, SirClement (Shrewsbury) | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Hodge, John | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Houston, Robert Paterson | Seddon, J. |
| Brace, William | Hudson, Walter | Shackleton, David James |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hunt, Rowland | Smith,Abel H.(Hertford,East) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Starkey, John R. |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Jowett, F. W. | Steadman, W. C |
| Byles, William Pollard | Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H. | Summerbell, T. |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt Hon. Col. W. | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Keswick, William | Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A.(Wore | King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull) | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Clynes, J. R. | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Coates, E. Feetham (Lewisham | Lea, HughCecil(St. Pancras, E. | Walker,Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Lee,ArthurH(Hants., Fareham | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Cooper, G. J. | Liddell, Henry | Walsh, Stephen |
| Craig,Charles Curtis (Antrim, S. | Lockwood, Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R. | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Craig, Captain James( Down.E.) | Long.Col. CharlesW.(Evesham | Wardle, George J. |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| Crooks, William | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W) |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Dixon-Hartland, Sir FredDixon | Macpherson, J. T. | Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Younger, George |
| Duncan,Robert( Lanark, Govan | Makrs, H. H. (Kent) | |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES— |
| Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | Mr.Ramsay Macdonald and Mr.George Roberts. |
| Fardell, Sir T. George | Moore, William | |
| Fell, Arthur | Morpeth, Viscount | |
| Fletcher J. S. | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield |
Resolution agreed to.
§ Question put, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
1191§ Remaining clauses and schedules agreed to.
§ Bill reported; as amended, to be considered upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 229.]