ACCOMMODATION FOR RECRUITS. (Hansard, 9 September 1914)

§ Sir. IVOR HERBERT

I gave notice to the Under-Secretary of State for War that on the Motion "That this House do now adjourn," I would draw attention to the serious want of proper preparation on the part of the War Office authorities in regard to recruitment, and to the subsequent treatment of recruits. I think, perhaps, it will be for the convenience of the House if I were to read a letter which I addressed to the Under-Secretary of State for War, for it contains briefly the substance of what I have to say.

The letter, dated 8th September, was as follows;— The want of reasonable forethought displayed by the War Office in its measures for the raising of the new Army of 500,000 men has produced the inevitable result of confusion, and the climax was reached on Saturday last, when orders were received to transfer to the Reserve men alredy enlisted in order to relieve the congestion in regimental depots, and other military centres, and in future to transfer similarly to the Reserve after attestation all men presenting themselves for enlistment. It is doubtful whether such an order does not constitute a breach of contract with the men enlisted last Saturday. Their attestation contained no mention of Reserve serving. They were enlisted to serve for three years or during the duration of the war, and orders issued indicate that the only service contemplated was Colour service. If this view is correct, then there is no justification for paying these men Reserve pay at sixpence a day in lieu of the full rate for which they engaged. But the question of pay is of little moment. Men are not coming forward, as they have done for the last three weeks, for lucre. The most serious grievance is that they are sent back (as they feel it to be) from the front. 608 They have suffered with exemplary patience and discipline the hardships they have suffered in being herded together without adequate or necessary arrangement in camps and regimental depots, and now they are sent back to their homes to tell the story of official incapacity and mismanagement. I have seen a large number of men so returned; I have also seen letters from men from Tidworth and other places, whither the recruits have been forwarded in feverish haste without any preparation for dealing with them. It is everywhere the same thing. Absence of food, no pay, and absence of decent provision for wasting and sanitation. I regret extremely at such a time to have made public a state of things which is a scandal, but I feel I have personal responsibility to upwards of 6,000 men who in the last few weeks have come forward from this county (my own county) in response to my call. I therefore write to give you notice that it is my intention to raise this question in the House of Commons on the Motion that the House do now adjourn To-morrow. That is the general substance of a very common complaint. The complaints to which I have alluded continue to come to me. I had a letter which I received when I was coming up this morning and which describes the conditions in which these men have been at some of the depots. It says:— May I call your attention to the treatment of young men from this district who have left, or are about to leave, good clean homes and good employment to defend the honour of their country? There were a large number sent from here to Brecon last week, and sent back last Saturday; many of them in a verminous state. They stale that there are men of the tramping class, who are verminous, put in the same rooms as they are, and naturally the lot of them get into the same state. A large number of the young men prefer to go and lie down all nigh; out in the square, and many refused a blanket to put over themselves, as they too are alive. What a condition of affairs to send young men into! I think there is only one way in which it is possible for me to call attention to the matter, and that is on the floor of this House. I trust we shall hear from the Under-Secretary some, I cannot say justification, but some explanation of the utter failure shown by the Department with which he is connected to give proper consideration to the problem presented to them, and to prevent such a state of things being possible. I would like to say that while I express the opinion contained in the letter just read as to the absence of thought on the part of the highest military authorities. I do not wish to cast any imputation or slur on those officers of the Western command with whom I have been in constant communication, and whose earnestness, zeal and industry have all been before me. If the House will permit 609 me to speak personally for a few moments, I should like to make an explanation. My connection with recruiting arose in this way. As soon as the Vote of this House was taken for the increased number of 500,000 men, I drafted a letter of instruction to all magistrates and chairmen of local authorities throughout the county for which I am His Majesty's Lieutenant, stating what they were to do to insure that there should be a proper response to this call, and also to insure that such an omission as this should not arise. I submitted my programme to the general officer commanding the Western district and asked his approval of my taking over the whole duties of recruiting in my county from that day. I received promptly a very kind telegram expressing the full approval of this officer who has given me every conceivable help, and I proceeded at once to carry out that programme. It was a very simple programme. It was to place in the hands of the local authorities, the men who are trusted by their fellow men and who are known all through the county, the duty of raising the required contingent from that county. The arrangements were such that every man who wished to serve his country, should be enrolled and retained at his home until such time as the military authorities were ready to deal with him. I may be permitted to read the words of my instructions— The first step should be the formation of Committees, whose function will be to register and classify, according to age and capacity, all men who are willing to undertake military service. These should be provided with a card bearing the name of the district, and a number, and arrangements should be made for their being immediately ready when required… County depots for the subsequent reception of recruits will be formed, whence they will be transferred to the Army centre to be clothed and equipped. All these arrangements were carried out admirably by a number of gentlemen and ladies who were working, purely voluntarily and without any pay. The whole of this work was done, and the 8,000 men who have enlisted in the last four weeks could have been dealt with easily, and they could have been now, if necessary, still at work at their occupation, but ready to come forward when wanted. Instead of that, orders were issued by the Department that these men were to be sent in feverish haste up to these depots which were inadequate to 610 receive them. From these depots they were sent again with the same feverish haste to centres like Tidworth. I may say, incidentally, that such arrangements as sending men backwards and forwards in that fashion are wholly unnecessary and absurd. Still, orders were given and carried out. I impressed on everybody from the outset that, whether the men agreed with those orders or not, if they came from a superior authority they would have to be carried out, and they were carried out. At the depots to which they were sent, like Brecon, in a place barely accommodating 500 men, 2,000 men were lying all over the barrack square, without any sort of shelter or covering. I have seen men come back from there afterwards, who told me that for eight days their clothes had never been off their backs, that they had to scramble for their food, never had a day's pay, and had no means of buying food for themselves. The orders, as received, were carried out regularly. The flow of recruits naturally became more and more marked as men more thoroughly understood the position of affairs and what had brought us into the War. The national response became stronger and stronger, until at last we were taking men at a thousand a day. These men were ordered to be forwarded at once. Then came the climax on Friday last, when it was ordered that these men should be immediately returned to their homes on the magnificent pay of sixpence a day—men who were earning, as I know of my own knowledge from their employers—from £3 to £4 per week.

I do not think that the War Office authorities, those who are responsible for this state of things, those whose duty it was to lay out the whole plan of raising this New Army, have had any conception of what it means to make a call to this country of a levée en masse of 500,000 men. They have dreamt that it was possible to raise an Army, as under the old method of the recruiting sergeant at the corner of a street collecting corner boys and loafers. They have had no idea of the men who have been coming forward, the finest type of working man in the country. I have every day inspected these men before they were sent off. I have spoken to them and recognised them as the finest fighting material that I have ever seen. They have 611 been sent away, and then they have been simply returned like this and left on the streets at sixpence a day. I do not believe that there is even the legal right to send them to the Reserve. These men were not engaged for the Reserve. They were engaged for Colour Service and nothing else, and therefore these men, I hold, are entitled to the full pay. It is only 1s. 9d. a day, and that for men with families who have been earning anything from £1 to £4 a week is not a very great luxury. As an example of the condition of things which I found in my own county when I went down from here on the 10th of August, I may state that there was a young officer who has been ten years out of the Service and never had anything to do with recruiting, who was appointed as a recruiting officer. He had allotted to him, as a War Office appointment and not an appointment by the local authorities, a medical officer and an old paid pensioner. That was the staff which was to collect the recruits from this district, and all of them were aliens. Not one of them had any knowledge whatever of the country. They certainly could never have spoken Welsh, though perhaps that was not absolutely necessary. But is was necessary that they should know something about the conditions of life of the people whom they were going to ask to serve. I say nothing against them. They did their best, and on that 10th August they succeeded in capturing one recruit. On the following day that was all swept away, and the record was eighty-two, and it continued to advance by leaps and bounds simply because there was a reasonable comprehensive scheme laid out, and people knew what they were doing. There has never been a comprehensive scheme laid out by the War Office, and the result has been a collapse as great as, or worse than, anything which we saw in the same institution during the South African War.

As I have said, in the letter which I read to the House just now, I feel a personal responsibility. I have given my time day and night for the last four weeks. I know' that I am known through the county, and people have been kind enough, irrespective of party or class or anything else, to rally round me and help. I have had a staff of thirty or forty ladies or gentlemen doing the work of recruiting, making out regis- 612 tration papers and so on during all that time, without demanding a single penny of money. That is the patriotic spirit that has been shown in the country, and the response made by the Department over which the right hon. Gentleman presides is that the men who come up are to have sixpence a day, after they have lost their employment and, in many cases, broken up their homes. I speak with warmth because I feel with warmth. I can only say that it this is to be the beginning, God help us before we are through with what has to be done! If this is to be an example of the organisation now at the War Office, it is time that the Secretary of State, who has the reputation of being a good organiser, should vindicate that reputation. I trust that we may hear something to assure the House that these men, who are now sent back disappointed and are row without homes, will have something done for them. I have made arrangements that, as far as possible, these men are to be fed and helped in every way, and, moreover, I do not propose that they should be allowed to drift back to casual employment, or anything of that sort. I am making arrangements that these men should be assembled and drilled, and the only difficulty that I have is that I fear that I am not authorised to pay these men. If the War Office would realise that counties have their administration, that they have an efficient administration, and that that administration can be trusted, I think that we should then get on a great deal better. If I had been authorised to pay these men their full pay daily during the time when they are away, they would be doing this work and they would be more fit to do what is required when they are sent for. But to think that it is only a few panjandrums at the War Office who can manage these things, and that these men must be sent back or to some of these concentration camps, is an absurdity. I regret that at such a time as this it should be my duty to raise a question which in any way casts reflection on any Department of the State, but it was my duty, and I have discharged that duty.

§ The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. H. J. Tennant)

I should like at the outset to be allowed to thank my hon. and gallant Friend for the services which he has given to the State 613 during the last three or four weeks in obtaining recruits for the British Army. I am quite sure he must have found difficulty in overcoming his natural reluctance to raise a matter of this kind in regard to the administration of a great Department of the State—a Department which is perhaps more, or, at any rate, is as much, in the public eye as any Department of His Majesty's Government. It has been working at high pressure for five or six weeks, and it has accomplished as much, if not more, than it has ever been able to accomplish at any similar time during the whole history of this country. I cannot help thinking that my hon. and gallant Friend, feeling strongly, as he admits he does, has used expressions of a character which he may regret. At any rate, I regret the somewhat strong language which he has used. The country has seen with a pride, which, I think, must be felt in every breast in this House, certainly in quarters responsible for the government of the country, the extremely patriotic response of the nation to the demand which has been made upon it by the Secretary of State for War. The inrush of recruits, the patriotic answer given by the nation, have been most remarkable and most gratifying—a statement with which, I am sure, the House will agree.

My hon. and gallant Friend remarked that the War Office apparently felt that they were enlisting corner boys and the dregs of the population into the ranks of the Army. He never made a greater mistake in his life. We knew, and we know, that we have been, and are, enlisting into our new Army the very best type of British men, and we, at the War Office, are most grateful to the country for the response which it has made. My hon. and gallant Friend talks about the utter failure of the authorities, but I think he might have at least realised the fact that we have set up throughout the country an absolutely new and improvised recruiting machinery, by which we have been able, in nine cases out of ten, to deal with enormous numbers of recruits in a manner which has not led to such complaints as my hon. and gallant Friend has brought before this House We have heard nothing of those complaints from other quarters, or only in some few instances, and it would 614 appear that all those cases have been unfortunately concentrated in the constituency of my hon. and gallant Friend. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] I do not say that there have not been other instances. Of course I am prepared to admit that there have been others, but it would appear that the greater number have been concentrated in the hon. and gallant Gentleman's constituency, and I am perfectly prepared to stand in a white sheet in regard to those cases. I feel sure I shall have the kind indulgence of the House when I say that, where thousands and thousands of men are coming in, after all those who have to deal with such numbers are only human.

In regard to what has been said about pay, this is absolutely the first time I have heard of any complaint having been made in regard to it. In reference to food, I believe it to be true that in certain cases the food has been badly cooked and badly served. The food was of the best possible quality, and I believe there has been no case brought to the notice of any hon. Gentleman here, and certainly not to the notice of the authorities at the War Office, in which there has been any complaint made as to the quality of the food. Of course food which is badly cooked and badly served cannot have the nourishing qualities which good food properly cooked possesses. I think that my hon. and gallant Friend, when he speaks about the utter failure of the Department at this time of great responsibility, and with this great inrush of recruits, is really not doing justice to his case. May I deal with the order sent out by the Secretary of State for War a few days ago, stating that where this tremendous congestion has taken place the congestion might be relieved by sending the soldiers to the Reserve, and paying them what he calls sixpence a day. In order that we may know exactly where the recruits were to be found they could put them in the Reserve, and could bring them back again as soon as the congestion had been relieved. In his earlier remarks my hon. and gallant Friend said that he himself had made a proposition of a very similar kind, namely, that recruiting agents were to take the names and addresses of the men who were to be called upon as vacancies occurred.