THE TERRITORIAL FORCE.

HL Deb 18 July 1910 vol 6 cc224-76

^*THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH rose to call attention to the inadequacy of the Territorial Army for Home Defence in view of the opinion now prevalent among experts that the landing of a large hostile force is practicable.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, I see my noble friend Lord Dartmouth in his place. I listened with great interest to his speech a few days ago, and I hope your Lordships will not think I am wanting in courtesy if I do not go into such full details as did my noble friend on that occasion. I wish this evening to raise questions of principle rather than of detail. My noble friend concluded his speech by saying that what was wanted was an expert who would take the trouble to find out whether the Territorial Army would fulfil the purposes for which it was created and be worth the money which was paid for it. We know that approximately the cost of the Territorial Army is over £3,000,000, an expensive price to pay if it is to be a toy and not a reality, and therefore I entirely agree with the concluding words of my noble friend Lord Dartmouth's speech. What we have to consider is whether the Territorial Army is now capable of fulfilling the purposes for which it was created and whether it is worth the money we are now paying for it.

When I moved in your Lordships' House the Second Reading of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill I expressly stated that the chief military problem in our case then was not the defence of the United Kingdom so much as the defence of the Empire, and at that time the military problem was considered and was decided from this point of view. We looked at the military problem as a whole. Due weight was given to the peculiar conditions and characteristics of the Empire, to the fact that it is scattered all over the world, to its great length of front, and to that extent and in that respect to its peculiarly vulnerable condition. We did not forget to bear in mind that in Egypt and in India, where a small minority is governing a large number of people of other races, unforeseen complications might arise at any time, and that we ought to provide for those complications, whether in Egypt, in India, or elsewhere, by having a striking force capable of maintaining and upholding the interests of the Empire at large. For that purpose we proposed to create an Expeditionary Force of 166,000 men, and when my noble friend the Under-Secretary of State for War replies in the course of this debate I hope he will state explicitly whether we have now 166,000 men capable of being sent out on emergency at short notice and complete in all arms.

We established this Force of 166,000 men, and without going into the controversies that arose at the time, we converted the Militia into a Reserve for wastage in war and for service abroad. That was the part which our scheme played in relation to the maintenance of the Empire across the seas; but for Home Defence, for the protection of these shores, we relied upon the force and the power of the Navy. It was never contemplated then that a serious invasion was probable. It was thought that we might have to take some measures of protection against a raid. A raid of a buccaneering character, made, let us say, against one of our rich and unprotected towns on the south coast, would be an act which would probably alienate to a great extent civilised opinion, and would not, so far as the power of the Empire goes or the power of this country goes, have any formidable effect. It would undoubtedly be very disagreeable to the people who were the occupants of that town. The kind of raid which we thought probable and which a great Continental Power might make would be a raid upon one of our arsenals, where, of course, they could, if they got in, in a very short period of time inflict an incredible amount of mischief. Against a raid of that kind we thought—and I think with reason—that we could, if invasion was not a probability, protect ourselves first and foremost through the Navy; then through our garrisons; and behind we were to have the Territorial Force with an establishment of 300,000 men. It is quite true that this Force was not to have serious training until it was embodied; but when once you admitted the view that serious invasion was not a probability, it was not unreasonable to say that in the event of a great war, one of long duration, you would have time to make out of that Force something which would be effective and really powerful.

I am afraid I must ask your Lordships to listen to the words of Mr. Balfour, because they bear very closely upon the principles on which the Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill was introduced and supported by me in this House, and they contrast very strikingly with the present condition of things. In May, 1905, Mr. Balfour, speaking as Prime Minister and on behalf of the Committee of Imperial Defence, said— is it possible to land 70,000 men on these shores? We have not gone into generalities about the command of the sea or the superiority of our Fleet, or this difficulty or that difficulty. Mr. Balfour at that time was supposing that we were at war with France. He continued— We have endeavoured to picture to ourselves a clear issue which is very unfavourable to this country, and I have shown that on the most unfavourable hypothesis serious invasion of these islands is not an eventuality which we need seriously consider.'' That was the view of the Prime Minister speaking on behalf of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and that was the official view which then held the field. But, my Lords, what is the official and authoritative view to-day? The present Prime Minister, speaking on July 29 last year, again not only as Prime Minister but on behalf of the Committee of Imperial Defence, made use of this language in the House of Commons— With regard to the military aspect, it is, in consequence of the finding of this Committee [the Defence Committee], the business of the War Office to see that we have under all circumstances— I beg your Lordships to note those words, "under all circumstances "— a properly organised and properly equipped Force capable of dealing effectively with a possible invasion by 70,000 men. That is the view to-day of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and it is diametrically opposed to the view stated by Mr. Balfour in 1905. Mr. Balfour dealt with a possible invasion of 70,000 men. He said then that that was not within the limits of probability. Mr. Asquith now says—and the Secretary of State for War is also a member of that Committee and therefore the Prime Minister is speaking also on his behalf—Mr. Asquith says to-day, and his language is very peremptory and very direct, not a mere expression of opinion, that it is the business of the War Office to see that we have, under all circumstances, such a Force as he mentioned.

Now, my Lords, that brings me to the sole and only point which I wish to bring before your Lordships' House this afternoon. Is the War Office providing us with such a Force? Have we in the Territorial Army a Force capable of resisting under all circumstances an invasion of 70,000 Continental troops? I am anxious not to obscure the main. issue by small details, but seeing my noble friend the Under-Secretary of State in his place, I should like very much, if he were able when he rises to give it, to have information with regard to the following points. First of all, how many men of the Territorial Army (the strength of which is now, approximately, 260.000) whose time. expired on June 30—I understand that, roughly speaking, about 65,000 men were liable to this condition—how many of those men have re-engaged? Is he able to give any approximate figure in that respect? Secondly, how many, if any, Regular batteries are allotted to the Territorial Force in time of war? Thirdly, what practice have the officers and men of the Territorial Field Artillery had with the guns? The figures of the men in the Territorial Field Artillery who have been in camp eight or fifteen days respectively are lumped together with the Infantry, and I cannot disentangle the one from the other. I hope my noble friend will be able to answer those questions. Then I want to know how many horses are allotted to the Territorial batteries. I do not know what my noble friend may be able to say about that; but it has been my lot to have a great number of Regular Artillerymen camping in my park during the last few weeks as a resting place between Aldershot and Bulford, and I learned almost universally from every one to whom I have spoken that, so far from there being any horses to allot to the Territorial Artillery, the Regular batteries are themselves very short of horses.

LORD LUCAS

May I ask what the noble Earl means by the word "allot" in that context?

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

How many horses are provided.

LORD LUCAS

Do you mean in establishments? Does the noble Earl ask what is the establishment of horses for Territorial batteries?

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

I mean in organisation for war—whether the horses are there, whether they exist. I must call your Lordships' attention, not in any great detail, to the leading main facts which we have extracted from my noble friend in regard to the condition of the Territorial Army to-day; and it must be borne in mind that the question we now have to ask ourselves is whether this Army is capable of resisting an invasion of 70,000 picked Continental troops. I am afraid that when you investigate the figures and the conditions the Territorial Army hardly comes up to the high standard which was expressed by my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War at Newcastle, when he stated that a nation in arms was the only safeguard for the public interests. What are the figures which the noble Lord the Under-Secretary gave to the House in reply to certain questions which I put to him in March of this year? He told us that out of 260,000 non-commissioned officers and men then serving—the date he gave was October 1, the latest date up to which he had the figures—98,306 were under twenty years of age, and that out of this total of 260,000 men. 163.000 only had attended even the limited drill of fifteen days in camp. To my mind these are striking and appalling figures, and they become much more striking and remarkable in the light of the very much higher task and the very much higher duties now imposed on the Territorial Force by the present Prime Minister and by the Committee of Imperial Defence.

I come now to the question of musketry. We hear a great deal about interest and enthusiasm; but however enthusiastic, however patriotic, may be the Force which is to fight for the freedom of this country against invasion, that Force will not he very effective unless it has at least the power to shoot. What is the position as regards musketry? My noble friend, in the course of the discussion to which I have referred, said— The firing of twenty-three rounds of miniature ammunition is not a standard we recognise. I cannot say how many have passed this standard, but I know there are seven battalions of Infantry and 50 per cent. of ten other battalions who have not been able to fire a single shot at an open range. If my noble friend brought out those very striking facts in order to strengthen public opinion in regard to obtaining more ranges and persuading the House of Commons to provide more money, that may be. But, on the other hand, it emphasises how extraordinarily inadequate this Force is to perform the duties which are now going to be imposed upon it.

Then, my Lords, can we rely for the defence of the country on the Territorial Field Artillery? A great deal has been made of the excellent work done by the Honourable Artillery Company and by Elswick's batteries in the South African war; but, with due respect, I venture to maintain that the good work that was done by those batteries is no guide as to the value generally of the Volunteer Field Artillery. I see the distinguished Field-Marshal (Earl Roberts) in his place, and I think he will bear me out when I say that, after all, these batteries were never opposed by highly trained Artillery, and, moreover, these batteries were trained for three months in the field before they were engaged with an enemy at all. Then it must be borne in mind that the Honourable Artillery Company and Elswick's batteries had special advantages. I do not know whether my noble and gallant friend Lord Denbigh is in the House this afternoon, but I am sure he will support that, statement, because he will be anxious to recognise the great assistance which the Royal Horse Artillery have been able to confer upon the Honourable Artillery Company by lending them the advantages of the use of their riding school. The Honourable Artillery Company also have in their personnel men of means who can expend both time and trouble in drills and training. And as regards the Elswick batteries, they, of course, were largely composed of trained artificers. I maintain that you cannot take the work done by these batteries and put that forward as any reason for establishing a general system of Territorial Field Artillery, or for supposing that Volunteer Field Artillery of that kind, who have had no practice in shooting, no practice in visualisation, will be competent to deal with the trained Artillery of a Continental army. Whatever there is of the Territorial Field Artillery, I am bound to say it is a Force which, as regards strength, is somewhat wrapped in mystery. And it is upon the Territorial Force that the Prime Minister has imposed the duty of resisting an invasion by 70,000 Continental troops.

It may be said that no such duty has been imposed upon the Territorial Force. I presume that the whole of the military problem has to deal with an existing state of war. I will presume that there are obligations in Egypt or in India which demand that we should send out of this country our Expeditionary Force. If we have these 166,000 men ready to send and fit to go, I maintain that if they are sent abroad you practically skin the Regular Army, and what remains? Nothing remains in this country except the Territorial Force. No human being, least of all the politicians, can tell when war is likely to break out. Some of the older members of your Lordships' House may remember Lord Granville coming down to this House in July, 1870, with all his accustomed bonhomie and charm. He had just succeeded, on the death of Lord Clarendon, to the Foreign Office, and he told your Lordships that he was glad to say that he had had an interview with Mr. Hammond, the long-experienced Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. And what did Lord Granville say? He said— Mr. Hammond had told him that during his long experience he had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs. That statement was made in your Lordships' House on July 11. On July 19, eight days afterwards, war was declared between France and Germany. It is clear that this country, with its responsibilities all over the world, is liable to attack, is liable to differences with other countries, at any time; and, my Lords, the strength of our diplomacy is measured by the strength of our force and of our power to maintain our diplomacy. There are some in this country who, because they have many votes, have, I am afraid, much influence upon a certain class of politicians, and who would be surprised and aggrieved, rather like the fat doctor in the robbery in Oliver Twist, that any such action should he taken without notice and unexpectedly. As if, as Charles Dickens said, gentlemen who are engaged in the business of housebreaking are in the habit of giving notice by the twopenny post and commencing their operations at noon. An invasion, if it came upon us, would come suddenly. Surely the language of the Prime Minister, unless the Committee of Imperial Defence is not to be taken as a serious institution at all, must be very seriously regarded.

I listened to a speech from my noble friend Lord Derby a night or two ago, in the course of which he struck a note of grave anxiety. He admitted—and no one is willing to admit it more fully than I do—that as an organisation, as a skeleton, the Territorial scheme is infinitely better than the haphazard old arrangement which prevailed before it. But; my Lords, the noble Earl was also impressed by the fact, no doubt having regard to the findings of the Committee of Imperial Defence, that the real point we have to consider now is, Can we make the Territorial Army capable of fulfilling the heavy duty which is going to be imposed upon it? The noble Earl suggested that it would give him much relief, and I presume would give the country much relief, if the members of the Army Council would individually sign a paper to the effect that they thought the Territorial Army capable of fulfilling the purpose for which it is now intended. I do not suppose for one moment that any such document as that will ever be extracted from any Government, and I am not quite sure whether my noble friend was not talking a little with his tongue in his cheek when he was making that proposal, because, after all, the Army Council practically means the Secretary of State. I do not wish to speak with the slightest disrespect of them individually, but the Army Council are the creatures of the Secretary of State for War. Under the present arrangement and under present conditions I do not see how they can possibly be otherwise. The Secretary of State is not bound to bring all questions before the Army Council, but can withdraw certain questions from their consideration. He can send for any member of the War Office, outside the question of whether he is on the Army Council or not, to talk over questions connected with different details of the administration of the Army. The Secretary of State is responsible for the Army, and practically all Secretaries of State have done this and will do so as long as the present arrangement lasts.

I do not wish to throw any red herring across the line regarding the efficiency of the Territorial Army, but the remark made by Lord Dartmouth and the proposal put forward by my noble friend Lord Derby all echo a great want of confidence and a great cause of anxiety in the minds of the public. I do say that, with all that can be said for and against it, our military system suffers because we have no man of distinction, no great soldier, as we have had in the past, who can speak for the Army as a whole. We have, it is true, very distinguished military members of the Army Council, but they cannot speak for the Army as a whole; and if my noble friend Lord Dartmouth's suggestion meant anything at all, it must have implied that he would like to see a great soldier, a great organiser, a man of great practical experience in the field, a man like Lord Kitchener, placed in the position of being able to give advice to the Secretary of State for War. Whatever the future may bring forward, I do regret most deeply that we cannot make some really effective use of Lord Kitchener's services. I do not believe that you will ever get the public really to have confidence, or that the Army will have confidence, in the administration of the War Office until in some shape or form you get the services of a man who can speak for the Army as a whole, and who can be in conference and in consultation with the Secretary of State.

I do not want to revive old questions, but I would refer to the success of the German military system in the war against France. It is quite true that France and Russia both suffered because their military system was tainted by Court influence, and persons were promoted by social and other considerations; but I draw an enormous distinction between the influence of a Court and the influence of a Sovereign. On the other hand, where there are, as there were in Germany, first-class soldiers, men of experience, men who had the confidence of the Army, and men who were known to have the confidence of the country, and where they were trusted and loyally trusted as was the case with the old Emperor William, you had the most excellent military results. And you must remember this, that when Bismarck decided that a war was necessary to consolidate the unity of Germany, he was able to act upon the advice of the two great soldiers who he knew would give him an absolutely reliable as well as an honest opinion. I ask, Is there any person at the present; moment, in case of diplomatic difficulties or diplomatic troubles, whom the Minister of the day could go to and ask whether it was an occasion when he could press his point, or whether, because we were weak, lie had better get out of the trouble as well as he could through the best diplomatic surrender lie could to save our face?

My noble friend the Under-Secretary of State for War has asked us not to keep pulling up the roots to see how the plant grows. I have no desire to do that. I should not wish to disturb the gradual evolution and development of the Territorial Army. All the occasion, all the necessity, has been brought about, not by, criticisms here or criticisms there, but by the deliberate opinion of the Prime Minister himself. It is perfectly obvious that one of two things must happen. If we are confronted to-day by a great Continental Power, we must either sacrifice the interest of our Empire abroad or the safety of the capital at home. Under present circumstances and having regard to the recent finding of the Committee of Imperial Defence, I am certain that public opinion would never allow the Expeditionary Force to leave these shores. I must apologise to your Lordships for having occupied longer time than I expected, and I can only say in. conclusion, that unless what we hear to-day of swaggering talk about the greatness and magnificence of our Empire is mere gas and gush, as indeed a great deal of it is, we ought honestly to face the facts of the situation and be prepared to pay the cost of Empire. We ought to be prepared to provide an Expeditionary Force to uphold our interests across the seas; and we ought also to provide what no military expert will tell us we have within measurable degree—an efficient and effective force to resist a possible invasion of 70,000 men

THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS)

My Lords, I do not think that on this side of the House we have any special reason to complain of this subject being raised by the noble Earl this afternoon. The question of the defence of the Empire is clearly of the highest importance. That there should be a public vigilance directed towards this subject is only natural, and if the result of this debate should be to clear up some misconceptions and to remove some of the anxieties to which the noble Earl referred, I think it will have had its value.

The noble Viscount, Lord Midleton, speaking in this House the other day, deplored the necessity of these debates, which he thought were injurious to the public interests, but I observed that in deploring their necessity he was not deterred from selecting from among all the possible criticisms which might be directed against our military system that which, if true, would be the most damning of all. He challenged the fact that we now possess a more considerable force for expeditionary purposes than had existed in, I think he said, the year 1905, and he attributed the debates in which he took part to the provocative attitude of the Secretary of State for War, who he said had been guilty of what amounted, I think his words were, to a criminal speech at Guildford, and he seemed to take us to task altogether for the statements which emanated from the Secretary of State. I think if the noble Viscount will look at the official papers on this subject he will see that we have a gain of about 80,000 men—I think the figure was 80,000, not 90,000—over the position in 1905. The figures supplied to me have, I think, been circulated, and they show that, whereas in 1905 we only had an Army of 185,000 men available for foreign service, we have at the present moment 265,000, or 80,000 more, and when the normal is reached we shall also have 265,000.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

How are those made up?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

I will go into the figures a little further in detail.The document I am quoting from is a Memorandum by the Army Council on the existing Army strength and the state of the existing military Forces in the United Kingdom.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Are those Regular troops or are they also auxiliary?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

They are all Regular troops.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

Our differences about figures are most deplorable. The establishment of the Army is 184,000 at this moment, and I think the noble Lord said that the number of Regular troops was 265,000. Will the noble Lord tell us how that number is made up?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

The figures which I have given comprise Regulars serving, the Regular Reserve, and the Special Reserve. I think what has misled the noble Viscount is this. He no doubt recalls the fact that there has been a reduction in the Regular Army since 1905–6 of 25,900 men, but there has been an increase of 69,000 Special Reservists and an increase of 34,000 Regular Reservists over the establishment for which Mr. Arnold-Forster was responsible in 1905. The then establishment of the Regular Reserve was 104,000. The effective strength now, not the establishment, is 134,000, so that there is a gain of at least 30,000 Regular Reservists. So that if you deduct from the gain the loss of 26,000, you will see that on those two items alone there is a net gain of 77,000 men liable for foreign service.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

In the remarks I made the other day I specially deprecated treating these matters merely from the point of view of what you could see on paper at the moment. I asked the House to take the numbers which your scheme is working to, and I followed the noble Duke who pointed out that in 1913 your present scheme will have worked you down by 36,000.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

Having questioned the statement of the Secretary of State for War, the noble Viscount said it was provocative and criminal, and that is the challenge to which I am replying. I think we have been able to show that, although there has been a reduction in the number of Regulars serving, there has been a great increase in Special Reservists and Regular Reservists liable for foreign service. Behind many of the arguments we have heard to-day and on previous occasions there seems to lurk the figure of our old friend, compulsory service. Compulsory service is not the policy of His Majesty's Government, for two very good reasons as it seems to me. In the first place, I do not believe the country would be prepared to accept the obligation of compulsory service except as the result of one of those national disasters to which noble Lords point.

LORD NEWTON

It would not be of much use then.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

I admit it would not be of much use after the event, but I would point out to noble Lords that, instead of admonishing His Majesty's Government on the subject, what they have to do is to educate public opinion. it is no good saying that we ought to have universal training if it is a well-known fact that the country does not intend to have it. There is another and stronger reason. It is that if more money is to be spent on national defence that money had much better be spent on the Navy than on the Army. I have always belonged to what is known as the Blue Water School, and I believe it is to our Navy that we must look for our real defence. I gather that the criticism of the noble Earl who raised this debate is directed to what he considers the inefficiency of our military system to perform the tasks which are thrown upon it, but I was not able to make out very clearly whether he falls foul of the principle or of the details of the present scheme. It is true that he said it was the principle that be attacked, but the main portion of his speech was directed to picking boles in the musketry, to the want of horses, and to other smaller details in the Territorial Army.

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

Will the noble Lord deny that the words I have quoted are the words of the Prime Minister? My point is that they change the whole situation, and I ask whether the Territorial Army is prepared now to resist invasion.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

Then I understand that what the noble Earl attacks is the general principle of the military organisation, and he questions whether it is fit to resist possible attack. It seems to me that any criticism upon our existing military organisation can only be explained by a failure to really grasp the inter-relation that exists between the military and naval problems. What we have to consider is not so much whether we are able to repel invasion as whether we have in this country a sufficient Force to deter an enemy attempting invasion except in such force as could not escape the vigilance of the Navy. That is our problem, and to overlook that even for a single moment is to lose sight of the unique strategic position of this country. Our Home Defence Army—in fact, the whole of our military organisation—is not so much designed to fight a pitched battle on these shores with an invading army, as by its existence to grant mobility and freedom to our Fleet; that is to say, to prevent our ships from becoming mere coast guards round our shores. How far has that object been attained? In the first place, we have at the present time a Regular Army, a First Line, and I say incidentally that it is the first time in the modern military history of this country that we have had a First Line, consisting of the Regular Army. For the first time provision has been made for the waste of war; and noble Lords opposite know very well from their own experience that an Expeditionary Army winch does not make provision for that purpose is in no sense of the term a real First Line.

The noble Earl says that it is all very well to have a Regular Army, but that when the Expeditionary Force has left these shores there will be little of the Regular Army left in this country. It is quite possible that you may be engaged upon some operation which would necessitate the Expeditionary Force leaving these shores. But the Expeditionary Force does not exhaust the whole of the Regular Army; the six Divisions which are designed for this purpose do not exhaust the whole of the Regular Army. In the first place, there are all those details which are unallotted. Then there are also the whole of the Special Reserve. Let us consider what will be the composition of the Special Reserve on an outbreak of war, when the Expeditionary Force had left. It would contain besides the Special Reservists trained under the old Militia system or a system similar to the old Militia system, all those Regular soldiers who for one reason or another had not been sent abroad with their units—all the immature soldiers who fall back upon the third battalions. Noble Lords know that the principle of mobilisation is this: the Regular Reserve is called out, they make up the second battalion cadres, and all the immature soldiers fall back on the third battalions. That in itself would be a considerable force, made up to a large extent by Regular troops. It is a mistake to suppose that because a soldier is under twenty-one years of age and consequently immature for foreign service, especially in tropical climes, he is not a trained soldier. On the contrary, very often he is just as much a trained soldier as those who serve with battalions abroad. Here we have a very considerable Force. It is true that they are not a mobile Force, but, as noble Lords know, there is a scheme of coast defence, and, as noble Lords also know, it is to those coast defence purposes that these troops are allotted. So that over and above the whole of the Special Reserve, made up as I have described, we have the Territorial Army, the fourteen Divisions; and they are a mobile Army possessing the complete organisation of a military force in every respect. I admit that they are not up to the numbers which we aim at, but still, as far as they go, they are a complete military organisation—it is true only a partially-trained military organisation— capable of taking the field with all the transport and all the other auxiliary services.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Including horses?

LORD LOVAT

And including guns?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

Including everything. I am dealing now with the principle. It is easy to point out certain defects of detail. They must inevitably occur in a Force which has been in existence for only two years. It could not be expected to have reached the complete perfection which it will undoubtedly eventually achieve. But I may point out to the House, with great respect, that we do possess this complete military engine. What we have to consider is whether a Force composed in this way is sufficient to deter the invasion of this country by an army of less than a considerable size. That figure has been mentioned at 70,000, and I do not understand that the noble Earl challenged the 70,000 figure. That was, as he well knows, fixed by the Committee of Imperial Defence after a most elaborate investigation, and I understand that the figure is not challenged. We say that this Force is capable of performing those duties. It is unreasonable to suppose that at the outbreak of war those who are responsible for our military position would be so imprudent as to court invasion by uncovering our coasts to any dangerous or serious extent

The House must remember that the real danger period with regard to this country is the first six months, because after six months embodiment the Territorials, by general admission, will have gained an amount of military efficiency which will make them far more formidable than they can hope to be at the present moment. It is going a long way to suppose that at the outbreak of war the whole six Divisions of our Expeditionary Force would have left this country, that the whole of the Navy would have got completely out of touch with home waters, gone right away, apparently, and left the invasion of these shores an absolutely easy and practicable matter, and that the Territorial Force would be in a disorganised and incomplete condition. It was stated last year in this House by the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition that the occurrence of those three conditions was extremely unlikely. That is the view which the Government take upon the matter. I think it is a mistake to suppose that the Territorial troops would be incapable of offering serious opposition to an invading army. I know there are those people who think that the value of Militia as against trained Regular troops can be disregarded. It certainly was the opinion of General George Washington, and he had considerable experience of the value of Militia troops; but I am not sure that the view would be borne out by those who remember, and especially those who served in, the South African war. The great advantage which the modern military rifle gives to these troops on the defensive was certainly not recognised before the South African war, and my own feeling is that it is quite possible to under-estimate the value of Territorial troops for defensive purposes. At any rate, we do not rely by any means upon what may be called the military efficiency of the Territorial Force to repel an invasion; we rely upon them. mainly to force the invasion of this country by so considerable a body of men as cannot escape the notice of our agents abroad and of those responsible for our naval administration.

It seems to me inconceivable that a very large body of men can possibly be assembled and landed on these shores without arousing our attention. Take the matter of transport alone. Large ships would be required for that, and at any rate there would be a body of men which could not possibly be assembled without its coining to the attention of the Navy. We claim that we have by our Territorial Force achieved our object, and made it necessary for any nation seriously intending to invade this country to come in very considerable force. We believe that the Navy is the arm to which we are to look for protection from such an invasion, and we are sure that we are able to rely upon them in that respect. I have only attempted to deal, imperfectly I am afraid, with a few of the points raised by the noble Earl in his speech, and I will leave it to much abler hands to continue the discussion from these Benches.

THE EARL OF DERBY

My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down has certainly contributed to our information, because he has given us details with regard to the safety of the Empire which we had not before. Apparently we have to rely for our safety in the future on striking terror into the heart of an enemy before he comes to our shores at all, and it is proposed to strike this terror after sending abroad the Expeditionary Force. What are the troops by whom terror is to he struck into the heart of an invader? First there are the unallotted details—

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

No, unallotted units—I meant detail units.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Can you tell me how many there are of those?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

I do not think I can.

THE EARL OF DERBY

I should like to know how many unallotted units there are after the Expeditionary Force of 166,000 men have gone abroad. In addition to that, we have a Special Reserve. But the noble Lord plumed himself at the beginning of his speech upon the fact that the Special Reserve comprised a body of men formed to make good the waste in the Expeditionary Force, so that those men have already disappeared. Then, thirdly, there are the immature men who are not fit to send out to defend their country in foreign climes. The noble Lord has put those forward as an adequate defence for the United Kingdom; but they are in no sense a body of men who could be depended upon to take organised action against an invader. So the noble Lord falls back on the Territorials, whom lie describes, much, I think, to the amazement of anybody who has anything to do with the Territorials, as being mobile in every respect. I should like him to tell me this Have they horses? Have they wagons? Have they boots? Have they even in; some instances guns? Have they reserve ammunition? Have they camp equipment of any sort or kind? My Lords, to describe the Territorial Force as a mobile one is surely the greatest exaggeration that has ever been applied in this House to this particular Force. It is mobile in no respect whatever. I would defy the noble Lord at the present moment or the Secretary of State to mobilise, as a Regular Division is mobilised, one single Division of the Territorials, much less the fourteen Divisions which the noble Lord thinks will be ready to defend the country against an invader. I am not going to deal with many of the figures which the noble Lord gave. I honestly confess I do not understand them in the very least. He talks of there being 185,000 men in 1905, and of there being 265,000 men in 1909. I think, if 1 may say so, he has made a mistake in the figures, and that what probably he will find is that whereas in the total for 1905 the Militia were not included, in 1909 he has included the Special Reserve.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

That is what I said.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Quite so, and the Special Reserve is the Militia under another name, only rather worse trained.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

May I interrupt the noble Earl again? The -Militia were never liable for foreign service, whereas the Special Reserve are. That makes a great difference.

THE EARL OF DERBY

I am not sure that it is not rather hair-splitting to say it; but they always went. I quite agree the noble Lord has got that point. But it is rather begging the question, is it not? to put into your present scheme, as efficient, men who are exactly the same as the old Militia with the exception that they do not have nearly as much training as the old Militia did?

LORD LUCAS

On the contrary, they have more.

THE EARL OF DERBY

In addition, the noble Lord spoke about the large increase of the Reserve. I think I am right in saying that the large increase of the Reserve is a great deal due to the 3-years system which was instituted for a certain time.

LORD LUCAS

You cannot leave it out of account.

THE EARL OF DERBY

I quite agree. But I think the noble Lord will agree that the large increase of this Reserve, formed as it was by the 3-years system now done away with, is a rapidly decreasing force. The noble Lord shakes his head. Will he contradict me?

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

I do, because there will only he a reduction of 4,000 men in the Reserve when the normal is reached. That is the only reduction there will be, so that it is nothing material.

THE EARL OF DERBY

If the noble Lord will make a little further inquiry he will find, as a matter of fact, that there will be a very much larger number by, say, the year 1915.

LORD LUCAS

Will the noble Earl make that good?

THE EARL OF DERBY

I have not got the figures here, but I will write to the noble Lord and make it good. Now I want to deal with the question as to invasion. The noble Lord seems to assume that the figure of 70,000, which has been taken as a probable number, is the number that would invade this country, we baying lost command of the sea. But, as a matter of fact, the 70,000 is the number of men who could be landed in this country while we still have command of the sea. It is to meet not a maximum number, which would be any number if we did lose such command, but a minimum number of 70,000 who could be landed even with our command of the sea still being held. Let the House look at how the figure grew to 70,000. If they will recognise what a change has come over the Defence Committee in a few years, I cannot help thinking that they will have the same feeling of unrest and alarm that I personally have. First of all, 10,000 was to be the utmost limit. Two years before that, I think I am right in saying, a dinghy's crew was suggested; so that you get from a dinghy's crew to 10,000, and then from 10,000 to 70,000. Is 70,000 the figure that holds good at the present moment? Does the noble Lord see no chance of that figure in the immediate future being in any way increased, thereby rendering the necessity for a Territorial or Home Force even greater than it is at the present moment? The noble Earl who introduced this debate was the Minister in charge of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill when it came before your Lordships' House, and he has told us, on his authority, that the Force as then constituted was the minimum required to meet the possible number of invaders at that moment. In other words, the Territorial Force, not even now up to its strength, was calculated on a basis of resisting an invasion of 10,000 men, whereas the number has now grown to 70,000.

THE EARL OF CREWE

I am afraid I do not accept the noble Earl's authority.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Does it not, at all events, make us wish to find out whether this Territorial Force, formed three years ago with a view of resisting a comparatively small number of invaders, is qualified and sufficient to resist the largely increased number that the Defence Committee now think possible? As I said before, I am not one of those who wish to decry the Force at all. I believe there are great possibilities in it; but I do want to find out what the real opinion of the military authorities is with regard to the Force at the present moment. Within the next three months the present Associations will come to an end, and those of us who have worked for the last three years and who may be purposing to continue the work, have a right to know whether our efforts in the past have had a sufficiently satisfactory result as to justify our continuing in the future. I am afraid I cannot accept the noble Lord as a military authority. What we want for this House and for the country at large, and more especially for those who either in the ranks or in other ways have contributed to the success as far as it has gone of the Territorial Force, is to get in writing from members of the Army Council some assurance that they are satisfied that as regards numbers, efficiency, and mobility, this Force is adequate to meet the 70,000 men whom the Government themselves admit may, even with our command of the sea, be landed on these shores.

The noble Earl said that I probably spoke when I asked for this assurance with my tongue in my cheek. I assure him that I did nothing of the kind. I am most anxious to get this declaration. He said that probably we will not be able to get it because every member of the Army Council is a creature of the Secretary of State for War. I will not dispute his knowledge of the Army Council, and I may say, if I may, that I agree with him. But there is one man who is certainly not a creature of the Secretary of State for War, and yet whose opinion I think the House would accept as really authoritative, and that is Lord Kitchener. He is not now employed, and if the noble Lord could see his way to let Laid Kitchener inspect these various Territorial troops in camp, as they will be within the next month, and let him make a report on their efficiency, I for one, if that report is perfectly satisfactory, should have nothing more to say as against the present system. But do not let the noble Lord think that we can be put off with an assurance that this Force is efficient, provided it gets six months for training first of all. I endeavoured the other day to show how ridiculous such an idea was, how futile it is to think that a foreign nation would give you that time to prepare a stick for their own backs. Of course they will not do that. Whereas you might get this six months time before a raid of 70,000 was made, 10,000 men might be got together very rapidly and sent across; and you may be perfectly certain that you will not get six months warning before an attempt is made to land 10,000 men on these shores. Therefore I repeat my two questions of the other day. I ask the noble Lord to give me a definite and authoritative statement from either the military members of the Army Council or from Lord Kitchener; and I further ask whether he is prepared now to say that the figure of 70,000 men as the maximum number that could be landed on these shores in case of an invasion is the number that still holds the field. I sincerely hope the noble Lord will give me a satisfactory answer to both those questions.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH

My Lords, I only wish to make one observation. The noble Lord opposite said the fact of its being necessary to assemble an invading army would make that operation known in this country. I think it is a great fallacy to believe that it is necessary to assemble an army before an invasion can take place. An army can easily be embarked at different ports and can meet at a prearranged time and place at sea. Furthermore, very few of the large foreign barracks are more than three miles from a railway station. It would therefore be easy to have a large number of men at sea before we knew anything about it.

LORD LOVAT

My Lords, I endorse the congratulatory observations made by Lord Derby on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers. I am sure on this side of the House we welcome all speakers on the other side on the subject of the Army, because we so seldom bear anything except from Lord Lucas and the Lord Privy Seal on that subject. We have the greatest difficulty, therefore, in arriving at any new matter. The noble Lord who has come forward to-day to defend the case of the Territorial Army has given us much food for reflection, and I think not a small amount of material that we would like to have more thoroughly thrashed out. I am not going to follow the noble Lord into what we sometimes call on the Back Benches that well-known juggle of figures with regard to the Militia. I am quite aware that if you take the figures you can get most alarming results. It is really a curious fact that while one side say the number of the Expeditionary Force has been increased by 70,000, the other side say it has been decreased by 90,000, so that we get a difference of something between 100,000 and 200,000 men on the part of competent military authorities on both sides.

I do not intend to follow the noble Lord in that, but I would like to point out that in order to have an Expeditionary Force at all there must be at least three things. In the first place, the Force must be in being; in the second place, it must be-able to leave these shores; and, in the third place, it must have some escort to conduct it to the particular place overseas where its duties are to he carried out. Whether we have those things or not I do not know. But I absolutely decline to believe that the Territorial Army is so organised as to be able to set free the 166,000 or 167,000 men to go out and fulfil their duties overseas in the service of the Empire. Secondly, from what I have seen of the duties of the Fleet, tethered, as my noble friend said, round these shores, I do not believe, with the near approach to equality in first class ships between England and certain Continental rivals, that we can spare the number of capital ships to enable the Expeditionary Force to be efficiently escorted. So much for the Expeditionary Force.

The next remark I wish to make is on the subject of compulsory training. 1 did not hear either the noble Earl or Lord Derby say a single word about compulsory training. We are not preaching that particular doctrine in this debate. We are dealing with the Territorial Force at the present moment. There is no reason why your Lordships should educate the country. I do not see how it arises out of the question we are now debating. Mr. Haldane has really made so many alarming remarks that if there is any question of criticism, it would be for us to say, "We criticise most emphatically the statements Mr. Haldane has made, which we do not think he can justify for a moment." If there is any education of the country to be done it should be in the way of putting the truth forward, and conducting the gentleman who has cut the pathway of unreality back into the lane of truth.

Let me give your Lordships an example. Mr. Haldane, on June 27, 1910, made the following statement— When people talk of the small Army of Great Britain I smile. The small Army of Great Britain of an expeditionary character is larger than the expeditionary armies of France and Germany put together. The House smiles as well as Mr. Haldane. What did the right lion. gentleman, I wonder, mean by that statement? Did he mean that if we were going to invade France we could send a million men there? We all know very well that if Germany is ever going to invade France she will send, a million men into France. Does the right hon. gentleman mean that we shall have the force of this 1,000,000 men of Germany, and also the force of 1,000,000 men that would come out of France if she, on her part, were going to invade Germany? Honestly, I do not understand what a statement of that kind means. It is presumably meant to teach somebody something, but I do not think it will bring any very clear significance to your Lordships' minds, or teach your Lordships anything.

Now let me give another example. Mr. Haldane also said— We have 14 great, big, swift-moving, crushing Territorial Divisions, with their accompaniments and ancillary forces. Just let me construe this for a moment. Why great? They are not great, because they are not up to strength. Why big? They are not big, for they are mostly composed of boys of about seventeen years of age. Why swift-moving? think Lord Derby dealt with that, and I need not go into it. As to crushing. I do not know that they are particularly crushing. Their shooting, at any rate, is not such as would be likely to enable them to destroy other forces very rapidly; and even the name dog-shooters has been abandoned now. Then as to their accompaniments. What has become a the accompaniments I do not quite know. I do not know whether this remark refers to the band or to the transport of supplies. The ancillary forces are, I presume, transport and other things—terms which, from a military point of -view, are equally not very well known. I challenge this statement of Mr. Haldane's. These are statements made by the Minister for War, who, presumably, is educating the country as to what we require; and I really think it does not come well from the noble Lord opposite to challenge us to go and preach propaganda in the country when—I must say it—we have such nonsense as this talked by a person of responsibility. Mr. Haldane has frequently talked about this "great Central Defence Force." I have frequently given your Lordships the facts about that force, and I do not propose to go over them again on this occasion. But when you have deducted the Expeditionary Force and the men who must go into the garrisons and who are not mobile, you come to a very small Central Defence Force in the end. Yet we are continually being told of this great Central Defence Force which is going to crush any possible invaders.

The next point raised by the noble Lord opposite was on the question of the relation of the defending power at home with our defence by sea. I have no doubt the noble Lord is a great authority on this matter; but may I read to your Lordships a couple of quotations on that point? The noble Lord said that all the Territorials had to do was to assume a great appearance of value, so that the Germans, or whoever intended invading us, would think twice, and then send no one over at all because they would be frightened of landing. That is what the noble Lord said. May I read to him what Mr. Asquith said on July 29, 1909, and I hope noble Lords opposite will remember this, because it does not come from this side of the House. This statement was made by Mr. Asquith after a very full investigation of the matter and after serious consideration of the question. This is what. Mr. Asquith said— With regard to the military aspect, it is, in consequence of the finding of tie' Defence Committee, the business of the War Office this is the important point— to see that we have, under all circumstances, a properly organised and properly equipped force capable of dealing effectively with a possible invasion by 70,000 men. My Lords, that is the point—" capable of dealing effectively with a possible invasion by 70,000 men." It is no good, when you are talking about dealing effectively with an invasion, speaking of defence manoeuvres such as the noble Lord who has just sat down mentioned. No campaign was ever gained by simply acting on the defensive. What we have to do is to so organise our forces that they are able to crush any force that comes over here—not merely to take the field against them, but to be able to attack and destroy that force. That is what we say the Territorial Army is unable to do.

We say the Territorial Army is unable to do that, in the first place, because the Artillery is not, we consider, up to standard. That was very thoroughly brought out the other night. by a noble Lord who is an Artillery officer, and who spoke most clearly on this subject. He pointed out the various weaknesses that existed in the Force, and although the noble Lord opposite says that it has this wonderful power of motion and that the Force can be organised in all respects, he must have forgotten that our machine guns are of the 1890 pattern; that the whole of our mobilisation equipment supposed to be provided by the Territorial Associations is not provided by them because they have not been given the money to do it; and, in addition, there are the several other points that the noble Earl, Lord Derby, raised and the further fact that the Staff is inadequate. Therefore, my Lords, if the Force is to take the field with success, all these things require attention. It may he possible for it to take the field with success in years to come, but to-day as a swift-moving, strong Force of fourteen Territorial Divisions it only exists in the imagination of the Secretary of State for War.

Before I sit down there is one other point. the noble Lord raised to which I desire to refer. He said that we should be certain to have a considerable amount of notice before any invading force set out from overseas, and he mentioned the fact that there would he a great collection of transports.- May I tell the noble Lord that I have personally counted the transports in the German ports on several occasions, and I can assure him that I have never known a time when the transports were not over 300,000 tons in the German ports. Whatever else may have been the result of the investigation which Lord Roberts made, it had this effect, that it knocked out a great many old figures; it knocked out the old idea that you had to have 5 tons to carry two men; and I think probably if you were to ask the military authorities to-day they would tell you that a ton per man is about what it would take the Germans to come over. Therefore if you admit that, there would only be required 70,000 tons—or we will say 120,000 tons to give a full margin—to bring over a force of 70,000 men. A great many times in every week there are 120,000 tons of fast-moving ships in the North Sea.

I do not wish to take up the whole question of invasion. I do not myself regard it as nearly the most important part of this big subject. I consider that far the most important part is the question of allowing our Expeditionary Force to go abroad. Although all of us here to-day may call ourselves believers in the Blue Water School, and may laugh at the idea of the Germans invading us, suppose we had trouble in India, or in Egypt, or in any other part of the world, do you mean to say that in the present state of things the people of England would allow this Expeditionary Force of 167,000 men to go abroad, especially as we believe that this suggested figure of 70,000 invaders is not a correct figure to-day? The figures upon which the Committee based their opinion were 1907 and. 1908 figures, and there is just as much chance to-day that the figure of 70,000 has considerably increased. As has already been pointed out, the figure went up between 1905 and 1908 from 10.000 to 70,000, and there is fully as much chance that the latter figure may now have gone up to 120,000.

THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD LUCAS)

My Lords, we had a debate on this subject. the other day, and I think we then confined ourselves almost entirely to a discussion of questions of detail, and this debate was reserved for discussing the general question. The noble Earl who inaugurated this debate has asked me several questions of detail, and I will answer him. But I propose not to deal with the many other points of detail which have been raised in this debate, because, after all, one cannot deal with both things together, at least without. taking up to an inordinate amount the time of the House. I will therefore just answer, if I may, the four questions the noble Earl put to me, and then confine myself entirely to the general question.

The noble Earl asked, first, how many men of the Territorial Force whose time expired last June have re-engaged. I find that of the men whose time expired during the last quarter, 17,591 left the Force, and 1,605 re-engaged.

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

Only 1,600 out of 17,000!

LORD LUCAS

Those are the. figures. Then the noble Earl asked how many Regular batteries would be mobilised. if the noble Earl means by that how many Regular batteries we are going to incorporate in the organisation of the Territorial Force, I reply to him that the answer is exactly what it was at the time he was at the War Office—none. We have never contemplated bringing into the Territorial Force units of the Regular Army. Then in regard to the practice of the Territorial Artillery, I would refer him, if I may, to the regulations of the Territorial Force with which he is no doubt familiar.

THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I have referred to those and I cannot get any light from them.

LORD LUCAS

If the noble Earl will write to me on the subject I will be very glad to give him the information in regard to the question of the horses allotted to the Territorial Artillery. As I have no doubt your Lordships are aware, there is a scheme at the present moment under discussion by the Army Council and the County Associations with. regard to all horses, not only for the Regulars, but for the Special Reserve and the Territorial Force, and when that is applied every unit of the Regulars, the Special Reserve, and the Territorials will be fully horsed. I think that deals with tie noble Earl's questions. The noble Earl, Lord Derby, raised the question of the mobility of the Territorial Force.

THE EARL OF DERBY

No, I did not raise it. It was the noble Lord, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, who did so by stating that it was a mobile Force.

LORD LUCAS

I do not want to quarrel over a word, but the noble Earl discussed the question of the mobility of the Territorial Force. After all, my Lords, we can discuss two separate things. One is the present state. of preparedness of the Territorial Force, and you may censure the War Office, if you think you have grounds for doing so, because of the fact that the whole of the arrangements for the Territorial Force are not complete. This is one question. The other question, which we are discussing to-day, I think, is the general question of the organisation of the Force. It is perfectly true that the Territorial Force is not entirely up to its establishment. There are certain things in which it is not yet complete. As the noble Earl know s, we are doing everything in our power to complete the supply of all those requirements. If you wish to discuss the question of the rapidity with which the Territorial Force is being brought to completion, let us by all means discuss it; but it does not come in on a question of this kind when we are discussing how far the present system is suitable for the needs of the country with regard to the resisting of invasion.

THE EARL OF DERBY

We should never have brought the question forward in any way, but Lord Ashby St. Ledgers made the statement that the Territorials were mobile in every respect. I think if such a statement had gone out to the country it would have given a very false impression of what is the case. The noble Lord, I dare say, is doing everything he can to make it mobile, but I think he will agree with nip that in neither horses, guns, wagons, nor equipment is it mobile at the present moment.

LORD LUCAS

I have a very clear impression of what my noble friend Lord Ashby St. Ledgers said. He did indicate that he was dealing only with the general question; that is to say, with regard to the Territorial Force in its conception and in what we mean to make it—namely, a Force organised so as to be able to take part in the field of operations.

THE EARL OF DERBY

I dare say that is what the noble Lord intends to make it, but will he say distinctly "Yes" or "No" whether it is mobile at the present moment?

LORD LUCAS

It entirely depends.

THE EARL OF DERBY

Can you move a Division at all at the present moment?

LORD LUCAS

It entirely depends upon what powers we take advantage of. We have powers under the Army Act for requisitioning horses, and if we choose to put those powers into force we can supply the whole of the Territorial Divisions, and we can equally mobilise all the vehicles and everything else we want. So that the answer is "Yes"; if it is a question of having to do it in case of emergency the Territorial Force at the present moment is undoubtedly a mobile force. The noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, told us he was not going to draw a red herring across the track of this debate. But he drew something across the track which might have proved a red whale, because he opened up the general question of the organisation of the Army and discussed the general advantages of an Army Council and a Commander-in-Chief, and finally he discussed whether it was or was not advisable for us to copy the Army system of Germany in 1870. I can only say, with c regard to that, that we took over the Army organisation as we found it in those respects. Noble Lords opposite who are now impeaching the present system were the people who, after all, put the present system into force. We have found it work extremely well, and we are not in the least disposed to go back upon it; and when the noble Earl recommends us to adopt the system of Germany in 1870 I can only say that, as far as my recollection carries me, our system at the present moment is very closely allied to that of Germany. Germany was the pioneer in doing the very thing which the Esher Committee laid down, which was to define and to separate the functions which are carried out by the different officers at the head of the Army. However, that is really off the point. But when the noble Earl, Lord Derby, suggests to us that we should have, first of all, a statement with regard to the efficiency of the Territorial Force produced and signed by the Army Council, and, secondly, that we should bring in Lord Kitchener and ask him to make a report upon this question, I must say that I think the noble Earl as a member of the Government which brought in this very change, known as the reorganisation, which followed the Report of the Esher Committee, is showing some impatience—

THE EARL OF DERBY

I only want it with regard to the Territorials.

LORD LUCAS

I know; but under the scheme then suggested you provided everything required under the present system. You appointed an Inspector-General for the very purpose of doing what you are now asking should be done. To bring in people outside the Army Council, who are not what you may call the officers of the Army Council for this purpose is to upset the whole of the system, and it also —although this is a matter. I go into with some hesitation—might lead to very serious results affecting the general responsibility of the Secretary of State for War. I do not wish to discuss that question.

TEE EARL OF DERBY

I should like very much to get an answer to this question: Does the Inspector-General of the Forces, Sir John French, inspect Auxiliary Forces, and does he make any report on their efficiency as a whole, and, if so, is it of such a character that it can be laid before this House?

LORD LUCAS

Sir John French does inspect them, and he has inspected practically the whole of the Territorial Force by this time. The result of his inspections last year was presented to Parliament. That was a departure from the ordinary rule. I dare say the noble Earl will remember that the point was considered by the Committee, and their view, which was adopted by the Government of the day, was that it was of the utmost importance that the Inspector-General's reports should be looked upon as documents which ought not to be made public. Their view was that they were confidential documents for the. use of the Army Council, and that if they were made public the value of them might, to a certain extent, be lost.

Now, my Lords, I come to the general question which the noble Earl raised. I have remarked before, and I certainly repeat it again, that I do think in these debates, of which we have had several in this House, we suffer from the fact that we do not get any opinion stated from what is, after all, the most important point of view—that is, the naval point of view—on this question. I remember the great discussion we had last, year, and in that and other discussions we had no naval opinion quoted to us with regard to this matter. As has been repeatedly laid down on this question when it has been authoritatively dealt with, invasion is first and foremost and primarily a naval question, and not a military one. We have not yet received the naval point of view with regard to it, and until we have received that point of view I think it is impossible for us to judge. After all, one can only regard this question when one considers the whole military situation and the whole naval situation at any given moment. The question of whether the Territorial Force can, or cannot, shoot at a particular moment is not the question that is going to determine the subject of invasion. The question that is going to determine the possibility of invasion is how far you use your Regular Army, your Territorial Force, and your Navy together; how far you make them work for one object; and how far you are able, if I may say so, to break them up and let them pursue different, objects.

What are the conditions which everybody agrees are necessary to make invasion possible at all? There are three simultaneous conditions necessary to make invasion possible—that the Regular Army is out of the country, that the Territorial Force is in the very earliest stage of its embodiment, and therefore not sufficiently hardened. up, and that the Navy has been got out of the way, or has left the coast clear. Unless all those three things occur together invasion is not a possibility. If we lose the command of the sea, if the enemy has free command of the sea and is able to pass troops into this country, then we have always considered that no measure of Conscription will save us. It is much more likely then to be a question of starvation than of fighting it out. The game is up when you get to that stage.

The point of risk is the temporary move which allows the enemy to slip a certain number of invaders through—I will not say losing the command of the sea. That is the point where the risk is said to lie, and if that does occur, if the enemy can temporarily or momentarily slip his transports through with an invading force on board, then it is a question of relying on the home defence of this country. That is the position we have to meet. The moment that this country would be in danger from an invasion of that kind is confined to the time when you had sent the whole of the Regular Army out of the country and the whole of the Territorial Force was still in the condition of suffering from lack of training. If the Government of the day decided to send the whole of the Regular Army abroad, all the six Divisions, and practically denude this country of Regulars before the Territorial Army had had more than a very short time of training on embodiment, then a heavy responsibility would fall upon the Navy to see that no opportunity occurred for invasion by a force of 70,000, if you accept 70,000 as the figure, although there is a great deal to be said with regard to it. But, my Lords, nobody realises that more clearly than the Navy do at the present time, and if the point one hears so often brought forward in this context is true, that to impose upon the Navy the duty of concentrating itself upon the defence of this country, or, at any rate, of preventing even the possibility of such a Force passing through, hampers them, if the Navy thought that was a thing which hampered their movements, which destroyed their power of defeating the enemy's fleets, we should have had some time or other a demand from the Navy that they should be released from that duty, and that we should institute in this country a system under winch they would never have to undertake such a duty.

I think it is a significant fact that we have never had from the Navy any demand of that kind. The Navy have never asked us to indulge in any form of Conscription, or anything of that kind which is going to put us at the beginning of the campaign in the position in which we shall certainly be at the end of six months when the Territorial Force. has had its training on embodiment. Therefore, my Lords, in other words the Navy realise the responsibility that may be thrown upon them if we choose to send the whole of our Expeditionary Force straight away out of this country. They accept the obligation that it casts upon them, and they do so knowing that they can fulfil it without its interfering with or impairing the general strategical conception that they may have for the purpose of war. That is a point which has never been dealt with by people who have taken this into consideration. Whenever the naval question has been raised, noble Lords opposite who are critics of the present system have said we cannot have a system which is going to tether the Navy to the coasts of this country. The Navy realise that they will have to guard the coasts of this country from possible invasion; they do not protest against it; they do not try to induce the War Office to adopt. measures which will enable them to get. out of this responsibility; and they are perfectly prepared to conduct their campaign and work out their strategic operations while at the same time protecting our coasts against the danger of invasion. - That is the position with regard to this question.

We have been asked to-day whether under all conditions the Territorial Force is capable of resisting an invasion of 70,000 men. I know that my noble friend the Leader of the House is going to explain this figure of 70,000 men, and all that it means. It has been accepted as the fixed and settled figure in regard to these things. But it is nothing of the kind. I do not think the Navy accept it at all; and whilst the Navy do not consider that anything like 70,000 men can invade this country, we, on the other hand, have made our preparations so that we can have an adequate force to enable us to deal with a larger number than that. So that you have what I may call a double overlap to make for absolute safety. My Lords, you ask whether the Force that we should have in this country on the outbreak of war would be sufficient to deal with an invasion of this kind. You have three possible alternatives. You may have the whole of the Regular Army in this country, when, of course, we could unquestionably resist a much larger invasion than that. You have the possibility of having sent out of this country four out of the six Divisions, which would leave you with two Divisions in this country. Again I say we have no doubt in our minds of being able to resist an invasion of the kind. Then you have the third alternative, which is if the whole of the Regular Army has been sent out of this country. Under those circumstances you have, as my noble friend has already pointed out, the whole of the Territorial Force; you have the whole of your Special Reserve, because, after all, at the beginning of war before the Territorial Force is hardened up you have not begun to make calls on your drafts. You have a considerable number of Reservists and young soldiers and units of the Regular Army which consist of at least one Brigade of Infantry and certain details that I have not sufficiently in my mind to be able to state to the noble Earl. But you have altogether a force of between 350,000 and 400,000 men.

With regard to the power of that force to resist an invasion of 70,000 men, I would like to recall to your Lordships' attention the speech which Mr. Balfour made in 1905 dealing with this question, and especially that part of it in which he said that in order to calculate our greatest period of military weakness he took the very worst week during the South African war, when we had extremely few Regulars left in this country. We had a certain number of batteries of Artillery and a certain number of regiments of Infantry, most of them being divisional battalions. We had the Militia less the Militia Reserve, and we had Volunteers who had not been called up and therefore had had no training on embodiment, and out of the whole of that Force we had nothing that we could constitute in any way at all into a mobile Force. The condition of this country in those days was considerably weaker from the military point of view, both in numbers and organisation, than it could possibly be under the present system. Mr. Balfour stated in 1905 that they asked Lord Roberts on the Committee of Imperial Defence what was the smallest army which could possibly invade this country, and he replied that 70,000 was the lowest number, and that would be a forlorn hope. That is an opinion to which we all of us bow in a matter of this kind. If Lord Roberts thought that in a condition of far greater military weakness than we can possibly be in at the present moment, weaker in every way, in numbers, organisation, equipment, and everything, 70,000 was a forlorn hope, we can say with great confidence, taking our military position at its very weakest-. at the present moment, that an invasion, of 70,000 would not succeed. That is our view of the case—that at no period would. an invasion of 70,000 men succeed, and that we have at all times a military organisation in this country capable of withstanding a larger force than that.

I have only to say this further. As noble Lords have pointed out, these things do change, but we have not yet got to anything like the bottom of the resources of a voluntary system. The voluntary system' is elastic. We may or may not be near the bottom of it—I do not like to venture an opinion upon that—but even when we have got to the end of the number of men available for home defence whom we get under the voluntary system, there is still the enormous reservoir of men that we have not begun to tap yet—namely, the Reserve. I do not know whether any noble Lords were present the other day at that extremely interesting parade of the Surrey Veterans. No one who was present could fail to have been impressed by it, and to agree with what was said by the General, probably above all others the man most fitted to form an opinion on this particular thing—Sir Ian Hamilton. They would have realised what an extraordinary reservoir of first-class fighting material you have in those Reservists. We consider our present numbers sufficient for the safety of this country, but should it become necessary to change them—and I do not see why it should be—you have a reservoir there of anything between 100,000 and 200,000 men whom you could equip, and. who would take their places in the field of operations. They would not require an organisation in the same form that the Territorial Force has, because they would be admirably equipped to go into garrisons, and you would thereby be able to set free a large number of your mobile troops who at present fill the garrisons. If it became necessary to do so, you could enormously strengthen the whole of your Home Defence Force, and you could strengthen it with what is undoubtedly first-class material. Therefore, my Lords, we are perfectly convinced of this, that not only is our present system the right one, but that under it we have got sufficient forces, and forces of the right kind, to make this country perfectly safe against invasion. The advantage we have is that the system is not by any means a hard-and-fast one, but one that is elastic and capable of expansion. Therefore I reply to the noble Earl, with great confidence, that the measures we have taken for securing this country against possible invasion are sufficient and satisfactory.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

My Lords, I intervene at this stage merely in deference to the speech of the noble Lord who has just sat down. I fully re-echo what fell from my noble friend Lord Derby when he congratulated the House on the entry of a new element into the debate in the person of the noble Lord opposite, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, and I am sure the speech he made has added to the interest of this discussion. But I cannot help feeling that this debate should not be entirely restricted to the Front Benches. We have noble Lords in the House of great authority on this subject. For instance, I see in his place the noble Viscount Lord Esher. There is no man in this House who has had more to do with the organisation of the Territorial Force than Lord Esher. He has the great authority also of being a member of the Defence Committee. He was Chairman of the Committee that was so well known as the Duma, which originally brought together a large number of those who have since been instrumental in working the Territorial Force, and I cannot help wishing, in these very intricate matters on which there is so divergent an opinion expressed between the two sides of the House, that we sometimes might have the advantage of the counsel of the noble Viscount, who speaks from an absolutely independent position, and who, in such a debate as that which was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth, the other day, would certainly have been able to tell us the state of the Territorial Force in Ldonon with an authority to which none of us on this side of the House can pretend.

I say that the more from a feeling that it is most desirable, if we possibly can, to come to common ground, because I regret as much as anybody the controversy which has arisen as to the relative strength of the forces now and a few years ago. I am not going into that question again this evening, though if at any time the noble Lord opposite is willing to clear up the question with me in such a manner that we may arrive at an authoritative statement, I can only tell him that the figures which cause me to differ so very much from his conclusions are entirely at his disposal. The sole object which I have in this matter is not to prove the superiority of one scheme over another scheme, or of one system over another system, but I am absolutely convinced that in the desire which the present Secretary of State has shown during his period at the War Office to advance to the very best of his ability the Volunteer or Territorial Force, he has fallen into the pitfall which lay before every Secretary of State, and which every Secretary of State successively has had to try to avoid— namely, of doing all for the Force which is the most popular with those who have to vote the money, but which does involve, and has involved as I maintain in this case, a serious reduction and weakening of the Regular Forces, on which, when emergency comes, you will always have to depend at the first stroke. I do not labour that point.. I have made it before, but I am absolutely convinced that when the history of this Administration comes to be written., the fact that the experienced troops, especially the Artillery, have been reduced, and that in a moment of emergency you will not be able to make them up, will stand out more strikingly even than the advance of the Territorial Forces.

I cannot help feeling at this moment, even after the very direct speeches which have been made, that we have still not wholly succeeded in conveying to the minds of the spokesmen of the Government what it is that we desire. I was quite unaware that Lord Portsmouth intended to place on record his opinion of the inadequacy of the Territorial Force. I followed every word of the speech of the noble Lord the Under-Secretary, and I fully realise that he endeavoured to assure us by quotations which do not seem to me in all respects to carry the effect which he desires to make. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, adjured us not to admonish the Government, but to try to convince the country, and he told us that it was first of all a question of the Navy, and not of the Army. But the whole point of the speeches of the noble Earl, of my noble friend beside me, and of Lord Lovat, seems to have been missed by the Under-Secretary. The point of their speeches was that after a review of the whole naval and military position, the Prime Minister came down and told the House of Commons, speaking as President of the Defence Committee, that a degree of danger existed which a previous Prime Minister declared in his opinion did not exist, and that what the War Office had to do was to provide against an attack by 70,000 men, which was not the figure, or anything like the figure, adopted three years ago. I think it is a mistake that we should—it is almost impossible to avoid arguing these matters on figures—tie ourselves too closely to these figures. They must be mutable. They are subject to all sorts of considerations. But when they are given to us on such very high authority, we as an Opposition have a right to ask simply the fair question, "Can you make good your resistance to that body of men?" I throw all the rest aside. I do regret, as I said before, that there is a tendency to exaggeration OD the Front Bench opposite in this respect. I am quite certain that when Lord Ashby St. Ledgers rises to-morrow morning, he will regret that in the fluency of his speech he told us that the Territorial Force was a complete military engine.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

One of them.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

I think lie also told us that all its accessories are ready.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS

May I interrupt, the noble Viscount? I think it only fair to say, as has already been pointed out, that I was discussing the organisation of the Territorial Army, and not minute details, nor how far the Territorial Force had achieved what it is in process of achieving.

THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH

I made a note of the words that fell from the noble Lord. He represented the Territorial Force as a mobile Force, and said that all the accessories were ready. As representing the Territorial Force, I know that is very far from being the fact.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

My Lords, here are we in the High Court of Parliament having these things said from the Government Bench; and they are taken up and believed in and made the subject of universal laudation and cheers at Liberal meetings. It is said, "Look what has been put before us. We have a complete military engine with all its accessories." The noble Lord now says he only means that the organisation is complete; that there is something which there was not before (and I pay a tribute to it, as I have done before) which enables it to be better used. Only yesterday I received a letter from one of the supporters of the Secretary of State in the county of Haddington asking, "Why is it that Lord Roberts and Lord Lovat are always attacking what the Secretary of State tells us is the fact, and endeavouring to show that it is not so?" That is why we have from time to time, and as I think too frequently, to bring forward these points; and I confess that I still want to know why the Government cannot give us some military authority on this subject.

I do not ask for a single thing which I have not myself been asked for over and over again as Secretary of State for War, and asked by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, whom I am glad to say I would far sooner meet when he is shooting at me from in front than when he used to fire at me from behind. I was asked over and over again in old days, "Have you the authority of the Commander-in-Chief for what you have been saying?" And I have been asked, "Has the Adjutant-General, Sir Redvers Buller, agreed with that statement?" In the days of the South African war, and even before the war, we were never allowed to make these statements in the House of Commons on civil authority if we could not support them by military authority.

We have had a very serious statement from Lord Portsmouth this evening. He sat on the Army Council for two or three years, and lie has told us that you could not get a military opinion, because the Army Council were the creatures of the Secretary of State. I was sorry for that expression; and if it is a justifiable one, then all possible belief in what comes to us on the authority of the Army Council must go; and it must be put down solely to the authority of the Secretary of State. The noble Earl told us that the Secretary of State keeps from the Army Council any subject that he does not choose to submit to it. My Lords, that is a most remarkable revelation. It is absolutely novel. It was absolutely unknown in the days when the Army Council did not exist in the present sense as a statutory body like the Admiralty. And this increases our desire to know whether these distinguished military men do believe that the Territorial Army, or what is left after the Expeditionary Force has gone abroad, is a sufficient and efficient force to deal with an invasion of 70,000 men.

The noble Lord the Under-Secretary told us several times that it is for the Government of the day to decide whether the Expeditionary Force is to go out of the country at all, and in what numbers. That may be; but there are contingencies in which the hands of the Government will be forced, and they will need every soldier they can muster from the whole of the six Divisions. A bolt from the blue, as was pointed out in this debate was the case in the war of France and Germany, may occur at any time, which might plunge us into war; and I do assure your Lordships that you must consider, if you are going to send a military force abroad, what is left behind. I know there are a large number of troops. The Duke of Bedford the other night explained how those would be made up; that some battalions a thousand strong would have very few efficient men, and not half their officers. That sort of thing is no use. That is not going to frighten an enemy from invading us. It comes down to this question, Can the Territorial Force as at present organised, with the degree of efficiency which you can hope from it and with the numbers you believe it is going to rise to (although I am afraid we have got pretty near the bottom of voluntary recruiting), and with the Artillery it has got, deal with the forces it is suggested it could deal with?

Only one other word on this subject. As the Regular Army was organised by the late Government our intention was, and the numbers show it, that there should be one-third of the Force available to be mobilised at home to resist an invasion of 120,000 men. You have not got that now; and it lies upon you, I venture to say, to show us, on military authority, that you can still face the possibility you have to meet. Names have been brought before your Lordships to-night—the name of Lord Kitchener and others. I do not wish to press for any name. I cannot help remembering a famous speech of the present Secretary of State in the year 1902, in which he said that he despaired of the War Office, and that the only thing which could possibly make it right was to turn Lord Kitchener loose in it. I confess that in the debates we have had during the last few weeks it has occurred to me once or twice that that opportunity has come to the Secretary of State, and that instead of immuring Lord Kitchener in a fortress, the better way would be to turn him loose in the War Office. What we want is to know, on military authority, whether what the Prime Minister has told us of the possible emergency we may have to face is accepted. We want to know whether the noble Lord can tell us that high military authorities concur with the speeches which have been made over and over again by the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary, and can assure us that if that number of men were landed to-morrow and our Expeditionary Force had left the country, we should be able to meet them.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, my noble friend Viscount Midleton has made an appeal to me to intervene in this debate. I wish in a few sentences to explain to your Lordships why, in my opinion, it is quite impossible for me to intervene effectively. The questions which your Lordships have been discussing are mainly questions which have been discussed in the Committee of Imperial Defence, of which I am a member, and are likely to be discussed again. I am quite sure that my noble friend Viscount Midleton, if he was sitting upon the Front Bench as a Minister, would be the first to admit that it is not within my province to discuss in this House any question which is a matter for consideration by the Committee of Imperial Defence. The proper spokesman of that Committee in this House must be one of the Ministers of the Crown; and I do not think that it is possible for me, under these circumstances, to refer to the main subject which has been discussed by your Lordships this evening.

But with regard to the London Territorial Force my responsibility is somewhat different, and I do not say that upon that question I cannot speak with complete frankness to your Lordships. The London County Association, like the other County Associations in this country, were made responsible for the raising of a definite number of men. I believe that the efforts of the London County Association have been as successful as those of any Association in this country, and that on the whole the work of that Association has been as well done as the work of any other Association. The net result is known, I believe, to all members of this House who take an interest in these questions. We have not succeeded in raising the full number of men allocated to the county of London. We have raised something like eighty-six or eighty-seven per cent., but we have not been able to raise the full number. It is also a somewhat distressing fact that in the last few months, which is the best recruiting season, we have not only failed to increase our numbers, but our numbers have somewhat diminished. Of course it is a matter of personal opinion, and it can be contradicted by my noble friend Lord Lucas; but in my opinion we have raised the maximum number of men which we shall be able to raise in London. I do not believe that time is likely to increase the number of Territorial troops who can be raised in this country, and that is a very pertinent fact to which His Majesty's Government and this House ought to give the gravest consideration.

If I am right, and if we have raised the full number of men we are likely to raise in the county of London, the same reasons which in my view will prevent us from increasing that number possibly apply to other County Associations. I think, therefore, that it is as well for His Majesty's Government to face the fact that the total number of Territorial troops now raised in this country, which amounts to something like 275,000 men and which corresponds remarkably with the numbers of the Volunteers before the great change was made, is likely to be the maximum number which can be raised under the existing conditions and under a voluntary system. It is important, and indeed almost essential, that in considering all these questions of defence, His Majesty's Government and the country should understand that main fact. My Lords, beyond that I do not think it would be desirable for me to add anything to the debate which has taken place this evening.

LORD RAGLAN

My Lords, at this late hour I do not propose to detain your Lordships more than a moment or two. I wish to express my great interest in what has fallen from the noble Viscount on the Cross Benches. I have had the same feeling myself, that we have got to the utmost number that the voluntary system will produce unless we reduce the training so as to make it an absolute farce. I was therefore very glad to hear the noble Viscount make those remarks, which I consider the most important that have been made during the course of this debate. I wish to allude to one or two things that were said by the noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State for War. If I may be allowed to say so, they seemed to me to be very remarkable statements. First with regard to the Army Council, the noble Lord said that the system of the Council was working with perfect satisfaction to everybody. I can assure the noble Lord that if he were to collect the officers of the Army outside the War Office who are in favour of the present conditions he could put them in an exceedingly small room. I very much doubt whether outside the War Office itself there are many people in the country who have much confidence in the Army Council, and I am convinced that such a system as exists would not last forty-eight hours in a time of actual war and that you would have to revert with speed and confusion to the former system which obtained before the Commander-in Chief was abolished.

The Under-Secretary of State for War complained that we did not on these Benches when raising these questions make sufficient of the naval question. Not many of us, I am afraid, are naval experts, but we must, of course, all recognise that the defence of this country depends on the forces of the Crown as a whole, whether those forces are trained to fight on shore or on sea. The defence of the Empire as a whole must rest on three branches—the naval branch, the force that fights on the sea; the force that fights at home; and the force that fights abroad; and what many of us feel is that with regard to the Expeditionary Force and the force for home defence the Government are on the horns of a great dilemma, because they cannot send the Expeditionary Force abroad until they have trained the home force sufficiently to defend these shores, and they will not be able to embody and sufficiently train the force for home defence as long as the Expeditionary Force remains at home. That seems to me the dilemma you will always be faced with. We were very badly placed in the course of the South African war by the refusal of the Volunteer Force to do any permanent duty. The result of this would be the unfortunate tying of the Navy to the shores of this country, which we would all most deeply deplore, and I am sure nobody more than the naval officers themselves. The Navy require a free hand to enable them to carry out properly their strategic work of making the shores of the enemy the frontiers of this country, and therefore the nation must be satisfied that they have a sufficient defensive force inside these islands. Let us look at what has been done by the Secretary of State for War for the actual protection of the shores of this country. He has abolished, first of all, the Militia, and established the Special Reserve, which consists of about half the number of men that the Militia consisted of—

LORD LUCAS

In establishments, you mean, not strength?

LORD RAGLAN

Yes, in strength.

LORD LUCAS

How does the noble Lord make that out?

LORD RAGLAN

The Militia consisted of 100,000 men.

LORD LUCAS

There were only 85,000 when we took them over.

LORD RAGLAN

You had been threatening it for a considerable time.

LORD LUCAS

No, we bad not. It had been threatened for a long time before we came upon the scene.

LORD RAGLAN

The noble Lord will find of necessity after a war that a force of that sort must dwindle to a certain extent. The men have had a long embodiment which they did not expect, and it takes a certain time to get over this. As a matter of fact, you have now got about 60,000 men in the Special Reserve, most of them old Militiamen, and nearly the whole of those who are not Militiamen are men who have failed to pass the medical examination for the Regular Army. Then you have swept away the defence of your ports, the submarine miners together with the whole of the garrisons of the forts and the Militia Artillery, and you have no force raised to fill their places. The noble Lord says, "we are all right; we have got the veterans." I must say that of all the curious remarks that have been made, the one about the veterans was the most curious, because the noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State for War has assisted to drive out of the Special Reserve all the veterans that existed. Anybody over thirty is too antique to serve in the Special Reserve; and I cannot understand if a man is not fit to serve in the Special Reserve why he should be fit to serve in some other force which does not exist. The noble Lord says the Special Reserve are better trained than the old Militia. All I can say is, the Special Reserve does not have anything like the collective training that the old Militia had. It has had twenty-five per cent. of its collective training knocked off, and it is infinitely worse off in officers and must be worse off also in non-commissioned officers. The twenty-five per cent. less collective training will affect the non-commissioned officers much more than the others. The net result, after the juggle of figures has been gone through, is that the Regular Army has been largely reduced and the Militia abolished.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE)

My Lords, I feel disposed to apologise for intervening at this late hour of the debate, particularly as it has so often fallen to me to close debates on this subject; but several points have been raised that make it imperative for me to say one or two words. We must all recognise the marked ability with which the noble Earl opposite, Lord Portsmouth, introduced this question, and perhaps he will allow me to say that I do not think the case which he desired to put forward could have been more forcibly put. 1 also recognise the ever-increasing interest which the noble Earl takes in these military questions since he ceased to be directly responsible for them in this House. But I confess that the noble Earl, since he crossed the floor, has adopted some formidable opinions; he has joined the school of blood and iron; and he holds up for our admiration, and possibly also for our imitation, the process which went on in Prussia during the sixties in the formation of I suppose, the most formidable engine of war which has ever been created—the German Army. I was sorry, however, that the noble Earl thought it necessary to speak in quite such forcible terms of the Army Council. It is quite legitimate for any man who holds those views to deplore the change that was made by the abolition of the office of Commander-in Chief. That, I think, is an arguable matter. But surely it is possible to hold those views without saying, what I feel certain is not the case but which the noble Earl seemed to imply, that the Army Council, as at present constituted, consists of people who either do not possess or do not dare to express any opinion in opposition to that of the Secretary of State for War. I have no knowledge, naturally, of the inner workings of the Army Council, but I cannot believe that that is the case. I also cannot help remembering that in the days when there was a Commander-in-Chief, as the noble Marquess opposite knows very well, there were occasions from time to time when difficulties arose between that officer and the Government of the day.

The point to which I particularly wish to allude, and which is the real reason for my rising, is this question of the 70,000 invaders, which has loomed so large in the course of the present debate. The noble Earl opposite, Lord Derby, implied, in fact stated, that in 1905 when Mr. Balfour made his famous statement in another place, it was assumed that the only attack which could be made upon this country was by a force of 10,000 men, and that now that number had risen to 70,000. The noble Earl went on to say that the Territorial Force having been fixed as an establishment of 315,000 on the basis of an invading force of 10,000, it ought now, on that showing, to be considerably larger. Well, clearly it ought; because in that case it ought to number no less than 2,205,000 men. Therefore I think the noble Earl will see that there was not a very definite foundation for that statement of his.

THE EARL OF DERBY

May I interrupt the noble Earl? I put it on the statement of the noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, who said that the Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill was framed on the basis that the Force would have to resist a raid of 10,000 men.

THE EARL OF CREWE

I am no authority on military subjects, but I think it will be generally agreed that if the possible force which could land in this country were finally and definitely limited to 10,000 men, an establishment of 315,000 of even only half-trained men would be considered somewhat excessive. As to this number of 70,000, my noble friend behind me stated the genesis of that figure. It was first mentioned by Mr. Balfour in another place, on the authority of Lord Roberts, as the smallest force with which an enemy would invade this country with a view of conquering it—that is to say, with a view of taking London—and Lord Roberts regarded such an attack as in the nature of a forlorn hope. Therefore if that is taken as the lowest invasion figure, every figure below that must have been taken to constitute a raid—that is to say, an attack not made with the hope of conquering the country, but merely with a view of causing alarm, and, if possible, of course, of escaping after the injury was done. Therefore when the noble Earl, Lord Derby, said in the course of the debate on July 11, if I may quote his words— A few years ago the Blue Water School prevailed to such an extent that it was questionable whether a dinghy's crew could be landed on our shores. That gradually went up to 10,000, and it has now gone up to 70,000 men, which 1 believe is the recognised figure at which a raid eau be put at the present moment, if the noble Earl will excuse my saying so, that is not really the case. This figure of 70,000 was used, on Lord Roberts's authority, as the lowest figure at which an invasion could possibly be taken. It was taken over, so to speak, for the purposes of argument by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in the same debate, and it has so far held the field ever since. But, as my noble friend behind me desired to point out, it must not be taken as the opinion of the Defence Committee, on the authority of the statement made by the Prime Minister on July 29 of last year, that they suppose for a moment that a force of 70,000 men can be landed at any time on these shores. The figure of 70,000 was, I think, used once more in this connection, because the result of the inquiry of which the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, has spoken undoubtedly showed a certain alteration in the conditions. It showed a greater power of massing tonnage in certain foreign ports, and it also showed a marked increase in the capacity of ships by which a raiding or invading force could be brought over. It was therefore necessary to increase to a considerable extent the raiding figure, if I may put it so, of 10,000 men. It was considerably increased, and it was assumed for the purposes of arriving at full security that two or three even of such raiding forces might be successfully landed on our shores, thus bringing the number up, not to 70,000 men, but within measurable distance of it; and the figure of 70,000, so far as I know, was only used to represent a margin over the figure of a possibility of two or even three combined raids evading the Fleet. It certainly was never the intention of my right hon. friend the Prime Minister, and I think anybody who reads the speech and reads that observation with its context and does not rely on it as quoted, will see that it is not fair to put the construction upon it that it is supposed that a single force all coming together of 70,000 men would, in the opinion of the Defence Committee, have a reasonable chance of evading the Fleet. I was anxious to make this clear, because I can see from what has been said in almost every speech that a wrong construction has been put upon the speech, and it has been assumed as something of a probability that 70,000 men could practically at any moment be dumped down at some point or other on the shores of these islands.

I might also mention, as another caution, that for the purposes of argument it seems to be assumed, supposing a war were to be declared on Monday, that the whole of our Expeditionary Force, the whole of the six Divisions, would start on Tuesday, and that we might be invaded on Wednesday morning. My Lords, things do not happen in that manner. In the first place—and, of course, I say this with the caution with which it is necessary to speak of all political contingencies—I confess I cannot foresee a state of things which would make it imperative, as seems to be assumed by noble Lords, to send the whole six Divisions out of the country at once at the beginning of a war. I cannot conceive any political combination, particularly in the case of our being at war without any ally, which would cause us to desire to send the whole of the six Divisions out of the country at one moment; and therefore, so far, the argument that you may have denuded the country of Regular troops without having subjected your Territorial Force to a period of training, seems to me not so strong as I quite admit on paper it appears to be. As a matter of practical politics, I confess it does not seem to me that that is a contingency which is likely to occur, although, of course, noble Lords reviewing the whole political field may reach a different opinion. I think it is quite clear—and I make a present of this statement to noble Lords opposite—that if the danger were supposed to be imminent not more than four of the Divisions would be allowed to leave the country until the Territorial Force had received what is regarded as an adequate training. I must say again that it appears to me noble Lords opposite prove too much. The noble and gallant Field Marshal is not in his place, but he doubles the invading number and puts it at 150,000 men. If that number could be landed on these shores then I confess it seems to me that the only course you could take is to do what Continental nations have to do—that is to say, guard your frontier with Regular troops; you would require a couple of Army Corps, or whatever it may be, mobilised on your frontier because your sea frontier had, in effect, become a land frontier. My Lords, that is a contingency which, if we had to face it, we should no doubt face whatever the cost; but it is not the belief of the military authorities, speaking generally, that such a contingency is likely. We agree that if a large invading force can be landed in this country, the Territorial Force, after having undergone a period of training, might not conceivably be adequate at any rate for that complete victory which you would desire; but that, of course, remains the point of difference, not I think so much between us and noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite, as between us and some other noble Lords in the House.

I may be excused if I do not follow the noble Lord who spoke last into the detailed criticism which he made on the present condition of the Special Reserve and of the Territorial Army. I do not think that my noble friend behind me, the Under-Secretary of State for War, was disposed, as far as I could gather, to accept all those allegations of the noble Lord as being thoroughly accurate. There is one other point with which I wish to deal, that is the demand which has been made by several noble Lords, including the noble Viscount opposite, Lord Midleton, for the testimony of a military authority with regard to the present condition of the Territorial Force. I confess I cannot think that that is a reasonable demand. The Territorial Force has only been in existence for two years, and although by common admission there are gaps to be filled—and I do not deny that some of the gaps may be important—by the testimony of military authorities outside the War Office I may mention that continual progress is being made towards a condition of efficiency. I entirely deprecate the practice of asking in either House of Parliament for the individual opinions of soldiers at the War Office. The noble Viscount. said that he was continually subjected to requisitions of that kind when he was at. the War Office. Well, as that happened some time ago I have no hesitation in saying that I think the demands made on him were thoroughly improper so far as they related to this particular subject. I do not think it is reasonable or right that individual opinions, either of soldiers at the War Office or of sailors at the Admiralty, should be demanded in support of the policy of the Government of the day. I think it is assumed that as long as they stay at the offices they give their advice, and that, in my opinion, is as far as anybody outside is entitled to go.

I have only one more observation to make, and that is with regard to the interesting remarks of my noble friend on the Cross Benches, Lord Esher. He seemed to believe, at any rate as regards London, and also, probably, as regards other parts of England, that the expansion of the Territorial Force had reached its limit. I always pay the highest attention, and so I am sure do we all, to the opinion of my noble friend. But it strikes me, looking at the matter from outside, that when he save this he says it speaking of the existing conditions exactly as they are; and if it should be found necessary or desirable at any time to further expand the Territorial Force, I have very little doubt that if you are prepared to spend more money on it the thing could be done. What I have no doubt produces the limitation of the Territorial Force at this moment is the fact that the Secretary of State for War, like other people, has to work with a limited sum of money; and if it should be found that the Force does not expand to the full establishment, or to a larger number still should the country require that, the country will have to consider whether it is prepared to pay more for a different article. That is a matter upon which the country always has to make up its mind, and when the time comes I have no doubt. it will do so. I have nothing more to add. I certainly do not deprecate these debates, because on points such as the one with regard to the 70,000 invading force, as to which your Lordships opposite seem to have drawn an erroneous deduction from what was said by my right hon. friend in another place, we are glad to have the opportunity of correcting any misconceptions.

LORD LOVAT

My Lords, I wish to call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the following statement of Mr. Haldane on Tuesday, 8th March, in reference to an inquiry by Sir Samuel Scott as to the strength and composition of the Central Home Defence Force: "Is it supposed that all the troops in the garrisons would sit still? I should think they would flock to re-inforce the Central Force"; and to ask the Under-Secretary of State for War what is the exact meaning of Mr. Haldane's statement.

We understand that these troops are not mobile, so that I suppose the term "flock" is a very excellent method of describing them. As well as the difficulty of actually getting from place to place there seems to be this further difficulty, that should they leave the garrisons of these places unprotected there might be a considerable danger to Naval Arsenals and to the country. The presumption is that if a garrison is put in a place it is meant to he held.

LORD LUCAS

My Lords, I would like to answer the noble Lord's Question by asking him another. Is it really worth his while to take up the time of the House in putting down Questions of this kind, because, even if there was no rule of secrecy, which he knows very well I have to observe with regard to our mobilisation arrangements, it would, from the very nature of the question, be absolutely impossible for me to say what would or would not be done in the event of a hostile force landing on these shores. The measures that would be taken to meet that force would have to depend entirely on the nature of the circumstances under which the invasion was made. We may be perfectly certain of two things—that whoever was responsible or in supreme command would make every possible effort to do everything that was necessary to be done to thoroughly defeat that force as rapidly as possible; and that if it was necessary to draw troops from outlying stations, or anything of that sort, the thing would be done. But to try and lay down beforehand a policy with regard to that is, of course, quite out of the question and quite absurd. The thing is bound to be met at the time. With regard to the noble Lord's Question as to how far these troops will be able to move if they are required, I would remind him of his own previous speeches, in which he proved to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of a considerable number of noble Lords on his side of the House, that most of the Territorial Army was going to be employed in garrisons. Well, if that is so we should have a considerable number of mobile troops released, so that there will be no difficulty in moving them.

LORD LOVAT

As the noble Lord in his answer asks me a question I presume I have a right to reply. If the noble Lord will admit that a large proportion of the Territorial Army will be required for garrisons, I have certainly got an admission that I have never been able to get before, and I am quite prepared to take that as an advance. I have always argued, and I think definitely proved, that you have not got enough men in this country to fill the garrison towns and naval bases, and we have always said that you would have to draw very largely from the Territorial Army, and instead of the Defence Force consisting of the 300,000 that you claim it would probably only consist of 200,000. If the noble Lord puts that as his answer I am quite prepared to take it. But in that case you must then reduce the number of the Central Defence Force to something like 200,000, which we always say on this side of the House it actually is.

LORD LUCAS

If I may have the leave of the House to reply shortly, I would say that I always feel when the noble Lord is speaking that the legal Bar has lost a very able advocate, because no one has more power than the noble Lord in the way of trying to make people make an admission which they have no desire to make. I can only say that I admit nothing in the reply I made to the noble Lord, and he can draw what inference he likes from what I said.

LORD LOVAT

Then we must draw one of two conclusions—either that the Territorial Force will go into garrisons, or that Mr. Haldane is what is vulgarly called "talking through his hat."