ARMY.

HL Deb 25 July 1905 vol 150 cc129-69

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

rose "To call attention to the continued deficiency in the number of officers in the British Army; to ask if any, and what, steps have been taken to mitigate this grave source of weakness to the efficiency of our land forces; and to move to resolve "That this House is of opinion that the supply, training, and conditions of service of officers in all branches of the King's Army require the instant attention of His Majesty's Government."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I feel that it is rather presumptuous of me, whose military experience does not extend further than a few years in a school rifle corps and afterwards eight or nine years in a Yeomanry regiment, to venture in this House, where there are so many noble Lords who have served in the Regular forces of His Majesty, and so many distinguished soldiers, to raise a question which is primarily of military importance. But it is something more than that. This is a question which interests all of us, whether civilians or soldiers, being a very important point of military policy, and it is not, I think, a controversial one, but one on which men of all Parties may agree. It does not raise any of the knotty points as to compulsory service or as to a big Army or a small Army.

For my own part I frankly answer that I am against compulsory service, and am in favour of a moderate-sized Regular Army, thoroughly efficient and sufficient to meet any reasonable calls upon it in our Colonies, in India, or in our other dependencies beyond the seas. I believe that for the defence of these islands we should depend upon our Auxiliary Forces; that those forces should be as efficient as possible, and that the measure of their efficiency should be the efficiency they can obtain without individuals being prevented from doing their full civil duties and fulfilling their civil employment. Holding that view, I think it is necessary that the Regular Army should be properly and sufficiently officered, that there should be a large reserve of officers, and that there should be a strong staff and an Intelligence Department thoroughly informed and efficient and able to form plans of campaigns in the different parts of the world in which our Army may be called upon to act. It is especially necessary that we should have officers trained to lead our Auxiliary Forces when they are called into action, for above all is it necessary for men who are partially trained to have officers to lead them who are fully trained and thoroughly acquainted with the arts of war.

I am particularly anxious that our officers should be many, should be able, should be contented, and should be sufficient for all the duties thatare thrown upon them. What is the shortage now to be found among the ranks of officers? It is rather remarkable. The figures I shall quote are all absolutely official, and have been given by Ministers in one House or the other. In the cavalry there is a shortage of sixty-five officers, in the Guards a shortage of twenty-nine officers, and in the infantry of the Line a shortage of 148 officers; in all, a shortage of 242 officers in the Regular Army. It must be remembered, so far as the Guards are concerned, that a considerable addition has been made in the last month or two by the admission to both the Horse Guards and the Foot Guards of officers who have passed no examination, and who are admitted as probationers, having to fulfil certain conditions after two years service. That is a new departure. I do not think, of recent years at any rate, that officers have been admitted to His Majesty's Army without examination, and this new departure has helped up the number of officers in the Guards.

To give your Lordships an idea of what this shortage means in individual regiments, I will take the case of seven cavalry regiments as given in the Army List of this month. Each of these cavalry regiments has an establishment of six second lieutenants. The 1st King's Dragoon Guards has one sub-lieutenant, the 3rd Dragoon Guards has two sub-lieutenants, the 4th Dragoon Guards has two sub-lieutenants, the 5th Lancers has one sub-lieutenant, the 8th Hussars has three sub-lieutenants, the 11th Hussars two sub-lieutenants, and the 18th Hussars three sub-lieutenants; that is to say, in those seven regiments, instead of forty-two sub-lieutenants, you have at this moment only fourteen. That seems to me to speak for itself. Leaving the Regular Army, let me come to the Auxiliary Forces. The shortage of officers there is more remarkable. In the Militia you have a shortage of 1,010 officers, in the Yeomanry a shortage of 344, in the Volunteers a shortage of 2,799; in all, a shortage of 4,153 officers. That, I admit, is perhaps a little overstating the case, because from this total should be deducted certain supernumerary and seconded officers who are included in the deficiency. The supernumerary and seconded officers included in the deficiency are—Militia, 244; Yeomanry, 63; Volunteers, 193. That makes a total of 500, and if you deduct that number from the total I have given, there is left a shortage of 3,653 officers in the Auxiliary Forces.

This shortage of officers works out in a singular way with regard to the Militia. You may almost say that in some Militia regiments the subaltern ranks are almost non-existent. In the Highland Light Infantry there are three subalterns out of an establishment of twelve; in the Manchester Regiment there are four subalterns out of an establishment of twenty-four; in the Sherwood Foresters there are three subalterns out- of an establishment of twelve; in the Black Watch there are eight out of an establishment of twelve, and in the East Surrey ten out of an establishment of fifteen; whilst the East Lancashire Regiment has no subalterns at all. I only quote this shortage to show what a sorry plight we are in. This is, I think, a state of affairs serious enough in time of peace, but what would be the state of affairs in case of war? What would be the call made upon our forces for officers in war and to fulfil the duties of the Army Service Corps, the Intelligence Department, and the general staff? The call likely to be made on officers for these purposes in anything like a serious war will be very great, and one that, to put it very mildly, it will be very difficult to meet.

We are always told that the most probable theatre of war is the North-West Frontier of India. Now, let as suppose a war in that region—a war for which it would be necessary, let us say, to mob lise and despatch eight divisions. What would our shortage be in the first instance? I leave out the question of the Auxiliary Forces altogether, merely saying that the shortage of officers in the Auxiliary Forces, and especially in the Militia, would be a very serious thing when you came to the question of getting fresh officers for an emergency to serve in the Regular Army. One of your great sources of supply of officers-will be taken away, and if you pass your measure which lays on the Militia the duty of going abroad, I think the power of taking officers from that source will be still more diminished in the future. In the first place, then, supposing that such a war as I have described—which, please God, may not happen—should break out, you would have your original deficiency of 242 officers. Then I am. told that the Indian authorities say that they want at least 600 officers in. India. I believe that is the number which has been named by Lord Kitchener, and which he would ask for. I think you will admit that I do not exaggerate when I say that a further 300 officers would be wanted for Staff purposes, and for the Army Service Corps and other purposes another 200 officers; that is to say, a total of 1,342 officers. I do not know, but I am told that the War Office estimate for the purposes I have mentioned no less than 1,850 officers, so that my estimate is not a high one.

Then I have assumed that you would, have to mobilise these eight divisions and send them out. I should like to put it to the noble Lord whether I am. Over stating the case when I say that in order to make up these eight divisions you would have to fall back on your Reserves. You have 91,000 Reservists in this country, and to make up the eight divisions you would have to call out 60,000 Reservists. How are you going to officer those 60,000 Reservists, taking one officer to every thirty Reservists? It would require 2,000 officers to officer the Reservists who would be taken to make up the eight divisions. That is at the commencement; but some allowance must be made for wastage in. war and for loss among officers through death and disease.

Sir Coleridge Grove stated in his. evidence before the Elgin Commission that 3,000 officers above the normal were supplied during eighteen months of the South African War, excluding Auxiliaries. The campaign that I am supposing is not in e country anything like so healthy as South Africa. There is no doubt that we were saved great losses in South Africa by the healthiness of that country, and the conditions, therefore, under which our troops were able to serve there; bat on the North-West Frontier of India you have great extremes of temperature, and a very rough country to fight in. You would, I suppose, be fighting against European soldiers. You have also to consider the high mortality that is always found to ensue when native troops are led by white officers. White officers have to show themselves well to the front, and consequently they suffer. I do not think that I am putting it very high when I say that you ought to allow 1,000 officers for twelve months service in such a war.

But that is not all. It is not sufficient to provide for a year's war. The war might come to an end at the conclusion of the first year, but still you must be prepared for the contingency of its going on beyond the first year. I know that both the Intelligence Department and the Staff College have estimated that in order to keep a force of eight divisions and your Indian Army in full strength you would require to supply 140,000 men a year. I suppose you would take steps. at once to get this number of men to reinforce your Army during the second year. What would you then have to fall back upon? I daresay there might be about 30,000 recruits not of sufficient age to go in the first year to the war. Then you might have, perhaps, 30,000 Militiamen to send out. That would leave you with still some 80,000 men to find, and you would have to recruit them. You would also have to train those 80,000 recruits at home during the first year of the war. You must have officers to do that. If I may take one officer to every thirty men, 2,600 officers would be required in order to train and make ready the troops that would be necessary to continue the war and to reinforce your Army during the second year.

That little sum amounts to this. There is the original deficiency of 1,342;

there are the 2,000 officers for the Reservists who would go out the first year of the war; there are the 1,000 to meet the wastage of the first year; and there are the 2,600 to train the recruits in case the war should go into the second year, making a total of 6,942 officers who would have to be provided during the first year's hostilities. My Lords, where are you going to get that number, or half that number from? You have no reserve. At this moment, I believe, you have eighty-seven Staff College officers, with instructors; I think your junior officers reserve is about 479, and I believe you have about thirty officers unemployed under the rank of colonel or second in command. That is the asset you have to set against this great demand for officers. It may be thought that I am drawing on my imagination, but I do honestly believe that that is about the number of men that would have to be provided, and that we ought to be able to provide, in order to carry on operations such as I have described and such as I believe are considered to be possible.

I will leave that and come to the present difficulty. After all, nobody denies that there is a difficulty now in obtaining officers. I remember that the other day the noble Earl the Under-Secretary of State for War said, in the debate raised by the Duke of Bedford, that there was no difficulty in getting candidates for commissions. I agree with him on the whole, but I do say that at this moment you have not got sufficient candidates for the cavalry and the Guards; or I will put it in this way, that you are beginning to feel a tightness in the supply of candidates for the cavalry and the Guards. What, then, does this shortage arise from? It is admitted that it does not come from any want of men ready to serve in the Army. It comes from the fact that you have had an altogether abnormal number of resignations of officers who have already obtained a certain position in the service. The noble Earl, in the Answer he gave to Lord Heneage the other day, said that since the South African War 321 cavalry officers had voluntarily retired or resigned their commissions, and during the same time 116 have received commissions.

Let me take the case with regard to the Guards and the cavalry. I will take the year before the effect of the war can have at all acted on the motives of men remaining in or leaving the Army. In the year 1898 I find that there were. fifty-two voluntary retirements or resignations from the Guards and cavalry. In 1903, again, there were no less than 144 such voluntary retirements or resignations, or nearly treble the number in 1898. What I am told is that quite recently over 1,000 officers have either resigned their commissions, given notice that they will resign them, or have told their commanding officers that they are thinking of resigning. I have seen that put at 1,500, but I am not going to argue upon any particular figure. My point is that there is a great movement in that direction, that the ordinary number of retirements year by year throughout the Army is gradually increasing, and that you are losing valuable men who have already received training and have had considerable experience. Even when they are replaced they are replaced by men who have to be trained in order to become efficient.

There are various reasons given for this state of things. Some people say it is because the pay is too low. I have not got much belief m that. I quite admit that the pay of the Army officer is not high, and I think that at any rate in the lower ranks some increase might well be given. I think second lieutenants might get 6s. 6d. a day instead of 5s. 3d., and I think lieutenants might get 7s. 6d. a day. But the amount of pay is not what will bring men into the Army. Whatever you are likely to give will not be such as to be a great inducement to men to become officers in the Army. They will enter for other reasons than that of pay. Another explanation is that it is on account of the great amount of work that has been thrown on officers lately. I do not believe that either. If you said that it was on account of the great worry that had been thrown on officers lately there would be something in it; but I do not believe it is either insufficiency of pay or over-sufficiency of work that has caused these retirements. That being the case, you will say, what do I think has been the cause? I can tell you very shortly. It is the absolute uncertainty of the position of the Army and of the officer in the Army, and the uncertainty as to what is going to happen to the Army, or to the particular regiment or officer. Nobody knows what is going to happen, and naturally officers do not like to remain in that state of uncertainty and doubt. If they enter a career they like to have an opportunity of following: it out with some certainty of success if they are competent.

When you hear of a regiment being ordered abroad, and of that order being suddenly countermanded after all the arrangements have been made by the officers; when you hear of a commanding officer who has three houses on his hands at the same time because he has been moved so often from one place to another; when you hear of officers who have held, high positions and who had every right to expect to be maintained in those-positions suddenly thrown out without any particular reason—I am not going to mention names, though they could be easily given—when you hear these things you can quite understand why retirements and resignations come about. The great reason for all these retirements is that the War Office is out of touch with the Army altogether. I will grant that the War Office is extremely anxious to apply remedies to the Army. During the last few years it has gone on applying remedy after remedy, but it has never diagnosed the disease, and a great deal of the present discontent arises from the fact that officers do not like to feel that their career and their position is largely at the sway of what I can call nothing but ignorance and incapacity.

The effect of this has been to excite the discontent of two classes of officers. The officer who is keen for his work dislikes this new regime and this new order because he feels the utter hollowness of all the worries that are imposed upon him. The idle officer hates them also because they interfere with his pleasure. I expect that under any improved system for the Army you would find the idle officer's pleasures interfered with, and, if he went, I daresay the country could get on well without him. The authorities have been desirous of making a great show. They have gone in for a great many field days; they have imposed a great many examinations. No doubt it is a very good thing for an officer to know all about the American War and the Peninsula War, and to write an essay on the tactics of Moltke in 1866 and 1870; but the first duty of officers is to be able to train their men, and they cannot do that unless they are given men to train and are allowed to train them. That is what is not done now.

As a matter of fact, what does a company officer rind I He thinks himself very lucky if he gets half his company out on any occasion. Let me give you an nstance. There is supposed to be a cavalry brigade ready 4o take the field at Aldershot—three regiments supposed to be of the strength of 600 each. What is the fact? By putting into the ranks their mess waiters and the officers' servants they can just each average 200, so that the total of that brigade when it comes to war is 600 of all ranks instead of 1,800. The fact of the matter is, the regimental officers—and I own that I myself have a great tenderness for the regimental officers, for it was they and the soldiers, not the generals or the staff, who pulled this country through the South African War—the regimental officers get very little opportunity of seeing their men, much less of training them. For the annual company field training no doubt the regimental officer does have his men, but he only has half a company instead of a whole company. On field days he sees them, such as they are, and also on church parade. Beyond that be does not do very much, and I honestly believe that the cause of good officers leaving the Army is that they are sickened by the hollowness and mockery of their everyday life. It is not for me to suggest a remedy for this state of things. I merely ask my noble friend if any and what steps have been taken to mitigate this grave source of weakness to the efficiency of our land forces, and I ask your Lordships to support me in declaring that this House is of opinion that the supply, training, and conditions of service of officers in all branches of the King's Army require the instant attention of His Majesty's Government.

Moved to resolve, "That this House is of opinion that the supply, training, and conditions of service of officers in all branches of the King's. Army require the instant attention of His Majestys Government."—(Lord Tweedmouth.)

LORD LOVAT:

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord who has just sat down on the very interesting way in which he has put the facts before the House. They are facts which the nation as yet has not had placed before them, but they are facts each one of which can be deduced from the Blue-books and from the Army List. There are certain general principles which make it essential that our Army should be more thoroughly officered with qualified officers than any army on the Continent. Our Army is founded on the basis of possible expansion. We have a small standing Army which, in time of need, has to be very considerably increased; and therefore it is of the first importance that we should have a good supply of officers. It is well known that men, provided they can shoot, can be quickly made into soldiers; but, as was pointed out in the Report of the Elgin Commission and also in the Report of the Norfolk Commission, officers cannot be improvised in a moment, and it is therefore most essential that we should have a sufficient supply of officers in the ranks, and an adequate reserve to meet the casualties which must occur.

Our Army, moreover, must always be made up of men of various degrees of training. It must consist of a certain number of Regulars, a certain number of half-trained Militiamen, and an even larger number of Volunteers who have-had but little training at all. It is a well-known axiom that the less educated, the troops the more educated the officers must be who lead them. There is another principle which is equally applicable to the British Army. The whole of our Army is founded on the voluntary system. of service, and the men in it must be led and not driven. The iron discipline of the Germans is inapplicable in our case. It is essential that each officer should have the respect of his men, otherwise the morale of the Army must suffer. The Elgin Commission in their Report said that— There is no subject of more supreme importance to the organisation of the Army than, the supply of officers. Well, my Lords, how do we stand in this respect? What we want is a supply of junior officers, of subalterns, and captains. Of colonels and higher officers we have always had a redundancy. In the German army they have, in the Landwehr Reserve, over 13,000 second lieutenants; they have something like 7,000 first lieutenants, and some 3,000 captains. The French army, in connection with which it was stated that they had the greatest anxiety about the scarcity of officers, possesses 18,500 in the Reserve. We, with all our expansion, have a reserve, I think, of seventeen second lieutenants, of about 100 first lieutenants, and some 600 or 800 captains. Included among the lieutenants are Cabinet Ministers and others. We see officers who command Auxiliary units figuring among these officers. It is a well-known fact that on mobilisation during the South African War a very considerable number of these did not appear through ill-health, monetary causes, and otherwise; and that is what we have got to fall back upon to fill up this enormous number of vacancies which Lord Tweedmouth has pointed out.

As to the exact deficiency of officers, everyone who works it out will probably come to a different result, but I think we are safe in saying that for service abroad and for our Auxiliary Forces we are not less than 10,000 officers short at the present time. The statement of Sir Coleridge Grove that 3,000 officers were required for the first eighteen months of the South African War was exclusive of officers for the Auxiliary Forces. They were to fill the ranks of the reserve forces of officers and to replace the casualties. There could be no war in which the casualties were fewer than in the South African War. Would anyone compare South Africa, which has, perhaps, the best climate in the world, with the North-Western Frontier of India, where the thermometer varies nearly a hundred degrees from morning to night? Sir Evelyn Wood pointed out, in his evidence, how one Reserve officer commanded 850 men at home. From another statement before the same Commission it appears that there were seventeen officers during the South African War to officer the whole 4,500 gunners who were mobilised. There were companies in the war which had only one or two very junior officers. If we add to the officers who would be required to go to the front the officers necessary for the proper training of the Reserves not immediately sent out, the number of officers deficient would be very considerably increased. It is no exaggeration to say that the deficiency, including the Auxiliary Forces, is 10,000 officers. Of some of Lord Tweed-mouth's figures I do not pretend to judge, but I consider his statement as to staff officers very much below the actual requirements. When you consider that in evidence before the Norfolk Commission 453 officers were put down for the Army Service Corps alone, the number which the noble Lord calculated—13,000—is by no means over-estimated.

How is the existing deficiency going to be made up? It is constituted, in the first place, by a deficiency in Regular officers. I do not agree with the noble Lord as to the gravity of the deficiency of 250 officers, because that will be put right, to a certain extent, very soon when the next batch come up from Sandhurst and the garrisor regiments are dismissed. But there is one question with regard to that which is of importance. The senior subalterns of to-day put in an average of six and a-half years service, while previously they put in rather over nine years service. That means that you are now losing your officers who understand their work, and that is a sign which is not hopeful for the future of the Army. I do not wish to enlarge on the point which Lord Tweedmouth. raised as to the pinpricks to which officers seem to be subject at every turn, but I think there are certain matters which the War Office might without much difficulty redress. I mean, for instance, such questions as the continual changes of drill-books and drill regulations, the continual changes of dress, and the shifting of barracks. Again, if you wish the senior officers to regard the War Office in a friendly spirit, it is not a good thing, for two years in succession, to have the seniority examination held on Derby day. I do not say that officers need necessarily be encouraged to go racing, but I think that on the day of a national festival like the Derby it is rather unnecessary, after some trouble had been raised last year, to have Derby day again appointed for the examination of senior officers.

Then there are other matters, such as the short notice which is given of changes. The 17th Lancers were ordered to go to Egypt. They had procured their houses in Egypt and bought their polo ponies there; they had given up their houses in this country and made all the arrangements to start, but at the last moment were told they were not to go. That makes dissatisfaction almost indelible. Junior officers see the statement which was made by Lord Kitchener, that as a whole the junior officers did better work than the senior officers throughout the South African War; yet it is the junior officers to whose interests no consideration whatever is given.

I wish for a moment to go into the question of Staff and mobilisation. Evidence taken before the Elgin Commission made it clear, according to the Report of the Commission, that confusion was caused by the fact that there was much improvisation in Staff arrangements at the beginning of the war. At the present moment there are in England only twenty-nine unemployed Staff officers under the rank of colonel—twenty-nine for eight divisions. In the late war there was about the same number. One general said— There was no officer of any war experience on my staff. Lord Kitchener, too, complained about the inequality of the work, and it is well known that only one brigade—General Hildyard's—left England as a constituted body with all the staff known to the general. That will happen again; we shall have identically the same thing repeated. I asked the noble Earl the other day what the exact deficiency of Staff officers was, and he informed me that that was not the time to bring the matter forward. I would now ask the noble Earl what the deficiency of Staff officers is in the Army as a whole on mobilisation.

There are certain things which might be done without very much cost. In the first place we should have both a long course and a short course at the Staff College. We ought to have a long course of two years for those who were going to the general staff, a shorter course of one year for those who were going to be the acting staff officers in the various brigades, and, further more, we ought to have a course of six months or so for the pick of our Auxiliary adjutants to learn staff work. They will have, in the case of the mobilisation of the whole of our forces, to act as Staff officers for the Auxiliary brigades and divisions, That has also been advocated by Lord Kitchener in his evidence before the Elgin Commission. I would also like to say a few words on the subject of the Auxiliary Forces, in connection with which a terrible deficiency exists. The numbers have already been quoted. In the South African War we took Militia officers, but we shall be able to take them no longer. We have to go down to the Volunteers to fill up the ranks of officers in the Regulars. Many of the officers in the Volunteers are simply serving in order to get recruits and to keep the regiments together.

If you do not recruit from the Volunteers, where will you go for your officers to make up this deficiency of something like 7,000 for service abroad? You will have to go out to the man in the street. We tried that in the South African War, and what did we find? Of 500 officers for one lot of Yeomanry 148 were cashiered before they had been out in South Africa many months, and, in addition, there were a considerable number who were not cashiered, but who were left in camps as perfectly hopeless to command men in the field. If you recruit again in the same way, 50 per cent, of your men will, as in the case of the Yeomanry officers to whom I have referred, be useless after short service and have to be fired out. As to what may be done to improve matters in regard to the Auxiliary Forces, the principle might be adopted which is laid down by the Norfolk Commission—namely, that an officer should not have to pay to serve his King. It would appear that many gentlemen who now serve as non-commissioned officers or privates are kept out of the commissioned ranks because they are not able to face the expense of £20 or £30 which it is necessary to incur to be an officer in these regiments. Surely, by some proper rearrangement of the capitation grant, officers need not be called upon to pay to serve in that force. I am convinced that there are only two methods by which we can get the officers necessary—either by some system of compulsory service for the leisured classes—by that I mean the enforcement of the Ballot Act against those without incumbrance who have, say, £400 a year and have reached the age of twenty-one—or, by what I think is more rational, an appeal to the Universities and the seats of learning.

THE EARL OF ERROLL:

My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to make a few remarks on this subject purely from the point of view of cavalry officers. I have been watching for some time with considerable anxiety the gradual and steady decrease in the number of officers in the cavalry, and I feel that unless this wastage can be arrested the efficiency of the cavalry must be very seriously prejudiced. I seldom look into the Gazette without seeing two or three resignations, and I very rarely find a corresponding number of appointments to fill up the vacancies. In August, 1903, the date which I think the noble Lord took, I find that the cavalry was seven officers over its strength. When we come to January, 1905, the surplus had been swept away and we had by that time a deficiency of thirty-seven. In April, 1905, just three months later, that deficiency had risen to sixty-seven. Taking cavalry officers at somewhere between 600 and 700 strong, your Lordships will see that this deficiency comes to something like 10 per cent.

I am informed by officers who are qualified to know that the establishment of our cavalry at the present moment is none too high even if all the regiments were full and up to their proper strength. These defects ought to be remedied and to be remedied at once. The effect which this has upon the cavalry is cumulative. As the shrinkage increases the work also gets harder, and the tendency to resign becomes very much stronger. There is one regiment which the noble Earl mentioned, the 5th Lancers, which has five subalterns short. The meaning of that is that nine sub- alterns have to do the work of fourteen, and consequently there is a tendency to discontent in the regiment. Your Lordships understand that it is quite impossible to improvise officers. Officers to be efficient must have a, thorough professional training, and it is very important that this training should be given them in the early stages of their service when they are young. We must remember that the subalterns of to-day are the captains of five years hence, and that if we have a large deficiency now in the junior ranks in the future we shall have no experienced officers to take the places of those captains who are either promoted or pass into civil life. I think that is one of the strongest reasons why immediate action should be taken.

I am happy to think that this subject has been occupying the attention of His Majesty's Government. I believe that a Committee has been sitting, and that certain recommendations have been made. I do not, of course, know what they are, but I hope that the noble Earl the Under-Secretary of State for War will be able to reassure us, and to tell us that some steps will be taken which are likely to make the cavalry more attractive than it is at the present moment. In my opinion—and this is purely my own opinion as a soldier—there are-various reasons why the cavalry is unpopular at the present moment. I believe that the chief among these are the inadequacy of the pay, the uncertainty of the prospects, and the constant worry, which has been already referred to. I do not believe that it is the extra work that the officers mind—I believe-it is the constant and never-ending examinations. In the Navy a sublieutenant when he has been to Greenwich at the age of about twenty finishes all his examinations. He has no further compulsory examinations, and I do not think anybody will say that the officers of the Navy are less efficient than the officers of the service to which I have the honour to belong. But, my Lords, these examinations in the Army are constant and never-ending. One officer described the situation, I thought, somewhat aptly when he said— We seem never to get away from examinations, they seem to last all our lives, and even after death we have a post mortem." I believe that this question resolves itself into one of supply and demand. When there were a great many more officers than were necessary to fill up the vacancies the country was able to make its own bargain. Now that the supply has fallen below the demand, and, if I may say so, the boot is on the other leg, I think some extreme measures will have to be taken to fill up the vacancies. Increase of pay would be of great service. This is the opinion of a great many senior officers with whom I have conversed on the subject. In the Indian cavalry there is no difficulty in recruiting officers because the pay is very much better and the pension is worth looking forward to. The pay of a private soldier has during the last thirty years been materially increased and hispositionhas been very much improved in various ways. Officers' pay has alone remained stationary, although the expense of living has very much increased and the consequent spending value of money very much decreased.

At one time it used to be thought that the supply of officers was inexhaustible, and that if you gave them no pay at all you could get as many as you liked. Those times have changed. Suitable young men have gone on strike, an abnormal number of resignations is taking place, and it is more difficult every day to fill the vacancies. In old days the Army was looked upon as a service in which to spend a few years among pleasant companions, with a chance of seeing a little active service, and when not too great a call was made upon the officer's time during peace; I believe that the miserable pittance which is called "pay" was looked upon more as a sort of retaining fee, and that the life was sufficiently attractive to get the number of officers required. As I have said, the times have considerably changed. I am not finding fault with that change. I am far from denying that we should have officers highly trained and up to date, but I cannot conceal from myself at the same time the fact that their work has increased ten-fold. Now that their whole time is given up to soldiering they should receive much better remuneration.

At the present moment it seems to me we are rather falling between two stools We are not getting the old sporting officer that we used to get because he will not stand quite so much interference with his liberty, and we are not getting the poor man because we do not pay enough to make it worth his while to serve. If we do not look out, I think we shall end by getting neither. I know I am laying myself open to be told that any appreciable increase in the pay of the officer would not be stood by the taxpayer. If the taxpayer will not pay the market price and if this wastage goes on, as I venture to predict it will, all I can say is the taxpayer will have to do the work himself, I think the advantages which the taxpayer enjoys in immunity from conscription are so great and so far-reaching that he ought not to grudge a fair wage to those who guarantee him that security, without which it would be impossible for him to carry on his commerce, his business, and his daily life in safety. I quite admit that the Army Estimates are very high, but my point is that the men who do the work—that is to say, the combatant officers—do not get their fair share. I should like to read to your Lordships a comparison of the pay given to British, Australian, and American officers. The second-lieutenant in the British Army gets the princely wage of £95 a year. In Australia apparently there are no second lieutenants, but in America the second lieutenant gets £280 a year. A lieutenant in the British Army gets £118 a year; in the Australian Army £200, rising by £25 a year to £300; and in the American Army £300. Captains in the British Army get £211; in the Australian Army from £325 to £400; and in the American Army £360. Majors receive in this country £247; in Australia from £425 to £500; and in America £500. Lieutenant-colonels receive here £328; in Australia from £500 to £600; and in America £600. I think this shows that the Colonies recognise the justice of giving a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, and that they treat their officers very much more generously than we do.

What are the conditions under which we ask the British subaltern to serve? In the first place he has to pass a very stiff examination, and in consequence of the somewhat antiquated methods of our public schools he has to go through a special and expensive preparation—how expensive some of your Lordships who have had sons at crammers must know. Then, after he has gone through this ordeal you give him the wages of an artisan or of one of your Lordships' butlers. For this pay he runs a very great risk ef being killed or of dying of fever in a far off country, while the said artisan is able to carry on his work in perfect peace and the butler is able to pour out your Lordships' claret, neither of them doing anything personally for the defence of their country. If he grumbles in the least, or gives out that it is difficult to make both ends meet, what do you do? Do you give him more pay? Certainly not. You begin cutting down his little comforts and make his life as unattractive as you possible can.

There is nothing that the British citizen likes so much as lecturing the subaltern on his extravagance. I believe the extravagance is very greatly exaggerated. I am informed by officers in the cavalry who have every right to know, that it is perfectly possible for an officer in a cavalry regiment to live now on £300 a year. The initial expense of joining is also much less. The cavalry is no doubt a less expensive force now than it used to be, but at the same time it is more difficult to get officers. Regiments very often get the blame when a young man comes to grief, although they have done all in their power to help him. It depends on the boy much more than on the regiment. When I used to be asked by parents how much money young men coming into my regiment as officers would want, I used to reply that it would depend very much on the boy and how he had been brought up. I have no sympathy with a man who sends his son into a very expensive regiment because he thinks he gets some sort of social advantages thereby, and then writes to The Times and grumbles at the expense. I hope that, whatever steps the Government take to get officers, we shall not get a different class of officer in the cavalry from that we have had in the past.

I daresay this is not the- opinion of the man in the street, but it is the opinion I have formed after thirty-six years service, and it is the opinion held by every Inspector-General of Cavalry and by every commanding officer of cavalry whom I have met, that what we want in the cavalry are sportsmen. We do not want prigs or pedants. There is a popular fallacy in this country that all Englishmen are horsemen. I do not believe that is the case. We are not a riding nation. I say that with all diffidence in your Lordships' House, where there are so many brilliant examples to prove I am wrong. Englishmen cannot compare with Australians, South Africans, Canadians, or any of our frontiersmen in the matter of horsemanship. The people of this country very seldom got on a horse at all, and they do not get that rough-and-ready life which i best fits a man for service in the field. The nearest approach to it is to be found in the hunting field. Why were the Boers such good scouts? Not because they were scientific soldiers; or highly educated. If it had come to the question of education we should have had a walk over. It was because of the outdoor and sporting life they led. I venture to think the country will get better value out of the sportsman who hunts and plays polo than out of the man who never gets on a horse except on parade. He is not only a better horseman, but, what is more important on service, he is a better horse-master. Some of the best scouting that was done in South Africa was done by the foxhunting officers of the first contingent of Yeomanry who went out and who had little technical knowledge before they started. Instead of driving this class of man out we ought to do all we can to keep him in, at any rate until we can get others to take his place.

Another reason why we have not got officers is that the standard of education has become rather too high. No one values the advantages of education more than I do, but I think at the present moment it is being rather overdone. No amount of education will make a good general. Nothing but force of character and strength of will will do that. There is no doubt that at the present moment the high standard of education frightens away a great many I men who would make very good cavalry officers. This principle has been to a certain extent acknowledged by admitting officers to the Guards without examination as probationers, though they will have, after a couple of years, to pass a purely technical examination in order to be allowed to stay on.

It is not so much the falling off in the candidates which seems to me so very serious. It is, as has been mentioned before, the abnormal number of resignations. The noble Earl told us the other day that the resignations had numbered about 320 since the war. Making all allowances for the supernumeraries, I think this total is too high, because it comes to very nearly half the number of officers we have got in the cavalry. I believe it is due, as has also been stated, to the uncertain prospects of the officer. It is easy enough to get boys. The love of adventure, the chance of seeing active service, and the sort of glamour that always hangs round the soldier's life will get you the boys; the difficulty is to retain the best men, who see much better opportunities in private life. The prospects of the majority of our officers are not brilliant owing to the tendency of recent legislation to reduce the appointments for seniors. This, I believe, makes a good many men resign. A man is very lucky now if he gets command of his regiment or battalion, but it is after that that the pinch comes; and I believe that the abolition of depot centres has had the effect of putting a good many officers on the shelf. There is no doubt that this amalgamation of depots has been a good thing in itself, but it has reduced to a certain extent the chances of senior officers securing advanced appointments and they get put on half pay at £300 a year or are retired on a totally inadequate pension of £420. The command in Egypt has been reduced from that of major-general to brigadier-general, and in consequence the A. A. G. has been done away with. In the artillery I believe many posts for senior officers have been done away with. It is changes like these that give rise to unrest and prevent men embarking on a career the plums of which become fewer and fewer every year. In the cavalry the prospects are worse, because there are fewer billets open to cavalry officers when they have left their regiments than are open to officers of the other branches of the service.

I am afraid we cannot disguise from ourselves that there is a feeling that the officer is not very generously treated by the country. I do not think that that feeling is against any particular Government or any particular Party. It is a feeling of resentment against the policy which has been acquiesced in by successive Governments, and it tends to focus itself against the War Office. Governments may come and Governments may go, but from the soldier's point of view the War Office goes on for ever. There is no doubt that there is a feeling against the War Office that officers are not well treated, and which gives a sort of soreness which it is almost impossible to ignore. This feeling is not of recent date; it dates almost from the days when purchase was done away with. To sum up, my contention is that if the country wants to attract the best men it will have to pay the lower grades better, and it will have to give a certainty of employment to the higher grades. In other words, it must make the service good enough. The prospects at the present moment are too shadowy to attract good men, and, what is more important still, to keep them: I thank your Lordships for the patience with which you have listened to me. This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, and this must be my excuse for having detained your Lordships so long.

THE EARL OF ARRAN:

My Lords, I venture to address your Lordships with some diffidence after so many more prominent Members have spoken, but I do so because I think perhaps the opinions of one who until recently had the honour of holding a commission in His Majesty's service may prove of some interest. The figures which have been given by Lord Tweedmouth represent a very serious state of affairs, because they show that the class which has until now supplied the British Army with officers is no longer able to supply them, or, if it does, that those officers are no longer willing to stay. However advanced may be the opinions one may hold, I think all who have had anything to do with the Army will agree with me when I say that to get the best officer you must go to the upper or the professional classes. Experience has shown that the rank and file will more readily obey and respect a man who has been brought up under circumstances different to their own. Since we see this dearth of officers, it is necessary for the country to make the most earnest inquiries as to the cause, and, having satisfied itself on that point, to remove that cause, whatever difficulties and expense may stand in the way.

The opinion in the Army, and my own opinion, is that the reasons of the deficiency of officers are two-fold. First of all, because you do not pay the officer enough for all that you ask of him, and, secondly, because he is being continually worried about. Those of your Lordships who have been soldiers will understand the expression "worried about," which comes from Aldershot; but for the information of those who have not been soldiers, "worried about" may be defined as meaning that officers are treated as irresponsible children instead of responsible men, and orders are given and work insisted upon which cause expense and worry to the officers without leading to the efficiency of the Army. I will give you an instance of the first kind. Just before I left the Army there was published an account of a War Office order, which was received in a very laudatory manner by the Press, and which was to the effect that colonels commanding regiments were not to give leave to young officers under their command until they had previously ascertained whether their parents were anxious and ready to receive them. I would remind your Lordships that an officer, however young, holds a very responsible position, both morally and financially, and I should like to know what the men over whom he is in command can think of an officer who, while he is considered capable of looking after them and of granting their leave, is not capable of going outside his barrack yard by himself. I confess I should not have been surprised if this order had been supplemented by a further order saying that colonels of cavalry regiments were to forbid their officers keeping hunters and polo ponies, and were to encourage them in the care, shall we say, of white rabbits, the officers being given professional advancement who could produce the most remarkable animal of that kind. I do think that such an instance as this of being worried about must not only disgust officers already in the service, but have the effect of preventing young men entering on a military career.

There is the other question of officers being given work which really leads to nothing very great. I have been talking to several senior officers lately. They have obtained field rank; their soul is in their profession, and they have served their country all over the world. They gave me instances of certain infantry battalions being sent this summer into camp for their training—a course of instruction that has lasted two months; that is, without musketry instruction and without manoeuvres, which may be coming on. As I know from personal experience, camp life is at least 25 per cent. more expensive for an officer than barracks. At the same time there are many officers who are married, and who not only have to incur the extra expense, but have at the same time to keep up their home establishments as well, do not say that if this training was necessary for the efficiency of their units the officers would not cheerfully have acquiesced, but they all say that the scheme of instruction which they had to give their men could have been easily given in three weeks or a month, and they felt that through mismanagement the men were getting stale and overworked, and everybody under them was getting discontented.

You ask officers to undertake a profession that involves a very high level of education, which I think perfectly right, and which also involves a very expensive outfit, residence in every class of climate, continual moving, and also a very uncertain career, because, of necessity, promotion must depend on the opinion and whim of one man. For all this you give an officer, as my noble friend Lord Errol said just now, the wages of an artisan. He has great moral and financial responsibilities and you pay him only a little over the wages of a weekly labourer. Great changes have been made in the Army. You have very properly increased the comfort of the men and their pay; you have made many changes in the interior economy, and I think every change has been for the good. But with all these changes, and with all the expense that has been incurred, the country has clean forgotten the officers. If you are to get the same class as officers that you have now, if you are to have the same class of men who up to now have done the work conscientiously, efficiently, and well, you must pay them properly; you must pay them the wages that they would get in other professions. High education turns a man into a reasoning animal, and he says to himself that if he has to -work so hard for such little pay in the Army he might as well turn his attention to another career in which he would have a chance of making his fortune and of securing a competency for himself and his wife and family in advanced age.

THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE

My Lords, hitherto I have not taken part in any of these debates in your Lordships' House, but I think I may claim that I am entitled to be listened to for a few minutes as the only commanding officer of Volunteers who commanded an entire Volunteer battalion in the field in the late war. As one who for many years has taken the greatest interest in. the Volunteers, I would embrace this opportunity of asking the noble Earl the Under-Secretary of State for War for. a statement as to the intentions of the War Office as regards the Volunteers in the immediate future. The noble Lord who raised this discussion to-night mentioned the deficiency of Volunteer officers as 2,799. I do not think the noble Lord understated it, because that is not including quartermasters and other non-combatant officers. I wish to ask the noble Earl in what way he proposes to remedy the evil, for if the Volunteers are to be a reality and not a sham they must perforce be attended to. There. are plenty of men in the ranks readily available and socially qualified to be-come officers if they receive at the hands of His Majesty's Government some encouragement and some little financial support. Many good men are deterred from joining the commissioned ranks by reason of the fact that they shirk responsibility, and many more by reason of the fact that they cannot afford the £20 or £30 which it is necessary for a commissioned officer to spend. I myself have seen men with large incomes serving in the ranks and doing fatigues and other menial work. That was three or four years ago. There are still men who will do such work to-day rather than become officers, because they shirk responsibility.

The Norfolk Commission declared that no officer ought to be compelled to pay for the privilege of serving the King. I am not going to enter into the rights or wrongs of that, but I understand that it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to reduce the Volunteer force to 180,000 men, thereby, I believe, effecting a retrenchment of between £300,000 and £400,000 per year. I would ask the noble Earl whether some of that saving could not find its way into the Volunteer force. Can he not do something by way of increasing the capitation grant? Can he not give a little towards defraying the expenses which officers joining the commissioned ranks are bound to undertake? I should like to see the capitation fee made more elastic. Before sitting down I should like to direct attention to the transport service. There are many regiments in the Volunteers which have no transport service at all and others which have very inadequate transport service. I have been shown the place which the brigade that I have the honour to command will occupy in the case of invasion. Am I to go to this place with inadequate transport and also with a deficiency of officers? Is my brigade of four battalions to take its place in the defence of the country inadequately furnished?

THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (The Earl of DONOUGHMORE)

My Lords, I say at once that I have nothing but friendly feelings towards the noble Lord opposite for having brought forward this important subject to-day, and I am very glad to join in a debate the tone of which has been so businesslike and so earnest in dealing with a matter, which is, I think, the most important that could possibly confront any Minister replying for the War Office in your Lordships' House. The noble Lord asks your Lordships to express the opinion that this matter requires the instant attention of His Majesty's Government. I am sure I am speaking within the recollection of those of your Lordships who have been at the War Office, or been connected with the War Office, when I say that this is a matter which calls for constant attention, and it has been kept anxiously in mind during the last few months. I will not in these circumstances offer any objection to the Motion which the noble Lord has moved appearing on the Journals of the House.

The debate this afternoon has ranged over a very great number of subjects, and I am glad that it should have done so. The noble Lord who initiated the discussion, although he dealt with the shortage now existing in the Auxiliary Forces and in the Regular Forces, applied himself more particularly to what I agree with him is infinitely the larger and more important part of the subject—the general question of the extension of the whole Army for purposes of war. But before turning my attention to that I should like to deal at once with the Question asked me by the noble Earl Lord Albemarle. I can assure the noble Earl that we attach great importance to the necessity of developing Volunteer transport, and have intimated our intention to make a grant for this purpose as soon as money is available.

I pass to the undoubted shortage of officers in the Auxiliary Forces. This is a very serious matter. I do not think the noble Lord opposite gave the percentage, but it practically amounts to 25 per cent., and I admit that it is by far the most serious problem which confronts the military authorities in connection with the Auxiliary Forces. The shortage is easier to explain than to remedy. It must, of course, not be forgotten that we are still feeling the effects of a great war of long duration —the longest war in which we have been engaged for a whole century—in the course of which many officers of the Auxiliary Forces achieved the two-fold purpose with which they joined, the patriotic purpose of serving their country and the desire to see war service if the opportunity presented itself. It is natural, perhaps, that the ambitions of many of them in this direction should have been satisfied, and it is not a thing that we can complain of that there should now be, as there always has been after a war, a considerable increase in the number of resignations. No action that any Government can take can remedy such a thing as that. We have to wait for a remedy for that difficulty until a younger generation shall grow up who have not had the opportunities for war service.

LORD LOVAT

I should like to ask the noble Earl if that means that we must wait for twenty-five years before getting a new set of officers.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Will the noble Lord let me finish my sentence? I was only introducing the subject with some general observations, and showing how natural it is that at the present moment the impulse to join the voluntary Army should be weaker than it has been, and making good my point that it is easier to find reasons for the falling off than to suggest a remedy. But we have done something towards remedying the evil, and we intend to do more, as financial opportunities permit, to reach what is undoubtedly the true ideal, as laid down by the Norfolk Commission, that no man should be out of pocket by serving his country. We hope to increase the camp allowance to Volunteer officers, and to provide them with horse allowance. Since the war we have provided an outfit allowance for the Militia. These, I admit, are only palliatives. More drastic remedies will have to be found. The remedies suggested to us in your Lordships' House by those who are every bit as qualified to suggest remedies as we are, have not up to the present time been of a very practical nature.

My noble friend Lord Raglan last year suggested £100 a year for Militia officers as a retaining fee. I said then, and I still think that that was not a practical remedy. I am familiar with the remedy suggested by my noble friend opposite in his evidence before the Royal Commission, that we should have compulsory service under certain conditions. That is not a remedy which we can at present contemplate, and I am sure the noble Lord, in his heart of hearts, does not expect us to contemplate it. He referred to another scheme which he has made his own—the use of the Universities to a larger extent than at present in the plans for obtaining officers for the Auxiliary Forces. It is too early for us definitely to announce our adhesion to that scheme; it is an expensive scheme. But we are going into it, as the noble Earl knows, in great detail, and I can promise him that it will receive careful consideration. If I may express a purely personal wish I will say that I hope both for the noble Lord's sake and for our own that it may lead us definitely along the path which we all so much desire to tread.

I now turn to the Regular Army. The noble Lord who moved the Motion before the House gave the figures correctly. The shortage of officers in the Guards is twenty-nine, in the cavalry sixty-nine, and in the infantry of the Line to date, 156. As regards the Guards, we have, as the noble Lord said, initiated the system of appointment on probation, and if your Lordships will consult the Army List you will see that as a result a considerable amelioration has taken place in the numbers of junior officers. We believe that this system, which was very carefully drawn up in consultation with colonels of the Guards, is leading us on the right road in solving the present difficulty. It has been settled that these probationers should be appointed every six months, not indiscriminately, and everything points to the probability that in this way a remedy will be found for the shortage in the Guards.

EARL SPENCER

I should like to ask the noble Earl whether it is proposed to extend the same system to the cavalry.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

It has been suggested, but at present it is not intended. The case of the cavalry is far more serious than that of other branches, and a Committee has recently been sitting in connection with the matter. That Committee has collected a great deal of evidence from cavalry officers, which is, to a great extent, contradictory, as to the cause of the deficiency in the cavalry. I had hoped to have been able to inform your Lordships of the decision of the Army Council upon that, but we have not yet arrived at a full decision with regard to it. We admit that some special measures will be necessary in order to deal with this very serious deficiency in cavalry regiments — a deficiency which gives no sign whatever of decreasing of its own accord.

EARL SPENCER

And prompt measures?

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Yes. The engineers and artillery have at the present moment reached the establishment authorised by Parliament, and, as regards the infantry, the deficiency is not so much in the number of candidates that come forward; it is due to some extent to the want of accommodation at Sandhurst. The term there is very shortly coming to a conclusion, and as a result about 120 officers will join the infantry from Sandhurst at an early date, which will reduce the deficiency of 156 to only thirty-six, which is a very small percentage

I now come to another point touched on by the noble Lord—the question of the staff. It is impossible for anyone to affirm that the Staff College turns out at present enough trained staff officers for the requirements of the Army, especially in view of the expansion necessary in time of war; but, as your Lordships will perhaps remember, some advance has recently been made in this connection. Lord Kitchener has decided to open a Staff College in India, which will, of course, benefit the British Army to a considerable extent. I believe, though perhaps I may be wrong, that the last figures the War Office have shows that the Indian Staff College will turn out twenty-four staff officers every year. This will set free a number of places at the Staff College at home which are at present earmarked for candidates coming from India, and will have the effect of increasing pro tanto the present output of thirty-two staff officers per annum.

I do not pretend that this is anything like the end to which we should go, but it is at any rate a step in the right direction. The only difficulty, as your Lordships will realise, in the way of considerably extending the Staff College is one of pounds, shillings, and pence. We still have a considerable amount of money available from previous Loan Bills to be applied to educational establishments, and I can assure your Lordships that we intend to apply a portion of that to increasing the accommodation at the Staff College. As regards the point mentioned by Lord Lovat with reference to the way in which improvised staffs went to South Africa, your Lordships are no doubt aware that at Aldershot and in some of the other commands in the kingdom the units are now organised under the staffs which it is proposed should command them in time of war—a state of things which in no way existed before the South African War broke out. The noble Lord touched on what is one of the most burning questions with regard to staff education—namely, whether we could arrange a short course as well as a long course at the Staff College. He quoted Lord Kitchener as being in favour of such a course.

LORD LOVAT

The noble Earl is incorrect. I only quoted Lord Kitchener as to the deficiency.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

I beg the noble Lord's pardon; I misunderstood him. But he must know that that is a subject which occasions considerable controversy. A great many staff officers do not like the idea of going through a short course for fear they should be labelled as Class B. officers, while those who went through the longer course would be labelled Class A.

I now come to what is, of course, the most important part of the whole subject—the necessity of expansion in time of war of the present establishment of officers. With regard to the existence of that necessity there cannot possibly be two opinions. I do not wish to follow the noble Lord into his estimates as to what that necessity is. He put it at 7,000, and my noble friend opposite put it at 10,000. I admit, of course, that the number is very considerable. We hope to very materially increase the number of officers in the Army. My noble friend the Secretary of State for War announced a year ago that he hoped to add five officers to every regiment, but to my mind, though you may increase the number of officers in the Army on the active list, what is needed is a large reserve, on which to draw. We have at the present moment a rather larger reserve than is represented by the figures given by the noble Lord opposite. We have 2,744 officers in the Reserve—

LORD LOVAT

How many of those are senior officers?

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Of those 2,744 officers, 2,500, roughly speaking, are under the rank of colonel. I admit, however, that very few of them are subalterns, and that is the direction in which we have to find the greatest expansion. A Committee is now sitting considering this very important subject, but I cannot anticipate when their Report will be received. Several proposals are before them, one of which is, that we should insist on all officers giving a certain service to the Army either on the active list or in the Reserve; but it is possible that to insist on that might affect the number of officers that would be obtained. The subject, therefore, is one of extreme delicacy, which can only be approached after mature consideration. With regard to Sandhurst it is very satisfactory not only that the candidates vastly outnumber the vacancies, but that the candidates who have qualified, who have reached the standard that we consider necessary, also vastly exceed the vacancies. In November, 1903, we had 443 candidates; eighty were admitted, and, beyond these eighty, 232 qualified outside the list of those successful. In June, 1904, eighty - four were admitted out of 522, and 257 qualified outside. And last November 511 candidates came forward, 129 were admitted and 244 qualified outside. That is, perhaps, the only satisfactory feature in connection with the whole question. We have made a temporary alteration—a retrograde alteration, I am sorry to say—at Sandhurst, and by reducing the course from two years to one we shall obtain accommodation for 230. By this alteration in the course we have doubled the accommodation, but we feel that we must still considerably increase the accommodation at Sandhurst. That will cost £300,000 if not more; but we have made up our minds that expenditure in this direction is necessary, and plans are well forward for carrying out this alteration.

The noble Lord opposite has shown, and I do not deny it, that there is a considerably larger movement in the direction of resignation than existed before the war. I think we must accept such a movement as inevitable for the reasons I have already outlined in dealing with the Auxiliary Forces. There are always a certain number of men who leave a voluntary Army at the end of a big war. I am glad that the noble Lord who moved the Motion now before the House does not put forward the view that the pay is too low.

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

Except in the case of the junior ranks.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

I accept the correction. I do not admit the justice of the comparison which has been drawn between the British officer and the artisan. I have not the least idea what the average artisan in this country does receive, but the amenities of the officer's position, at any rate, widely separate his lot from the lot of the artisan. I would instance the fact that in the case of the artisan there is the danger of unemployment. The artisan, again, does not receive housing from his employer, and there are other advantages, such as free doctoring, etc., which do not fall to the lot of the artisan.

THE EARL OF ERROLL

The artisan does not have to live like a gentleman. Unless an officer lives like a gentleman he is of no use to you as an officer.

THE EARL OF ARRAN

And the officer has to keep up an expensive uniform, which is not the case with the artisan.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

That only emphasises my contention that there is no earthly comparison between the two. The noble Lord opposite referred to the question of expense. I quite agree that the question of expense to officers is a very important one; and I am sure my noble friend, whose experience in the Army is a recent one, will admit that a great deal has been done in the direction of lightening officers expenses. In this connection, however, it is an interesting fact that a certain amount of evidence has been placed before the Cavalry Committee claiming that the deficiency in officers is due to the fact that the War Office interfere with the way officers spend their money. The attempts which have been made to diminish expense are, it is said, resented by officers who wish to live as expensively as they please. I do not put that forward as a final argument for consideration, but it is worthy of note that such an argument has been put forward. It is also a curious circumstance that the regiments familiarly called crack regiments, which are supposed to be the most expensive in our cavalry, are not the regiments which have had the greatest difficulty in getting officers.

I agree, however, that there has been need for action in the direction of the diminution of expenses, and I claim that the Government have taken action in that direction. Cavalry officers are now provided with their chargers at the public expense. Issues of saddlery and of a certain amount of farriery are also made at the public expense. The officers' quarters and mess are not now, indeed, furnished at the public expense; but officers receive privileges and assistance which has not, I think, always met with a just measure of appreciation. Officers have undoubtedly been saved considerable expense in this direction. There is no body in the world more subject to rumours than the British Army, and I cannot help telling your Lordships of an experience I had in Ireland shortly after I went to the War Office. Your Lordships are aware that officers are provided with furniture and that a certain charge for depreciation is made against them. I was at a big public entertainment, and a fond father whose son had just gone into the Army was there contending that his son had been supplied with furniture worth £50 and was charged £30 a year rent for it. The facts of the case were that he was charged one penny a day, which worked out at 30s. Yet this fond father was going about all over the place blackguarding the War Office on account of their rapacity.

The action of the War Office in helping officers in this manner has not been as much appreciated as it ought to have been. I am not familiar with the figures quoted by my noble friend behind me with regard to the pay of officers in the Australian service and in the service of the United States; but I think if they were inquired into we should find considerable difference in the conditions of service which would largely account for the apparent discrepancy in the amount of pay. The noble Lord opposite touched upon the complaints which have been made in certain quarters that the Army is unpopular because there is too much work to do.

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

I said too much worry, not too much work.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Although that may not have been the noble Lord's suggestion, complaints have been made in certain directions that too much work is given to the officers. I am glad the noble Lord dissociated himself from that suggestion; but I join issue with him as to there being too much worry. I confess I heard with astonishment the suggestion that the War Office is out of touch with the Army What is the War Office? The War Office is a body of, roughly, a thousand members, rather more than half of whom are soldiers. Why should it be said that a soldier who goes to the War Office is necessarily out of touch with the Army from which he is for the moment separated by only a few miles? I can assure your Lordships that we are in constant touch with the Army. Only a few days ago I had a conference with cavalry officers from various commands all over the country. The whole tendency at the War Office is to keep officers flowing between the War Office and the Army, and to have officers who are administering the Army in different parts of the country coming up and giving us the benefit of their advice.

Then there is the Selection Board, the body which advises us with regard to promotion and appointment in the lower ranks. It consists of the commanders-in-chief of the six different distinct commands in this country, and I can imagine nothing more calculated to increase the degree to which the Army and the War Office are kept in touch than the Selection Board. I am sure that Lord Tweedmouth's figures have been supplied to him on excellent authority, but I cannot for the life of me comprehend that such a thing could have happened as that three regiments in a cavalry brigade at Aldershot should have had only 200 mer available to come on parade. I have before me a Return, the latest we have, dated the 1st June. This Return shows that the strength of the three cavalry regiments in the cavalry brigade at Aldershot on that date was, after deducting those sick and absent, as follows: 1st Dragoon Guards, 21 officers and 637 men; 5th Lancers, 21 officers and 621 men; 8th Hussars, 24 officers and 601 men. I accept the noble Lord's statement, but I cannot provide an adequate reason for this extraordinary shortage, whereby each of these regiments could only produce one third of their lull number on parade. I cannot help thinking that some very special circumstances must have been in evidence on the day he refers to. I quite sympathise with Lord Lovat as to the holding of promotion examinations on Derby day. But I would remind your Lordships that it is not the custom of Parliament to adjourn on Derby day, and I am sure the inconvenience which is caused to a few officers going up for promotion in the British Army does not constitute such a very great grievance when Parliament itself continues sitting on that day.

The noble Lord opposite referred to the inconvenience entailed on the 17th Lancers through being ordered to Egypt and then having those orders countermanded. That order was given in accordance with the decision to considerably decrease the garrison of Egypt, and I think your Lordships will admit that no other course was open to us than the one we followed. The only alternative was, after having decided that this cavalry regiment was not required in Egypt, to calmly send them there in order not to entail inconvenience upon them; and this, I think, would have been an illogical action for any Government to have taken.

LORD VIVIAN

May I ask whether any compensation has been given to those officers of the 17th Lancers who had already sent their baggage on to Egypt?

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

I have not the least idea. I am not aware that any application has been made. My noble friend Lord Erroll animadverted, from the cavalry officers' point of view, upon the number of examinations in the Army, and compared the position of the Army with that of the Navy, to which he looked with longing eyes, stating that no naval officer after passing the rank of sub-lieutenant is troubled with examinations. I am not aware of the practice in the Navy, but as a humble reader of the newspapers I have noticed that such distinguished persons as admirals are sent to Greenwich for instruction. Whether that instruction is followed by examination I do not know, but at any rate instruction is considered necessary; and, after all, instruction is the important thing, whether there is an examination at the end of it or not. The object of the examination is only to make sure that the instruction has taken place. I would point out that while the noble Lord is opposed to the present high standard of educational requirement for the Army, he will not find any large consensus of opinion among cavalry officers to agree with him in the advisability of lowering the standard. One of the facts which has come out very strongly in the evidence before the Cavalry Committee is the strong feeling of opposition among cavalry officers to any reduction in the educational requirement of their branch of the service

Though my noble friend was correct in saying that a certain number of billets in the Army had been abolished by the organisation of depot centres, I would again ask him to contemplate the alternative. The only alternative would have been to retain these billets, having made up our minds that they were not necessary for the good of the service. It is, of course, an unpopular thing at any time to do away with appointments, but the general benefits to the service must, I submit, be always considered as of more importance than the convenience of certain individuals. Every cavalry officer who is qualified for a high command is just as likely to be appointed to it as an officer in any other branch of the service. It is possible that there may not be the same large number of billets earmarked for officers in the cavalry, and I should be very glad if it were so. I regard it as a most vicious system that high oppointments should be earmarked solely for certain branches of the service; except, of course, where expert knowledge is necessary. The true ideal we should put before ourselves is that any officer, no matter what branch of the service he may belong to, should be eligible for any billet provided he is the best man for it.

As regards the instance given by my noble friend of a regiment sent into camp for two months I do not recognise the case, but shall be glad to inquire into it if he will communicate with me privately. As my noble friend knows, officers in camp draw camp allowance, and, therefore, I do not think the expense is necessarily so great as he would have us believe.

THE EARL OF ARRAN

Has an alteration been made in the camp allowance of staff officers?

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Yes; staff officers now draw consolidated pay, which includes certain allowances which they did not draw in old days when in camp. I do not wish to conceal that we intend to apply the principle of consolidated pay to officers throughout the whole Army. I think I have now dealt with most of the points which have been raised in the course of this debate. I admit the great importance of this subject; it is the most important of the subjects that could be discussed in connection with the military forces of the Crown. I can assure the House that we fully recognise its importance, and I am glad to be able to accept the Resolution of the noble Lord opposite.

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

My Lords, I wish to briefly thank the noble Earl for accepting my Motion. He differed from me on, I think, only two points, and one was as to the War Office being out of touch with the Army. That is a matter on which he would naturally take a view different from my own. The noble Earl at the beginning of his speech said that the resignations of officers of the Auxiliary Forces were due to the war, to the fact that that they had had enough soldiering. I do not think the resignations arise so much from that reason as from the reason that you are using your Auxiliary Forces for purposes for which they were never intended. A man joins the Auxiliary Forces for the purpose of defending this country, and the fact of his being sent out of the country—not without his permission, I admit—would naturally have a deterrent effect on "other possible officers. I agree that it is a pity that the course at Sandhurst should be cut down from two years to one, and I had hoped that it was intended to restore the two-year course.

THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE

Yes, when we get the extra accommodation.

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

It does seem to me that it would be a good plan, for admission to the Army, to put the Militia or the Volunteers and Sandhurst very much more on a footing; that is to say, the candidate should have the choice of going to Sandhurst or of joining the Volunteers or the Militia for a certain period, and after that period of service in the Auxiliary Forces he should pass exactly the same examination as is given to the cadet at Sandhurst at the end of his time. In that way you would have, so to speak, a check on the officers issuing from Sandhurst, and at the same time a check on the qualifications of the officers passing through the Militia or the Volunteers. The reason I think this system desirable is that it would secure a greater number of officers for the Militia. It is most necessary that the Militia should be used as a sort of intermediate stage to the Army. If you had a great number of young men joining the Militia for the purpose of entering the Army under such conditions as I suggest, those who did not eventually succeed in getting into the Army would remain in the. Militia regiments, and would be more or less capable officers who could be used from time to time. Then I am extremely favourable to the idea that all officers joining the Army should agree to serve for a definite time. That would be putting them on exactly the same footing as an ordinary soldier in the ranks, and it seems to me it is no hardship to say to the officer that if he joins His Majesty's service he shall remain in it for a certain time, except on the payment of a heavy fine. In that way you would greatly increase your reserve of officers. I again thank the noble Earl for accepting my Motion, and would express the hope that the War Office will pay particular attention to the words in it which insist upon the urgency of the question.

EARL CARRINGTON

My Lords, the noble Earl the Under-Secretary for War questioned the statement of the noble Earl opposite when he said that the subaltern in the British Army was not paid so well as the average artisan. The pay of the subaltern is, I believe, £95 per year; that is, including Sundays, 5s. 2d per day. The wages of an engineer are 6s. 6d. a day, and in the shipbuilding yards the wages of good rivetters are 8s. 2d. a day; engine-drivers get either 6s. 6d. or 7s. a day. I only mention these facts to show that my noble friend was perfectly accurate when he said that the subaltern in the British Army is not as well paid as the skilled artisan.

THE EARL OF LONSDALE

My Lords, I understood the noble Lord, the mover of the Motion now before the House, to say that the shortage of officers in the Auxiliary Forces was due to the fact that those forces had been used for purposes for which they had not been enlisted. I have only risen for the purpose of saying that if there is one thing which has been more conducive than another to the happiness and good feeling of the Yeomanry and Volunteers it has been the fact that they have been allowed to take an active part in the service of the country, and to fight for their King and country.

On Question, Motion agreed to.