§ As amended, considered.
§ Clause 1—
§ * MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER (Croydon)moved an Amendment to exempt the Militia from the operation of the clause. He did not think it would be necessary to carry the Amendment to a division, as last week the Secretary for War was good enough to give the Loader of the Opposition encouragement to hope that the views entertained by many on that side of the House with regard to the Militia would receive his favourable attention. He sincerely trusted that would be the case. It was some weeks ago since he ventured to suggest that a compromise might be arrived at, and that it might be found possible without destroying the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman that the Militia should be reintroduced into our first line. The Leader of the Opposition had referred to the illuminating example of the Irish Militia, in whose case the difficulty with regard to the special contingent, which the Secretary for War at one time thought insuperable, had been got over. It had been found possible to regard some of the Irish battalions, not only as sources from which drafts might be supplied, but also as units, which in certain eventualities might take the field as battalions. His right hon. friend made the important suggestion that the principle which had been accepted on the other side of the Irish Channel should be accepted on this side also. If that suggestion, to which he understood the right hon. Gentleman had given a conditional assent, were 181 adopted, it would be a great relief to many on that side of the House, as it would permit the Militia to remain as an existing force in our Army organisation. It might be that the right hon. Gentleman would suggest that some of the battalions should be differentiated, as regarded their treatment, from the others; that, he understood, was the case in Ireland. In Ireland a certain number of battalions were to be turned into third battalions of the Regular Army, and to be made liable for service in time of war, and were to act if necessary as units for the purpose of guarding lines of communication or the occupation of fortresses. The remaining battalion were to be retained for the purpose of supplying drafts. He understood that that proposal might be applied to the English Militia. Substantially his view would be met by an arrangement of that kind. He did not, however, believe it was possible to separate the battalions one from another and say that this battalion should or should not be stamped for all time as a unit which would take the field in time of war with its own officers. But the principle would be accepted that the Militia were to exist in the future as they had existed in the past, and if that were so his objection to the Bill would be very greatly decreased, if not altogether removed. Yet this could not be the end, but rather the beginning, of the change in respect of the Militia. The right hon. Gentleman had been good enough to confirm the views they had held with regard to the Militia, and had admitted that before they became a valuable force they must undergo serious changes, and, he would say, serious reforms. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would find after he had taken this very wise step that there was still a great deal to do, because the real difficulty in regard, to the Militia was the pressure from the Line to which they were always subjected. As this pressure would not be removed, eventually they would have to go a little further. But for the present, unless he was misinformed, he understood the Militia would remain and would not be destroyed; they would be made liable for service abroad in time of war; they would become the Territorial battalions of the Regular Army; and they would be officered to a considerable extent by officers of the Regular Army. Those four points would carry them a long way 182 towards bringing back the Militia to the position they once occupied, and which he hoped they would occupy again. He hoped he had said nothing in this matter in a controversial spirit. That was not the spirit which animated him. Ever since the right hon. Gentleman made his announcement last week he had felt that there was hope of light on the matter. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would now be able to confirm the outline which he had laid before the House as representing the views of the Opposition, and that he would be able to state in greater detail what he proposed to do in carrying out the pledge given to the Leader of the Opposition as to the maintenance of the Militia as a live part of our military organisation.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 1, line 8, after the word' Regulars ' to insert the words 'and Militia.' "— (Mr. Arnold-Forster.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted in the Bill."
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. HALDANE, Haddington)The Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman gives me, at all events, the opportunity of making a statement on the position which arose at the conclusion of the debate last Monday. The Leader of the Opposition made a suggestion which seemed to me so feasible that I undertook to consider it, and I was the more able to consider it because the whole matter had been before my mind for two months past. Indeed, I think that, but for the attitude and decision of the commanders and officers of the Militia, who frankly refused to supply drafts, the controversy would not have arisen in its acute stage. If they had adopted a different position there might have been a different form for Part III. of the Bill. But the more I have looked into the matter the more I have been convinced it was a happy opposition, because it has given us the opportunity of making the care of the first line the overriding consideration and of producing an organisation simpler than if we had dealt with the matter in a mere spirit of compromise. I entirely agree with what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London. The right hon. Gentleman referred to our proposals in regard to the Irish Militia, 183 and said why not, at any rate as regards a large part of the English Militia, organise it so that we may get what I think he and his friends regarded as a great point, namely, relief units which will be available as units. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that it was wholly consistent with the demands which I had made upon the population for war purposes, and that it fitted in with the general lines of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said it was perfectly consistent with that part of the scheme, and he suggested that I should consider whether I could not modify, not the root ideas of the plan, but what are really mere details, so as to extend to England and Scotland the same scheme of Militia organisation as I had applied to Ireland, subject to the qualification that in Ireland there are no Volunteers to take the place of the Militia. I think I can meet the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman, and meet it with all the better conscience because it has been my own idea since May last. I think we have got to a happy solution. Not one line will have to be changed—not one part of the machinery altered. It is a question of organisation under the powers which the Bill proposes to confer, and I will explain to the House how we can work it out. The original scheme of the Bill was that we should take sixty-six Regular regiments in England and Scotland, and eight Regular regiments in Ireland, and that we should put behind each of the sixty-six a third battalion, the primary function of which should be to train drafts to supply the wastage of war, and which might, in case of mobilisation, throw off men for lines of communication and for relief purposes. In the case of Ireland we proposed to do the same, but to organise also twelve battalions behind the eight Irish third battalions, which should be enlisted under Part III., the men of which should be under precisely the same engagements as the men in the third battalions, but their primary purpose should be to furnish units, though also liable to supply drafts, as in the case of the existing battalions. When I came to consider the working out of the scheme with the Adjutant-General he pointed out some time ago that, in the establishments we were proposing to take away, we were taking away more than was necessary, because he thought it right to provide a margin of safety. I should give the 184 numbers. In addition to twelve Irish battalions, it is proposed to organise fifteen more in England and Scotland, which will give twenty-seven units for lines of communication and reliefs, and these units will be available in times of great necessity to find drafts. They will be behind and independent of the third battalions. They will principally serve as fourth battalions to certain territorial regiments, and in that way we shall have a provision for drafts in case of emergency, but primarily we shall have twenty-seven battalions for the purpose of providing relief units. As regards men in the fourth battalions as I call them, for short, the strength will be 800. Now, as regards officers, we have made provision for the creation of a reserve of officers, but it will necessarily take a little time before it becomes operative. This plan will enable us to give to junior Militia officers under thirty-five the position at once of going into the reserve of officers, and, as such, they will be in a much better position than they are at the present time. Under the scheme they will have £20 a year retaining fee for taking engagements to serve abroad. I am talking now of men below the rank of major. These officers would be required for the purposes of the third battalions and also for the purposes of the fourth battalions. In the third battalions we propose to provide a large proportion of Regular officers, because we think it necessary in order to make the training machinery as perfect as possible. In the fourth battalions we shall not have quite as many Regular officers, so that we shall be able to make more use from the beginning of the junior Militia officers. These officers on mobilisation would become full Regular officers, taking their positions according to their ranks. Then as regards the senior Militia officers, the House knows that we are short enough of officers at present, and therefore we shall be in a position to make use of the senior officers of the Militia. We should ask them to go into, not the new Reserve of Officers which we propose to create, but into the existing Reserve of Officers into which retired officers of the Regular Army go to be available in the time of war; but I think we should be able to do for them what we cannot do for the old Reserve officers, and that is we should be able to ask them to come out to train their battalions. Shortly, our new proposals 185 come to this: in Ireland the Militia battalions in substance will form eight third battalions with twelve fourth battalions behind them. They will cease to be Militia as such, and they will become Regulars, belonging to and forming part of the organisation of the Regular Army. In the case of the English and Scottish Militia they too—those of them whom we can take—will be asked to come in under Part III. of the Bill, but we do all we can to preserve their traditions, names, and colours. Let me take an analogy from the law. When a commercial company is to have a new constitution, what occurs? It is reconstructed. It is wound up, and it emerges under new articles of association under the Companies Acts, but with the same name, traditions, and shareholders, the same everything, except the legal constitution and the fresh capital. In the same manner the Militia battalions will rise, phœnix-like, in the form of third and fourth battalions.
§ MR. WYNDHAM (Dover)asked whether there was to be any distinction under the plan between England and Scotland and Ireland.
§ * MR. HALDANENone. The only distinction is that we cannot take the whole 124 English Militia battalions. Some of them are in a most unsatisfactory condition, as they are unable to get the men, and it is much bettor that they should go into the Territorial Army, where we can take them in large numbers. The figures stand in this way. There are at present 124 Militia battalions in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of these we propose to take material to furnish us with 101 battalions. There will remain a substantial number of weak Militia battalions, with which we can do very little, and, as I have said, we propose that these should go into the Territorial Army. Of the 101 battalions seventy-four will have an establishment of 500 men, with a large staff of officers, and twenty-seven will have an establishment of 800 men, with a substantial staff of officers. Now, I have sketched as nearly as possible the details of my proposal; but there is a great deal to work out, and naturally the House of Commons will ask for details of finance. I am glad to say the difference in money will be very little indeed. I shall be enabled to save the expenditure with the Militia, allowing the 186 working-off engagements under the now system, while new officers come up under the Reserve. The change in our proposals will enable me to fill the Reserve of Officers by the machinery provided. On the whole, the arrangement seems to me, from a financial point of view, sufficient.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (Worcestershire, E.)asked how the future finance of the new Army would be affected.
§ MR. HALDANEPractically not at all. We take off on the one hand and put on the other.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINAfter the transition period?
§ * MR. HALDANEIt ultimately means that the Territorial Army will be a little cheaper and the other a little dearer. Of course there are a number of details I have not gone into. Depots will be assimilated, the cost of the Militia Staff will be saved, and the House may take it from me that there will be a great many economies effected from the change to a single force and by simplicity of organisation. I will not go further now than to say that there will be no substantial addition to the cost—something slight, but nothing that the House need trouble about. I have been asked if the proposal will apply to the Militia Garrison Artillery, and here the matter is much more difficult than with the Field Artillery, because the former is not what we want, but we shall endeavour to consult the feeling among the men as well as we can; there is no reason why we should not try to preserve the sentiment, the colours, the band, the name even. You cannot treat them eo nomine as a separate force for the Regular Army, but you can keep up the battalion with the same emblems, honourable traditions, and history, and we shall endeavour to do that as far as we can. I think I have now put before the House the main points, and if there is any further information required I will give it, as far as I can, in the form of replies to Questions.
§ * MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERasked if the force would be under the county associations.
§ MR. HALDANENo, no; for the future all the Militia in substance will belong to the Regular Army. There will be only two lines; we wipe out the intermediate organisation corresponding to the Militia. It may be said that this looks like increasing the Regular Army, and in one sense it is; but we are taking from the force behind it.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London)Speaking for myself, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the modifications in his scheme which he has just explained to the House, and I think the House at large will be grateful to him for the statement he has made. He has told us that it has been in his mind for some time, and we can well believe it, for the germ, or more than the germ, of the proposal can be found in the Bill, and especially in that part which concerns the Irish Militia. There is no change in the substance of his original plan, nothing inconsistent with what I think is the root idea of the scheme. If that is true of the right hon. Gentleman, a similar observation can be made with regard to friends of mine on this side of the House. We fool that the scheme as regards the Militia fits in with our ideas for which we have been arguing, and so we are in the fortunate position of being in agreement in substance with what is proposed to be done, no matter to what school of thought we belong. I do not now wish to delay the House from entering upon other important matters which were not discussed in Committee, and I which I hope will receive attention on this Report stage; but there is one Question only I would like to ask. I almost gather from what the right hon. Gentleman said that in his opinion this modification of his plan can be carried out without alteration of the Bill; but surely the transfer from the second to the first line of the whole of the Militia battalions—surely that change will require some modification of the actual wording of the Bill? If not, it seems to me that our discussions have been upon no particular plan. Will he explain how it is that the important modification can be carried out without altering a word or comma in the Bill?
§ MR. HALDANEThe right hon. Gentlemen has met me in so handsome a manner and in such an admirable spirit 188 that I feel almost anxious to make Amendments to assure him of my good will; but my difficulty is they are not necessary. The Irish Militia have all through been in the position I have just described. I gave an administrative undertaking to organise a special contingent, and the men willing to take service abroad and to be drafted will be asked to enlist under Part III. of the Bill. We then say there are some of the men so good, so well trained, that we give them the chance of forming a fourth battalion. To them we say, "Come under Part III.; we shall want you to be drafted; but it only means that you will come under a new set of statutes; you come into a fourth battalion if required.'' That will be done in the case of each man, and for the Militia battalions that are weak it is possible we may have to take two battalions to make up a single third battalion. Some of the battalions we hope may come over en bloc, and we have every desire to suit their territorial conditions and traditions. Where we can, although the men come in individually, they will be formed into a unit as like as possible to the old, but under new engagements. So far as individual men are concerned, we should try to consult their convenience at every point. We have provided the financial means and the machinery we require to create our first line.
§ MR. McCRAE (Edinburgh, E.)said he wished to congratulate his right hon. friend upon his statement, and on the course he was now going to pursue. It agreed in many points with the views he had humbly pressed upon his notice for months past—the formation of the Volunteers and Yeomanry into a Territorial Army, and pushing what was good of the Militia into the first line. What proportion of the twenty-seven battalions did the right hon. Gentleman propose to allocate to Scotland?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid there were some very good battalions in Scotland, but he would have to survey the whole of the battalions and judge according to merit.
§ Mr. McCRAEsaid they were all good in Scotland.
§ Mr. ASHLEY (Lancashire, Blackpool)inquired as to the age of enlistment. Would it be the same as before, seventeen or eighteen years of age?
§ MR. HALDANEreplied that it would be just the same as heretofore. Seventeen was the minimum age for the Militia, and the reason for that was not that they wished to send out soldiers below the proper age, but that they got a number of men at seventeen whom they would not get at a later age. It paid to get them and train them to a greater extent than those who came on at a more advanced age, and later on they went into the Line. By enlisting at seventeen they secured a stream of recruits whom they had to train more than they trained older men, but who furnished them with material they would not otherwise get. They did not for a moment contemplate sending out these men in either the 3rd or 4th Battalions under the now system at an immature age
§ MR. ASHLEYasked whether the period of enlistment would be the same as now, six years.
§ MR. HALDANEwas understood to say the enlistment would be just the same as ever.
§ MR. COURTENAY WARNER (Staffordshire, Lichfield)said he was very anxious to congratulate the Secretary of State for War personally on the improvement of the scheme by the change, which he thought would be greatly to the advantage and efficiency of the fighting force. He wished, however, to know whether the light hon. Gentleman proposed to enlist all the Militia Force straight off. If so, were they to work out their time under the existing engagement, and were only recruits to come forward under the new terms; because, however faithful and good the Militia might be, there were always a number of men who would not take any new engagement without being paid for it. He did not think the practice of enlisting at seventeen was so serious a matter as hon. Members thought, although he knew that it did tell to a certain extent in Regular regiments, but not so much in the Militia. In a battalion in which he was interested he found that only 10 per cent. of the men were under twenty years of age, and the reason was that many old soldiers enlisted in the Militia, and they did not get quite so many young men in the force as some hon. and right hon. Gentlemen thought. The officers were 190 well satisfied with the scheme put forward, though some of them who were seniors would have to go, but the old ones always had to go. He thought, however, that there would be an advantage in adopting the formation proposed, and allowing officers to go and fill up the reserve, as there would be a great many Militia who would be useful in time of war. He was glad they would be used and pushed forward into the Regular Army, in which many of them ought to have been. A question which required consideration was whether the men would have to be re-enlisted and whether they would serve out their time, or whether the re-enlistment would be under new terms of service.
§ SIR SAMUEL SCOTT (Marylebone, W.)asked how the right hon. Gentleman proposed to fill up the Reserve of Officers in order to feed the Regular Army in time of war.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid he did not rise to join in the chorus of congratulation to the Secretary of State, because, having advocated something of the kind for the last seven years, the right hon. Gentleman well knew how deeply grateful he was that he had consented to carry out the change proposed. He presumed that they might still take 300,000 in round numbers as the strength of the Territorial Force. The Auxiliary Forces at present rather exceeded 360,000, and the right hon. Gentleman was taking 58,000 men to form this reserve battalion. That would leave about 300,000 men in round numbers as members of the Territorial Force.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid they took 300,000 as an estimate for the establishment, because they thought that that would be about what they would get. He did not know, now that they were taking away so many Militiamen, whether they would get that number, but the establishment which they proposed would still remain. He thought that what had happened would make it rather difficult to get the Territorial numbers, at any rate, as quickly as under ordinary circumstances.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he desired to ask a question on the 191 financial aspect of the scheme. He assumed that, as a result of the right hon. Gentleman's announcement that day, the whole of the finance of the Militia would be part of the finance of the Regular Army, and that the accounts of the Militia would be audited and controlled by the Auditor and Comptroller-General as at present, and not in the way proposed for the Territorial Army. He also assumed that, under the new arrangement, there would be a special Vote taken for the Militia, as had been the case hitherto.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he did not know about a special Vote for the Militia, because the Militia substance would now be part of the Regular Army, and of course, the procedure with regard to finance would be precisely the same as that of the Regular Army. He did not want to pin himself to the exact form in which it would come before the House, but that was the substance of it, and, of course, the accounts would be audited in the same way as those of the Regular Army. As regarded the finance, at present they spent on the Auxiliary Forces well on to four and a half millions of money. The estimate he took for the Territorial Army was a sum of £2,850,000, and then he added to that certain other items. That estimate was taken on the assumption that they had 300,000 men going into camp for fifteen days. He never believed that they would get anything like the whole of that number to go into camp for fifteen days, though they would keep the units standing, and he doubted whether, now that they had taken the Militia away, they would for some time, at any rate, get the whole 300,000. The margin for the extra cost that these things would entail came not only from the economies of the abolition of the old depots, but from the difference between what they spent on the Territorial Army and the four and a half millions they spent on the Auxiliary Forces. It was obvious that the simplification of organisation avoided multiplication of stock, and they got a certain amount of economy in that way.
§ * SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean)said it was obvious that, when the new state of things came into force, there would be no Militia Vote; but, supposing the present men would not come over, would they have a 192 Militia Vote until the Militia became extinct by time?
§ MR. HALDANEreplied that his right hon. friend was quite right, and he saw his point. There would necessarily be a certain number of people who would say, "We will not come over, and you must keep us going," and there might be, in that transition period, a small Militia Vote. In reply to the Question of the hon. Baronet the Member for Marylebone, he had to say that somewhere about 4,000 officers would be required on mobilisation. Some, they hoped, would come from the universities and public schools, some from the public schools alone. The rest would come, they hoped, by taking a year in a Regular unit, and they would be very much akin to the class who came to the Regular Army through the Militia at the present time. He had to say, in reply to the hon. Member for Lichfield, that they would enlist at once all they could, but there would be some who would remain Militiamen. They would be worked off, he hoped, very quickly, but, while they were there, they could not disturb any contract.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEY (Shropshire, Newport)asked whether the training of the Militia both for the Reserve and the men would be the same as now.
§ MR. HALDANEwas understood to say that the training in all cases would be six months initial training. It was now six months, with twenty-eight days annual training, but in future it would be six months initial training, with fifteen days annual training and musketry training in addition.
§ LORD BALCARRES (Lancashire, Chorley)said that when the right hon. Gentleman told them that he was going to save the Militia they had some reason to hope that he would retain it at least on its present basis of efficiency. He did not think, however, they could make the force as efficient with fifteen days training as when it had twenty eight days. He now understood how it was that the right hon. Gentleman intended to give this training without the expenditure of further moneys. The matter became the more serious from the fact that the Militia as such was going to disappear, and become part of 193 the Regular Army, and be brought under the Army Act and not under the Militia Act. He wished to know, if the new Militia disappeared from the Militia Vote and appeared on Votes A and I of the Army Estimates, would it have the same responsibilities as the remainder of the Regular Forces with which it was to be grouped in future? Would that responsibility for foreign service, so far as the new Militia was concerned, be identical with that of the Regular Army?
§ * MR. HALDANEsaid he was not quite sure whether he appreciated the point of the noble Lord. The Militia would have the same responsibility as the Army Reserve.
§ * MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he did not know if the right hon. Gentleman desired him to withdraw his Amendment. He understood now that there was no use for it. There was nothing more to be said on the point saving one thing. He regretted that owing to the time at which this change had been made, some very important questions which arose consequentially upon the change could not be discussed. He would like to repeat a remark he had made earlier in the afternoon. He had been a student of Militia depots for years, and had visited nearly every Militia depot in England and Scotland, and though the House received the right hon. Gentleman's announcement with great satisfaction, the change was not going to make the Militia all the right hon. Gentleman desired. It could only make for good if it was the beginning and not the end of the changes with regard to the Militia.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)asked whether the Militia was to be taken entirely out of the control of the county associations. He put the same Question at Question time, and then understood the right hon. Gentleman to say there was no truth whatever in the report. But from his subsequent statement it appeared to him that the right hon. Gentleman had taken exactly the course hinted at in the Question he put.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid there would be certain Militia battalions which would go into the Territorial Army. They would be under the control of the county 194 associations. The others would be under the control of the Regular Army.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ VISCOUNT VALENTIA (Oxford),in moving an Amendment to secure the exemption of the Yeomanry from (he operation of Clause 1, said the right hon. Gentleman had expressed considerable sympathy with the Yeomanry Force at an earlier stage of the Bill. But in listening to the speech, and on since perusing it, he failed to find any reason for including that force in the right hon. Gentleman's scheme, except that they were not as efficient as the right hon. Gentleman hoped to make the cavalry. But Yeomanry were as anxious to make themselves efficient as was the right hon. Gentleman to see them efficient, and so far as serving with other forces in the field was concerned, they were not only prepared to do so, but the complaint of the officers was that they had not the opportunity they would like to have of so doing. With regard to the pay, the right hon. Gentleman had said it would be impossible to go on with different rates of pay. But in the Regular Forces there were different rates of pay at the present time. The right hon. Gentleman proposed to leave the Irish regiments of Yeomanry as they were at present, and there was a very strong similarity between the Irish Yeomanry and those of England, and it was very curious that what was sauce for the Irish goose should not be sauce for the English and Scottish gander. The arguments which had been used in regard to the Militia applied equally to the Yeomanry, with one exception, and that was the production of drafts for the Regular services. There, of course, the Yeomanry was differently situated; owing to the different ages at which the men were enlisted it would be impossible for them to supply drafts. But he thought that the right hon. Gentleman might well extend the analogy of reconstitution to the Imperial Yeomanry as well as the Militia. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think there was considerable value attached by the Auxiliary Forces to their bands and colours. But there was also a sentimental value attached to the conditions under which they served that weighed even more, he thought, with the Yeomanry than 195 with the Militia. Therefore, believing it was unwise to sacrifice the force of cavalry we now had in the shape of Yeomanry in order to obtain what must prove to be a less efficient force in the Territorial Army, he begged to move.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 1, line 8, after the word ' Regulars ' to insert the words 'and Yeomanry.' "— (Viscount Valentia.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted in the Bill."
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid that, if he desired to review the position of the Yeomanry under the Bill, he would be compelled to deal with a number of hypothetical assumptions, because, at the present time, they did not know what its position was. Was it analogous to that of the Militia? The position of the Militia under the Bill could be entirely changed without a word of the Bill being altered, and he assumed that the position of the Yeomanry would be the same. That being so, that seemed to be the opportunity for asking the right hon. Gentleman to temper his power with consideration, to boar in mind what had been so often urged on behalf of the Yeomanry, and not to bind himself in any way. The right hon. Gentleman was asking the Yeomanry to do more, and, at the same time, was telling the officers of the force to ask the men to accept less pay. That was the difficulty. It was obvious to the minds of most people that the admitted efficiency of the Yeomanry during the last ten years was due to the better pay of the force. In recent years they had been enabled, for that reason, to draw many young men, the sons of farmers, and enterprising clerks from the towns, who devoted four or five of the best years of their lives to fitting themselves for service and had made themselves efficient. The right hon. Gentleman must bear in mind that he could not alter these conditions for the men without losing a large proportion of the teachable men—men to whom some knowledge could be imparted in three or four weeks—men who could learn to ride and read a map better than any Regular soldier. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would tell the House that he was not wedded to his system of pay, but that he would 196 preserve an open mind to direct the ample powers he was taking under the Bill. He understood that those of the Yeomanry who were going on active service on the outbreak of war were to pass into the special contingent of fourteen squadrons. Those men were presumably to be taken from the Yeomanry regiments as a body, one regiment furnishing seven and another perhaps twenty-nine, but the average aimed at was about a troop a-piece. He gathered that those men would be taken so largely out of the regiments as almost to cease to belong to them. The House had had nothing distinct upon that point. First, they were told that they came in Class "A," and then in Part III., and then that they would be trained not with the troops to which they belonged. It was too late in the day to argue for and against these various propositions. The right hon. Gentleman had reserved to himself the power to deal with them, and in one way or another to modify his present plan, but he hoped he would keep present in his mind the fact that if they took men away from their officers and comrades altogether they would cease to be part of the units. He would have been very glad if the right hon. Gentleman had seen his way to invite the regiments to supply so many men willing to serve abroad, and then he could say—" We will not take you unless you will do so much training." He believed that if they did that they would have a succession of men taking up the obligation, who would fulfil the tests which the War Office imposed upon them. He confessed they on that side had a predilection for that plan, but he did not press it at that moment. He hoped, however, that the right hon. Gentleman would not dismiss it altogether from his mind, because it was an alternative plan to his proposal which would take the men. altogether out of the Yeomanry. According to the plan of the Secretary of State for War these men were to go into the Reserve, but he understood that even according to that plan there was no question of their supplying drafts generally to the cavalry. There was that distinction between their position and that of the Militia. But if, under the Secretary of State for War's plan, they got this special contingent, then they went to produce the fourteen squadrons of additional cavalry, and they did not go into the Reserve. The 197 right hon. Gentleman should not throw away all the chances he had of reaching a class he had not reached before. He hoped he would not imperil his chance of getting these men, or take up an attitude from which he could never recede in respect of the method by which he was going to get men on the outbreak of war.
§ MR. HALDANEthat said no one could have listened to the two distinguished Yeomanry commanding officers who had just spoken without feeling it to be almost impossible to resist them. But he had happened, within almost the last few-hours, to be in the company of two very distinguished officers of the Regular Army, one a very great cavalry leader and the other with great experience of cavalry, and they were as full of gloom about the Yeomanry as the right hon. Gentleman and the noble Lord were full of confidence. They had said to him that he was mixing himself up so much with Yeomanry officers in the House of Commons that he was being persuaded to make concessions, and that he was bringing into the Regular Army as divisional cavalry Yeomanry which, they thought, had not and could not have that professional instinct which cavalry who were trained men possessed. It was difficult for a very humble man to decide between two such great authorities. But he felt encouraged to repeat that the safest plan was, after all, the plan which he had decided upon— not to yield to the criticism of any distinguished Regular officers on the Yeomanry, because, as the right hon. Gentleman had well said, the Yeomanry came from an extremely enlightened class. On the contrary, it would not do to set out with a theory about the superiority of the training standard of the Regular cavalry and demand a marked differential character in favour of the Yeomanry. They had done a good deal to bridge over the experimental stage. There would be a period in which the right hon. Gentleman might find out that he had been right and himself wrong.
§ MR. WYNDHAMOr it may be the other way.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid it might be the other way, but he clung to the hope that, at all events, the House would feel that 198 in this matter he could not be criticised or reproached for want of a certain softness and readiness to yield. But, having gone so far, it would not do to go further, for fear that he should incur the criticism of those distinguished military authorities of whom he had spoken. The noble Lord had said, "Why not extend the kind of treatment the Irish Yeomanry are receiving to the Yeomanry hero?" He thought the noble Lord did not appreciate the position of the Irish Yeomanry. He had said that the Irish Yeomanry would go over, like the Irish Militia, to the divisional work. The regiments of Irish Yeomanry were to be asked to go over to the divisional cavalry, which on mobilisation would be attached to the Regular Army. The reason for that was that there was no Territorial Army in Ireland and there was no place open for them. Ireland had taken a prominent part in raising good Yeomanry regiments, and they hoped that Ireland would raise, in substance, two Yeomanry regiments for divisional cavalry. It was quite true that there was a great difference between the Yeomanry and the Militia. The special squadrons, although they came under Part III., were earmarked for divisional cavalry. That was the view of the General Staff. He did not think anybody would be content with the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman, who came in contact as much as he did with the views of commanding officers of the Regular Force, upon this subject of the divisional cavalry. The right hon. Gentleman had suggested that they should come under Clause 12 of the Bill, without any training which differentiated them from the Yeomanry; that they should be raised as part of the Yeomanry regiments, and go forward and be earmarked by their own consent for the Regular division.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid it was only a matter of method. He thought they would get more men if they adopted that method—if they allowed men to offer to undertake foreign obligations, and then told them that they could not be allowed to do that work unless they trained for so many months at a special school. They would get more men, and they would do less by that method to destroy the esprit de corps of the regiment than by allowing a man to be nominally attached to a Yeomanry regiment, but 199 drilling him for six months apart from his regiment.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that that was one of the points that were open to reconsideration—how much a man should be allowed to go back. He hoped the House would understand that he was not pinning himself to rigid methods in carrying out his plan. They might gain a great deal by experience. He had had it put to him with the greatest force by some of the most distinguished men commanding these divisions that the men who came into the divisional cavalry must have professional instinct. They said that if the men were left without the support of the Regulars the divisional cavalry could never be relied upon to do the kind of work that was wanted. They must be the ears and eyes of the division, the screen cavalry. They would be required to perform all sorts of services as divisional cavalry, which could not be foreseen, and which required professional instinct. There had been more criticism upon that part of the new organisation than upon any other. It was said that for the very part of the cavalry which required all good men they were making the least preparation; that they ought to have put the Yeomanry into the screen cavalry in the place of the two brigades of mounted infantry; that they ought to have kept the Regular trained mounted infantry for the divisional force. Those were problems which only experience could solve. The Government did not want to tie themselves upon that point. He had the least expert experience of any man in the House, but he had tried to weigh the arguments without prejudice, and, on the whole, he thought the line which he had marked out best met the criticisms and difficulties which had been put to him. The sum and substance of it was that, if they took the Yeomanry out of the Territorial Force, they could only do it, lock, stock, and barrel, in the way the Militia were going. He would be well content to take these fourteen squadrons if he could get them, but that would be to ask the whole force to undertake training which their antecedents and their social condition would not allow them to do. It would be much better to keep them as they were, and do the best they could with them.
§ * SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that our military authorities had been accused of heresy on this question, and the Continental Powers had decided on the opposite plan. In the case of Austria and Germany tradition might have been supposed to govern their ideas, and that the change would have met with resistance. Italy, which was a very poor country, could not do all that she would like to do; and in the case of France they were driven to contemplate the reduction of the cavalry on financial grounds alone. Although for these financial reasons the decision to retain the full numbers of regular cavalry was unwillingly arrived at, it was forced upon those Powers by necessity. They wanted a little more knowledge on this question. They did not know where the right hon. Gentleman was taking them. As he understood, the right hon. Gentleman did not know himself. He did not blame the right hon. Gentleman, for it was an experimental process no doubt, and he was right to make experiments. The connection between this new short-training divisional cavalry and the existing Yeomanry seemed to be very thin, and it was hardly worth while to pretend that these troops were Yeomanry in any sense at all, and he would have thought that it would be much better to treat them separately from the Yeomanry organisation. Either that scheme or the one suggested by the right hon. Member for Dover would attract him more, but after all it was purely experimental. He would have thought that the existing Yeomanry organisation with the best Yeomanry officers would have formed an organisation to get the recruits for the new body. It would be better to tell the House plainly that that body had no real connection with the existing Yeomanry. The right hon. Gentleman had not yet told them how and where these men were going to be trained. They assumed that they would be trained at Aldershot. If the right hon. Gentleman would give them more information as to what was in his mind with regard to this experiment, he would considerably relieve the minds of hon. Members.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he quite appreciated the view which the right hon. Baronet had taken. As regarded the. 201 training, they hoped to make it local, and the only reason why he had not enlarged upon that question was that the whole cavalry organisation was under consideration at the present time. As to the policy of general organisation, he was not in a position to say yet where the schools and training squadrons would be.
§ VISCOUNT TURNOUR (Sussex, Horsham)regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had mentioned the opinion of two anonymous cavalry leaders in regard to the Imperial Yeomanry, because he was afraid the House might conclude that military opinion was unfavourable to the Imperial Yeomanry, whereas the contrary was the fact. He would like to know if the two cavalry leaders referred to had had any opportunity of coming into close contact with the Imperial Yeomanry, not in South Africa but since the war. Obviously, if they had not, their opinion was valueless. He regretted to notice a vein of disparagement of the Yeomanry running through the Secretary of State's speeches. If instead of referring to those distinguished cavalry leaders, the right hon. Gentleman had given the House some indication of the sort of views expressed in the reports of the inspecting officers of the Imperial Yeomanry, hon. Members would have gathered a very different impression. As one who had recently come from a training of the Imperial Yeomanry he assured the right hon. Gentleman that his proposals were having an extraordinary effect upon that force, because recruits were falling off and they were frightened at what was being proposed in this Bill.
§ MR. HALDANEThe last returns for April show an increase of some hundreds more Yeomanry than the previous returns.
§ VISCOUNT TURNOURsaid that that was probably due to the fact that the country had not yet realised the full extent of these proposals. He would like to see the returns in regard to those Yeomanry who had re-engaged at the end of the training. He was very much surprised to hear that the April returns were larger. He did not think that even the right hon. Gentleman would deny that in the Yeomanry generally the gravest apprehension was felt as to the effect of the proposals contained in the Bill. He protested against the quotation by the 202 right hon. Gentleman of the opinion of anonymous cavalry leaders.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTWho are they?
§ VISCOUNT TURNOUR,in conclusion, said the House ought to have an opportunity of knowing what the real military opinion was in regard to the value of the Imperial Yeomanry.
§ MAJOR SEELY (Liverpool, Abercromby)said he did not agree that the right hon. Gentleman in his speeches had shown a contempt for the Yeomanry; on the contrary, he had given them well-merited praise. He deprecated any statement that the Yeomanry as a whole were going to refuse to join on account of this Bill. He had repeatedly stated that he thought it was a mistake to reduce the pay unless it could be made up in some other way. He thought it was very wrong to make things look worse than they were by trying to make out that the Yeomanry would not accept the new conditions; it was their duty to carry out whatever the House ultimately decided.
§ VISCOUNT TURNOURsaid he did not say that the Yeomanry as a whole would refuse to serve. What he said was that their opinion was distinctly unfavourable to the right hon. Gentleman's proposals.
§ MAJOR SEELYsaid he did not wish to join in the controversy as to the value of the makeshift troops which his right hon. friend proposed to create. After all, history showed that a long period of peace was a period of accumulated errors in military affairs, and when war broke out the bullets swept the errors away. All their military training was like playing football without a football, because they did not have the thing which was of real importance, namely, the element of fear. Consequently all lessons learned by peace training were liable to gigantic errors, but one supreme lesson they had learnt was that cohesion and confidence in soldiers were more important than the precise number of days training. If, for instance, the right hon. Member for Dover could bring his own squadron complete to the theatre of war, owing to their cohesion and confidence in him they would be of considerably more 203 value than the same number of highly-trained cavalry who had never seen their leader before. The cavalrymen with their higher standard of training and skill would of course be immeasurably superior. Many of them were better horse masters, because they had been at it since their boyhood. It would not be wise to ignore the spirit of cohesion and confidence in the leader. The proposal to take a small number from each regiment and group them under officers they had not seen was not likely to produce the best results. He did not agree with the suggestion that the Yeomanry should be taken bodily from the Territorial Force and attached to the Regular Army. He trusted his right hon. friend would bear in mind the importance of maintaining cohesion and confidence in their leader in any troops he proposed to send to war, because that was of infinitely more value than anything else.
§ MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid the hon. and gallant Gentleman had said something which to him was of considerable interest, although he did not agree with his historical recollection. The most successful and the briefest war in modern history was that which took place in 1866, and that was conducted by officers and men of whom not one in a thousand had ever seen war. They were asked to violate the very principles which the hon. and gallant Member for Abercromby had laid down. He understood that little squads of men would be taken from each county, and those men would never act with the squadron in which they were going to fight, still less with the regiment. That seemed to him a very bad preparation— that the men should be organised in such a way that they would never meet as a consolidated unit until they met on the battle field. He wished the right hon. Gentleman would tell them whether he considered he was making the wisest use of the Yeomanry cavalry, which a short time ago became practically mounted infantry, and as such, he believed, were competent to render the greatest possible service. When war broke out the whole of the divisional cavalry of the British Army would now be composed of practically untrained men. That was a very serious matter. Cavalry on the Continent was trained to act by shock tactics against cavalry, but was it probable that 204 cavalry with six months training, who had never acted in masses at all, could be subjected with safety to such an ordeal as that? And the horses were trained, as well as the men, for those shock tactics in the Continental armies. They would not get anything in the least like Continental cavalry in the Yeomanry. cavalry, even if they got the regiments together and manœuvred them for some months. Would it not be possible even now for the right hon. Gentleman to modify the use he was going to make of the Yeomanry? He believed with his right hon. friend that the Yeomanry would do their very best to give value to the country, whatever conditions might be imposed, but that, he thought, placed the War Office under the corresponding obligation of making a fit use of them.He hoped the Yeomanry would, at any rate, be given a chance of acting as Mounted Infantry and Scouts, and would not be used as divisional cavalry of the British Army, a position which no troops with their training and qualities could be expected to fill.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYasked whether the fourteen squadrons of Yeomanry were to be officered by Yeomanry or Regular officers. It was obvious that if they took these men out of their Yeomanry regiments, and sent them away from the Territorial officership, they would strike at the Territorial character of the force. He was interested in what was said by the hon. Member for the Abercromby Division. The hon. and gallant Gentleman was in his usual difficulty: he wished to have an efficient Army, and to get it economically; therefore he had as usual to sacrifice efficiency for economy. He would like to know from the Minister for War whether the men subtracted from the Yeomanry in the way described were to be treated as regular cavalry, or whether they would continue to be counted as mounted infantry. Were they to be trained in an entirely different way from the parent Yeomanry regiment?
§ SIR SAMUEL SCOTTsaid the right hon. Gentleman had stated that the Yeomanry regiments were all to be on the same basis in regard to training as the Irish Militia. The Irish Militia were to have six months Militia training. Were 205 the Irish Yeomanry recruits to have six months preliminary training or not?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that was so, otherwise they would not be able to go with the Regulars and form part of the divisional cavalry. All the men who went into the special squadrons would receive six months training. With regard to the cavalry, he thought a great deal of confusion had been imported into the discussion by the use of the words divisional cavalry. He quite agreed that men trained in the fashion proposed would not be able to cope with Continental cavalry. Screen cavalry were part cavalry, part mounted infantry, and the functions of what they called divisional cavalry were in many respects much nearer those of mounted infantry than those of cavalry; Hon. Members knew that nowadays the line of demarcation between cavalry and mounted infantry was not a sharp line. Continental cavalry were organised for shock operations, ours were not. We gave the Lancer the lance still, but the cavalry were trained for work of a different kind. Our operations would render it extremely difficult for cavalry to come into shock at all. In their capacity as cavalry, however, they were muck more highly trained than mounted infantry. Possibly the divisional cavalry would be adequately described as mounted infantry, but divisional cavalry was the title which had been given to them. The mounted troops who went with the divisions under the name of divisional cavalry would be trained. As to the officers, of course the grade of officer could not be very high, they must be junior officers.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYasked whether the officers would be Yeomanry or Regular officers.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid they would be Yeomanry officers who had gone into the Reserve, and for a troop the officer very likely would not be above the rank of a lieutenant. The higher organisation would naturally look to Regular officers, or officers of a higher grade who were in the Reserve. Very likely they would be Regular officers.
THE MARQUESS OF HAMILTON (Londonderry)said that if the six months training were adhered to, two North of 206 Ireland Yeomanry regiments would be wiped out of existence. He was an officer in an Irish Yeomanry regiment in which practically all the men were farmers' sons. They worked on the farms, and now that a large number of the tenants had purchased their holdings under the Land Act, they would be more needed on the farms than ever. How could they spare six months at seed time and harvest in order to go and train for the Yeomanry?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid they must consider the circumstances and how they could deal with the Irish Yeomanry in order to bring thorn into a divisional organisation. It would be necessary to give them a higher training than they got now. However, he would consider the matter and see whether anything could be done in the direction suggested by the hon. Member.
§ * MR. ASHLEYsaid he was glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman would consider the position of the Irish Yeomanry, as the hon. Member for; Londonderry had shown that the proposals in the Bill as to the future of the corps was destructive. He had not risen to speak for the Yeomanry, but he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the extra squadron of Yeomanry were to be asked to come out for six months preliminary training, as well as fifteen days annual training. If so, it would be much harder on these men than on the men in the existing squadrons, who received 5s. 6d. pay per day. The right hon. Gentleman had said that in the future the Yeomanry were to receive 1s. 2d. a day pay, Is. a day allowance for messing and comforts to be paid through the commanding officer, and an Army ration valued at 6d. a day. That was to say, the Yeoman in the future was going to get 2s. 8d. a day—which made him worse by 2s. 10d. than the Yeoman at the present time. Under those conditions he could not see how the right hon. Gentleman would get the same number or class of men in the future as in the past or at present. Could the right hon. Gentleman give the House some information of an incident which he saw recorded in The Times with reference to the Hampshire Yeomanry? The impression left on his mind was that the Hampshire Yeomanry, through their 207 commanding officer, respectfully informed the right hon. Gentleman that if their pay was to be reduced at the end of their present engagement, they could not see their way to re-engage; and it was stated that the right hon. Gentleman wrote back that the Yeomanry would be able to continue under the conditions of present engagement. Was that exactly what had occurred?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he had received a telegram from the commanding officer of the Hampshire Yeomanry asking him what the terms of engagement of recruits would be, and he replied that the commanding officer might enlist new men up to the time the Bill became operative and that the men till then would remain under the present conditions. Of course it followed that the men already under engagement would go on to the end of their term of service under the existing conditions. Following on that the War Office sent out a letter to commanding officers stating the position quite fully. The words of the telegram should be read with the words of the letter.
§ VISCOUNT VALENTIAsaid that he understood that the right hon. Gentleman had stated that it would be much better if the Yeomanry were left as they were.
§ MR. HALDANEI did not say that.
§ VISCOUNT VALENTIAwas understood to say that he believed the Yeomanry would have no objection to be under the county associations. However, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman had rather modified his point of view, and he begged leave to withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid he wished to move an Amendment to exclude the Volunteers from the operation of the Bill, in order to give the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of stating what good the Bill would do to that force. The Militia were taken out of the Bill, and the right hon. Gentleman had just made a statement that the Yeomanry would continue to serve under present conditions until the Bill became operative— 208 which might be a hundred years hence. He had read the Bill; he had listened to every word which the right hon. Gentleman had said in the course of the debates, and also all the letters which the right hon. Gentleman had written, but he entirely failed to see what advantages the Volunteers were to gain. It was perfectly true that they were going to establish four divisions under old generals. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had conferred with those divisional generals, but he could have formed those brigades without a Bill, as had already been done in the provinces, although London had been left out of account. He could not see what use the county associations would be. The Volunteers were not represented in the House in the same strength as the Yeomanry and the Militia; the hon. and gallant Member for East Edinburgh and himself alone were able to stand up for the Volunteer force. If the right hon. Gentleman would kindly explain what advantages the Volunteers and the country would derive from this voluminous and cumbrous Bill he would withdraw his Amendment.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill,
In page 1, line 8, after the word 'Regulars,' to insert the words and Volunteers. "—(Sir Howard Vincen.)
§ Question proposed, That those words be there inserted in the Bill.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid he could not admit that the hon. and gallant Member now represented in the same sense as before the Volunteer force, of which he formerly was such a brilliant ornament. Since his retirement a great change had come over the spirit of the Volunteers. They wished no longer to be regarded or used as an ornamental force, as those knew who were in very close relationship with them. Even within the last few hours he had received a telegram from Sheffield as to the way in which the strength of one of the chief infantry battalions in that city had grown up under the enthusiasm which had been inspired by the hope of their becoming real soldiers. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman went to Sheffield he would find out how mistaken was the view he had taken, He now appealed to the 209 House to come to the question of the county associations so that it might receive adequate discussion.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTasked leave to withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ * VISCOUNT MORPETH (Birmingham, S.)moved an Amendment to give more representation to the local authorities on the county associations, because he considered that the county associations as constituted under the Bill were not likely to be successful. He was very sceptical as to the value of the associations at all from a military point of view. The Secretary of State for War had said that he followed up the idea of county associations from a former practical experiment made in this country; but that experiment had been a failure. In military affairs central control was essential. It was the invariable case when an extension of local government was granted by Parliament that what was given legislatively was taken away administratively by the Central Departments of Government. But when it came to a question of Army management the main question was whether the authorities at Whitehall should not be kept in very close contact with administration. He believed that if the associations were to be merely the nominees of the War Office they would consist of a number of excellent persons who would supply valuable information to that Department, but they would after all be simply its instruments. It might be said that the War Office was not a very good selector of persons in the county to form those associations, and it would be very difficult for that Department to make a choice. The right hon. Gentleman had struck out the Lord-Lieutenant as the official head of the association, but no doubt the Minister of War would put himself in communication with the county council and other persons of light and leading in the county. That course, however, was also open to very grave objection. Supposing there was an association nominated in this manner by the War Office, how were the vacancies in that association to be filled up? Probably what would happen was that a member of the association would write to the right hon. Gentleman 210 and say that so-and-so was a very desirable candidate. That led them to the principle of pure co-optation, and although it had certain merits, if it was the sole method of appointment it would inevitably lead to the affairs of the associations falling into the hands of a clique. He had no confidence that these associations would be successful, but he did not feel sufficiently strongly on the matter to say that the experiment should not be made. The state of the Territorial and Auxiliary Forces of the Army was not so flourishing that they could refuse to make any experiment, but if the county association was to have any weight it must be a local body and not merely the creature of the War Office or a co-opted body. If they were to carry Army matters into local affairs they must go to the living centres of local government, and go to the city councils and county councils and ask them to combine and take their share of the work. He quite agreed that the War Office should put on the commanding officers of the county, and that they should be in a majority; but he still thought that the other members should not be nominated by the War Office or by the Army Council.
§ MR. ASHLEYseconded the Amendment, though not for the reasons urged by the mover. He was in favour of the county associations, as they could do no harm and might do good, and anything that would stimulate interest ought to be supported. He saw no reason why local magnates representing the different interests in the country should not form a considerable adjunct to the work of the Bill in the creation of the Territorial Army. He supported the Amendment on that ground, because it was not at all certain whether they were going to have in these associations representatives of the county and borough councils at all. Under Sub-section (d) the right hon. Gentleman could nominate not less than half of the associations in the persons of the commanding officers, who would form a majority; therefore it should be left to the local bodies to select the minority.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 2, line 9, to leave out all the words from the word 'appointment' to the first word 'of in line 11."— (Viscount Morpeth.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words ' by the Army Council ' stand part of the Bill."
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the reason for the present form of the clause could hardly be appreciated without some knowledge of the history of the question. When the Bill was first being considered his idea was that they could use the county councils very much in the way that had been suggested by the mover and seconder of the Amendment; in other words, that the county association might be taken to be a body which was in part at all events directly representative of the local bodies. He found a storm of disapproval of that among the Volunteer forces, who refused to be put under the county councils. They seized hold of a phrase of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon that they were going to be made into a county council army, and objected. The unfortunate person who had to deal with Army affairs had to take into account public sentiment, and he had to consider his position. He thought that the Volunteers, with the exception of his noble friend, approved of the way which he had now chosen, viz., that the association should be incorporated with and form part of the administrative portion of the Army authorities, that it should be there as representing the Army authorities, and that its function should be to look after the administrative side of the soldier in the Home Army. They therefore got to the point that the association should be appointed by the Army Council with a considerable amount of elasticity to meet the requirements of the particular locality. It was proposed that not less than half of the body should be composed of commanding officers, and it was necessary that some latitude should be given to bring in people whose local knowledge was likely to help. There was the residue of the association to be dealt with, and for the sake of introducing elasticity it was proposed to insert the words now objected to which would enable the Army Council to introduce representatives of county and borough councils. He hoped the members of these bodies would take a large and honourable part in the work of the associations, but they had thought it right to give a free hand to the Army Council in the matter.
§ * SIR H. AUBREY-FLETCHER (Sussex, Lewes)was glad that county councils were not to be the bodies who were to have the superintendence of the Territorial Army. He had served ever since the formation of the present Volunteer Force, and in one sense was one of the founders of it. The lords- lieutenant of the counties, the county gentlemen, and in the cities the lord mayor and lord provost were the main factors in starting the force. They had heard that it went back to the days of Cromwell, but without going back so far he might mention that he had found in a family chest a document in relation to the Volunteer Forces dated 1803, which showed that something similar was in the mind of the Government of that day. It related to the county of Glamorgan and said—
At a general meeting of the Lieutenancy, holden at Pyle Inn, on Thursday, the 18th day of August, 1803, the Lord-Lieutenant in the Car. It is recommended that each hundred do raise their own quota to exonerate the county from the compulsory clauses of the Defence Act, that subscriptions be raised in the separate hundreds for this purpose, and that the inspectors of hundreds be requested to use their best endeavours to forward this plan and to receive and distribute the subscriptions in their respective hundreds.There was another matter that might be interesting—That it be recommended to each inspector to clothe the Volunteers in their districts with a red jacket turned up with lemon colour, grey pantaloons, round hat with a worsted feather; sharpshooters to be clothed in green if Government will allow it. That each inspector shall appropriate the subscriptions to be received by them, in first instance, towards clothing the men, should it be found sufficient for that purpose, not exceeding ten shillings for each man, and the surplus, if any, should remain towards the pay of the men on each Sunday, or other day, at the rate of one shilling per man, when not paid by Government.The resolutions were adopted. He thought everyone know that the Volunteer Force of that day did not last for long. When they came down to 1859 the force was raised by the lords-lieutenant, the lord provosts, and lord mayors of the day, and it existed under their superintendence for something like two years, during which he had the honour to command a battalion. He was very happy when the day arrived that they were taken away from the care of the lord-lieutenant 213 and placed under the immediate superintendence of the War Office. He could not say that the War Office did very much for them for many years of their existence, but they did something by providing them with rifles. They found their own uniforms, made their own ranges, and paid their own sergeant-instructors. An adjutant was allotted to them who was usually a retired officer of the Army, not up-to-date, and generally a very useless man. When they got under the War Office they had an adjutant of different calibre and one more satisfactory to the Volunteer Force. The right hon. Gentleman made one remark the other day on which he was tempted to rise and offer his opinion. It might have been a joke. He hoped it was. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Volunteer Force of 1859 was never intended to be a reality. The House might take it from him, and there were many Members who could corroborate him, that the Volunteers of 1859 did intend to be a reality and not a sham. In the second year of their existence they raised 20,000 Volunteers and marched them into Hyde Park, and, what was more, marched them out again. They were told in the old days by the Duke of Wellington that they would never be able to get 20,000 Volunteers into Hyde Park and if they did they would never get them out again. They did both. As to the county associations he was not altogether in favour of them. He thought they would drift in a very short time under the jurisdiction of the county councils. County gentlemen now had their hands full, and most of them were on the county councils. He feared that the county councils might, at no great distance of time, be the presiding bodies under which the Territorial Army would be placed. He hoped that would not be the case, but it might be, and if it was it would be a bad day for the force.
§ SIR GILBERT PARKER (Gravesend)said that if what his hon. friend had just said was true, he could only see failure in this portion of the Bill, but he hoped his hon. friend was mistaken and that the county gentlemen would assist the right hon. Gentleman in carrying out the objects of the Bill. He thought they must approach the question from a different standpoint from that from which 214 it was approached a few days ago. The statement of the right hon. Gentleman had altered the whole position. He thought that if they had the county associations at all they should be for the Militia, but that was now out of the question as the Militia was to go into the third and fourth battalions. Only the remnants of the Militia were to go to the Territorial Army, which would now rest upon the Yeomanry and the Volunteers, and the county associations would now interest themselves in the organisation of those forces. There should, in his opinion, be no rigidity in the matter, for the reason that in a good many counties there would be real difficulty if it was absolutely necessary to work with representatives of the county associations who on their side had adopted what they considered to be certain limits of rigidity of the scheme. He thought a certain amount of elasticity was necessary and that without it the county associations would not be established at all in certain counties. He therefore could not support his noble friend behind him, but would support the right hon. Gentleman, and he trusted his noble friend would not press his Amendment. He was not quite clear how far the right hon. Gentleman was going to invite these county gentlemen to join the associations. Half would be officers commanding and there would be representatives of the county councils. Did he understand that the other representatives would be county gentlemen—because the important part of the scheme was that the right hon. Gentlemen should be able to induce them to interest themselves in the matter; otherwise the scheme would not succeed.
§ SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that to his mind the county associations had been the main objection to the Bill, but he thought it was certain that the Bill would now pass through both Houses of Parliament with some organisation of this description embodied in it. Therefore he thought the one point which they might usefully elucidate was the applicability of the county association system to all parts of the two kingdoms. There were some parts of the country where a very strong county feeling existed. There were other parts of the country where a strong national or Imperial feeling dominated the county feeling. He did not know how far the right hon. Gentleman 215 thought the county feeling such as prevailed in the best Volunteer and Yeomanry counties at the present moment could be created in counties where it had not hitherto had existence. The right hon. Gentleman might reassure some of them who knew the strong view there was among active Volunteers by working more and more in the direction of county committees of commanding officers throughout the counties which had a county feeling and of large groupings of counties, in such cases as Wales and Scotland, where that county feeling did not exist.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid he was not sure that the right hon. Baronet was quite right in saying that the Bill was certain to pass. He himself was not so certain. He thought the right hon. Gentleman had done him (Sir Howard Vincent) a great injustice. If there was one part of the Bill to which he was favourable it was that dealing with the county associations. He thought those associations were likely to stir up county interest in favour of the Territorial Force. The noble Lord the Member for South Birmingham opposed the proposal of the Government in defence of local government and resented the interference of the Army Council in these local matters. It was perfectly true that the majority of the commanding officers resented the interference of the county associations in military matters, and he was quite sure that the feeling had been well expressed by the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench, whose services to the Volunteer Force had extended over nearly half a century. A great improvement set in when the military direction was taken over by the War Office, and they were entirely in favour of the military authorities having military control over the Volunteer Force. But that was not the object of the county associations. Their object was to promote financial and local feeling in favour of the Territorial Force and to see that there was a proper provision of headquarters, ranges, and other things appertaining to efficiency. To do that the county association must be a real local organisation. He quite agreed that the commanding officers should have 216 a considerable voice in the associations, and it was provided that 50 per cent. of the members should be representative of the commanding officers of the different regiments; as regarded the other members he thought it must be left to local opinion. But here the proposition was that the Army Council was not only to select the members, but provide the chairman and the secretary, conduct the business, control their finance, and in fact keep a light bearing rein on them all the time. If the right hon. Gentleman thought he was going to invoke local feeling by the aid of county associations under rules of that kind he was very greatly mistaken. The view put forward so well by the noble Lord the Member for South Birmingham and the hon. Member for Blackpool thoroughly represented the feeling in the matter. It was essential that the county associations and the prominent people of every locality should take an interest in the matter, and he did not think that object would be attained by the clause. One would think that the Army Council had enough upon their hands without taking up these matters of local administration, and if the noble Lord went to a division he would certainly vote for the Amendment, which was in accordance with good sense.
§ * Mr. McCRAE (Edinburgh, E.)said he could not agree with the hon. Gentleman opposite, and he was afraid that the reason why the hon. and gallant Member held that view, was that he was now a retired Volunteer somewhat out of touch with current opinion. He could state from his own knowledge that commanding officers rather resented being placed under county associations. He could not support the Amendment. He thought that the Army Council should have a good deal of discretion in the matter. He had not hesitated to say that he was against county associations as proposed to be established under the Bill; but now the power was to be given to the Army Council, and that, he thought, was a great step in advance. He for one did not fear the Army Council in the matter, and he would rather support that body having pretty large powers as to what duties it might delegate to the county associations, because it was to the Army 217 Council they must look for the administration of the Territorial Army.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTWithout a representative upon it?
§ VISCOUNT MORPETHsaid he wished to explain why he must go a division on the Question.
§ * MR. SPEAKERThe noble Lord has no right of reply.
§ VISCOUNT MORPETHI understood that under the new rule there was a right of reply.
§ * MR. SPEAKERThe noble Lord ought to know better than I do that this Bill has not been to Grand Committee.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided—Ayes, 265; Noes, 99. (Division List No. 235.)
219| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Crosfield, A. H. | Hope,W. Bateman(Somerset.N |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Dalmeny, Lord | Horniman, Emslie John |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Dalziel, James Henry | Horridge, Thomas Gardner |
| Alden, Percy | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan | Hyde, Clarendon |
| Armstrong, W. C. Heaton | Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Idris, T. H. W. |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Dickinson, W.H. (St.Pancras, N | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel |
| Asquith,Rt.Hon.HerbertHenry | Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Jackson, R. S. |
| Atherley-Jones, L. | Duncan, C.(Barrow-in-Furness | Jenkins, J. |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Johnson, John (Gateshead) |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Dunne,Major E.Martin(Walsall | Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) |
| Barker, John | Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Jones,Sir D.Brynmor(Swansea) |
| Barlow, John Emmot(Somerset | Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Jones, Leif (Appleby) |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Elibank, Master of | Jones,William (Carnarvonshire |
| Barran, Rowland Hirst | Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward | Kearley, Hudson E. |
| Barry, Redmond J (Tyrone, N.) | Erskine, David C. | Kincaid-Smith, Captain |
| Beale, W. P. | Esslemont, George Birnie | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) |
| Beauchamp, E. | Evans, Samuel T. | Kitson, Rt. Hon. Sir James |
| Bell, Richard | Everett, R. Lacey | Laidlaw, Robert |
| Benn,W.(T'w'r Hamlets.S Geo. | Faber, G. H. (Boston) | Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster |
| Bennett, E. N. | Fenwick, Charles | Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Ferens, T. R. | Lambert, George |
| Bethell.Sir J.H.(Essex,Romfrd | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Lamont, Norman |
| Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) | Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Lay land-Barratt, Francis |
| Billson, Alfred | Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Lea,Hugh Cecil(St.Pancras, E.) |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Freeman-Thomas, Freeman | Leese,Sir JosephF(Accrington) |
| Black, Arthur W. | Fuller, John Michael F. | Lehmann, R. C. |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Fullerton, Hugh | Lever,A. Levy(Essex, Harwich |
| Brace, William | Gardner, Col. Alan (Hereford,S. | Lever,W. H. (Cheshire,Wirral) |
| Branch, James | Gladstone,Rt.Hn. HerberJohn | Levy, Maurice |
| Brodie, H. C. | Glover, Thomas | Lewis, John Herbert |
| Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs.,Leigh) | Goddard, Daniel Ford | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Grant, Corrie | Lough, Thomas |
| Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Greenwood, Hamar (York) | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Macdonald,J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Griffith, Ellis J. | Mackarness, Frederic C. |
| Buxton, Rt. Hn.SydneyCharles | Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas.. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | M'Callum, John M. |
| Cameron, Robert | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | M'Crae, George |
| Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Wore'r) | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Hart-Davies, T. | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) |
| Causton,Rt. HnRichardKnight | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Maddison, Frederick |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Haworth, Arthur A. | Mallet, Charles E. |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Manfield, Harry (Northants) |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R R. | Hemmerde, Edward George | Marks,G. Croydon(Launceston, |
| Cleland, J. W. | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Marnham, F. J. |
| Clough, William | Henderson,J.M.(Aberdeen, W.) | Masterman, C. F. G. |
| Coats,Sir T.Glen(Renfrew,W.) | Henry, Charles S. | Menzies, Walter |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Herbert, Colonel Ivor(Mon.,S.) | Micklem, Nathamel |
| Collins,Sir Wm.J(StPancras,W | Higham, John Sharp | Money, L. G. Chiozza. |
| Corbett.C.H (Sussex, E.Grinst'd | Hobart, Sir Robert | Montagu, E. S. |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) |
| Cremer, William Randal | Hodge, John | Morgan.J. Lloyd(Carmarthen) |
| Crombie, John William | Holland, Sir William Henry | Morley, Rt. Hon. John |
| Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | Runciman, Walter | Tomkinson, James |
| Murray, James | Russell, T. W. | Torrance, Sir A. M., |
| Myer, Horatio | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) | Toulmin, George |
| Newnes, F.(Notts, Bassetlaw) | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) | Trevelyan, (Charles Philips |
| Nicholls, George | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | Ure, Alexander |
| Nicholson,Charles N.(Doncast'r | Sehwann, SirC.E.(Manchester) | Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) |
| Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Scott,A. H(Ashton under Lyne | Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) |
| Nuttall,Harry | Sears, J. E. | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Parker,Sir Gilbert(Gravesend) | Seaverns, J. H. | Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent) |
| Partington, Oswald | Seely, Major J. B. | Ward,W.Dudley(Southampton) |
| Paulton, James Mellor | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B., | Wardle, George J. |
| Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Sherwell, Arthur James | Waring. Walter |
| Philipps,J. Wynford(Pembroke | Shipman, Dr. John G. | Warner. Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John | Wason, Eugene(Clackmannan) |
| Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie | Wason,John Catheart(Orkney) |
| Pirie, Duncan V. | Soares, Ernest J. | Waterlow, D. S. |
| Pollard, Dr. | Spicer, Sir Albert | Watt, Henry A. |
| Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh.Central) | Stanger, H. Y. | Weir, James Galloway |
| Price,Robert John(Norfolk, E.) | Stanley,Hn. A. Lyulph(Chesh.) | Whitbread, Howard |
| Pullar, Sir Robert | Steadman, W. C. | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) |
| Rea, Russell (Gloucester) | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) | White, Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) | Whitehead, Rowland |
| Rees, J. D. | Strachey, Sir Edward | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Renton, Major Leslie | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Richards, Thomas(W.Monm'th | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Richards, T. F. (Wolverhmpt'n | Summerbell, T. | Williams, Llewelyn(Carmarth'n |
| Rickett, J. Compton | Sutherland, J. E. | Wilson, Henry J.(York. W.R.) |
| Ridsdale, E. A. | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Robertson, Rt. Hn. E. (Dundee) | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Robertson,Sir G.Scott(Bradf'rd | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | |
| Robson, Sir William Snowdon | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Rogers, F. E. Newman | Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.) | |
| Rose, Charles Day | Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr | |
| Rowlands, J. | Thomasson, Franklin | |
| NOES. | ||
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Faber, Capt, W. V. (Hants, W.) | Pease, Herbert Pike(Darlington |
| Arnold-Forster,Rt.Hn Hugh O. | Fardell, Sir T. George | Percy, Earl |
| Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt.Hon.Sir H | Fell, Arthur | Powell,.Sir Francis Sharp |
| Balcarres, Lord | Forster, Henry William | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Baldwin, Alfred | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Roberts,S.(Sheffield,Ecclesall) |
| Banbury,Sir Frederick George | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Baring,Capt.Hn.G( Winchester) | Haddock, George R. | Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos.Myles |
| Barnes, G. N. | Hamilton, Marquess of | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.) | Hardy,Laurence(Kent, Ashford | Sheffield,Sir BerkeleyGeorge D. |
| Beach, Hn. Michael HughHicks | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Sloan, Thomas Henry |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Smith,Abel H(Hertford, East) |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hervey,F.W.F.(Bury SEdm'ds | Smith,F.E.(Liverpool, Walton) |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Starkey, John R. |
| Boyle, Sir Edward | Hills, J. W. | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Jowett, F. W. | Talbot.Rt. HnJ.G.(Oxf'd Univ. |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Kenyon-Slaney,Rt. Hon.Col. W | Thomson.W. Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | King,Sir HenrySeymour(Hull) | Thorne, William |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Lambton, Hon Frederick Win. | Thornton. Percy M. |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Valentia Viscount |
| Cave, George | Lee, Arthur H(Hants.,Fareham | Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard |
| Cavendish, Rt. Hon. VictorC. W. | Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt. -Col. A. R. | Walker,Col.W.H. (Lancashire) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Long,Col. CharlesW. (Evesham | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey- | Long,Rt. Hn. Walter(Dublin,S) | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Chamberlain, RtHnJ. A. (Wore. | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Wilson,A Stanley(York, E.R.) |
| Clark,George Smith(Belfast,N. | MacIver, David (Liverpool) | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Coates,E.Feetham (Lewisham) | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C B. Stuart- |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Magnus, Sir Philip | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Corbett, T. L. (Down, North) | Moore, William | |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | Muntz, Sir Philip A. | TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Viscount Morpeth and Mr. Ashley. |
| Craig,Captain James(Down,E.) | Nield, Herbert | |
| Dixon-Hartland,Sir FredDixon | O'Grady, J. | |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Parker, James (Halifax) | |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Parkes, Ebenezer |
§ MR. HALDANEformally moved the omission of the words "after consultation" in lines 9 and 10.
§
Amendment proposed—
In page 2, lines 9 and 10 to leave out the words" after consultation.—(Mr. Secretary Haldane)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the clause."
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINasked if the Secretary of State for War had any explanation to offer of this Amendment. What reason was there for leaving out those words?
§ MR. HALDANEsaid it was a purely drafting Amendment.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. ASHLEYmoved to leave out subsection (g). It seemed to him that different localities might have different forms of procedure. He had a precedent for the course he was suggesting in the Education Bill of 1902, which provided that any county council might establish education committees constituted in accordance with a scheme made by the council and approved by the Education Board. That was what he desired to be done in this case. He wished to have the whole of the internal affairs arranged in accordance with the scheme made by each county association, and approved afterwards by the Army Council. He thought it was much better that these local matters should be arranged by the local association. Surely such matters as the appointment of the secretary, the chairman, and the officers could be better done by the local association than by an order of the Army Council.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTseconded the Amendment. He said it would be quite impossible for the authorities on the Army Council to appreciate fully the difference in county feeling. The county association was much better able to understand what would be good for a locality than the Army Council. What was the Army Council? It consisted of two Members of the House of Commons, one Member of the House of Lords, and three generals who had spent most of their time in India and know nothing 222 whatever of local feeling. Whatever might be their individual merits as soldiers, they could not be expected to. understand and sympathise with local feeling in the way that was necessary for success. The right hon. Gentleman was really going against his own Bill. The Party sitting on the Opposition Benches had always been associated with the extension of local government, and they thought some sympathy in that direction would have been shown by hon. Gentlemen opposite. That, however, did not appear to be so, judging from the small trust they were reposing in the county associations, because they were now tying them down by a cast-iron rule. If county associations were to be bound by a set of rules of this kind made by the Army Council it was quite certain they would not work. What they required to do was to promote as much us possible local feeling and enthusiasm, and produce local emulation between different cities and boroughs for the furtherance and the success of the Territorial Force. His hon. friend had proposed the Amendment to assist the right hon. Gentleman in making the county associations a success, and he hoped he would recognise the help which it was intended to give him. He thought that even the three parliamentarians and the three generals ought to have an opportunity of seeing these rules before they were put into force in order to see that they did not subvert the principles of the whole Bill which he would be one of the first to support when it was carried.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 2, line 18, to leave out paragraph (g)."—( Mr. Ashley)
§ Question proposed, "That paragraph (g) stand part of the Bill."
§ MR. HALDANEsaid that his chief fear was that if he were to accept this Amendment he would fall under the bullets of those Volunteers whom his hon. and gallant friend did not load, and who had manifested the most lively dislike to control by local bodies of the affairs of their force. They had said "we are quite willing to take local administration of a military character by people who understand us and consider us," and they had asked the Army 223 Council to frame the schemes themselves. If the hon. Member who had moved the Amendment would only recall what the situation was he would see why the arrangement could only be a provisional one. The proposition was that the appointment of the chairman and the vice-chairman should take place under the scheme which was to be framed by the Army Council once for all for each association. That was to say that when the Bill became law, and they had to frame the scheme, that body could do the thing much better than if it was done according to the varying local opinions, and the most varying ideas. They would certainly consult the localities very closely and very carefully. They would have an idea that they were likely to form the association, and they would provide a scheme which would not always be the same for each county, because there might be variations, but they would provide machinery by which the chairman and the vice-chairman could be elected. There might be cases in which the Army Council might be asked to nominate the chairman and the vice-chairman in the first instance, and then the machinery would provide what was to happen after that. It might be that in other cases the association would desire to elect the chairman and the vice-chairman themselves, in which case the council would promote a scheme to meet their wishes. He instanced those cases to show the great necessity for observing two principles. The first was that wherever they could consult the locality they should do so; and the second was that they should, wherever they could, give the locality some guide as to the sort of thing they wanted. That was why they wished to consult the localities according to their varying circumstances, so as to ascertain the form the schemes should take. It followed that the provisions as to the appointment of the officers should vary; in some cases it might be well to elect them straight off and in others leave them to be appointed by the association.
§ * VISCOUNT MORPETHsaid the right hon. Gentleman had told them that he proposed to consult the localities. He had not told them what body he proposed to consult, and he had always shown quite clearly that he did not trust the real local self-governing bodies. 224 There were two authorities in the counties—the lord-lieutenant and the county council. The right hon. Gentleman had; thrown over the county council because of the storm among the Volunteers, and he had thrown over the lord-lieutenant, who ought to be at the head of the military force in the county, apparently because of the political storm among his own supporters. When the Bill was introduced the county association was to be the body which was to bring local life and sap into the dying Territorial Forces and to encourage country gentlemen to associate themselves with the local life of the county. There was no greater danger than sham self government. What the, right hon. Gentleman now proposed was not self-government at all. He would have far greater confidence in the scheme if the right hon. Gentleman and the military authorities took the matter into their own hands. He himself had never pretended that these associations would be of any value, but if they were to be set up as pure dummies appointed at Whitehall they would be a hindrance, a pretence, and a sham.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid the discussion illustrated the difficulty the House had to encounter owing to the way in which the Bill was being put through. This clause alone would have required a very long discussion to enable them to understand the body which the Minister of War saw in his imagination hon. Members could not conceive exactly what shape the body would ultimately take. The proposal in the Bill was that the scheme should provide for the appointment of the chairman and the vice-chairman, but the Minister for War had reserved to himself how they were to be appointed. It might be by nomination, or it might be by election. If election, by whom? The right hon. Gentleman had thrown out the idea that probably there would be nomination in the first place, and that then if local opinion desired election, election would be substituted. What was the local opinion going to be? In the earlier part of the clause it had already been laid down that the majority of the association was to consist of officers representing the Territorial Forces. If it was left to election, would it not be the case that there would be a tendency to divide into two parties—a military party who desired that the chairman should 225 be a military officer, and a local economical administration party holding the contrary view that the chairman should be the best business man in the county? Surely at the Report stage of the Bill the right hon. Gentleman must have some predilection in his mind. Did he hope that the chairman would be a military man or a business man? Were they not entitled to know which he desired? If he desired the first, of course, he was the best judge
§ as to who the military man should be, but if he desired a local business man the locality would be the best judge. He thought the House should be told provisionally what the right hon. Gentleman expected under the Bill.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided: — Ayes, 267; Noes, 89. (Division List No. 236).
227| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Corbett,C.H.(Sussex,E.Grinst'd | Hodge, John |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Holland, Sir William Henry |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Craik, Sir Henry | Horniman, Emslie John |
| Alden, Percy | Cremer, William Randal | Horridge, Thomas Gardner |
| Allen,A Acland (Christchurch) | Crombie, John William | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Crosfield, A. H. | Hyde, Clarendon |
| Armstrong,W.C. (Heaton | Dalmeny, Lord | Idris, T. H. W. |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Dalziel, James Henry | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel |
| Asquith.Rt.Hon Herbert Henry | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Jackson, R. S. |
| Atherley-Jones, L. | Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan | Jenkins, J. |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Johnson, John (Gateshead) |
| Baker, Joseph A.(Finsbury, E.) | Dickinson, W.H.(St Pancras,N. | Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Jones,Sir D.Brynmor(Swansea) |
| Baring,Godfrey(Isle of Wight) | Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Jones, Leif (Appleby) |
| Barker, John | Duncan, C(Barrow-in-Furness) | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire |
| Barlow,John Emmot (Somerset | Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Kearley, Hudson E. |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Dunne,Major E Martin(Walsall | Kincaid-Smith, Captain |
| Barnes, G. N. | Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) |
| Barran, Rowland Hirst | Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Kitson, Rt. Hon. Sir James |
| Barry, Redmond J.(Tyrone,N.) | Elibank, Master of | Laidlaw, Robert |
| Beale, W. P. | Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward | Lamb, Edmund.(Leominster |
| Beauchamp, E | Esslemont, George Birnie | Lambert, George |
| Bell, Richard | Evans, Samuel T. | Lamont, Norman |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Eve, Harry Trelawney | Lea,Hugh Cecil(St.Pancras, E. |
| Benn,W.(T'w'r Hamlets,S.Geo. | Everett, R. Lacey | Leese,Sir Joseph F(Accrington |
| Bennett E. N. | Faber, G. H. (Boston) | Lehmann, R. C. |
| Berridge. T. H. D. | Fenwick. Charles | Lever, A. Levy(Essex,Harwich) |
| Bertram, Julius | Ferens, T. R. | Lever, W. H. (Cheshire,Wirral) |
| Bethell, SirJ.H.( Essex, Romford | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Levy, Maurice |
| Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) | Findlay, Alexander | Lewis, John Herbert |
| Billson, Alfred | Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David |
| Black, Arthur W. | Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Lough, Thomas |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Fuller, John Michael F. | Lupton. Arnold |
| Brace, William | Fullerton, Hugh | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes |
| Bramsdon, T. A. | Gardner,Col. Alan(Hereford,S. | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Branch, James | Gladstone,Rt.HnHerbert John | Lynch, H. B. |
| Brodie, H. C. | Glover, Thomas | Macdonald,J.M.(Falkirk Bghs) |
| Brunner,J.F.L.(Lanes., Leigh) | Goddard, Daniel Ford | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. |
| Bryce, J. Annan. | Grant, Corrie | MCallum, John M. |
| Buchannan, Thomas Ryburn | Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | M'Crae, George |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Greenwood, Hamar (York) | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) |
| Burns. Rt. Hon. John | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Maddison, Frederick |
| Burt. Rt. Hon. Thomas | Griffith, Ellis J. | Mallet, Charles E. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Manfield, Harry (Northants) |
| Cameron, Robert | Haldane, Rt. Hon Richard B. | Marks,G.Croydon(Launceston) |
| Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Marnham, F. J. |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Harmsworth, Cecil B.(Wore'r) | Massie. J. |
| Causton,Rt.Hn RichardKnight | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Masterman, C. F. G. |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Haworth, Arthur A. | Menzies, Walter |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Micklem, Nathaniel |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Money, L. G. Chiozza |
| Cleland, J. W. | Henderson,J.M(Aberdeen, W.) | Montagu, E. S. |
| Clough, William | Herbert, Colonel Ivor(Mon.,'S.) | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) |
| Coats,Sir T. Glen(Renfrew,W.) | Higham, John Sharp | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Hobart, Sir Robert | Morley, Rt. Hon. John |
| Collins,.Sir Wm.J.(SPancras, W. | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas |
| Murray, James | Russell, T. W. | Ure, Alexander |
| Myer, Horatio | Rutherford. V. H. (Brentford) | Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) |
| Napier, T. B. | Samuel, Herbert L.(Cleveland) | Walton. Sir John L. (Leeds,S.) |
| Newnes, F. (Notts,Bassetlaw) | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Nicholls, George | Scott,A.H.(Ashton under Lyne | Ward John (Stoke upon Trent) |
| Nicholson,Charles A(Doncaster | Sears, J. E. | Ward, W.Dudley (Southampt'n |
| Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Seaverns. J. H. | Wardle, George. J. |
| Nuttall, Harry | Seely, Major J. B. | Waring, Walter |
| Parker, James (Halifax) | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Paulton, James Mellor | Sherwell, Arthur James | Wason,Eugene(Clackmannan) |
| Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Shipman, Dr. John G. | Wason,JohnCatheart (Orkney) |
| Philipps,J.Wynford (Pembroke | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John | Waterlow. D. S. |
| Philipps. Owen C. (Pembroke) | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie | Watt, Henry A. |
| Pickersgill. Edward Hare | Soares. Ernest J. | Weir, James Galloway |
| Pirie, Duncan V. | Spicer, Sir Albert | White,.J. D. (Dumbartonshire) |
| Pollard, Dr. | Stanger. H. Y. | White. Luke (York. E. R.) |
| Price, C.E. (Edinburgh,Central | Stanley.Hn.A.Lyulph (Chesh.) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax.) |
| Pullar, Sir Robert | Steadman, W. C. | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer |
| Rainy, A. Rolland | Stewart. Halley (Greenock) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Rea, Russell (Gloucester) | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Rea, Walter Russell (Searboro' | Strachey, Sir Edward | Williams. J. (Glamorgan) |
| Rees, J. D. | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) | Williams, Llewelyn(Carmarthen |
| Renton. Major Leslie | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| Richards,Thomas(W. Monm'th | Summerbell, T. | Williamson. A. |
| Richards,T.F.Wolverhampton | Sutherland. J. E. | Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.) |
| Rickett, J. Compton | Taylor. John W. (Durham) | Wilson. J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Ridsdale, E. A. | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) | Wilson, P. W. (St.Pancras, S. ) |
| Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Tennant, SirEdward(Salisbury | Winfrey, R. |
| Roberts, John H. (Denbigh.) | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | Wood,T. M'Kinnon |
| Robertson,SirG.Scott (Bradford | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | |
| Robson, Sir William Snowdon | Thomas, SirA.(Glamorgan,E.) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Rogers, F. E. Newman | Thomas, DavidAlfred(Merthyr) | |
| Rose. Charles Day | Torrance, Sir A. M. | |
| Rowlands, J. | Toulmin, George | |
| Runciman, Walter | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | |
| NOES. | ||
| Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt.Hn. Sir H. | Gibbs. G. A. (Bristol, West) | Powell. Sir Francis Sharp |
| Balcarres, Lord | Grettoa, John | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Baldwin, Alfred | Haddock, George R. | Rawlinson,John FrederickPeel |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Hamilton, Marquess of | Roberts.S. (Sheffield,Ecclesall) |
| Baring,Capt.HnG.(Winchester) | Hardy,Laurence (Kent,Ashford | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry. N. | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Beach. Hn.Michael HughHicks | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Scott,SirS. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Hervey.F.W.F.(BuryS.Edm'ds | Sheffield,Sir BerkeleyGeorgeD. |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Sloan, Thomas Henry |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Hills, J. W. | Smith,F. E.(Liverpool,Walton) |
| Boyle, Sir Edward | Jowett. F. W. | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Bridgeman,W. Clive | Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hn. Col. W. | Starkey, John R. |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Keswick, William | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | King SirHenry Seymour(Hull) | Thomson. W. Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Thorne, William |
| Carson, Rt. Hn. Sir Edw. H. | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | Lockwood,Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R, | Tuke. Sir John Batty |
| Cave, George | Long.Rt.Hn.Walter (Dublin, S. | Valentia, Viscount |
| Cavendish.Rt. Hon. VictorC.W. | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Walker,Col. W. H.(Lancashire) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Walrond. Hon. Lionel |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Lyttelton, Rt, Hon. Alfred | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Coates,E. Feetham (Lewisham) | MacIver, David (Liverpool) | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Cochrane,Hn. Thos. H. A. E. | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | Morpeth, Viscount | Wilson,A. Stanley (York,E.R.) |
| Craig,Capt. James (Down, E.) | Muntz, Sir Philip A. | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Dixon-Hartland,SirFredDixon | Nield, Herbert | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | O'Grady, J. | Wyndham. Rt. Hon. George |
| Faber, Capt, W. V. (Hants, W.) | Parker,SirGilbert(Gravesend) | |
| Fell, Arthur | Parkes, Ebenezer | TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.Ashley and Sir Howard Vincent. |
| Forster, Henry William | Pease, HerbertPike(Darlington) | |
| Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Percy, Earl |
§ VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH (Maidstone)moved the omission of Clause 2. He said he did not move the Amendment 228 in a hostile spirit, but rather because under the action of the guillotine when the Bill was in Committee it had been 229 impossible to have any discussion whatever in regard to the constitution, duties, and powers of the county associations which were to be set up. The associations were an entirely new departure in our military organisation. He did not think for a moment that the right hon. Gentleman had any desire to evade discussion, for he understood that his desire was to make a statement in regard to the county associations. He had said that in this respect there was no necessity to alter one line or word in the Bill; but he could not remove the apprehension that many hon. Members had in regard to the county associations without making some alteration. The Bill was of such a vague character that some alteration was necessary to enable hon. members to comprehend what was at the back of the mind of the right hon. Gentleman. They know that a system of associations was recommended by the Esher Committee. He had no idea to what extent that recommendation went, but he knew that the suggestions of that Committee were not followed by the Bill. The county associations were practically a new departure, and the definite supervision of the Army Council was also an entirely new departure, and should be discussed fully by the House. It was obvious that the duties of the county associations would be very numerous, onerous, and arduous. On the associations there were to be representatives of the county, officers of the Territorial Army, representatives of the county councils and the borough councils, and of the universities. There wore also to be a number of co-opted members, a chairman, and a vice-chairman. That would form a vast body and would add to the numerous bodies already established all over the country. He asked the right hon. Gentleman how he expected such a body of amateurs to take upon themselves those exceedingly onerous duties which would devolve upon them. If they were to be chosen for efficiency they would be busy men and hardly able to devote themselves to the competent discharge of their duties. It was said that during the South African War county committees rose all over the country, but he did not think that there was any analogy with the proposals now made. The association was to be summoned by the Army Council, and 230 the duty to be imposed upon it when constituted was "to make itself acquainted with and conform to the plan of the Army Council for the organisation of the Territorial Force within the county and to ascertain the military resources and capabilities of the county, and to render advice and assistance to the Army Council and to such officers as the Army Council may direct, and an association shall have, exercise, and discharge such powers and duties connected with the organisation and administration of His Majesty's military forces as may for the time being be transferred or assigned to it by order of His Majesty signified under the hand of a Secretary of State." He asked how the right hon. Gentleman could expect that busy men could give up sufficient time to do all that. And then, so far as he could see, there was to be no remuneration given to them. He moved the omission of Clause 2.
§ * SIR SAMUEL SCOTTseconded. So far as he could understand, the Army Council was to have a very curious control. If they looked closely at the clause the duties which the county associations were to perform were practically all the functions at present exercised by the War Office. There was no guarantee that there would be cohesion and similarity of method such as was desirable; and he hoped the right hon. Gentle man would assure the House as to what steps he had taken to ensure that cohesion and uniformity of method In the future the Territorial Force would be commanded to a great extent by the county associations, who would lack the military weight of the War Office, and whose orders would not have the same effect as if they came from the War Office. He could not understand through what channel the different associations were to approach the War Office. As far as he could make out there would be no particular de-department for the purpose except the Civil Department, the head of which would be a political appointment, and he viewed that with considerable misapprehension. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would seriously consider the necessity of appointing as member of the Army Council a military officer preferably belonging to the Territorial Army to look after the Territorial Army.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 3, line 16, to leave out Clause 2"—(Viscount Castlereagh)
§ Question proposed, "That Clause 2 stand part of the Bill."
§ MR. HALDANEthought it was quite reasonable that an opportunity should be given to raise a general discussion on the position of the county associations. Those associations were perhaps the most novel feature in the whole scheme, and it was as well that the House should have a proper discussion as to their position and significance. The origin of the associations was this. They knew from experience how difficult it was to look after the affairs of the Volunteer Force without a very great deal of local co-operation. They knew very well that to try to manage the Volunteers directly from the War Office would be to overwhelm the force with red-tape and to drown in correspondence all possibility of its expansion; and they know that the Volunteers were perfectly adapted for local handling. The principle which underlay the clause was to bring in mind the difference between command and training on the one hand and administration on the other. They would have to look after the force, its supplies, equipment and arms, and also the provision of ranges. They would have to consider how best to raise this force and obtain the resources of the country so as to make the best of them. That was a task which it was impossible to discharge through the War Office. Decentralisation they must have, and the question was how best to decentralise. Under the old organisation of lie Volunteers there was a good deal of decentralisation, because the commanding officers of units had not only to train their troops, but to provide for supplies, form their bases, and even to pay the debts of the corps. The War Office felt that that would be an impossible position to continue if they were to make the Volunteer force a real force, and consequently, when they came to the reconstitution of the Home Army, they sought to devise a scheme by which the question of administration might be handled locally and yet be left in such a fashion that the individual power of the commanding officers should not be overwhelmed. By far the best plan seemed 232 to them to be to form in the different counties associations consisting of the very people who had done the work hitherto. At least one half of the members of the county associations would be the commanding officers, and they would continue to do the work with which they had been familiar in the past. They would have a secretary who would be an efficient person, and the chairman especially would be a man of business. The associations would be in constant communication and touch with the War Office in more ways than one, both directly through their officials and indirectly through the brigadiers. The Regular officers would be armed with power to attend the meetings of the associations and advise them, although they would have no power to vote. They had taken every means in their power to bring the Associations into close touch with the War Office and at the same time to leave them an open hand and preserve their local character. In the past few weeks he had had experience of the enormous advantage of enlisting the sympathies of those who were of importance in the counties. He had been arranging lately the plan of the cavalry manœuvres which were going to take place in the counties of Scotland. They had managed to bring to their assistance a long string of landowners right down from the North of Perthshire to the South of Scotland, and even on his own small property he would have some 1,300 troops quartered in the next few weeks. Many others had come forward and they had been able to arrange for the manœuvres without a single penny being paid for the land upon which they were to be held. They had not only secured the sympathy of the owners of the land but of the farmers and also of the local tradesmen. Wherever possible contracts for supplies would be given in the locality. There was nothing more encouraging for the prospects of this clause than the way in which the authorities had been met in every county in Scotland. It was infinitely better than the old state of things under which the War Office always had to pay the utmost the law allowed, because the Government was looked upon as the general milch cow. They looked to these associations so to arrange matters that in future owners would not object once in five or six years to troops going over convenient portions 233 of their land, especially when compensation was paid for damage done and the presence of the soldiers brought custom to the district. Even if there were drawbacks to the scheme they were more than counterbalanced by its advantages, because their object was to bring the Territorial Army more in touch with the nation, and he thought that in that sense no exception could be taken to the phrase "a nation in arms." They believed that the clause would be popular throughout the length and breadth of the land. He was asked how they provided for unity of action. They relied very much upon the fact that the associations would be under the direction of the Army Council, The Army Council would, of course, not interfere in details. It would be impossible for them to work out how the quota should be supplied from each district. That must be settled by the people on the spot who knew the local units and the nature of the material of which they were made up. The old-fashioned officialdom, moreover, would know nothing of the rifle ranges required and nothing of local custom. In the past they had not been able to suit either employers or employed, but if they got into communication with those on the spot they would be able to suit both; there were a hundred and one details of military service which could be better carried out by means of decentralisation than by a central body. He challenged those who opposed the scheme to say what they would put in its place. If they came to close quarters with the question they would see that there was nothing so strong as the case for the associations, although they might discuss their constitution. Time must elapse before they would know to what extent the associations would be operative, but they would provide something of an organisation of county life, revivify interest, and bring now life into the country districts where it was very much needed.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid he was very glad the right hon. Gentleman had had an opportunity of saying something in regard to the county associations. The right hon. Gentleman had said the chairman would be a business man. If he might use a figure of speech suggested by the word chairman he would like to know who were to be the shareholders; 234 who were the people who were going to sanction the expenditure and to provide the money? When they turned to the next clause they found that all the funds were to be provided by the Army Council. They were the people who were to assign the money to the different objects and decide how much to each. The power of an Association to decide whether its money should be spent on rifle ranges and manœuvre grounds would be very small indeed. If it came into conflict with the Army Council acting in the same district the County Association would go to the wall, because it would be contending with people who had the power of the purse. He further desired to point out that the functions put upon the County Associations fell into two broad categories. Some fell into the category of expedients, such as the provision of manœuvre grounds and provision for the families of men who went abroad. In such directions the County Associations might do good work. But before passing from the provision of rifle ranges and manœuvre grounds the right hon. Gentleman should approach the Department of Woods and Forests and attempt to influence that Department to assist the County Associations in these matters. The Crown owned large tracts of land, much of which was suitable for these purposes, but the Crown had always taken the strict landlord view and had endeavoured to extract large rents for them. It had opposed the efforts of commanding officers of those forces year after year until they almost despaired of turning to account those tracts in England best suited to these purposes He put it to the right hon. Gentleman that some easy channel should be opened up between the County Associations and the Department of Woods and Forests in order that they might co-operate in this great effort. Other functions of the County Associations were of another character, and there he was not so hopeful of a successful result ensuing. He alluded to recruiting and providing horses. Those functions were of a totally distinct character and he was not sure that the same body should be in charge of the two sets of functions, because it would have to choose on which to spend its money. If it spent its money largely on manœuvre grounds and rifle ranges and so forth 235 it would not have the energy to see to the recruiting. He thought the recruiting should be in the hands of the commanding officers as at present and that the County Associations should direct their energies solely to those matters which were of a somewhat commercial character. Otherwise, neither set of functions would be carried out effectively, and they were far better fitted to perform the former rather than the latter. The commanding officers had often great difficulty in respect to the component parts of their corps, and had to decide whether a company could be drawn from a particular district. They were experts, and the recruiting should be left to them or to soldiers. He hoped when the right hon. Gentleman came to deal with this matter he would reconsider his plan. Apparently, the County Associations were not only to mount the Yeomanry in time of peace but to keep a register of all horses available for any purpose in time of war. The horse question was a very difficult one. In any case, there was the danger of two sets of people buying in the same market for the same purpose. He believed that was a subject to which the right hon. Gentleman would have to give very careful attention.
§ * Mr. McCRAEdid not think the right hon. Member for Dover was very convincing in his criticism in connection with the division of duties of providing rifle ranges, etc., and recruiting, because, as he understood from his right hon. friend that afternoon, those functions would be separated on the Estimates. It would be made impossible for the County Associations to spend money under one head on any other purposes. He rose to draw attention to a matter which he considered to be of serious constitutional importance. Under Clause 2, line 22 and onwards, his right hon. friend, unless he put in some limiting words, was really taking power to hand over to the County Associations not only the finance and administration of the Territorial Army, but of the Regular forces also. He knew that was not the intention of the right hon. Gentleman but it was the effect of the Bill. He was particularly anxious as to that point because he felt that the less the County Associations had to do with the control of the finance, even of the 236 Territorial Army, the better. He there fore brought the fact to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman in the hope that he would restrict the operation of the clause.
§ COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid his right hon. friend the Member for Dover had spoken of the County Associations spending their money on different objects, and that phrase had again raised the old suspicion in his mind to which he called attention in Committee. What money was it that they were to spend? Was it still contemplated that the County Associations were to spend money other than the funds supplied by the Army Council? Because if that was so the Government were setting up a fatal system which would lead to inequality in the Army. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would distinctly and positively assure the House that the County Associations were not to raise or spend any money other than that put at their disposal by the Army Council after it had approved of the scheme of the County Associations. He believed the County Associations as constituted under the Bill would be unable to work; that they would lead to confusion and extravagance and not to any purpose of good soldiering. He therefore urged the right hon. Gentle man to separate the functions that he intended to impose on the County Associations, and keep them entirely clear from any sort of interference with the actual soldier while the man was a soldier. They should have nothing to do with ranges or recruiting. The raising of the Yeomanry recruit should be left with the Yeomanry colonel and the Volunteer recruiting to the Volunteer colonel. The raising of the Regular troops for the Crown should be distinctly left to the War Office. The introduction of this hybrid element, this semi-civilian and semi-business element, would be altogether mischievous. He thought they would be imposing upon the Associations a duty which would lead to a great many local jealousies and a great deal of mistrust, and instead of cementing kindly feeling between the county element and the military element, they would do a great deal to upset it. He could understand, apart from military administration, how these County Associations could be made useful for a limited 237 purpose. They might be used to discharge duties which were now per formed by two or? three kindred associations. There was the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association, which dealt with the families while the husbands were away in time of war, and there was the association whose object was to find employment for soldiers after they had returned from the war. Neither association was allowed to spend a penny on the objects of the other; and so they had two or three associations in every county overlapping, making the work more difficult. It was only by having a central association in every county that they could deal with all these matters relating to the Imperial forces, and such an association as the County Association would be able adequately to deal with them. If they reserved the County Associations for that kind of work they would be doing well, but if they put actual live soldiering upon them the duties would not be properly performed. Supposing a General-in Command came in conflict with the new County Association on some point as to when and where the soldiers should train, was the Commanding Officer or the County Association to have the supreme voice? If it was not to be the General Officer, what an absurd position they put him in; for he must of necessity be a far better judge than the County Association of what should be the training of the men and which would be the most suitable locality for their training. He had never attempted to conceal his disapprobation of the work proposed to be put upon the County Associations and of this encouragement of them illegitimately to spend illegitimate money, which they had no business to spend and no business to raise. He wished that they should act entirely in concert with military advisers, possibly on such questions as the provision of ranges and areas, and also with regard to looking after soldiers on their return to civilian life. The Government proposal was fraught with danger, and he much regretted the determination at which the right hon. Gentleman had arrived.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid the point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Edinburgh was of very serious importance, and it should have the most careful attention of the Secre- 238 tary of State. He was extremely glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman state that the establishment of County Associations was the most novel part of the Bill, and should have received full discussion. When the right hon. Gentle man said that, he could not have re collected that nearly a month before the discussion came on, the whole process of debate was absolutely prevented. On the first day the Bill was in Committee only two lines of the whole clause was dealt with, and three foolscap pages were advanced without anyone having an opportunity of saying a single syllable as to the constitution, powers, and duties of the Associations, or of the financial arrangements appertaining there to. He was very glad to see the Financial Secretary to the War Office in his place and in charge of the Bill, because they had hardly heard his voice during the whole of its conduct; when a private Member he was continually speaking; now they never heard his voice. He would like to learn the hon. Gentleman's personal view on the important point raised by the hon. Member for Marylebone, who said that it was unfair that the Army Council should regulate the whole of the proceedings of the County Associations. They were to have no direct representation of the Territorial Force upon the Army Council, with the exception of a political officer, who had no practical knowledge or experience, or very rarely indeed, and was appointed for a reason entirely other than his knowledge and experience of the Territorial Force. It was most unfair and improper that these great duties should be forced upon the Army Council without the Territorial Force having distinct representation upon it by the presence of an officer of high rank who was fully acquainted with the whole of the details, to say nothing of the feelings of the force and of the locality. The political officer, the Under-Secretary of State, who represented the War Office in the Upper House, could not possibly, with his Parliamentary duties, go about visiting the Associations and the regiments, and he had no technical knowledge and experience. If the Territorial Force were represented as it should be on the Army Council by an officer of high rank, responsible for that force, it would be possible to lay before the Council in large measure the feelings of 239 the different localities, which it was so absolutely necessary should be done. The Financial Secretary probably had observed that the Secretary of State had ignored the remarks of the hon. Member for Marylebone on that subject, and he hoped the Financial Secretary, if he had not spoken already, would give them his views on the point. He would like to hear the hon. Gentleman's defence of the position taken up in defiance of the Duke of Norfolk's Committee on which sat many officers of large experience, who were absolutely unanimous in the view that it was necessary for the efficiency of the Auxiliary Forces that they should be represented on the central department by an officer of experience who believed in the forces, and had knowledge of their aspirations and wishes. Many hon. Members on that side of the House had expressed the hope that this matter would be again raised on Report, the opinion of the Volunteer Forces, the Yeomanry, and Militia being entirely in favour of direct representation upon the Army Council by an officer of practical experience, and not merely by a political officer representing the War Office in the House of Lords. He thought that the Government, if they were anxious for the success of the scheme, should have met that general feeling. It was deplorable, at that time of day, to hear the Secretary of State say that he wanted to make the Volunteer Force a real force, when they remembered that it consisted of 248,000 men, that for several years it had withstood official opposition and the official cold shoulder which had always been shown to them, and that they sent 30,000 men out to the South African War without the stimulus of a moral or legal obligation to do so.
Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members being found present.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid the fact of this count showed the extent of the interest taken in the Bill. There had been an extremely small attendance on the Government benches through out the discussions. The fact was that there was no driving power behind the Bill in the country. Every Member on the other side of the House knew that it had fallen perfectly flat. If 240 the Bill did go through it would be by the use of a Parliamentary procedure borrowed from foreign legislatures, and not by the merits of the measure in any shape or form. The point he was making was that there should be direct representation of the Territorial Force on the Army Council, by an officer of high rank with a practical knowledge of the force, in accordance with the recommendations of the Norfolk Commission. That was the more important in view of the fact that the House had just declared by large majorities that the War Office was to regulate the proceedings of the county associations, the appointment of chairman and secretary, and all their functionaries. There should be proper and direct representation, and not by means of a branch of the Adjutant-General's Department, presided over by an officer having no executive authority himself, and having to submit every Question and every Paper to the Adjutant-General.
§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTsubmitted that it arose on the proposal of the hon. Member for Marylebone, but he had finished what he had to say.
§ * VISCOUNT MORPETHsaid that when the Bill was first introduced the Association seemed to be an important feature in it. But as the debates proceeded the value of the Association seemed to be steadily diminishing, and its personnel appeared to have very little importance attached to it. The right hon. Gentleman had given rather a bald account of the duties to be assigned to the Association, and he had defended this course on the ground that there should be decentralisation. They had been challenged to say what other plan they had to submit as an alternative which would bring about the desired result. It seemed to him that there was one very obvious and apparent plan, which was that decentralisation should be carried out through the major-general who would in future command the divisions of the Territorial Forces. He was the proper man to deal with the questions assigned to the County Association. Outside the officers commanding battalions, the County Association consisted in its essentials of a chairman 241 and secretary. The chairman had to be a business man, but what was a business man? As a rule it meant either a man engaged in commerce or manufacture, or a man of ordinary business like intelligence. If the first, a great many other qualities wont to make up what was required for successful dealing with these matters. If he had to choose between a business man as secretary and a major-general who was commanding a division he would have far more confidence in the decision of the major-general. If the right hon. Gentle-man approached the loading landowners in the same spirit in which he approached those he had referred to in his speech he had no doubt that he would get similar results to those obtained in Perth. To attempt to build up a system of County Associations was altogether an exaggerated bit of constructive legislation. He viewed with some alarm the suggestion that County Associations would be valuable in the way of encouraging local tradesmen by giving them local orders. If the Associations had to purchase their supplies locally the expenditure would be vastly increased.
§ VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGHasked leave to withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ SIR HENRY CRAIK (Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities)moved to omit from the sub-section transferring to the County Associations powers for "establishing and maintaining or fostering and encouraging cadet battalions and corps and rifle clubs" the qualifying words, "Provided that no financial assistance shall be given by any association in respect of any person in a battalion or corps in a school in receipt of a Parliamentary grant until such person has attained the age of sixteen." He said the subject he desired to raise was of the greatest interest to those immediately connected with the Army. The questions which had been discussed hitherto were matters of technical rather than of Imperial or National interest, but the subject introduced by the Amendment really touched a large National interest of the first and most important kind. He had refrained from the first from interfering in the debates on this Bill, 242 not because he had not the strongest personal reasons for being interested in the matter, or because he had not studied the question, but because he thought it was a matter of presumption on the part of mere laymen to attempt to speak on technical subjects side by side with the military Members of the House. On this special subject, however, he claimed that he had some right to speak. He happened to be one of the very few hon. Members who had sat upon the Advisory Education Board at the War Office from its commencement. For three years he had been chairman of the Army Qualifying Board, and he had formed an opinion upon questions such as those involved in the Amendment. It was because of that experience that he ventured to place his views before the House. He was speaking as one who was by no means an enemy of the Bill. As far as he was able to judge he looked with thorough trust and great admiration on its pro visions, and he had no wish to do anything that would tend to wreck the measure. He wished, however, to appeal to the right hon. Gentle- man from his second thoughts to his first. He desired him to restore his Bill to the form in which it was read a second time. He could not believe that the Bill was introduced without careful consideration, and he preferred himself to follow that stream of clear thinking by which the right hon. Gentleman laid such a store, and in which they fully recognised his mastery before the clear stream was disturbed by the more turbid waters which flowed from his extreme supporters. He appealed to the Secretary of State for War first on what was more or less a technical and a personal point. Only last autumn the right hon. Gentleman appointed a Committee of eminent civilians and military men to consider how from the schools and universities a large supply of what he called supplementary and auxiliary officers might be obtained. That Committee took evidence at some length, and came to certain definite conclusions which were approved by the Army Council. What did those conclusions amount to? Those supplementary and auxiliary officers were to go through a training of a year with a unit of the Army. It was recognised that training for a year was to busy men and to poor men who were compelled to earn their livelihood a very serious difficulty. 243 The scheme proposed that a cadet corps from the schools should be formed, and that it should be open to the schools of every grade throughout the country. It was expressly contemplated that by that means a large supply of officers coming from every class of society, and comprising those who were sent by means of county council scholarships to the secondary or intermediate schools, should have certain advantages open to them. They were to be allowed at fifteen years of age to pass an examination after two years training. They were then to obtain a certificate to exempt them from four months of the training. If they went to the University and obtained a further certificate after three or four years training they were then to be exempt for eight months out of the twelve months training. Consequently the advantage to those boys was very considerable. They were to be admitted to the level of officers of the Army. They were to get considerable payment for outfit and payment on the level of a second lieutenant. The light hon. Gentleman carried the scheme a little further than mere approval by the Army Council. The scheme was communicated to the teachers throughout the length and breadth of the country, and they were asked to co-operate. He might say that the scheme was very cordially received, and they were prepared to establish in their schools cadet corps. They pledged themselves to the stirring up of patriotism, and in that way they would have been able to add very largely to the class of supplementary and auxiliary officers. On the 7th June, after the Secretary of State for War had yielded to the disturbing element to which he had alluded, he summoned a meeting at the United Service Institute. On June 7th the right hon. Gentleman summoned a meeting of teachers, and was it not the case that strong disappointment was felt when he took away the foundation of what they expected would give them high results? He hoped the House would remember that he was not speaking of the rich schools. To the large public schools like Eton and Harrow the grants were of no importance; it was the poorer schools scattered throughout the country, and attended by children whose parents could not sub scribe, whose hopes were raised, and whose hopes were now shattered, by the 244 proviso which the right hon. Gentleman, without discussion, introduced during the Committee stage. He felt that this was a more or less technical point.; it was closely connected with the whole scheme. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would not deny that it was connected with the general scheme which he had been tracing out. He was doing far more than interfering with the training of a few thousands for the Auxiliary forces. Officers were to be drawn from the very poor. Though their position might be very disadvantageous from birth, if they proved to be in possession of brains and capacity, they would be able to take their position among the officers of the Army. What did the right hon. Gentleman base his whole scheme upon? He based it on an appeal to patriotism; he spoke of the strength of a trained youth and of a nation in arms, but he gave up a fundamental part of his scheme when he withdrew this encouragement to the sense of patriotism, nowhere more readily aroused than in the schools of the country. That observation applied not merely to the upper, but to the intermediary, and even the elementary, schools. Was it for the Army alone that there could be no practical training under the age of 16? Did the training of a sailor not begin until after that age? Did not practical training for the work a lad was to do in after life begin much earlier? In elementary and middle-class schools drill was studied day by day with physical advantage and assistance to education. The verdict of the teachers, one and all, was that they were helped in their work in that way. Was the right hon. Gentleman going to abandon the hopes which he himself had expressed? But while these lads were being denied the opportunities they had enjoyed hitherto, the offer made by the right hon. Gentle man of a £3 premium, which might be gained at the age of fifteen by pupils at the schools, was taken away, and they would be left merely to the tender mercy of voluntary subscriptions, and possibly the small subscriptions, which might be extorted from the teachers or the parents. The right hon. Gentleman might answer that this, after all, was not a matter for the War Office, but for the Education Department. He did not think that that argument would hold water. In the first place, if they introduced military drill into the ordinary curriculum 245 of the elementary schools, they gave some ground for saying that it was compulsory. He had no wish to make it compulsory, but if it was embodied in the code as part of the ordinary curriculum they would put an argument into the mouths of those who objected to its being compulsory. Besides, the Education Department had many things to do, and it had not hitherto given any ground for saying that the physical training given in schools was military training, and it was not likely to do so. During the present session it had been seen how the slightest indication of any inclination on the part of the education authorities to introduce such training into the curriculum of the schools would directly be made the subject of complaint in the House. He was afraid, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman in relieving himself in this way was placing the matter on the shoulders of the President of the Board of Education, who in turn would shift the load on to parents of the children attending the schools. He wanted to make an appeal with all respect to hon. Members who sat below the gangway, and to others who represented extreme opinions on the other side of the House. He knew that there were those who wore almost mad on the subject of the dangers of military training. If a boy wont through squad drill and manual practice, and if he learned to present arms, they thought he was almost a full blown soldier. If he went so far as to practice at a Morris-tube range, they thought the next step would be that he would go out and shoot the first man he met. He hoped that some of those extremely nervous, and perhaps hysterical, persons would learn what military exercise really meant. A gun was a dangerous weapon, but it was never more dangerous than in the hands of those who did not know how to use it. It was dangerous to the enemy if a man knew how to use it, but it was still more dangerous to his friends if he did not know how to use it. He would ask those who wore interested in the training of the children of the labouring classes to think of what they were depriving those children when they objected to military training in schools. Had they no trust in those who worked the schools? He maintained that the vast majority of teachers were prepared to back up Parliament in introducing 246 this military drill, not merely as an adjunct of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman, but as a means of building up character, and of teaching discipline which would not only benefit the boys themselves, but assist the work of the schools. They all knew that the sons of the richer classes did not do all the educational work which they might do; but, after all, by means of their physical training, and the compulsion of discipline, the boys learned comradeship and obedience. If the boys of the poorer classes were withdrawn from the discipline it would be a downright loss to them. They had been told by an hon. Gentleman opposite that this was not an ago of militarism, but an age of industrialism. But, though we were extending our industrial interests with the constant improvements in machinery, was it to be supposed that what might be called our tire insurance for defensive purposes was one whit less necessary, that our growth did not excite the cupidity of others, and entail greater risk, or that they made it less necessary for the country to stand boldly for defence, and not for offence? They were told that this spirit of militarism was to be exorcised, and that they were to devote their whole labour capital to industrialism; but that was to forget that the defence of one's country was one of the first duties of citizenship. Again, they had been told that with the extension of militarism liberty was checked. But what was the experience of the Colonies? Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—of the prowess of whose sons they had all reason to be proud, and whose democratic spirit was beyond question— had established, without any fears in their hearts, cadet corps for the defence of their country. Natal, with a population of only 100,000 white men, had 4,000 cadets under fifteen years of ago. Mr. Deakin had stated that in Australia there were 30,000 cadets this year, that they would number 40,000 next year, and 50,000 the year after. The Commonwealth Premier at the same time declared that was no injury to the democratic feeling of the country, but made for its safety. No course of action could be more cruel than to neglect boys after their compulsory schooling was ended, and not to keep hold of them so as to train them to take their share, if occasion arose, in the defence of the country, in stead of sending them long afterwards 247 into the rough and tumble of the battle field with insufficient preparation and training. He fancied he was not wrong in thinking that the right hon. Gentleman fully recognised the importance of the very crucial question presented to him in the Amendment, although he spoke as if it were a dangerous reef which might wreck his ship. He was not one of those who despaired; time was on their side. The feeling of the nation was against the policy of the Government. Parents, children, teachers were all alike in favour of military drill for their boys, and day by day the number of cadet corps was increasing. The time would come when we would have the beginning of a nation in arms. He begged to move.
§ MR. GUY BARING (Winchester),in seconding said he had had six years service in Australia, and had personal experience as a soldier of the value of cadet corps. There was no more conspicuous or smarter body at the memorial service in Melbourne to the late Queen than the cadet corps, al though there were representatives of all branches of His Majesty's Service present. The reputation of the Melbourne larrikin was world wide, the larrikin being the fore runner of the hooligan. Law and education had failed to reform those larrikins, and at last some of the citizens hit on the method of forming cadet corps, which had proved to be a conspicuous success, and larrikinism was now dead; the streets of Melbourne knew it no more as a real source of terror. The people of Australia were neither militarist nor undemocratic, but they believed that the physical and moral training to be obtained from the cadet corps ought not to be lost to the nation. He sincerely hoped that the pressure of public opinion would induce the Government to alter the present form of the Bill, and put it back into its original shape.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 4, line 9. to leave out from the word clubs' to the end of paragraph (f)."—(Sir Henry Craik.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out to the second word 'in,' in page 4, line 11, stand part of the Bill.
§ MR. HALDANEsaid the House had listened to a speech of genuine earnestness 248 which contained a good deal of eloquence from the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment and they had also listened to a technical speech from the seconder. These speeches in support of the Amendment showed what strong feeling there was in one direction upon this question; but it was not the only direction in which there was strong feeling. The duty of a War Minister in charge of a Bill of this sort was a very difficult one. A War Minister subjected to two such cross fires had only one course to fall back upon, and that was to consider the matter on its merits from the point of view of the organisation of the Army. In the first place, they did not want for the officers of the Army the training of children, but of men. He had made the most close and careful inquiry from those responsible for the Committee which had been referred to, and they told him that really boys under sixteen were of little or no use for the particular purpose; but there was a great distinction between the State aided schools and those great public schools where cadet corps had existed for a great number of years. The type of boy he wanted was the type between sixteen and eighteen, about the time when the public school boy proceeded to the University.
§ SIR HENRY CRAIKDid not the Committee recommend the training of these boys between fifteen and sixteen years of age?
§ MR HALDANEsaid he was informed by those who were responsible that the Committee thought that the question was immaterial to their deliberations. What they required was not to disturb the old state of things, but he was anxious to make it clear that what they wanted as such material as should be sufficient for the reserve of officer. It might well be true that some of the corps which had been mentioned not only did not lead to the diffusion of a spirit of militarism, but wore excellent things in themselves. Boys' brigades were splendid things, and many of them wished to encourage them in every way in the good work they did and to teach the young idea even from eleven to twelve how to shoot. But these things were outside the province upon which he could justify the expenditure of public money. He had an extremely limited amount of money to 249 dispose of, and he did not intend to spend it on boys' brigades.
§ SIR HENRY CRAIKI never said anything about boys' brigades.
§ MR. HALDANEpointed out that the hon. Gentleman had referred to cadet corps, the age of the members of which went down to thirteen or fourteen and even to eleven or ten. That question was one which emphatically belonged to the department of education. Inquiry taught him that except in so far as it was expedient not to disturb the state of things in the great secondary private schools, he was not really much concerned with boys under sixteen. What was the situation at present? The Government did not give grants of money to cadet corps; they gave ammunition and arms to the uniformed corps. Of these there were some 11,000. He laid great stress upon this, because it was from thorn that he hoped to get material for the reserve of officers. These organisations in the great schools would give him what he wanted for the reserve of officers; but it did not in the least follow that he would get what he wanted by going to another class of school, and encouraging the formation of cadet corps consisting of boys under sixteen years of ago. He would be travelling wholly outside the region of the War Office into the department of education—outside anything which could be of practical use to him—if he were to propose to earmark financial assistance for boys under sixteen in the State-aided schools. What he was concerned to do was at least not to preclude himself from supporting the cadet corps in the great private schools. Those were the bodies on which he drew, and was likely to draw. The duty of developing military training in the elementary schools was one he declined to assume. It was a matter which be longed to the field of education, and to the field of education he left it.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid the right hon. Gentleman had stated that the contact between his Bill and education was merely accidental, that it touched education at one point—by those provisions which he hoped would enable him to obtain a reserve of officers. But the intervention of certain hon. Members in the matter was not accidental, but intentional. Their 250 view was that drill was an injury to the young.
§ MR. HALDANEThey are content to help me to get my reserve of officers. They say take them from boys over sixteen.
§ MR. WYNDHAMsaid that would not do. They were not merely discussing the right hon. Gentleman's reserve of officers; they were discussing whether it was well or ill that in the course of education in schools some form of military training should be given to the young. Why had the right hon. Gentle man chosen the age of sixteen? He knew perfectly well that he had swept out of the Bill and debarred from any such encouragement as might have been obtained under it all the public elementary schools and all the intermediate schools in the country. Whatever might be the reasons of the right hon. Gentleman for yielding to pressure, those who brought it to bear considered it a mistake that the young should be brought into contact at a plastic age with anything that might stir their sympathies for a military career. The right hon. Gentleman was deliberately inventing a class distinction. Youths attending schools of a certain character were to have their minds impressed with military aspirations and to receive training; and the rest of the nation, attending public elementary schools and inter mediate schools, were to be put in a different class. They were to have a kind of Greek Republic in which there was to be a class of soldiers and another class composed of those engaged in industrial occupations. That was the suggestion, and he thought the House ought to pause before it accepted it. It was the fact that the sons of artisans and those engaged in industry did, as a rule, leave school earlier than the sons of the upper class. Therefore, if a universal rule of sixteen were made, the sons of one class would be taught a certain amount of drill, while the sons of the other class would not be taught drill at all, a class distinction being thus made—-one class being brought up with military tendencies and the other being debarred in youth from learning anything but industrialism. From the purely educational point of view it was held by many educational authorities that the great danger of the industrial age was not only 251 to the manhood of the country, but to the youth of the country who were brought up in a narrow groove. We were living in an age of competitive commercialism, but that was only a reason for trying to broaden the lives of the youths of the country and not to allow them to be narrowed into the industrial groove. Why did we teach children to sing the musical stave or freehand drawing? In order to give them education and to draw them out of the narrow groove of industrialism. What would the hon. Member say if he was told he must not teach children to sing or draw lest they should be impregnated with the artistic temperament? To tell the children of what were sometimes called the lower classes that they only were to be cut off from the stimulating appeal to patriotism was a mistake, and he earnestly hoped the House would not consider the question within the narrow limits laid down by the Secretary of State. It was a great national question, and a great educational question. For his part, he thought these associations could not direct their efforts better than by giving some slight assistance, in providing drill-sergeants and miniature rifles, to widen the lives of children in elementary schools, to stir patriotism in their breasts, and to make men of them, instead of little machines to grow up into big machines.
§ * MR. BENNETT (Oxfordshire, Wood stock)said that he would oppose the Amendment with the greatest pleasure. There were many reasons for offering resistance to any proposals for foisting military training on children of tender years. He wished to point out, however, in passing, that the alleged distinction between the son of, say, an artisan and the son of a rich man taught at a public school was quite unreal. The artisan's boy at seventeen could, of course, if he wished for military experience, join his local Volunteer corps, and would possess exactly the same privilege, in fact an even higher one than the public school boy of the same age who was serving in his cadet corps. The majority of hon. Members on his side of the House would, he thought, agree that military training tended to produce a very undesirable spirit amongst young boys. He did not like the thought of very young children 252 being continually associated through drills and firing exercises with the idea of human slaughter in one form or another. Many hon. Members were convinced that the introduction of military training into the schools of the country was an indirect encouragement to the idea of national conscription. That theory might be seen in a crystallised shape on the board hung up in Victoria Street. "The National Service League, with which is incorporated the Lads' Drill Association." He would, however, chiefly confine himself that evening to some more prosaic arguments than that based on a conscientious dislike of militarism. He was utterly opposed to the military training of young boys because such training was quite futile and provided no real asset of any military value. If corroboration was sought elsewhere, let hon. Members reflect that France, which possessed what was probably the most efficient army and military system in the world, had altogether discarded the bataillons scolaires. The French had come to realise what he trusted we should realise also, that these toy regiments of small boys were of no earthly use to the State. As to the military drill, it was well known that our drill was perpetually being altered. The manual exercise of their boyhood soldiering had been improved almost out of existence; and the simplest company movements were very different now from what they were when hon. Members served in cadet corps. Would any real benefit accrue to the country in any time of national stress and peril, because so many hundreds of thousands of her citizens had in their childhood acquired the beggarly elements of a system of drill long since obsolete? Further, the proposed drills and firing exercises involved very often a sheer waste of school time. While the nation's ideals of education were so imperfect, no Liberal, at any rate, he felt sure, could desire to see any hours which should be devoted to the intellectual curriculum of the school given up to square drill or musketry. Again, another ground for opposing the Amendment arose from the expense involved. The military training of cadet corps in our national schools meant the grants of rifles, ammunition, rifle ranges, and instructors. Musketry instruction could not fairly or reasonably be demanded amongst the qualifications of a national schoolmaster. The Government was 253 pledged to economy, and could not afford to spend public money on such wholly subsidiary and somewhat ridiculous organisations. Some hon. Members had experienced some difficulty in securing a second suit of clothes for the Territorial Forces; they had been threatened with the loss of their regular adjutants and the diminution of the number of their regular drill instructors. These disadvantages had been threatened on the ground—a very legitimate ground—of economy. That being so, he protested against any grants of the taxpayers' money being assigned to corps and battalions of what one of our Colonial visitors recently described as "kiddy soldiers." Finally, no pledge of service was exacted or could be exacted from such boys; indeed he felt that even the older boys who won Certificate A or, later on still, Certificate B would really be receiving public grants without any definite under taking on their part to render military service in return. His own experience, too, had taught him that the existence of cadet corps did not necessarily encourage young men to join Volunteer and Militia battalions later on. Quite the contrary in many cases. At Oxford and, he was informed, at Cambridge too, one of the commonest excuses for shirking military duties in the Volunteer battalions was that the undergraduate alleged that he had had quite enough drill at school. As to rifle clubs an age limit was desirable not only for the younger members, but the older ones. He did not think it right that any public money should be given to any member of a rifle club who was by age quite unfitted to undertake any kind of military service Nor indeed was he, as a keen Volunteer and anxious to do his best for the Territorial Army, very deeply enamoured of rifle clubs. He greatly feared that; the good-fellowship, pot hunting and, above all, the easy terms of service might lead many young men to devote their attention exclusively to rifle clubs in preference to the more arduous and infinitely more valuable conditions of service in the Territorial Force. The Bill was getting better and better day by day as various excrescences were lopped off, and he for one could wish that it was wholly free from any maintenance or fostering of the cadet corps system, which he regarded as not only injurious to the boys, but useless to the State.
§ MR F. E. SMITH (Liverpool, Walton)said that as the text of his observations on the Amendment he desired to take a speech of the hon. and gallant Member for the Abercromby division of Liverpool, made some four or five years ago, when he said—
I myself, speaking as a Member of Parliament, with a scat to lose, say openly that I consider it extremely desirable and obligatory that every male in this country should be trained to arms. I also believe that five-sixths of the people of this country would welcome such a proposition.He accepted in its entirety that simple statement of the attitude of his hon. and gallant friend at that time, and he would invite the House to welcome the opportunity which was afforded by the Amendment of deciding what was the best method of carrying into effect those aspirations, which, be it noted, were to some extent shared by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for War. Here they were struck by one of the most astonishing phenomena in reference to the position of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to the arguments with which those on his side of the House commended the Amendment of his hon. friend. It was true that the hon. Gentleman had spoken in one part of his speech of the spirit of militarism. The hon. Member for Salford, who sat behind the right hon. Gentleman, had a perfectly clear idea of what was meant by the spirit of militarism. He did not know whether the right lion. Gentleman the Minister for War had an equally clear idea of what was meant, when he spoke with reprobation of the spirit of militarism. Though he had spoken of the spirit of militarism with contempt, yet the Minister for War had gone round the country and presented to one Volunteer corps after another the prizes which had been won, and at the same time he had expressed an ardent desire that the nation should "spring to arms." Was it in a spirit of Quakerism that they were to spring to arms? Did the right hon. Gentleman or did he not wish under the stimulating influence of his eloquence, and of his example, for aught he knew, the nation to spring to arms. He presumed, when the right hon. Gentleman asked his countrymen to take upon themselves the burden of defending the country in the last resort, it was really his view that the position 255 of this country, having regard to international complications, might well prove to be such that it would be necessary for the safety of the realm that every adult male should, in the last report, be able to defend it. If that was not the view of the right hon. Gentleman, why should he indulge in mischievous utterances, crying of "springing to arms"? Why should he spread the poison of the doctrine of militarism? Why should he not rather repress it? But that was not what the War Minister was doing, and that was not what the Bill was doing. If it was a wrong thing to foster the spirit of militarism, if the hon. Gentle man the Member for Salford, who made unsuccessful efforts to conceal his disgust at the speeches of the Secretary for War, thought that was the right spirit, then let them limit the doctrine of militarism in other ways than by merely saying that it should nut be applied to boys of fourteen or sixteen years of age. He had studied various periods of human life with as much care as most men, and he was utterly unable to discover what was the magic about the age of sixteen. What was the difference between sixteen and seventeen, considering it from the point of view of this question? Of course, there was no distinction between those two ages. He always listened to the hon. Gentleman with respect when he made demands on the patience of the House, but lot him remind the hon. Gentleman that in an earlier part of the debate he had said that if a foreign invader approached our shores, "a million bayonets would flash in the sun." What an inspiring thought —a million bayonets flashing in the sun, in an age of artillery, and flashed by people who had never been taught to handle a gun? It was in these circum- stances that the right hon. Gentle man went to Volunteer meetings like another Peter the Hermit, bidding the nation to give him troops for a great European war, [" No, no."] Lot them have an understanding. Was there or was there not a desire on the part of the right hon. Gentleman that we should have in England a nation ready to spring to arms? That was a simple question. Was that the wish of hon. Gentlemen opposite or was it not their wish? He had not observed that anybody had come forward to contradict him when he had referred to the right hon. Gentleman 256 as another Peter the Hermit, exhorting the country, and necessarily hon. Gentle men opposite, to rally in support of his contention that the nation should be ready to spring to arms. At the time when the Bill was drafted the right hon. Gentleman held the view that the pecuniary support which he was now determined to withhold ought to be given to cadet corps without reference to the age of sixteen; it was not suggested that the right hon. Gentleman when the Bill was drafted did not consider the point. What were the representations which changed the views of the right hon. Gentleman? Were they military representations? That was not alleged. Was it the argument of an expert that the right hon. Gentleman would not get value for his money, which was the only argument that he had laid before the House that night? No, the arguments were the arguments of the hon. Members for Salford, Haggerston, and Falkirk Burghs, who believed that the whole spirit of militarism was injurious to the country. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] Yes, that was the view. They had got the argument in the open now—was it the argument of the right hon. Gentleman the responsible Minister for the armed forces of the Crown? The House knew that it was not. But from what quarter did the representations proceed? The right hon. Gentleman first became conscious that he was not going to get value for his money when a deputation approached him of Members who were convinced that he would not get value for any money spent for this purpose. In the words of Mr. Deakin—If you want a community which realises what war is, you must go to the community in which every household shares the risk of war.On that side of the House they were not afraid to face that prospect. They could all fill some place in the great scheme which was open to them under this Amendment, and even the hon. Member for Salford might be employed in a non-belligerent capacity, giving lectures on patriotism to the children of the soldiers.
§ * SIR W. J. COLLINS (St. Pancras, W.)agreed that it was undesirable to draw a distinction in this matter between schools receiving a Parliamentary grant and those schools ordinarily called public 257 schools. He urged the right hon. Gentle man to consider the propriety of applying this proviso impartially to all types of schools. He made that appeal mainly on educational grounds. It was said that the Bill was a bulwark against conscription. Let them not indirectly put compulsion on children of school age by giving official sanction to military drill for them and voting public money for stimulating and fostering cadet corps. He objected to the proposal on educational grounds because it was cultivating premature specialisation, and those who were acquainted with school life and higher education knew the danger of too early specialisation in our schools. Six teen was a sufficiently early age for specialisation, whether for a soldier or for any other profession. He was strongly in favour of physical exercises. But esprit de corps was promoted in the cricket field and the football field; while the exercises of the swimming bath and the gymnasium were far better and less mechanical than drill with a rifle. The late Sir Joshua Fitch in one of his pamphlets said that the handling of a rifle, forming fours, and preparing to receive cavalry were no necessary part of a good system of corporeal drill, and were often advocated with the ulterior political object of encouraging the martial spirit amongst boys. At the Albert Hall the Prime Minister said—
It is vain to seek peace if you do not also ensure it.Was it ensuing peace to teach boys of thirteen or fourteen exercises of a military character? He would urge upon the Secretary of State for War that the pathway alike of reality and progress was the pathway of peace. The time was opportune for showing our sincerity in regard to this question. At the Hague Conference the nations were 258 now represented in larger numbers than on any previous occasion. He ventured to think that we should be giving proof of the sincerity of the aspirations ex pressed by our representatives at the Conference if we showed that in regard to boys of fourteen and fifteen we did not desire to stimulate the spirit of militarism in them.
§ * MR. BYLES (Salford, N.)who was greeted with laughter and cries of "Oh!" said it seemed to him that he was received with a certain amount of derision. Did anybody in the House suppose that he was ashamed of his opinions on war? If they did they would find that they were mistaken. This he believed was the only time during the whole of the debates on the Territorial Forces Bill at which the anti-military party in the House had been able to make any protest. [An HON. MEMBER: They have not been here at all.] He wished to enter his protest in the strongest possible way against teaching children the art of war. War was murder; war was a horrible thing, and it ought to be hated and avoided. It was the negation of every thing good and beautiful. If it was ever necessary, it was a necessary evil. The purity and loveliness of youth ought to be a stranger to this as to many other forms of human evil. He wondered who of his hon. colleagues on that and the other side of the House would wish his own prattling boy of fourteen or fifteen, holding a miniature rifle in his hand, to be taught that when he was bigger he should have a bigger rifle and learn to use it in order that he might shoot and kill his fellow-man. He did not believe that anyone would like his own son to be imbued with those ideas. The truth was that a student was one 259 type of humanity, and a soldier was another. For his part, he was sorry to see the references in the Bill to the universities and the schools. The tramp of armed troops through the peaceful haunts of learning was not, to his mind, a pleasant vision to contemplate. He was surprised that these proposals to associate scholarship with militarism should have been brought forward by his right hon. friend, who, after all, was a civilian and a scholar, and one who had drank deep at the wells of literature and learning. The right hon. Gentleman well knew that scholarship made for inter national fellowship and brotherhood, while militarism always made for mutual suspicion and hatred, and was the denial of the fellowship and brotherhood of man. At the Hague Conference, now in session, the representatives of forty nations were assembled trying to put an end to, or, at any rate, to put some limitation to, the evils of war which, he supposed, every Member of this House, even the postprandial scoffers whom he saw before him [Cries of "Order" and "Withdraw"] wished to limit. Was that a moment when England, the pioneer in civilisation, with a Liberal Government, should be forming schoolboy brigades and cadet corps, and carrying even to the children of the land the knowledge and the love of war?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid he was sure the hon. Gentleman had spoken from the depths of his heart; he had given expression to a ruling principle in his life, and doubtless felt that he was acting in a missionary spirit in the interest of peace. In that interest they were all agreed. There was not a man in the House, to whatever Party he belonged, who did not think, in the first place, that war was in itself, as the hon. 260 Gentleman truly said, a horrible thing, and that the interests of this country, quite apart from the horrors of war in the abstract and the moral question, were all for peace. In so far as that was the case, they were all of the hon. Gentleman's school. But let them consider the general propositions which the hon. Gentleman had advanced, and the particular conclusion which he had deduced from them. The subject they were now discussing was whether boys at school ought or ought not to be taught the elements of drill if the schoolmaster desired it, and if the county council wished to spend the money in promoting it. There was no compulsion in the Amendment of his hon., friend. j No county council, if the Amendment was carried, would be required to spend a shilling in the cause of military drill, and no schoolmaster if he thought it inimical to the general interests of education would be obliged to accept a shilling from the county council. The Amendment gave liberty both to the giver of money and the receiver; it compelled money neither to be offered nor to be received. But supposing money was offered and received, did all the ill consequences which the hon. Gentleman had conjured up really follow? The hon. Gentleman pictured to himself the British schoolboy as a peaceful and innocent animal— [Labour cries of dissent, and an HON. MEMBER: Practically]—well, practically, to whom the very thought of strife was detestable, who was a natural lover of peace, and whom a flagitious Government, aided by an unscrupulous Opposition, were going to indoctrinate with these prejudices in favour of bitterness and strife. He ventured to say that the hon. Gentleman's picture of the ordinary British schoolboy was drawn in rather 261 too angelic colours; those of them who had been at school did not remember to, have seen angelic wings springing from the shoulders of their school-fellows, and, while there was not that absolute innocence waiting to be corrupted by the Government existing in either our elementary or our public schools, there was really nothing in the Amendment which suggested to a schoolboy otherwise peaceably inclined that he should hence forth devote himself to the reckless and unnecessary destruction of his follow men. The hon. Member for West St. Pancras seemed to have a strong leaning towards athletics as well as a strong objection to the Amendment, but he supposed he had in his mind the old, he believed the apocryphal, adage that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. He did not think it could be undue specialisation to say that any boy who desired instead of learning cricket, or in addition to learning it, to learn the use of the ride, might be more competent to win some battle other than that of which the Duke of Wellington talked. And when the hon. Gentleman talked of over specialisation, and compared a boy of fourteen or fifteen learning how to use the rifle with a boy of fourteen or fifteen being prematurely indoctrinated into the mysteries of the profession of which the hon. Gentleman himself was so great an ornament, he must have felt that the parallel was not a very close one. He did not think it could be described as over specialisation. But could they seriously take the view of the hon. Gentleman and think that this was going to promote a military spirit? What did they want a Territorial Army for? As he understood the views of the Secretary for War, he desired among other things to make the land of this country and the territories of the 262 British Empire absolutely secure. Neither he nor anybody on that side was in favour of a policy of conquest and adventure' even were the possibility of conquest and adventure open to any Government in this country. The only military interest we had was the interest of self-defence, and the Amendment was directed to teaching a boy of under sixteen that he might have to defend himself. The Amendment would not promote the military spirit. What it would promote was the spirit of the man who was ready to do his share in rendering the Empire of which he was a citizen secure against foreign attack. There was no possibility of any Government under any circum stances arising in this country which would be so mad as to desire to enter upon a reckless and unnecessary war. [LABOUR cries of "The Transvaal War."] Hon. Gentlemen below the gangway appeared to think that the South African War was reckless and unnecessary. [MINISTERIAL cheers and OPPOSITION cries of "Asquith."] Did hon. Gentlemen below the gangway think that that war was unnecessary? [LABOUR cries of "Yes."] He need hardly say that that was not the opinion of the hon. Gentlemen who sit on the Opposition side of the House, nor was it the opinion of the majority of the people. He never suggested that in future the whole of the country would be unanimous as to whether a war was wise or unwise; but he did say that no Government was likely to exist which would go into a war believing it to be unnecessary and solely for the purpose of aggression or conquest. He appealed to the Government to resist to the utmost of their ability the heresy—for it was nothing else—that to teach boys and men how to handle in the interest of national defence those weapons by which alone national defence, in the 263 last resort, could be accomplished, was to promote the military spirit, if the military spirit was the spirit of aggression, and to assert that it was but to enable the people of this country to prepare to offer a successful resistance to any invasion that might be organised by a foreign Power of their rights, their liberties, and their territories.
§ MAJOR SEELYsaid he most earnestly hoped that the Government would resist the Amendment, and precisely for the reasons urged by the hon. Gentleman who moved it. He believed it was the duty of every man to fit himself to defend his country, and he believed that nine-tenths of the people were willing to do so. But the worst way to proceed was to force the children to do that which they themselves were too cowardly to under take. He was convinced they could procure a sufficient number of persons voluntarily to undertake to defend the country without resorting to the policy of the Amendment; and, indeed, by forcing children under the age of sixteen to go through military exercises was to turn them against the Army, and so far from adding to the military strength of the nation they would greatly diminish it. [OPPOSITION cries of "There is no forcing."] It had been suggested by his right hon. friend the President of the Local Government Board that military ardour was like measles, and that a man only got it once in his life and when he did he got it strongly. Therefore if they forced children—
§ Sir HENRY CRAIKMy Amendment does not involve any force.
§ MAJOR SEELYsaid he quite understood that, but if his hon. friend had borne with him for one moment he should have 264 pointed out why he had used the word "force." What he was saying was that if they forced children to go through military exercises they were much less likely to get them to serve their country in the Army. Now he would come to the argument of the hon. Gentleman that there was no compulsion. Surely that was a ridiculous doctrine. If military exercises were laid down in the school curriculum by the school authorities, it was absurd to say the children would not. be forced to undertake them. If the children were forced to undertake exercises of that kind, it would tend to decrease the efficiency of the Army, because by such a course the military ardour of the lads would be diminished and their fighting efficiency in after years lessened. He disagreed with those who thought that when we entered the Hague Conference we should gain anything by saying we would not allow our children to learn the use of arms, because we were at the present moment proposing to maintain a larger expeditionary force than we ever had before. That fact cut the ground from under the feet of those who thought it wise to pursue an anti-military policy because we were going to maintain a far larger Regular Army than any country in the world. He suggested, therefore, that it was useless, in view of the increase of the expeditionary force, to urge the fact that we refused to allow our children to receive military training. He joined with those who asked that they should not force upon the children that which the parents had not yet accepted. He thought that in so far as they forced a boy to do what he did not want to do they would detract from his efficiency in. time of war, because he would not wish to go through the military exercises which he had been compelled to practise 265 in his youth He should therefore resist the Amendment.
§ * SIR BRAMPTON GURDON (Norfolk, N.)observed that to make drill a part of school work was the surest way of crushing out the military spirit of the youth of the country. He remembered when he was at school a long time ago a sergeant used to come and drill the boys, who hated the very sight of him, and such a course tended to discourage lads from thinking of a military career. When a man grow up he would not go back to the work which he had to under take at school, and if the system now suggested was carried on for ten years they would not be able to get a single recruit for the Army from the schools which were subject to it. The only thing they could teach boys in schools was barrack-square drill, and all our wars had shown us that that was precisely what we did not want. As Sir John Gorst had said, a good soldier was far more likely to be made by such games as cricket and football than by drill of this kind. In those games the boys wore taught to act independently but with devotion to the interests of the side to which they belonged and affection for their captain. For himself he had been brought up in an atmosphere of game and shooting, and in the early days of Wimbledon he was a very keen rifle
§ shot. Although he was apprehensive of the result of a policy of putting firearms into the hands of children, he might say that if Lord Roberts's scheme of universal military training were carried out, there would be this compensation. One of the greatest evils of the present day was the over preservation of game for the purpose of supplying the battues which were now the fashion. He was not sure that our forefathers were not happier when, after a day's sport, they brought home a partridge and a couple of snipe, than the cockney sportsman who came down from London and whose only object was not to kill but to "muddle down" more pheasants than other people in the neighbourhood did. If Lord Roberts's plan was carried out, the present over preservation of game would cease, because it would be impossible if they turned out from the schools every year a healthy crop of young poachers.
§ And, it being half-past Ten of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of 6th May, to put the Question on the Amendment; already proposed from the Chair.
§ Question put "That the words proposed to be left out, to the second word 'in,' in page 4, line 11, stand part of the Bill."
§ The House divided: Ayes, 304; Noes, 114. (Division List No. 237.)
269| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Barker, John | Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Barlow, John Emmott (Som'rs't | Billson, Alfred |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine |
| Alden, Percy | Barnes, G. N. | Black, Arthur W. |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Barran, Rowland Hirst | Bowerman, C.W. |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Barry.RedmondJ. (Tyrone,N.) | Brace, William |
| Armitage, R. | Beale, W. P. | Bramsdon, T. A. |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Beauchamp, E. | Branch, James |
| Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry | Bell, Richard | Brigg, John |
| Astbury, John Meir | Bellairs, Carlyon | Bright, J. A. |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Bennett, E. N. | Brooke, Stopford |
| Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury,E.) | Berridge, T. H. D. | Brunner.J.F.L. (Lanes., Leigh) |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Bertram, Julius | Brunner.Rt.Hn.Sir J.T.(Chesh. |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Bethell,Sir J. H. (Essex.Romf'd | Bryce, J. Annan |
| Buchanan. Thomas Ryburn | Hemmerde, Edward George | Murray, James |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Myer, Horatio |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Henderson, J.M.( Aberdeen, W.) | Napier. T. B. |
| Burt. Rt. Hon. Thomas | Henry, Charles S. | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Buxton,Rt. Hn.Sydney Charles | Herbert,Colonel Ivor (Mon., S.) | Newnes, Sir George (Swansea) |
| Byles, William Pollard | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Nicholls, George |
| Cairna, Thomas | Higham, John Sharp | Nicholson,Charles N.(Doncast'r |
| Cameron, Robert | Hobart, Sir Robert | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Cambpell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Hobhouse. Charles E. H. | Nussey, Thomas Willans |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Hodge, John | Nuttall, Harry |
| Causton,Rt. Hn. Richard Knight | Holden, E. Hopkinson | O'Grady, J. |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick | Holland, Sir William Henry | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Holt, Richard Dinning | Partington, Oswald |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Horniman, Emslie John | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester) |
| Cleland, J. W. | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Philipps,Col.Ivor (S'thampton) |
| Clough, William | Hudson, Walter | Philipps,J.Wynford( Pembroke |
| Coats,Sir T.Glen (Renfrew, W.) | Hyde, Clarendon | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) |
| Cobbold, Felix Thornley | Idris, T. H. W. | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Pirie, Duncan V. |
| Collins,SirWm.J.(S.Pancras,W | Jackson, R. S. | Pollard. Dr. |
| Cooper, G. J. | Jenkins, J. | Price, C. R.(Edinburgh.Central) |
| Corbett,C.H.(Sussex,E.Gr'st'd) | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Price,Robert John (Norfolk, E. |
| Cory, Clifford John | Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Jones,Sir D. Brynmor(Swansea) | Rainy, A. Rolland |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) |
| Cremer, William Randal | Jones,William (Carnarvonshire) | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' |
| Crombie, John William | Jowett, F. W. | Richards,Thomas (W.Monm'th |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Kearley, Hudson E. | Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n |
| Crossley, William J. | Kekewich, Sir George | Rickett, J. Compton |
| Dalziel, James Henry | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Kitson, Rt. Hon. Sir James | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan | Laidlaw, Robert | Robertson.Rt.Hn. E. (Dundee) |
| Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Lamb, Edmund G (Leominster) | Robertson,Sir G.Scott (Bradf'd |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Lambert, George | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Dickinson,W.H.(St. Pancras,N. | Lamont, Norman | Rogers. F. E. Newman |
| Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Layland-Barratt, Francis | Rose, Charles Day |
| Duncan,C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Lea,Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras,E. | Rowlands, J. |
| Dunne,Major E.Martin (Wals'll | Leese,Sir Joseph F.(Accrington | Russell, T. W. |
| Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Lehmann, R. C | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Edwards, Frank (Radnor) | Lever, A.Levy (Essex,Harwich | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) |
| Elibank, Master of | Lever, W.H. (Cheshire, Wirral) | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward | Levy, Maurice | Scarisbrick, T. T. L. |
| Erskine, David C | Lewis, John Herbert | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Schwann, Sir C.E.(Manchester) |
| Evans, Samuel T. | Lough, Thomas | Scott,A.H.(Ashton under Lyne |
| Eve, Harry Trelawney | Lupton, Arnold | Sears, J. E. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes | Seely, Major J. B. |
| Fenwick, Charles | Lyell, Charles Henry | Shaw, Rt.Hn. T. (Hawick B.) |
| Ferens, T. R. | Macdonald,J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Mackarness. Frederic C. | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Findlay, Alexander | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | M'Callum, John M. | Sinclair. Rt. Hon. John |
| Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | M'Crae, George | Smeaton. Donald Mackenzie |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Fullerton, Hugh | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Soares, Ernest.J. |
| Gladstone,Rt. Hn.Herbert John | M'Micking, Major G. | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Glover, Thomas | Maddison. Frederic | Stanger. H. Y. |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | Mallet, Charles E. | Stanley,Hon. A. Lyulph(Chesh.) |
| Grant, Corrie | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Steadman. W. C. |
| Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Markham, Arthur Basil | Stewart. Halley (Greenock) |
| Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Marks,G.Croydon (Launceston) | Stewart-Smith. D. (Kendal) |
| Griffiths. Ellis J. | Marnham, F. J. | Strachey. Sir Edward |
| Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill | Massie. J. | Straus. B. S. (Mile End) |
| Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Menzies, Walter | Strauss. E. A. (Abingdon) |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Micklem, Nathaniel | Summerbell. T. |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Molteno, Percy Alport | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r) | Mond, A. | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Harmsworth.R.L. (Caithn'ss-sh | Money, L. G. Chiozza | Taylor. John W. (Durham) |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Montagu, E. S. | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Harwood, George | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) | Thomas,Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Haworth, Arthur A. | Morgan, J.Lloyd (Carmarthen) | Thomas.Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.) |
| Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | Thomas,David Alfred (Merthyr) |
| Thomasson, Franklin | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) | Williamson, A. |
| Thompson,J.W.H. (Somerset.E | Wason, John Catheart (Orkney) | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| Thorne, William | Waterlow, D. S. | Wilson.Hn. C.H.W. (Hull, W.) |
| Tomkinson, James | Watt, Henry A. | Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R. |
| Torrance, Sir A. M. | Weir, James Galloway | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Toulmin, George | White, George (Norfolk) | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Trevelyan, Charles Philips | White, J. D.(Dumbartonshire) | Wilson. W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Ure, Alexander | White, Luke (York, E. R.) | Winfrey, R. |
| Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) | Whitehead, Rowland | Wodehouse, Lord |
| Walton. Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Ward,John (Stoke upon Trent) | Wiles, Thomas | |
| Ward.W. Dudley (Southampt'n | Wilkie. Alexander | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Wardle, George J. | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) | |
| Waring. Walter | Williams,Llewelyn (Carmarth'n | |
| Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland-Hood,Rt.Hn.SirAlex.F. | Fardell, Sir T. George | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens |
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Fell, Arthur | Percy, Earl |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Fletcher, J. S. | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Forster, Henry William | Rawlinson.John Frederick Peel |
| Arnold-Forster,Rt, Hn. Hugh O. | Gardner,Col. Alan (Hereford,S. | Rees, J. D. |
| Ashley, W. W. | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Renton, Major Leslie |
| Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt. Hon.Sir H. | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Balcarres, Lord | Gretton, John | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesal |
| Balfour,RtHn.A.J.(CityLond.) | Haddock, George R. | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Banbury, Sir FrederickGeorge | Hamilton, Marquess of | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.) | Hardy,Laurence (Kent,Ashford | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Beach,Hn. Michael HughHicks | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Seaverns, J. H. |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Sheffield,SirBerkeleyGeorge.D. |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hervey,F.W.F.(BuryS.Edm'ds | Smith,F.E. (Liverpool,Walton) |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury) | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Boyle, Sir Edward | Hills, J. W. | Starkey, John R. |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Houston, Robert Paterson | Stone, Sir Benjamin |
| Bodies, H. C. | Kennaway,Rt.Hon.SirJohn H. | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Col. VV. | Talbot, Rt.Hn.J.G. (Oxf'd Univ |
| Carlile, E. Mildred | Keswick, William | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. | Kincaid-Smith, Captain | Thomson,W. Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | King,SirHenrySeymour (Hull) | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Cave, George | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Cavendish,Rt. Hon. VictorC.W. | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Valentia, Viscount |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Lee,ArthurH.(Hants., Fareham | Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard |
| Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey- | Lockwood, Rt.Hn. Lt.Col. A.R. | Walker,Col.W.H. (Lancashire) |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Long,Col. Charles W.(Evesham | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Long,Rt. Hn. Walter (Dublin,S | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Clark,George Smith (Belfast,N. | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Coates, E. Feetham (Lewisham | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Wilson,A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | MacIver, David (Liverpool) | Wortley, Rt, Hon. C.B. Stuart- |
| Craig,Charles Curtis(Antrim, S. | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Craig,Captain James(Down,E.) | M'Iver,Sir Lewis(Edinburgh,W | Younger, George |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Magnus, Sir Philip | |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Henry Craik and Captain Baring. |
| Doughty, Sir George | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Morpeth, Viscount | |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield | |
| Faber, Capt. W.V. (Hants, W.) | Nield, Herbert |
§ Mr. SPEAKER then proceeded successively to put forthwith the Questions upon any Amendments moved by the Government, of which notice had been given, which were necessary to dispose of the Business to be concluded.
270
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 4, line 38, at the beginning, to insert the words 'Subject to regulations under this Act.' "—(Mr. Secretary Haldane).
§ Question put, "That the Amendment be made."
271| The House divided: Ayes, 314; Noes, 105. (Division List No. 238.) |
| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Rhondda) | Crooks, William | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Crosfield, A. H. | Jackson, R. S. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Crossley, William J. | Jenkins, J. |
| Alden, Percy | Dalziel, James Henry | Johnson. John (Gateshead) |
| Allen,A. Acland (Christchurrh) | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan | Jomes,SirD. Brynmor(Swansea) |
| Armitage, R. | Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | Jones, Leif (Appleby) |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Jones,William (Carnarvonshire |
| Asquith,Rt. Hon. HerbertHenry | Dickinson,W.H. (St.Pancras.N. | Jowett, F. W. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Kearley, Hudson E. |
| Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth) | Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Kekewich, Sir George |
| Baker,Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.) | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness | Kincaid-Smith, Captain |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Dunne,Major E.Martin(Walsall | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) |
| Baring,Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Edwards, Clement (Denbigh) | Kitson. Rt. Hon. Sir James |
| Barker, John | Edward, Frank (Radnor) | Laidlaw, Robert |
| Barlow,JohnEmmott(Somerset | Elibank, Master of | Lamb. Edmund G. (Leominster |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Ellis, Rt, Hon. John Edward | Lambert, George |
| Barnes, G. N. | Erskine, David C. | Lamont, Norman |
| Barran, Rowland Hirst | Esslemont, George Birnie | Layland- Barratt, Francis |
| Barry, Redmond J.(Tyrone,N.) | Evans, Samuel T. | Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E. |
| Beale, W. P. | Eve, Harry Trelawney | Leese,Sir Joseph F.(Accrington |
| Beauchamp, E. | Everett, R. Lacey | Lehmann, R. C. |
| Bell, Richard | Fenwick, Charles | Lever,A. Levy (Essex,Harwich) |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Ferens, T. R. | Lever, W. H.(Cheshire, Wirral) |
| Bennett, E. N. | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Levy, Maurice |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Findlay, Alexander | Lewis, John Herbert |
| Bertram, Julius | Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David |
| Bethell,SirJ.H. (Essex,Romf'rd | Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry | Lough, Thomas |
| Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon) | Fuller, John Michael F. | Lupton, Arnold |
| Billson, Alfred | Fullerton. Hugh | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Gardner,Col.Alan (Hereford, S. | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Black, Arthur W. | Gladstone,Rt.Hn. Herbert John | Lynch, H. B. |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Glover, Thomas | Macdonald. J. R. (Leicester) |
| Brace, William | Goddard, Daniel Ford | Macdonald.J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs. |
| Bramsdon, T. A. | Grant, Corrie | Mackarness, Frederic C. |
| Branch, James | Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. |
| Brigg, John | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | M'Callum, John M. |
| Brodie, H. C. | Griffith, Ellis J. | M'Crae, George |
| Brooke, Stopford | Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Brunner,J.F. L. (Lanes.,Leigh) | Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) |
| Brunner,RtHnSirJ.T (Cheshire | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | M'Micking, Major G. |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis | Maddison, Frederick |
| Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r) | Mallet, Charles E. |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Harmsworth,R. L. (Caithn'ss-sh | Manfield, Harry (Northants) |
| Burns. Rt. Hon. John | Harvey. A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Markham, Arthur Basil |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Harwood, George | Marks, G. Croydon(Launceston |
| Buxton,Rt. Hn.Sydney Charles | Haworth. Arthur A. | Marnham, F. J. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Massie, J. |
| Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Hemmerde, Edward George | Menzies, Walter |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Micklem, Nathaniel |
| Causton,Rt. Hn. RichardKnight | Henderson,J.M. (Aberdeen,W.) | Molteno, Perey Alport |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick | Henry, Charles S. | Mond. A. |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon., S. | Money, L. G.Chiozza |
| Cheetham. John Frederick | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | Montagu, E. S. |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Higham, John Sharp | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) |
| Cleland, J. W. | Hobart, Sir Robert | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen |
| Clough, William | Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Morton, Alpheus Charles |
| Coats,Sir T.Glen (Renfrew, W.) | Hodge, John | Murray, James |
| Cobbold, Felix Thornley | Holden, E. Hopkinson | Myer, Horatio |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Holland, Sir William Henry | Napier, T. B. |
| Collins,Sir Wm.J.(S.Pancras,W. | Holt, Richard Durning | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Cooper, G. J. | Wope, W.Bateman (Somerset,N | Newnes, Sir George (Swansea) |
| Corbett,CH (Sussex,E.Grinst'd | Horniman, Emslie John | Nicholls, George |
| Cory, Clifford John | Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Nicholson,Charles N.(D'ncast'r |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Hudson, Walter | Nussey, Thomas Willans |
| Cremer, William Randal | Hyde, Clarendon | Nuttall, Harry |
| Crombie, John William | Idris, T. H. W. | O'Grady, J. |
| Parker, James (Halifax) | Seaverns, J. H. | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Partington, Oswald | Seely, Major J. B. | Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent) |
| Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) | Ward, W.Dudley (Southampt'n |
| Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester) | Sherwell, Arthur James | Wardle, George J. |
| Philipps,Col.Ivor (S'thampton) | Shipman, Dr. John G. | Waring, Walter |
| Philipps, J.Wynford (Pembroke | Simon, John Allsebrook | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) | Sinclair, Rt, Hon. John | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) |
| Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie | Wason,John Catheart (Orkney) |
| Pirie, Duncan V. | Soames, Arthur Wellesley | Waterlow, D. S. |
| Pollard, Dr. | Soares, Ernest J. | Watt, Henry A. |
| Price,C.E.(Edinburgh, Central) | Spicer, Sir Albert | Weir, James Galloway |
| Price,Robert John (Norfolk,E.) | Stanger, H. Y. | White, George (Norfolk) |
| Priestley. Arthur (Grantham) | Stanley,Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.) | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) |
| Rainy, A. Rolland | Steadman, W. C. | White, Luke (York. E.R.) |
| Rea, Russell (Gloucester) | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) | Whitehead, Rowland |
| Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro') | Stewart-Smith D. (Kendal) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Rees, J. D. | Strachey, Sir Edward | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer |
| Renton, Major Leslie | Straus, B. S. (Mile End) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Richards,Thomas|(W.Monm'th | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Richards, T.F.(Wolverh'mpton | Summerbell, T. | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| Rickett, J. Compton | Sutherland, J. E. | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n |
| Ridsdale, E. A. | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) | Williamson, A. |
| Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| Robertson, Rt. Hn. E.(Dundee) | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | Wilson,Hn. C. H. W. (Hull, W.) |
| Robertson,Sir G.Scott(Bradf'd) | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.) |
| Robson, Sir William Snowdon | Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.) | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Rogers, F. E. Newman | Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras. S.). |
| Rose, Charles Day | Thomasson, Franklin | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton). |
| Rowlands, J. | Thompson,J.W.H.(Somerset,E. | Winfrey, R. |
| Russell, T. W. | Thorne. William | Wodehouse, Lord |
| Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) | Tomkinson, James | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) | Torrance, Sir A. M. | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | Toulmin, George | |
| Scarisbrick, T. T. L. | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A Pease. |
| Schwann, Sir C. E.(Manchester) | Ure, Alexander | |
| Scott,A.H.(Ashton under Lyne | Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) | |
| Sears, J. E. | Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) |
| NOES. | ||
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Craig, Capt. James (Down, E.) | Long,Col.Charles W.(Evesham) |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Craik, Sir Henry | Long,Rt.Hn.Walter (Dublin,S. |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Dalrymple, Viscount | Lonsdale, John Brownlee |
| Ashley,W. W. | Doughty, Sir George | Lowe, Sir Francis William |
| Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt.Hn. Sir H. | Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred |
| Balcarres, Lord | Faber, George Denison (York) | MacIver, David (Liverpool) |
| Balfour,Rt Hn. A. J.(CityLond. | Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | M'Calmont, Colonel James |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Fardell, Sir T. George | M'lver,Sir Lewis(EdnburghW.) |
| Baring,Capt.Hn.G (Winchester | Fell, Arthur | Magnus, Sir Philip |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.) | Fletcher, J. S. | Mason, James F. (Windsor) |
| Beach,Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks | Forster, Henry William | Mildmay, Francis Bingham |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | Morpeth, Viscount |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) |
| Bowles. G. Stewart | Gretton, John | Nield, Herbert |
| Boyle, Sir Edward | Haddock, George R. | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hamilton, Marquess of | Pease,HerbertPike(Darlington) |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Hardy,Laurence (Kent,Ashford | Percy, Earl |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Rawlinson, John Frederick P. |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | Hervey,F.W.F. (BuryS.Edm'ds | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Cave, George | Hill, Sir Clemet (Shrewsbury) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Cavendish, Rt. Hn. Victor C.W. | Hills, J. W. | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Houston, Robert Paterson | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey- | Kennaway,Rt Hn. Sir John H. | Sheffield,Sir BerkeleyGeorge D. |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hn. Col.W. | Smith,F.E.(Liverpool, Walton) |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Keswick, William | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Clark,George Smith(Belfast,N.) | King,Sir Henry Seymour(Hull) | Starkey, John R. |
| Coates, E. Feetham (Lewisham | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Stone, Sir Benjamin |
| Cochrane,Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | Lee,Arthur H.(Hants.,Farehan | Talbot,Rt.Hn.J.G. (Oxf 'dUniv. |
| Craig,Charles Curtis(Antrim,S.) | Lockwood, Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R. | Thomson, W.Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Thornton, Percy M. | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Tuke, Sir John Batty | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) | Younger, George |
| Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord | TELLERS FOR THE NOES— |
| Walker, Col. W.H.(Lancashire) | Wilson,A.Stanley (York. E. R.) | Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia. |
| Walrond, Hon. Lionel | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
§ Drafting Amendment made.
§
Amendments—
In page 4, line 42, at the end, to insert the words, 'Provided than nothing in this section shall be construed as enabling the Army Council to give their consent to the application of money to any purpose to which, apart from this section, it could not lawfully be applied, or to give their consent, without the authority of the Treasury, in any ease in which, apart from this section, the authority of the Treasury would he required.'
In page 7, line 14, at the end, to insert the words, (c) ' When the corps of a man of the Territorial Force includes more than one unit, authorise him when not embodied to be
§
posted, without his consent, to any unit other than that to which he was posted on enlistment; or.' "—(Mr. Haldane)
§ Agreed to.
§
Amendment proposed to the Bill—
In page 8, line 20, to leave out the word 'a,' and insert the word 'such.' "—(Mr. Secretary Haldane)—instead thereof.
§ Question put, "That the Amendment be made."
§ The House divided: Ayes, 312; Noes, 106. (Division List No. 239.)
| Hobart, Sir Robert | Montagu, E. S. | Stanger, H. Y. |
| Hobhouse, Charles E. H. | Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) | Stanley, Hn. A.Lyulph(Chesh.) |
| Hodge, John | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Cramarthen) | Steadman, W. C. |
| Holden, E. Hopkinson | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) |
| Holland, Sir William Henry | Murray, James | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) |
| Holt, Richard Durning | Myer, Horatio | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Hope, W. Bateman(Somerset,N. | Napier, T. B. | Straus, B.S.(Mile End) |
| Horniman, Emslie John | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) | Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon) |
| Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Newnes, Sir George (Swansea) | Summerbell, T. |
| Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Nicholls, George | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Hudson. Walter | Nicholson,CharlesN. (Doncast'r | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Hyde, Clarendon | Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Idris, T. H. W. | Nussey, Thomas Willans | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Nuttall, Harry | Tennant. H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Jackson, R. S. | O'Grady, J. | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Jenkins, J. | Parker, James (Halifax) | Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E. |
| Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Partington, Oswald | Thomas,David Alfred (Merthyr |
| Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) | Paulton, James Mellor | Thomasson, Franklin |
| Jones,SirD. Brynmor( Swansea) | Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Thompson, J. W.H.(Somerset,E |
| Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Pearson, Sir W.D. (Colchester) | Thorne, William |
| Jones, William (Carnarvonshire | Philipps,Col. Ivor (S'thampton) | Tomkinson, James |
| Kearley, Hudson E. | Philipps,J. Wynford(Pembroke | Torrance, Sir A. M. |
| Kekewich, Sir George | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) | Toulmin, George |
| Kincaid-Smith, Captain | Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Pirie, Duncan V. | Ure, Alexander |
| Kitson, Rt. Hon. Sir James | Pollard, Dr. | Walker, H. De R. (Leicester) |
| Laidlaw, Robert | Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh,Central) | Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds, S.) |
| Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster | Price,RobertJohn (Norfolk,E.) | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Lambert, George | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) |
| Lamont, Norman | Rainy. A. Rolland | Ward,W. Dudley(Southampton |
| Layland-Barratt, Francis | Rea, Russell (Gloucester) | Wardle, George J. |
| Lea, Hugh Cecil (St.Pancras,E. | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro' | Waring, Walter |
| Leese,SirJosephF. (Accrington) | Rees, J. D. | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Lehmann, R. C. | Renton, Major Leslie | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) |
| Lever, A. Levy (Essex,Harwich | Richards, Thomas (W.Monm'th | Wason,JohnCathcart (Orkney) |
| Levy, Maurice | Richards,T.F.(Wolverhampton | Waterlow, D. S. |
| Lewis, John Herbert | Rickett, J. Compton | Watt, Henry A. |
| Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Ridsdale, E. A. | Weir, James Galloway |
| Lough, Thomas | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | White, George (Norfolk) |
| Lupton, Arnold | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) | White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire) |
| Luttrell, Hugh Fownes | Robertson,Rt. Hn. E. (Dundee) | White, Luke (York, E. R.) |
| Lyell, Charles Henry | Robertson,SirG Scott(Bradf' rd | Whitehead, Rowland |
| Lynch, H. B. | Robson, Sir William Snowdon | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Rogers, F. E. Newman | Whittaker, Sir Thomas Palmer |
| Macdonald,J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs | Rose, Charles Day | Wiles, Thomas |
| Mackarness, Frederic C. | Rowlands, J. | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Russell. T. W. | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| M'Callum, John M. | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) | Williams Llewelyn( Carmarthen |
| M'Crac, George | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | Williamson, A. |
| M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Scarisbrick, T. T. L. | Wills, Arthur Walters |
| M'Micking, Major G. | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) | Wilson,Hon. C.H. W. (Hull,H.) |
| Maddison, Frederick | Schwann,Sir C. E. (Manchester) | Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough) |
| Mallet, Charles E. | Scott, A.H.(Ashton-under-Lyne | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Sears, J. E. | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Markham, Arthur Basil | Seaverns, J. H. | Winfrey, R. |
| Marks, G.Croydon(Launceston) | Seely, Major J. B. | Wodehouse, Lord |
| Marnham, F. J. | Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Sherwell, Arthur James | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Massie, J. | Shipman, Dr. John G. | |
| Menzies, Walter | Simon, John Allsebrook | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease. |
| Micklem, Nathaniel | Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John | |
| Molteno, Percy Alport | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie | |
| Mond, A. | Soames, Arthur Wellesley | |
| Money, L. G. Chiozza | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| NOES. | ||
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Ashley, W. W. | Balfour,RtHn.A.J.(CityLond.) |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt. Hon.SirH. | Banbury, Sir Frederick George |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Balcarres, Lord | Baring,Capt.Hn.G(Winchester) |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry.N.) | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Pease,HerbertPike(Darlington) |
| Beach,Hn.Michael Hugh Hicks | Gretton, John | Percy, Earl |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Haddock, George R. | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hamilton, Marquess of | Rawlinson,JohnFrederickPeel |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Hardy, Laurence(Kent,Ashford | Roberts,S.(Sheffield,Ecclesall) |
| Boyle, Sir Edward | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Hervey,F.W.F.(BuryS. Edm'ds | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Hill, SirClement (Shrewsbury) | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. | Hills, J. W. | Sheffield,Sir Berkeley GeorgeD. |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | Houston, Robert Paterson | Smith,F.E.(Liverpool,Walton) |
| Cave, George | Kennaway,Rt.Hon.SirJohnH. | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Cavendish,Rt.Hon.Victor C.W. | Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hon.Col.W. | Starkey, John R. |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Keswick, William | Stone, Sir Benjamin |
| Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey | King,Sir Henry Seymour (Hull) | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. | Talbot,Rt.Hn.J.G. (Oxf 'dUniv. |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Thomson, W.Mitchell-(Lanark) |
| Clark,GeorgeSmith(Belfast,N.) | Lee,ArthurH.(Hants., Fareham | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Coates, E. Feetham (Lewisham | Lockwood,Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R. | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Long,Col.CharlesW.(Evesham) | Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | Long,Rt, Hn. Walter(Dublin,S.) | Walker,Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Craig, CharlesCurtis(Antrim, S.) | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Craig,CaptainJames( Down,E.) | Lowe, Sir Francis William | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | MacIver, David (Liverpool) | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord |
| Doughty, Sir George | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wilson, A.Stanley( York,E.R.) |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon.A. Akers- | M'Iver,SirLewis(EdinburghW.) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Magnus, Sir Philip | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Younger, George |
| Fardell, Sir T. George | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | |
| Fell, Arthur | Morpeth, Viscount | TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia. |
| Fletcher, J. S. | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) | |
| Forster, Henry William | Nield, Herbert | |
| Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East) | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens |
§
Amendments—,
In page 8, line 21, after the word 'county,' to insert the words ' as he may select and, if that corps comprises more than one unit within the county, shall be posted to such one of those units as he may select.'
In page 8, line 36, after the word ' discharged,' to insert the words, ' before the end of his current term of service.'
In page 9, line 11, to leave out the words, ' both or either,' and insert the words, ' all or any.'
In page 9, lines 11 and 12, to leave out the words, ' as to notice and payment.'
In page 12, line 19, to leave out from the word ' the,' to the end of line 22, and insert, the words' requirements of this section may be dispensed with in whole or in part, (i) as respects any unit, by the prescribed general officer, and (ii) as respects an individual man by his commanding officer, subject to any general directions by the prescribed general officer. "—(Mr. Haldane).
§ Agreed to.
280§ Bill, as amended, to be further considered To-morrow.