CONSIDERATION. MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS. (Hansard, 27 July 1882)

THE EARL OF CARNARVON
said, before the Question was put, he wished to ask for some explanation in regard to it. He did not wish to criticize the proposal of the Government in any adverse sense; but, at the same time, he did not 1905 think it was altogether satisfactory that in so comparatively small a military expedition as that about to be undertaken to Egypt, requiring, as it appeared, only an addition of 10,000 men to the Army, we should be obliged to rely upon a Force which was intended, after all, as a last resource. He trusted Her Majesty's Government had in their recollection, and had fully considered, the inconveniences and difficulties which attended the last calling out of the Reserve. The wives and children of many of the men had fallen upon the rates for maintenance, considerable distress was suffered, and difficulties arose in consequence of employers, in certain cases, declining to take back the Reserve men into their service when relieved from their duties with the Colours. He thought their Lordships would feel that there could be nothing so unfortunate, and nothing so calculated to injure the Eeserve system, as any feeling of unwillingness on the part of employers of labour to re-employ the men when discharged from service; or, on the other hand, any feeling on the part of the men that they were likely to suffer from being called out. He wished to know whether these points had been considered by Her Majesty's Government; and he should also like to be informed whether the men who were to be called out were not the men who served in 1878? The men might, it was true, be required only for a very short time; but, on the other hand, complications might ensue which would render it necessary that their service should continue for a considerable period; and as the men would have to leave their wives and children unprovided for, it would be well if some arrangement could be made whereby they would receive some portion of their pay in advance, so that the worst cases of hardship might, in that way, be mitigated?

LORD ELLENBOROUGH
said, he wished to consider the matter from a military point of view. The fact that we had to call out the Reserves for an Egyptian expedition—for that which, under happier circumstances, would have been a comparatively small and short war—showed that having regard to our enormous Possessions and extensive commercial interests, our fighting Force was not only on a ridiculously inefficient scale as regarded numbers, but absolutely Liliputian. With regard to the manage- 1906 ment of military and naval affairs, we were more civilian in our notions than if we had no Army at all—than even our American cousins. The civilian element everywhere had the upper hand, and the consequence was that there was seldom, if ever, any military or naval undertaking on the part of this country managed on purely professional principles, neither were naval or military men selected to represent the Naval or Military Departments of the State; and naval or military subjects were not listened to in Parliament with the smallest degree of patience when there were other political matters pressing themselves on the attention of the Government of the day. He hoped that the present necessity for calling out the Reserves would be a warning to Her Majesty's Government, and that it was not true, as was rumoured, that there had been as many collapses in respect to the war we were unhappily about to undertake as there had been during the Crimean War, and that everything had been turned topsy-turvy when everything was to have been quite perfect. The taxpayers would prefer that naval and military officers should be held responsible for grave errors of judgment, the same as officers who committed themselves in the field. He would repeat that the Army was not proportionate to the magnitude of the interests of the country; and as to the Navy, our line-of-battle ships did not carry sufficient Marines on board, from the circumstance of insufficiency of space to accommodate them, notwithstanding the costly nature of them making any such defect inexcusable.

THE EARL OF MORLEY
said, he was not surprised that his noble Friend opposite (the Earl of Carnarvon) should require information as to the calling out of a portion of the Reserves. He (the Earl of Morley) could not subscribe to the theory that the noble Earl had enunciated—namely, that it was only as a last resource that the Reserves were to be used. On the present occasion they served a very important purpose. He (the Earl of Morley) looked upon the question of the Reserves from a very different point of view to that of his noble Friend. He looked upon it from the point of view—as it was looked upon by officers of great distinction and experience—that it was desirable that the 1907 young and inexperienced soldiers of the Army should not be sent into the field. The object the Government, therefore, had in calling out the Reserves was that they would be able to leave at home all soldiers who had not been at least one year in the Service, and fill up the gaps by the well-seasoned men taken from the First Class Army Reserve. They had, accordingly, chosen those men of the Reserve who had been the shortest time absent from the Colours—namely, those who had joined the Reserve since the 1st of January, 1881. It happened that just at present there was a larger proportion of younger soldiers in the battalions which compose the First Army Corps than there would be next year, or at any future time. Under former arrangements it was supposed that there were always at the top of the Roster a certain number of battalions of high strength ready for foreign service, and that these should consist of 820 rank and file. Leaving at homo the young and untrained and unfit men in these battalions would reduce them below their war strength; and, therefore, it was determined that in future the 12 battalions at the top of the Roster for foreign service should be maintained at considerably over their war strength—namely, at 950 rank and file, without including the depots, which would be of varying strength, from 50 to 150 men. This system had been adopted last year; and to bring it into operation it had been necessary suddenly to raise the establishments of the battalions of the First Army Corps from a low to a very high strength. That, obviously, could only be done by recruiting rapidly for those battalions; and, consequently, there were now with the Colours a larger proportion of young men than there would be when the system was complete. There were two advantages in calling up the men who had most recently joined, for then the First Class Army Reserve men would have had the least time to lose what military instruction they might have received; and, from their having been a shorter time in domestic and civil life, they would find it a lesser hardship to be disturbed in their civil employment than those who had been for a considerable number of years engaged in civil occupation, and, being younger, they would be less likely to be married than those who had left the 1908 Colours at an earlier date. The Government had not overlooked the point alluded to by his noble Friend, as to the resumption of their employment by the men on their discharge. With regard to it, all he could say was that the Government could not bring any pressure to bear on the employers in England in regard to taking the men back into their civil occupations. They could only appeal to their patriotism in the matter; and he thought that the employers of labour, in the country's and even in their own interests, should take back into their service, at the termination of hostilities, the men who had done good service to their country, by serving it abroad, and who were disciplined and reliable. In so doing, they would not only be acting considerately to those who merited it for their past services; but they would be doing much to induce others to join the Reserves. It was, however, as he had said, a matter upon which the Government could not exercise any pressure or authority, and which must be left to the force of public opinion. With regard to the women and children, that was a subject of great importance. He might say that the wives and children of Reserve men would be treated in the same way as those of other soldiers, and would receive their separation allowance; but the Government hoped by taking the men who had last joined—that was to say, the youngest—men in the Reserve, that the proportion of women and children who would be affected would not be so large as the noble Earl expected. It could not be regarded as a hardship that the men should be recalled to the Colours. That recalling to the Colours was the very essence of the Short Service system, because, while the men were serving upon their Re-serve engagements, they received pay at the rate of 6d. per day, which might be regarded in the light of a retaining fee. He thought he had now answered all the questions of the noble Earl. The noble and gallant Lord who had followed him (Lord Ellenborough) was rather severe in his criticisms upon their whole military system. He (the Earl of Morley) did not think he should be meeting the wishes of the House by embarking upon a general discussion of the subject of the efficiency of our Army; but he would content himself 1909 with saying that he was unaware in what manner the noble and gallant Lord could show that all the arrangements made by the Government for the Egyptian expedition had broken down. As a matter of fact, he thought the noble and gallant Lord would have great difficulty in proving that any arrangements hitherto made had collapsed in the manner indicated.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD
thought the explanation of the noble Earl the Under Secretary of State for War was scarcely satisfactory; and it was certainly most unfortunate that the Eastern Question had broken out again before the new arrangements of the War Office were completed. Yet he had no wish to oppose the Motion. It was, however, to be observed that the military operations proposed by the present Government under the moral law were somewhat differently viewed from those proposed by other Governments. He could not help remarking that what in the late Lord Beaconsfield was denounced as "Jingoism" was in the case of Mr. Gladstone described as righteous justice.

LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE
said, that he understood the noble Earl (the Earl of Morley) had stated that no soldiers would be sent abroad who had served less than one year. He (Lord Oranmore and Browne) believed, however, that a regiment had been ordered on foreign service—namely, to Gibraltar or Malta, containing 300 men, who had only been in the ranks for three months. Was it so?

THE EARL OF MORLEY
, in reply, said, that what he had said referred to the despatch of men on active foreign service. Men below the age of 20, and who had served less than one year, had been sent with the battalions which were to form the garrisons at Gibraltar and Malta, replacing the battalions which had proceeded from these places to the field. He saw no objection to this, for these young soldiers would not be sent into the field; but he did not see why they should not be trained at Gibraltar or Malta just as well as at Portsmouth or Plymouth.