SECOND READING. (Hansard, 3 August 1899)

§ * THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, under this Bill we take power to borrow a sum of£4,000,000 for military works in continuation of the Military Works Loans Act, 1897. A part of the expenditure to be incurred will be for defences; another—and by far the larger—part for barracks; and there is also a sum for providing ranges for Volunteers, a subject which was discussed in this House not many days ago. I think it is generally admitted that there are advantages in dealing with a large expenditure of this kind under loan, and not under the ordinary Estimates. I noticed the other day that my predecessor at the War Office admitted That there is a great convenience in loans when you can contemplate a uniform, steady, and uninterrupted expenditure of money upon a particular service without being exposed to the freaks and vicissitudes of the Estimates. That is obviously one advantage of proceeding by loan. You can make your contracts beforehand, and carry out your 1249 programme steadily, deliberately, and methodically, and without the apprehension that supplies may be forthcoming one year and not the next. I am, of course, very far from suggesting that expenditure of this kind should be withdrawn from the scrutiny and surveillance of Parliament, and we shall every year present to both Houses a statement showing how much we have spent during the past and previous years, and how much we intend to spend during the coming year. It is, I think, fair to argue that when the Government of the day finds itself compelled to undertake a general revision of our defences, or a large scheme of barrack construction from which the Army will benefit for many years to come, the burden of the expenditure involved should not fall entirely upon the four or five years over which the execution of the works might be spread. This, at any rate, has been the policy adopted upon former occasions, and we have had loans of this kind in 1860, 1872, 1888, 1890, and 1897. I may be asked why, having borrowed, as we did, five and a-half millions in 1897 for this purpose, we come back to Parliament again so soon for a further loan. There is, I think, a sufficient answer to the question. In so far as defences are concerned, we have, since 1897, found it absolutely necessary to take up seriously the question of re-árming our defences, and we have come to the conclusion that both at home and abroad we can no longer put off the introduction of guns of a modern type, to take the place of the obsolete armament upon which, I am sorry to say, we are at present depending to an extent quite inconsistent with our national security. For these guns, which we are providing out of Estimates, suitable works will have to be provided, in most cases by the adaptation of works already in existence, and the £1,000,000 which we are borrowing for defences is for this purpose. As for barracks, Parliament, so lately as last year, sanctioned a large increase of the strength of the Army, and for this reason alone, apart from others of which I shall speak presently, it would be absolutely necessary that we should provide barracks in which to house the new troops, of which a considerable part has already been raised. Your Lordships have before you, in the first place, the Bill itself, 1250 which follows the model of the Bill of 1897. The schedule of the Bill shows how the £4,000,000 is to be apportioned to the different services which we are about to undertake; but, besides the Bill itself, we have presented a schedule which gives an account of what I may describe as the complete War Office scheme, the whole of which will have to be ultimately undertaken if the two great questions of our defences and our barracks are to be dealt with in a complete fashion, and with as near an approach to finality as is possible when we consider the constantly altering conditions with which we have to deal. We are at this moment asking only for authority to undertake those services which seem to us most pressing; but we have thought it desirable that Parliament should know that, when these services have been completed, it may be called upon for additional funds to make good the whole of the deficiencies of which we are aware. We owe it to Parliament that it should see the whole scheme. We owe it to ourselves that we should not be open to the imputation of presenting to Parliament an imperfect and insufficiently thought-out programme. For defences—that is, not for guns, but for the works in which the guns will be placed—we take £1,000,000. As to this, I desire to explain that this expenditure does not represent a fitful and ill-considered outburst of military activity; nor, again, is it a scheme which has been evolved by the War Office without the fullest consideration of the problem of Imperial defence as a whole, and the fullest consultation with the representatives of the Navy. There have been apprehensions in some quarters that we were going to undertake a wholesale fortification of all our commercial ports. I have even seen it suggested that we were going to fortify pleasure resorts and bathing places. I need not say that all this is pure imagination. The scheme is mainly a scheme of revision. We have reviewed the defences of the Empire one by one, and as parts of one great system of defence in which the Army and Navy are partners. I may, indeed, say that in providing for the defence of different categories of ports and harbours, we have followed the classification laid down by the Admiralty. We recognise that our Fleets must be our first line of defence, and we take comfort in the reflection that 1251 at no moment in the history of the country has the Navy been so powerful as it is at present; but, however strong our Navy, we cannot altogether dispense with fixed defences. The function of a powerful Navy is not to stand sentry over the coasts of the country to which it belongs, or over the stations and harbours upon which it has itself to depend. It must be mobile, it must be able to concentrate for a great and combined effort, even if such a concentration involves temporary denudation of the seaboard; but there are some points at home and abroad which are of such national importance, of such importance to the Navy itself, because, without them, the Navy, would have no place in which to renew its supplies of coal, or to refit or repair injuries, that we cannot allow an enemy to avail himself of their temporary exposure in order to attack them with a prospect of success. The damage done might, in some cases, be irreparable, or even if not irreparable, might inflict a ruinous shock upon public confidence. It follows that at all these points we must be strong enough to drive off any assailant whom we can reasonably expect, or, better still, to deter him from coming there at all. No battery might be more useful than that which was never called upon to fire a shot in anger, but the existence of which secured immunity for an important Imperial harbour, or even for a great commercial manufacturing centre. The places to be thus defended have been very carefully selected. We are far from saying that in all cases a port, once defended upon a certain scale, must always be defended upon that scale. There are gradations, and each place has been considered on its merits. We are concerned, first, with our dockyards and naval bases; secondly, with what are known to the Navy as secondary naval bases; thirdly, with our great strategic harbours such as Berechaven and Lough Swilly; and lastly, with commercial ports, to some of which—such, for example, as the Clyde and the Mersey—we think it absolutely necessary to give a moderate amount of defensive power. The House will understand that of the £1,000,000 which will now be spent upon the adaptation or reconstruction of defences, the whole will be spent upon works, and there will be no expenditure upon guns. These we shall provide for entirely on the annual Esti- 1252 mate. But our scheme of works cannot be considered apart from our scheme for guns. We have undertaken to substitute for the obsolete guns which now form so large a part of the armament throughout our fortresses, both at home and abroad, a much smaller number of modern guns, superior to them in rapidity of firing, in destructive effect, in range, and in accuracy. The expenditure to be made under this Bill will enable us to provide the works necessary for the reception of those guns. In another respect, I am glad to say we shall greatly gain by the substitution—I mean in respect of the saving of personnel which will result from the substitution of a smaller number of modern for a large number of old-fashioned guns. One of the reproaches to which we are, I think, most open, is that we have been apt to consider these questions of armament without sufficient reference to the personnel of our Artillery, and I hail with the greatest satisfaction the relief which will be given to us by the change which I have just described. I now pass to the question of barracks. As I have already pointed out, the main justification of this expenditure is to be found in. the recent increase of the Army. This alone, if we take the 25,000 men whom we are adding to the Army, at the usual figure per man, would involve an expenditure of about £3,000,000;but it must also be borne in mind that while we have been increasing the number of men—for whom we have to find accommodation—we have simultaneously been diminishing the amount of that accommodation. We have of late, and I am glad to think that we have done so, been condemning a number of old barracks. Some of these have been condemned because they were so in sanitary that we could not safely house our troops in them. If I were minded to do so, I could give the House a somewhat lurid description of the condition of things which has been found to exist in some of our most old-fashioned and worn-out barracks. In a few cases we propose to get rid of existing barracks, because they are, from a military point of view, in the wrong place, perhaps in neighbourhoods where no training ground is available, or, again, because the regiment or battalion, instead of being concentrated at one spot, has been scattered about in detachments here and there. In regard to barracks at home we find, upon a review of our requirements, of the 1253 number of barracks available, of the number under construction, and of the number which we have been obliged to condemn, that we are deficient in barrack accommodation for three regiments of Cavalry, eighteen batteries of Horse and Field Artillery, four companies of Garrison Artillery, and seven battalions of Infantry. But our liabilities do not end here, for there are, besides, a considerable number of barracks which are too good to be condemned, and which will not be replaced, but in the case of which a large expenditure of money will be necessary in order to provide accommodation for the eighty men whom we recently decided to add to each of our Infantry battalions. The whole of these deficiencies we hope ultimately to make good, and under the present Bill we shall make a very substantial commencement. The Bill also provides for additions to the depôts of regiments to which we have lately added new battalions, for the completion of work at various barracks in progress under the Act of 1897, for further improvements in our large camps at Alder shot, Colchester, the Curragh and Shorncliffe, and for barracks at various foreign stations, among which Gibraltar, Malta, and Wei-hai-wei are the most notable. There can be no doubt that the substitution of new barracks of a more modern and convenient type will bean immense gain to the Army, both in respect to the health of the troops, their efficiency, their comfort, and last, but not least, in respect of the popularity of the Service. We are being driven, not reluctantly, in this direction by several distinct causes. There is, in the first place, the higher sanitary standard which now obtains universally in all classes of the community. Its observance is insisted upon in the case of all human habitations, a standard below which we ought not to fall in dealing with the buildings in which our troops have to pass their lives. In our private dwelling-houses, in our farms and cottages, in our factories, we are required to provide healthy surroundings for the inmates. If we fail in our duty that inspector who looms so large in the foreground of our lives is there to remind us of our shortcomings, and to see that we make them good. In the case of our barracks, public opinion is, perhaps, the most efficient kind of inspector, and public opinion would, I am convinced, insist upon our 1254 taking these steps, even if we were not ready to do so of our own accord. Then, again, experience has shown us that nothing is so wasteful as the habit of constantly patching and tinkering these old buildings. I appeal to all of those who have had to do with house property of any kind, and I say, without hesitation, that in the long run I believe the public saves money by providing sound and properly-constructed buildings to take the place of some of the old fabrics which have for years past been so constant a drain upon the annual Estimates. I confess, however, that I do not defend our barrack proposals merely upon the ground that they will, in the long run, be economical, or because I wish to escape the condemnation of the sanitary experts. I hold very strongly that if voluntary service is to survive and succeed in this country, if we are to attract to the ranks of the Army men belonging to the class which we should like to see serving the Queen, it is our bounden duty, not only to divest what I might call the domestic life of the soldier of all squalid and repellent surroundings and associations, but to make it decent and as attractive as it can be made, consistently with sound economy. We have, I am glad to think, made considerable progress in these respects, and I do not think we have anything to be ashamed of in our most recently-constructed barracks, but we fully intend to travel further in the same direction. Our new barracks will contain one improvement which will, I think, be very acceptable to the troops. We intend to give them company dining-rooms, in which to take their meals, instead of compelling them, as now, to take them in the barrack rooms in which they sleep and clean and dry their clothes and accoutrements. We shall also be more liberal in such matters as drying-rooms, bath-rooms, and other minor conveniences. There is another question which I think requires an amount of consideration which has not yet been given to it. I refer to the sleeping accommodation of the private soldier. There is, I believe, in all classes of the community a growing desire for privacy. The soldier has none whatever in barracks. I think the time has come when we should, at all events, try an experiment in this direction by adapting our new barracks, or a part of the rooms in them, to the cubicle system, under 1255 which each man is given, not a separate room, but a section of a room divided from the adjoining section by a barrier which effectually screens the inmate of one compartment from that of another. That experiment has been tried with signal success in the case of the buildings well known by the name of a Member of this House—I mean Lord Rowton, whose exertions on behalf of the working classes will be gratefully remembered, and not by the working classes alone. There are, I know, special difficulties in carrying out this system in soldiers' bedrooms, difficulties mainly of discipline. Moreover, some of the arrangements which have worked so well in the Rowton Houses would, no doubt, be inapplicable in barracks, and I am aware that there is a considerable body of military opinion decidedly adverse to this innovation. It is, however, regarded with favour by the Commander-in-Chief, and we mean to try the experiment, certainly in the new barracks, and perhaps in one or two of the old ones. We shall proceed cautiously, and I hope we shall not have to retrace our steps. I have said enough to show the House that we have a good deal of leeway to make up, both in respect of the quantity and the quality of our barrack accommodation, and we are applying ourselves seriously to the task. There remains to be considered the question of selecting sites for the new barracks. In doing this, our main object will be to keep units of the different branches of the Army together, for the sake of discipline and training, and to build only at stations where proper training ground can be provided in the immediate neighbourhood. The want of such training ground has been a serious drawback in many of our stations, and there are obvious advantages in bringing considerable masses of troops together at the same place, and thereby affording the commanding officers an opportunity of handling a comparatively large number of men. For these reasons, we intend to build on Salisbury Plain the greater part of the new barracks which will ultimately be required. The House will see, by reference to the Schedule in the Bill, the various other stations, both at home and abroad, at which it is proposed to spend money on the construction or improvement of barracks, and I shall be happy to afford further information on any point on which it may 1256 be desired. I have already explained upon a recent occasion the nature of our proposal with regard to the rifle ranges for the Volunteers. The amount taken is a small one, but, if judiciously expended, will, I hope, be the means of materially alleviating the difficulty with which the Volunteer force has at present to contend in regard to range accommodation.