THE TERRITORIAL ARMY SCHEME.

HL Deb 13 February 1908 vol 184 cc158-66

*LORD AMPTHILL

My Lords, I rise to ask the Under-Secretary of State for War—(1.) Whether he is yet in a position to define exactly the duties of secretaries of County Associations under the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act in view of the prevailing uncertainty as to whether those duties are to be purely administrative or partly executive; (2.) Whether each unit of the Territorial Army will be obliged to hold its annual camp within the area of the County Association to which it belongs, or whether inland corps will still be allowed to go to seaside camps; (3.) Whether recruiting for each unit will be restricted to the area of the County Association to which that unit belongs, or whether the present custom will be allowed to continue at least so far as the preference of individual recruits is concerned; (4.) Whether it is finally decided that separation allowances will only be granted to noncommissioned officers. My Questions need a little explanation, but a very few words will suffice. They have to do with certain points concerning which doubt exists or apprehension has arisen, to which, as chairman of a County Association, I have had my attention called. The existence of those doubts and of that apprehension is, so far as the experience of my own small county shows, a very material hindrance to the proper development of the Territorial Army scheme.

The first Question relates to the duties of the secretaries of County Associations, and its importance lies in the fact that it is very difficult to select a man for an appointment unless and until you can tell him what his duties will be. Now, in regard to the duties of secretaries of County Associations two sets of opinion exist. There are some who, interpreting very literally the phrase in the Act which says that the County Associations are to raise the Territorial Army, regard the secretaries as recruiting officers, and have an idea that the secretaries will have to do very much what was done by individuals at the time of the South African War. They conceive that the secretary will be a species of itinerant recruiting officer, for, since they believe it to be the duty of the Association to find, enlist, and keep the men—and it is pretty obvious that the members of the Association cannot go about in a body to perform this duty—that duty will devolve on the secretary.

Those who hold a different view regard the County Association as an administrative body, the deputy of the War Office, in fact a miniature War Office for the county to which it belongs, and believe that it will exercise purely administrative functions analogous in every way to the functions of the War Office from which they are delegated. Those who hold this view regard the secretary merely as a scribe, the right-hand man of the chairman of the Association, and they hold that he will have nothing more to do personally with the actual enlisting of men than the clerk of a county council has to do with the inspection of insanitary areas or the inspection of the schools within his county. The House will readily believe—and I feel sure most of your Lordships have met with a similar experience—that it is extremely difficult, indeed impossible, to decide upon the choice of a secretary until this doubt has been removed and we are in a position to say exactly what the secretary will have to do.

It is possible that the noble Earl the Under-Secretary will tell me that this is a matter which will be left to the discretion of the County Associations, and that if they like to choose an active man, who will run about every day and all day and assist in the work of recruiting, they will be at liberty to do so; but I very earnestly hope that this will not be his answer. I hope that the conception of the Territorial Army scheme which exists in the mind of the Secretary of State is so consistent and so clear that homogeneous principles will be laid down for the whole country. The want of a clear understanding in regard to the line between administrative and executive functions in military matters has led to more than one great controversy, and notably to that great controversy which convulsed the whole system of government in India a few years ago, and led to deplorable results, of which it will take a long time to remove the traces. I can well imagine that there might be many very serious storms in tea-cups in the various counties if a similar confusion on a small scale were to exist in regard to the duties of the secretary.

My next Question is a simple one, but one of considerable importance. To many Volunteers the only attraction of volunteering, the only circumstance which enables them to make the sacrifices necessary to discharge this patriotic duty, is the complete change of air which they get at a seaside camp, or in some place of which the climate and surroundings are entirely different from their own place of residence. To many Volunteers the annual training is the only holiday, and unless that holiday can be made a real holiday it would not be worth their while, or, to put it, perhaps, in the more correct way, it would be impossible for them to make the necessary sacrifices which are entailed by joining the Volunteers. In my own county there is a very fine Engineer Volunteer Corps, and it is a fact that at the present time resignations are coming in far more quickly than they ought to be at this period of the year, and there is a considerable hesitation about transferring to the Territorial Army, solely on account of the doubt which exists as to whether the seaside camp will be allowed to continue, or whether they will have to go to some inland brigade camp. That is my justification for troubling the Under-Secretary and for detaining your Lordships. I have endeavoured to obtain information from less exalted sources, but I find that nothing short of an authoritative statement from the fountain head will satisfy those who are addressing their inquiries to me.

The third Question is an analogous one, which, perhaps, I may best illustrate by an example. In my own county of Bedfordshire one of the companies of the Infantry Volunteer Corps is recruited partly in the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire. The men of these two counties belong to a homogeneous district, which is kept together by considerations entirely independent of county boundaries. It has been the custom for these men to associate together for volunteering and a species of comradeship has sprung up. Besides that, there is the habit they have got of doing their drill in certain places to which they have convenient access. Here, again, a doubt has arisen as to whether this arrangement will be allowed to continue, and whether Buckinghamshire men will be permitted to join the Bedfordshire Volunteers. The result of this feeling is that many men are already declaring that they will be unable to join the Territorial Army if they are taken away from their old comrades, and not allowed to do their training under the same conditions.

Lastly, I ask whether it is finally decided that separation allowances will be granted only to non-commissioned officers. I need hardly detain your Lordships by pointing out that the conditions of service in the Volunteers are necessarily so different from those which obtain in the Regular Army, that it is not possible to enforce those distinctions between the non-commissioned rank and the privates which are desirable and which raise no question in the Regular Army. The non-commissioned officer in the Volunteers is not, necessarily, the best man. Other circumstances come into the consideration, and the very conditions of service make it impossible for a large number to look forward to regular promotion to the non-commissioned ranks. To these men who are privates in the infantry, or sappers in the Engineers, it is difficult to discern a reason why a married man who has four or five children should not get the separation allowance just the same as his comrade who happens to be a non-commissioned officer, and who may not have served for a longer period. That is all I have to say, and I hope that the noble Earl will be able to give definite replies to these Questions, for I can assure him that, at any rate so far as my own county is concerned, the existing doubt is causing a good deal of disquietude in regard to the success of the Territorial Army scheme.

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

My Lords, in reply to Question 1, regarding the duties of the secretaries of County Associations, I would like to point out to my noble friend that the relations between the Army Council and the Associations preclude the exact definition by the Council of the secretary's duties. The Army Council, in their desire to give the Territorial Force as free a hand as possible, have decentralised its administration so far as is compatible with military efficiency. They have laid down at some length in Chapter 2 of the Act the duties of County Associations. The secretary, though his appointment must be approved by the Army Council, is the servant not of the Council but of the County Association. We look upon him, so to speak, as the special machine to carry out effectively the resolutions and decisions of the Association in the exercise of their functions.

The duties of the various Associations naturally must differ very materially in various details, and I do not think it would be possible for the Army Council or for the Secretary of State, or for any central authority, to attempt to lay down any hard and fast rules. I should be sorry to see such a task imposed upon the Army Council. Even if the Army Council were desirous of doing this, they could not do so with any satisfaction or with any reasonable chance of success. The circumstances of each Association are different, and we should be immediately accused of just that kind of undue War Office interference which has been, I think rightly, resented by the Volunteers in the past. The very semblance of this we are anxious to avoid as far as possible. Each association, in our opinion, must order its own affairs. It is a self-contained organisation with certain defined powers and responsibilities, and it is for each Association to utilise the services of their paid secretary in whatever directions they think most conducive to the proper performance of their duties.

In reply to Question 2 there will not be a definite obligation on any unit of the Territorial Force to hold its annual camp within the County Association area. The selection of annual camps will as in the past, be left in the hands of the general officers commanding-in-chief, acting through the major-generals of divisions. It is the desire of the Army Council that, wherever possible, the wishes of the units should be gratified in this respect. My noble friend will, I am sure, quite understand the importance of the annual camp from the training or strictly military standpoint, but, so far as is compatible with this requirement, he may rest assured that no undue opposition to the wishes of units will be entertained, as the Army Council and the general officers commanding fully appreciate the spirit of sacrifice shown by the Volunteer, who, in many cases, gives up his annual holiday to the annual camp.

I now come to Question 3, in reply to which I have to say that it will be one of the primary duties of an association to define the limits of recruiting areas within its county limits, so that normally units will be recruited from residents within the area of the Association by which these units are administered. Any recruiting within that area for units not administered by the Association will be a matter of arrangement between the various Associations concerned. I must add, however, that in the case of certain special corps, such as the Medical Corps and the Corps of Electrical Engineers, the special circumstances demand that the recruiting should be to some extent carried on independently of county boundaries. These are what may be called expert or technical corps, and the material to be drawn upon is consequently scattered. I am sure, therefore, that your Lordships will appreciate the necessity of a slight departure from the general scheme of county organisation. It is not practicable in such cases to limit the recruiting area by the boundaries of any particular county. It must be extended as the special circumstances demand, and thus, for instance, we find it necessary to allow the Corps of Electrical Engineers to reckon all the middle of England as their recruiting area.

Now, as regards Question 4, I am afraid that the Army Council cannot possibly grant the demand that the issue of separation allowance should be extended to the privates of the Territorial Force. I would remind your Lordships that it was not given to the Militia, except in some special cases when men were undergoing special courses of instruction, and such men were always non-commissioned officers. It has been decided to give it to the non-commissioned officers of the special Reserve, the transformed Militia, as well as to non-commissioned officers of the Territorial Force, but not to the privates, and I think your Lordships will agree that if any extension of the grant were to be made, the special Reserve would have a stronger claim, seeing that they are absent from their families for a much longer period than the Volunteers, six months initial and twenty-one days annual training, as compared with no such initial training and a maximum of fifteen days annual camp.

In the next place, I am sure your Lordships, so many of whom have had military experience of various kinds, will readily admit that it is important, from a military point of view, that the difference between the ranks of noncommissioned officer and private should be sufficiently accentuated, This has hardly been the case in the past. The Army Council are confident that giving the non-commissioned officer the pay of his rank and (in the case of married men) the separation allowance will, it is hoped, induce the Volunteer to strive, during the non-training period of the year, to improve his military efficiency. Finally, we must not overlook financial considerations, and the result of extending the privilege of separation allowance to all married members of the Territorial Force would be an increase of expenditure which the Army Council do not think should be lightly incurred. We have not sufficient data to work out the exact cost, but it is no exaggeration to say that it would not be less than £50,000, and might even amount to £100,000 per annum.

LORD BELPER

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Answer given by the noble Earl with regard to the duties of secretaries of County Associations, and I am bound to say that I think noble Lords are very much in the position that they were before the Question was asked. The noble Earl's Answer forcibly reminds me of a question put by one who was anxious to know what the particular duties were of a high ecclesiastical dignatory. The questioner asked his friend, who was an authority on the subject, what were the duties of an archdeacon, and the only reply he could get was that his duties were to perform archidiaconal functions. As far as I can see, the only answer that has been given by the noble Earl is that the secretary is to perform secretarial functions. In the case of many Associations the difficulty is not as to what the duties of the secretary are, but how to get for the post of secretary, with its salary of only £150 a year, men competent to perform the duties. More than one Association

Regiment of Battery.

Total Strength 1st February, 1908.

Total of Men who have less than One Year's Service or are under 20 Years of Age.

Recruits at Depot.

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

We shall be very glad to give this Return, but I hope my noble friend will understand that we shall have to communicate with the local military authorities, and have been advised that their only course to get anybody at all is to combine with another county and appoint one secretary for both comities; but, as it is an absolute sine qua non that there should be two offices, that proposal is hardly one to be adopted. I hope the Government will give attention to this point, because it is a serious difficulty, which in the initial stages of an experiment which we all hope will work out satisfactorily is likely to prove detrimental to the working of the County Associations. I am confident that if the Government cannot see their way to increase the funds which have been suggested for many of the counties it will be quite impossible to obtain competent men to perform the duties.