Lords Sitting of 16 November 1915

Preamble
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have not been complied with:

London County Council (Celluloid).

Glasgow Corporation (Celluloid, &c.).

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
Colonies (Annual)—No. 869. British Solomon Islands (Report for 1914–1915):
Public Works (Ireland) — Eighty-third Annual Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, with Appendices, for the year ended 31st March 1915:
Customs and Excise—Sixth Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Customs and Excise for the year ended 31st March 1915, being the Fifty-ninth Report relating to the Customs and the Fifty-eighth Report relating to the Excise:
Inland Revenue—Fifty-eighth Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue for the year ended 31st March 1915:
Railway Accidents—Summary of accidents and casualties reported to the Board of Trade by the several railway companies in the United Kingdom during the three months ended 30th June 1915, in pursuance of the Regulation of Railways Act, 1871; together with reports to the Board of Trade by the Inspecting Officers, Assistant Inspecting Officers and Sub-Inspecting Officers of the Railway Department upon certain accidents which were inquired into:
Employment in Shops (Departmental Committee)—Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to consider the conditions of retail trade which can best secure that the further enlistment of men or their employment in other national services may not interfere with the operations of that trade:
Education (Scotland)—Regulations, dated 15th November 1915, made by the Scotch Education Department, as to grants to School Boards in respect of the medical treatment of necessitous school children:
Irish Land Commission—Index to Estates comprised in Returns of Advances made under the Irish Land Acts, 1903-1909, during the Year ended 31st December 1914:
Presented (by command) and ordered to lie on the Table.
Bank of England—Return of the amount of Notes issued more than Forty Years, and outstanding on 27th October 1915, which have been written off:
Shops Act, 1912—Orders made by the under-mentioned Local Authorities and confirmed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, affecting certain classes of shops within their respective areas—

1. Council of County of Cumberland (Cockermouth Urban District);

2. Council of Urban District of Whitworth;

3. Council of Borough of Stoke-on-Trent;

Naval and Marine Pay and Pensions Act, 1865—Orders in Council, dated the 10th November 1915, approving Memorials of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty made under the Act:
Diseases of Animals Acts, 1894 to 1914—Order, No. 9579, dated 11th November 1915, postponing the operation of the two Orders described in the Schedule thereto until the 25th November 1915:
National Insurance Acts—The National Health Insurance (Deposit Contributors Benefits) Order (Scotland), 1915, dated 28th October 1915:
Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) and ordered to lie on the Table.

LORD FISHER AND MR. CHURCHILL.
LORD FISHER: My Lords, I ask leave of your Lordships to make a statement. Certain references were made to me in a speech delivered in the other House yesterday by Mr. Churchill. I have been sixty-one years in the service of my country,

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and I leave my record in the hands of my countrymen. The Prime Minister stated yesterday that Mr. Churchill had said one or two things which he had better not have said, and that he had necessarily and naturally left unsaid some things which will have to be said. I am content to wait. It is unfitting to make personal explanations affecting national interests when my country is in the midst of a great War.

CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES.
The DUKE OF DEVONSHIREappointed to take the Chair in Committee of the Whole House this day, in the absence of the Chairman of Committees.

VOLUNTEER BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Marquess of Lincolnshire.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Power to accept services of Volunteers.
1. It shall be lawful for His Majesty to accept, for purposes in connection with the present war, the services of any Volunteer corps, being a corps which is duly affiliated to the Central Association Volunteer Training Corps, as recognised and approved by the Army Council, and whose services aro offered through that Association.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (Loan NEWTON)moved to delete from Clause 1 the words "which is duly affiliated to the Central Association Volunteer Training Corps, as." The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment I need hardly say that no slur is intended upon the Central Association. As a matter of fact, the War Office are indebted for the great assistance which they have received from Lord Desborough and his associates since the inception of this movement, and they would be singularly ungrateful if they made any proposals which appeared to depreciate those efforts. But if recognition of these Volunteers is to take place, it is fairly obvious that the Army Council must
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inevitably be the controlling authority, whereas if the Central Association were to remain as the statutory body it is quite conceivable that difficulties might arise. It is not, I admit, in the least likely that there would be difficulties as long as my noble friend was at the head of the association, but changes might take place; and the War Office would be unable to accept the position that the Central Association should be the determining and excluding authority. At the same time, I should like to assure the Committee that the Army Council will naturally take every opportunity of consulting with the Central Association and availing themselves of their aid and advice. I understand that my noble friend Lord Desborough has been in communication with the War Office authorities with regard to this Amendment, and that he is not prepared to oppose it. I hope, therefore, that it will be allowed to go through. As is quite obvious, this Amendment embraces various other Amendments which will be moved subsequently, but I have thought it better not to say anything at the present moment upon, for instance, the question of the inclusion of recognition of Irish Volunteers, until the subsequent Amendments are before your Lordships.
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave oat from ("the second corps") to ("recognised") in line 8.—(Lord Newton.)
LORD DESBOROUGH: I should like, in the first place, to thank my noble friend who has just sat down for the kind expressions he has used towards myself; and, in the second place, to say, on behalf of the Central Association, that although we quite understand that it would not be fitting, perhaps, to include any particular association in an Act of Parliament, still it might avoid trouble later on if in this Bill some words were substituted such as "which is duly affiliated to a recognised association of Volunteer training corps." The object of. mentioning the association is this. Throughout the whole of this movement the Army Council have delegated to a recognised and approved association in England, in Scotland and in Ireland powers of affiliating or not affiliating Volunteer corps; and at the present time it is only those Volunteer corps who are affiliated to one of these three recognised associations who are in the position of being recognised and able to wear the

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red brassard which gives them a right to fight for their country and to carry arms without a licence. Therefore if the Government could see their way to introducing, either here or elsewhere, words such as I have suggested, it is quite possible that it might save a good deal of trouble in the future. As regards the Central Association, I am quite willing that the words proposed to be deleted should be cut out; but I hope that in some way it will be possible to recognise in the Bill the Association for England, the Association for Scotland, and the Association for Ireland, which have already been recognised by the Army Council.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am glad to notice that there is no serious difference of opinion between my noble friend opposite and the noble Lord who represents the War Office. My noble friend behind me (Lord Newton) went out of his way to express the debt of gratitude which we owe to the association for which my noble friend Lord Desborough is responsible, and he went further and gave what I think amounted to an undertaking that every effort would be made by the War Office to avail itself of the advice and co-operation of the Central Association. But, of course, that is a widely different thing from giving the association a statutory recognition in the manner proposed in the Bill as it was originally framed. I submit to your Lordships that in a case of this kind the sole responsibility must remain with the Army Council, and that the Army Council cannot be allowed or encouraged to divest itself in any way of that responsibility. I gather from my noble friend Lord Desborough that it would be agreeable to him if some form of words could be found, either in this part of the Bill or elsewhere, which would at any rate, by mentioning the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps, show that they had a position in the estimation of the public and of the War Office. I observe, as to that, that my noble friend Lord Harris has given notice of an Amendment at the end of Clause 2 which raises that point quite distinctly. I would therefore suggest that the consideration of that suggestion might stand over for the present and be discussed when we come to Lord Harris's Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD NEWTON: The next Amendment standing in my name is consequential. It is to omit from the end of Clause I the words "and whose services are offered through that Association."
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 9, leave out from ("Council") to the end of the clause.—(Lord Newton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2:
Power to make regulations.
2.—(1) The Army Council may make regulations for the purpose of carrying this Act into effect, and in particular may by those regulations make provision, in relation to Volunteer corps whose services are accepted under this Act, as to—

(a) their organisation; and

(b) their duties in case of invasion; and

(c) the other duties for which their services may be accepted; and

(d) the appointment and promotion of officers, and the enrolment, and term and conditions of service, of members; and

(e) the maintenance of discipline.

(2) Any such regulations may apply, with the necessary modifications, any of the provisions of the Volunteer Act, 1863, or any enactment amending or extending that Act, in relation to the same or similar matters.
LORD MAC DONNELL: I move to insert, at the end of Clause 2, the new subsection standing in my name. I agree that the Secretary of State for War and the Army Council should have complete and unfettered discretion as to the rules which they make. I would not insert any words which would indicate that rules of a particular character should be made; I would leave complete power to the Secretary of State and the Army Council. It may happen that local rules may be required for certain parts of the country, arid that different rules may be necessary for other parts. Our object, I understand, is that the fullest power should be given to the Secretary of State for War to authorise as many Volunteer corps as the circumstances of the war may require. Therefore I would leave the Secretary of State complete authority. At the same time I would insist that all these rules should be subjected to the criticism of Parliament. I think it is

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most desirable that an opportunity should be given to the public to know the character of the rules that are made. It is possible that the rules may be made under the Publication of Statutory Rules Act. Under that Act, as I understand it, the procedure is of three kinds. The first procedure is that notice of intention to make statutory rules should be published in the Gazette, and that then a certain period—forty days, I think—should elapse during which the public would have the opportunity of making their objections to and criticisms upon the rules. That is a form of publication which I do not advocate. Another form is that the rules when made should be laid on the Table of both Houses of Parliament and that a certain period should be allowed to elapse before they came into effect. That seems to me to be the proper method of publication. But it may be objected that that would involve a certain amount of delay. There is, however, a provision in the Act by which the Secretary of State can declare that the necessity for making the rules is urgent, or he may give other special reasons for them, and then and there the rules take effect immediately on being made, but the regular procedure under the Act which I have explained would at the same time continue—the rules would come into operation, but they would, for I think a fortnight after being made, remain on the Table of both Houses and be open to criticism. But it is possible to provide a special procedure. It may he said that the rules should not come into operation until, say, fourteen or fifteen days or a month after they have been made. I should be quite satisfied with such an arrangement as that. If your Lordships would agree to vest the Secretary of State with the power of making rules and indicate that those rules should not come into operation until say a month or fifteen days after they had been made, I would be perfectly satisfied with the opportunity of criticism which the period of a month or fifteen days would allow.
Amendment moved—
Clause 2, page 2, after line 4, insert the following new subsection:
"(3) All regulations made in pursuance of this section shall be laid before Parliament within fourteen days after the making thereof; or, if Parliament is not then sitting, then within fourteen days after the next meeting of Parliament."—(Lord MacDonnell.)
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: I entirely agree with the principle suggested by the noble Lord who has moved this Amendment, but I hardly think he goes far enough. The whole of the arrangements with regard to Volunteer and all other military corps have hitherto been made by Statute, and although power to make regulations has been given in some Acts practically everything material has been laid down by Act of Parliament. In this case it is proposed to leave to the War Office very wide powers of making regulations, but I think that fair opportunity of public discussion of the regulations so made might be allowed without any material delay in regard to the matters which we wish to see advanced. Everybody knows, with regard to this question of Volunteers, that even at the present time serious questions arise, such as the terms on which they are accepted, their conditions of service, the taking of oaths, the degree to which they should be equipped or armed—these are all questions with which Parliament has hitherto dealt and which have not been left to the Public Department. This is an exceptional Bill for the war, and I quite realise that exceptional steps may be taken; but what I ask is that these regulations should be laid before Parliament and should not be enforced until fourteen days thereafter, during which time Parliament will have an opportunity, if necessary, of bringing any difficulties which may occur before the notice of the War Office. I would therefore move, as an Amendment to the noble Lord's proposed new subsection, to leave out all words after "Parliament" where that word first occurs to the end of the subsection, and to insert "and shall not take effect until fourteen days after being so laid." The subsection would then read—
" All regulations made in pursuance of this section shall be laid before Parliament and shall not take effect until fourteen days after being so laid."
If it is objected that Parliament may not be sitting, then I am afraid we must take that possibility into account. But if such regulations were made, and the whole establishment of these corps set up, as it were, behind the possibility of criticism by Parliament, I think it would be a great evil.
Amendment moved to the Amendment—
Leave out all words after "Parliament" where it first occurs, and insert "and shall not take effect until fourteen days after being so laid."—(Viscount Midleton.)
LORD DESBOROUGH: I desire to offer as strong opposition as I can to the Amendment. The one object of this Bill is to enable the country to obtain with little or no delay the services of some 309,000 men who have been drilling for something like a year. These men are wanted for a large variety of objects, but at present they have no warrant to act. The embodiment and calling out and regularisation of this large Volunteer force in England, Scotland, and Ireland may very well be the subject of mature and careful consideration. But the pressing object of this Bill is, as I say, to enable the Army Council to avail themselves of the services of this very large body of men. The noble Viscount who has moved this Amendment is a great advocate of economy, as we have more than once heard in this House. I venture to say that this Volunteer movement is about the only economical movement in connection with the war. A very large number of men have drilled, have put themselves into uniform, and have to a certain extent armed themselves at absolutely no cost to the country. They have done this with one object—namely, to do "their bit" in this war, being unable, through age or other disability, to go to the Front.
The Sunday before last. I went down to the very large ordnance works at Didcot. I did not go alone, because from various parts of Oxfordshire and Berkshire 900 Volunteers in uniform marched in sections and squads from their various localities to special trains which took them to those ordnance stores; and only yesterday morning I heard the colonel in charge there say that it would have been absolutely impossible for him, without the help of those Volunteers, to have despatched the enormous number of trains which there were in Didcot siding on that particular Sunday. As a matter of fact, these Volunteers, at no cost to the country, unloaded 209 trucks, some containing very weighty objects such as gun carriages, and these were handled with method and despatch by the Volunteers. Although these men are willing to give up their time and feed themselves while doing this work, they are under this disability, that supposing they are injured in carrying out this work they have, until they are regularised, absolutely no claim for compensation in respect of any injuries they
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may suffer. As a matter of fact, one man was rather severely injured. I think that in doing this work for the country these men might at least have the protection afforded under this Bill of not suffering permanently for injuries which they incur in their efforts to carry out these duties for their country.
This movement has been largely extended at Oxford. I happened last Sunday to have the honour of shoving a truck in company with the Professor of Political Economy, the Public Orator, the Professor of Geology, and the Professor of Anthropology at Oxford; and these gentlemen and many more Volunteers are going to turn up next Sunday, when we hope to have 1,500 men assisting in this work. What we want to secure is that these men, when working at a place like an ordnance store, should be ipso facto under military law for the time being. I have had several conversations with the War Office authorities with regard to this matter, but they say it is absolutely essential for them to get this Bill before they can issue any such regulations as would meet the case to which I have referred. There are something like 20,000 Volunteers out at the present time. They have been asked to come out; they are round the coast; they are digging trenches north and south of London; they are guarding railways and ammunition works—but they have no status. What the Volunteer wants is that when he is asked by a General Officer Commanding to perform a certain duty, he should then ipso facto come under military law; arid, on the other hand, that he should be compensated for any injury he receives and be immune from any civil action in case anything should happen when he is performing these duties. Therefore I strongly oppose anything that would cause delay. I know, as a matter of fact, that many branches of the Army Department are anxious at the present time to employ the services of these men, and the men will come forward provided they get proper protection. They do not want pay, but they do want to be given a status when called upon to perform these duties. I am not opposed to any reasonable publication, but if the proposal means a very long delay—Parliament, for instance, might not be sitting—before you could call out men to do this work which the country wants done, I think it would be a great misfortune.
LORD HARRIS: I am sorry I did not see my noble friend before he spoke, because I should like to have pointed out to him that in my opinion Lord MacDonnell's Amendment, with the addition proposed by my noble friend Lord Midleton, is really a protection of the Volunteer. With the experience that my noble friend Lord Midleton and I have had in connection with Volunteer regulations and the War Office, I can assure Lord Desborough that the Volunteer corps themselves ought to think twice before they subject themselves to the domination of the War Office without any security that Parliament is going to cheek the proceedings of that Department. It would be a danger to leave a Public Office to do whatever it pleased, and to impose whatever regulations it liked upon this body of free men. My noble friend thinks that these Volunteers are not going to ask for any money contribution. I am not so sure of that. That was the claim of the old Volunteers, but I do not know that a very long time passed before they asked for some contribution from public funds. It was not in the shape of pay, I admit. They asked for camp allowance, a contingent fund for uniform, and so on; it all grew by degrees. If you have not the protection of Parliament, the War Office, having at one time made grants to these Volunteer corps, could by a stroke of the pen take them away, and Parliament would have no power to interfere unless it happened to find out about the matter through sonic other process; at any rate, it would not have an opportunity of interfering before the mischief was done.
I shall most certainly support the Amendment moved by my noble friend below me (Viscount Midleton), and I do so from my own experience and my own conviction. Now that these Volunteer corps, through the Central Association, have requested Parliament to put them under Statute, I think they ought to be very careful that the Statute provides that Parliament shall be continually taking care of them and that they shall not be handed over to the sweet will of a Department. After all, what would the delay mean? I cannot imagine that the delay in approving of the regulations in Parliament is going to be anything like as long as the time that will be taken in framing the regulations themselves. I am afraid the War Office is so busy that it will be some time before it is in a position
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to issue regulations that will suit the fancies of all the corps and also of the Central Association.
I am entirely with my noble friend Lord Desborough in his anxiety that these corps should be made as much use of as possible. But he has himself shown us that certain corps are being already used. It is quite true that they have not got the status of soldiers, but in many cases they have given a promise that they will be obedient as soldiers; they are honourably carrying out that promise, and are being utilised all over the country in various ways. Therefore I submit that my noble friend has arrived partly at his aim, which is that these corps should be used, and I urge upon him that in the interests of the corps themselves he should accept the advice of my noble friend Lord Midleton, who has had great experience of the action of the War Office and of the effect of giving Parliamentary opportunity of supervising Volunteer regulations.
THE EARL OF DESART: I rise to support the Amendment. I am quite sure that we are all in sympathy with what was said by Lord Desborough as to the anxiety we feel that these Volunteers should receive the recognition they desire. But I think that in providing for the recognition of corps formed under special circumstances and for special purposes Parliament should be aware of the conditions under which they are to be recognised and employed. The whole point of this Bill is the regulations; the regulations are really the effective part of the Bill, and it does occur to me that there will be many matters of interest as to the constitution, the method of employing, organising, and working these Volunteer corps which will have to be settled in the regulations. Lord Desborough himself gave a number of forms of recognition—compensation, and so on—which he desired. His security for getting those forms of recognition would be that he should have an opportunity in his place in Parliament of seeing the regulations, commenting upon them, adding to them, deducting from them, or suggesting improvements. The Amendment would give my noble friend the opportunity of providing the protection for the Volunteers to which he very properly attaches so much importance. My belief is that it is really necessary that in some form or other Parliament should

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have an opportunity of seeing what the Department propose to do about these Volunteers, whether they mean to treat them fairly, and whether they mean to make provision—I give this merely as an instance—for enlisting men in these corps who are of military age for other purposes. There are a number of points of this kind that one can think of, and in my opinion Parliament ought to have an opportunity of seeing and commenting upon the regulations made under this Bill. I do not think this would cause any delay. Further, I believe that the provision in the Amendment would operate in the interests of these Volunteer corps, which we all have so much at heart. I feel that the War Office ought not to be left to make any regulations they like without check, and I cannot think that the possible delay in requiring that the regulations should be laid on the Table—I doubt whether there would be any delay—is really a sufficient answer to the desirability that the regulations should not come into force without Parliament having an opportunity of seeing what is proposed.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: I am diffident of expressing any opinion on this subject, especially after what has been said by the three noble Lords who speak with so much weight and experience. Their arguments, of course, would be unanswerable in time of peace, but it must be remembered that we are at war. We have a Fourth Line composed of a quarter of a million men, who have been clamouring for some time for recognition and for employment. It seems to me that you could not throw cold water on the aspirations of these gallant men more successfully than for the War Office to have to say to them, "We are very much obliged to you for your offer; we should be glad to employ you, but the fact is that Parliament is not sitting and therefore we have no power whatever to make regulations, and you must wait until Parliament meets again." For the reason that this is a matter of emergency I earnestly hope that the noble Viscount opposite will not press the Amendment, which he has sprung upon us rather unexpectedly at the last moment.
LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE: I should like to say a word with regard to the question of delay, which seems to be regarded by many as a matter of much
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importance. Since the beginning of the war I think six weeks is the longest time which has elapsed without Parliament sitting, and it is very unlikely that we shall have any longer period than that when we shall not be meeting. It seems to me, therefore, that the delay which would occur by requiring that the regulations should be laid before Parliament would be infinitesimal compared with the importance that matters of this kind should be subject to criticism by both Houses of Parliament.
LORD NEWTON: It is rather distressing to hear two noble Lords opposite (Lord Midleton and Lord Harris) express so much distrust of a Department with which they were both connected. I hope that I shall not eventually find myself in the same position. All that I have to say on the subject of the Amendment is that the War Office do not regard it as necessary, and they consider that the period prescribed in it is unnecessarily short. What the War Office suggest is that if any subsection of the kind is inserted it should take the usual formula, such as exists in the Territorial Act—namely, that the regulations should be laid before Parliament. "as soon as may be" after they are made. That is the view which the War Office take of this particular Amendment, although, as I have said, they do not consider it necessary.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I venture to think that there are two considerations which your Lordships may well bear in mind in connection with this Amendment. In the first place, the whole of this legislation is emergency legislation. The movement of which my noble friend Lord Desborough is the head is an emergency movement, and the Bill recites clearly, in words, that the services of these Volunteer corps may be accepted for a limited purpose—the purpose of this war. If that is true, does it not follow that we ought to be careful to avoid anything which might occasion long and certainly indefinite delay in giving these corps the recognition which they so much desire? There are, my noble friend told us, 309,000 of them who welcome this proposal, receive it with open arms, and who certainly will be greatly disappointed if, owing to what will seem to them red-tape considerations, they are kept waiting a long time for the

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decision of the Department. That is one argument why we should avoid delay.
The other point which I think we should bear in mind is this. It is perfectly reasonable to insist—as noble Lords opposite have insisted—that these regulations should be made fully public and should be open to public criticism. Cannot that be secured somewhat in the manner which the. noble Lord who moved this Amendment (Lord MacDonnell) desires? My noble friend who represents the War Office pointed out, I think with force, that to stipulate that the regulations arc to be laid before Parliament within fourteen days of the making of them might lead to trouble. Some hitch might arise in the printing or the publishing, and owing to some technicality the whole thing might be shipwrecked and have no effect. But if your Lordships will accept the formula which I understood my noble friend Lord Newton to propose on behalf of the War Office, that danger would disappear. If my noble friend's formula were accepted, the subsection would read thus—
"All regulations made in pursuance of this section shall be laid before Parliament as soon as may be after they are made."
That, I am told, is a form of words which occurs in other Statutes and with which people are familiar.
My noble friend Lord Midleton wants to go a great deal further. He desires that the regulations should be laid before Parliament, should remain on the Table for a certain number of days, and should not have effect until that period of time had elapsed. That is a very serious proposition. Supposing the regulations were to see the light at a time When Parliament was not sitting. The Volunteer corps might be kept waiting weeks or even months before the regulations could be laid. I think in war time my noble friend's precaution is greater than the circumstances of the case require; and I appeal to him as an old War Office man that in a matter of this kind and in an emergency like this he might very well trust the Army Council to use wisely the opportunities afforded them by this Bill.
LORD MAC DONNELL: It seems to me that two points of difference have emerged in this discussion. On the one hand, Lord Midleton is desirous that the
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War Office should have the benefit of Parliamentary criticism upon the rules before they are finally made. On the other hand, as the noble Marquess has pointed out, it may well happen that delay would be injurious, and that it may be desirable that the rules should be at once acted upon. All that is provided for under the Publication of Statutory Rules Act. As I pointed out in my opening remarks, there are three procedures under that Act. Two procedures are dilatory. But the Act provides specifically for the occurrence of the case to which the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, referred. There may be cases of urgency, or there may be special reasons for which it is desirable to make the rules and bring them into operation at once. That is provided for by Section 2 of the Act to which I refer—namely, 56 and 57 of Victoria, cap. 56—under which the regulations can be brought into operation at once; but before they become final they have to go through the regular procedure of criticism before both Houses of Parliament. Therefore if you make the rules under the existing law you provide for immediate effect if the circumstances require it, and, on the other hand, you provide for the full and detailed and leisurely Parliamentary criticism which is also necessary. However, I do not desire. to put my judgment against that of Lord Midleton or Lord Harris, who have had very much greater experience of these matters than I have, and I am perfectly willing to accept any decision to which the House may come.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: I am most anxious to see the question from the point of view of Lord Desborough and Lord Lansdowne, but I must point out that the protection for which I have asked is not given in the least by the subsection as suggested by the War Office. It really amounts to this, that Parliament is merely to be seized of the matter as soon as conveniently may be. I do not wish to quote past speeches by my noble friend Lord Lansdowne advocating that regulations should be laid before Parliament for very much longer periods, and that Parliament should have power to annul them, but I would remind him of what occurred in 1907 when the Territorial Force Act was passing through Parliament. Not merely were the Government induced to allow Orders in Council to lie upon the Table of Parliament for forty days, but

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it was provided also that Parliament within those forty days should have power, by an Address, to annul any Order without prejudice to the making of a new Order. I do not ask for anything of the kind here, but I do ask that Parliament should have the power of criticism before the regulations actually take effect. I do not ask for forty days; I suggest fourteen days. As Lord Oranmore has pointed out, Parliament is almost continually in session now, so that there would not be likely to be any delay comparable to that occupied in the making of the regulations. I should be sorry if in this matter the whole responsibility should rest on the War Office, and so far as I am concerned if I have any support I should like to take the sense of your Lordships' House on the Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BUCKMASTER): I cannot help thinking that what the noble Viscount has said is an excellent illustration of the difficulty of discussing this Bill upon the hypothesis that we are in times of peace. He referred, indeed, to speeches by Lord Lansdowne directed to what should be done in times of peace. But at the present moment not only are we in times of war, but if one looks at the face of this Bill it is obvious that it contemplates regulations being made in case of the appalling consequence of the invasion of this country. Supposing such a terrible possibility were believed to be imminent, would the noble Viscount require that the regulations which the War Office would then be compelled to make for the effective control of this force should be laid before Parliament and not become effective until Parliament had had an opportunity of discussing and criticising them? I cannot help thinking that anything more lamentable could hardly be imagined. Yet that is the very essence of one of the objects to which these regulations must be directed. Might I say a word as to the effect upon these Volunteer corps of having the regulations laid before Parliament and having them subject to criticism and discussion. I suggest for the noble Viscount's consideration that it would discourage them immensely. They do not desire, I should imagine from what has been said by Lord Desborough, to have regulations of this kind made the subject of Parliamentary debate. They are quite prepared to act when the War Office thinks that regulations should be
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made, and to have them operate instantly on their being made. I respectfully suggest to the noble Viscount that the considerations which I have urged are reasons why he should not press his Amendment.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: With great respect to the noble and learned Lord, is it fair to represent as a matter of such emergency a question which has not been taken up at all until 309,000 Volunteers have been enrolled and which has now been before Parliament a considerable time and to suppose that a further delay of fourteen days is likely to have the effect of annulling all the advantages of this Bill? It is putting it too strongly to suggest that the emergency is so very great as to make it necessary for us to override all possible safeguards. There is, in my opinion, grave danger that these emergency regulations may be pressed through in such a hurry that false steps may be taken against which Parliament should have a right to enter a protest.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: What is the purpose for which this Volunteer force has been called into existence? It has been called into existence for the possible emergencies of those later stages of the war when not only the Regular forces but the ordinary Second Line have been fully used up. It is essentially an emergency force; It is essentially a force which will be required, if at all, at the very shortest notice; it is essentially a force which will continue to exist only so long as the war lasts, and which will be wanted only in case of urgent peril. In those circumstances is it reasonable that the regulations which are required before this force can be made effective should be submitted to Parliament to be discussed? It seems to me that the theoretical considerations which have been urged, and which are no doubt true when you are laying down the constitution of a force in time of peace, are beside the point now. Here we are dealing with what may prove to be a national emergency in which the supreme command of the forces is the only means that can be taken to put these corps into shape and make them available. In those circumstances it seems to me that the immense preponderance of military and public considerations are adverse to the Amendment.
LORD CHARNWOOD: I should like to say a few words on this subject as a Volunteer who has considered the matter a good deal and talked about it with many other Volunteers, and who is to some extent aware of the attitude of the War Office towards us. I am sure we do not feel at all apprehensive of that danger of oppressive regulations against which I gather it the purpose of this Amendment to defend us, but I can assure your Lordships that we do feel apprehensive of further delays in recognising us arid providing for our status, and we fear very much indeed that such delays may prevent our being of great service when upon some sudden emergency, the nature of which cannot now be forecast, a good opportunity occurs for using us. I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Midleton, does not wish to propose anything which would depress and discourage the Volunteer movement. But might I point out to him, when he speaks of only fourteen days delay, that this is not the full measure of possible delay. The full measure of possible delay that might be occasioned by his Amendment before any regulations could take effect is eight weeks. There is serious prospect that some way of making use of the Volunteers may suddenly arise, and that it may be important to decide upon that use of them immediately. This Amendment might have the consequence of delaying and thereby spoiling the whole use of the Volunteer movement. That is the most serious evil that could happen. I believe that the acceptance of this Amendment by your Lordships would be felt by the Volunteers generally as a severe mortification.
LORD DESBOROUGH: The noble Earl, Lord Desart, seems to have misapprehended what has already taken place with regard to these Volunteer corps. Exactly the same regulations govern the three associations which have been formed in the United Kingdom to regulate the Volunteer movement, and the first of I those regulations is that it is to be clearly understood that only those can be registered as members of this corps who are not eligible through age to serve in the Regular or Territorial Army or are unable to do so for some genuine reason, which has to be recorded in the corps register; and those who come within the latter category must agree in writing to enlist it specially called upon to do so. There
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fore you could not have a greater control than the War Office is exercising through the existing associations, and that is one of the reasons why I was anxious, when we were discussing Clause 1, that the existing associations should not be entirely ignored in this Bill. The noble Earl seemed to think that six weeks plus fourteen days constitutes no very great delay. There are received every day at the offices of the Central Association applications for these men to be used at once in order to relieve men who are so urgently required to go and fight the battles of the country abroad. A short time ago the General Officer in command of the London District asked us for 500 men for road purposes. Volunteers could easily be found to do this work, but as soon as the General Officer learned that they were not attested he said he could not take them. He was informed that we had had no trouble so far, and that these men had carried out all the orders that had been given to them. He replied, "That is not the point. I cannot have Men under my command who may not carry out orders." One of the objects of this Bill is to empower the Army Council to draw up regulations to secure that these men, when their services are availed of, should ipso facto come under the Army Act, and be free from any civil disabilities which they might incur in the discharge of their duty. It is not so ranch a question of calling out 300,000 men to protect this country from invasion; the question is one of using the services of these men in guarding railways, ammunition factories, and so on, for which their services have already been utilised. This Bill, I hope, will enable the services of these men to be more largely used at little or no cost to the country.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am anxious that there should be no misunderstanding on this matter. The Amendment which we are inclined to support would not delay for an instant the coming into operation of the regulations. The effect of Lord MacDonnell's Amendment, as amended by my noble friend behind me (Lord Newton), would simply be that it would be obligatory on the War Office to lay all regulations before Parliament as soon as may be after they are made.
LORD DESBOROUGH: I accept that.
LORD HARRIS: In the circumstances that have been explained by the noble Marquess and by the noble Viscount (Lord Haldane), the Amendment as proposed by the War Office satisfies me.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: I will not press my Amendment.
Amendment to the Amendment (by leave) withdrawn.
LORD NEWTON: I move my Amendment to Lord MacDonnell's Amendment. The proposed new subsection would then run, "All regulations made in pursuance of this section shall be laid before Parliament as soon as may be after they are made."
Amendment moved to the Amendment—
Leave out all words after ("Parliament") and insert ("as soon as may be after they are made"). —(Lord Newton.)
On Question, Amendment to the Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHAIRMAN: It is now proposed that the following new subsection. be added to Clause 2, "All regulations made in pursuance of this section shall be laid before Parliament as soon as may be after they are made."
On Question, new subsection agreed to.
LORD HARRIS: My Amendment to Clause 2 raises, as the noble Marquess pointed out, the important question whether the War Office should be directly responsible for recognising Volunteer corps or whether they should have the intermediation of such associations as have been brought into existence by the special circumstances of each ease in the last year or two. Before the Territorial Force Act was passed Volunteer corps were not recognised directly by the War Office, and I have no recollection that there was any intermediation of any association in those days. As a result, as the noble Lord knows, the location of different arms was very inconvenient. You had masses of Artillery in places where they were of no use, and the Secretary of State had to incur a good deal of obloquy because he had to do away with arms where they had been in existence for twenty or more years, and put in those places an arm which had not been there before, and create
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the old arm, which had been done away with in one place, in some other. It is simply a question of what the War Office prefer. Would they rather recognise these associations direct or guarantee the substantiality of the movement in the neighbourhood—the respectability of the officer who is prepared to take command, and so on? I do not know that I can offer a direct opinion one way or the other. On the whole, although I move this Amendment I agree with the noble Marquess that it is better for the War Office to be directly responsible. But is it; worth while to pay such a bad compliment to the associations that have already come into existence and done so much? I take it that if the War Office is going to take over the recognition direct and impose the reaulations, there would be nothing for the associations to do. Their métier would disappear; there would be no use for them; they would cease to exist. That is rather a bad compliment to pay them. There has been another ominous warning from the noble Marquess to-night, as there was the other night from Lord Newton, as regards this force. The noble Marquess pointed out that it is only going to he used for the term of the war, and Lord Newton warned us that it would be some time before the War Office introduced regulations. Between these two warnings I am not quite sure that the Volunteer force is going to have a very long existence under regulation. Therefore as there are associations in existence which have been extremely useful for the purpose of introducing these corps to the War Office and which presently would be useful in giving information as to the persons who are officering the corps, I think on the whole it would be better to recognise their existence and give them a statutory position.
Amendment moved—
Clause 2, page 2, after line 4, insert the follow ing new subsection:
"(3) Any such regulations may further provide for the establishment or recognition of associations of Volunteer corps and the constitution and management of such associations and the acceptance of the services of a Volunteer corps through such associations."—(Lord Harris.)
LORD NEWTON: When I moved the first Amendment that stood in my name I was careful to explain that I hoped we had convinced noble Lords opposite that there was no desire whatever to put any slight on the associations, and I added that the

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War Office would be only too glad to avail themselves of their advice and experience. With regard to this Amendment, the War Office do not consider it necessary. They look upon it as redundant, because they consider they would have ample powers in this direction under the Bill. But I am not going to take the responsibility of opposing the Amendment if the noble Lord insists on it.
LORD DESBOROUGH: I should like to say a word in favour of the Amendment. It was felt in Scotland, in Ireland, and here in England that if all reference to the associations was omitted from the Bill it might be difficult for them to keep their authority over the bodies of which they are at the present moment in charge. Therefore if the War Office have no objection to the inclusion of this new subsection, which of course may be used or not as they like, I am sure that the reference in this Bill to the associations which have already done a good deal of work will be accepted by them as a compliment.
LORD MACDONNELL: I think that from the Irish point of view it is desirable to leave the matter altogether in the hands of the War Office. Lord Desborough has referred to the association in Ireland. I have made inquiries about that association, and I find that it has not, except in very few places, touched that stratum of society which we desire to get into our Volunteer corps. Altogether during its existence it has managed to recruit only a little over 2,000 men, and that only in Dublin, Belfast and neighbourhood, and the City of Cork. In the rural parts of Ireland there is a disinclination to come under the association. They would much prefer there to be directly under the orders of the War Office, and I think myself that if they were directly under the War Office it would stimulate recruitment if by any chance men of recruitable age do get into our Volunteer corps.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: We must, I think, all feel grateful to the associations to which my noble friend opposite has referred. They have done a great and valuable work, and I am sure there is not the slightest desire anywhere to appear indifferent to, or ungrateful for, what has been done. But I rather feel that if we were to put in the Amendment which has been moved by the noble Lord opposite we should appear
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to be prescribing the associations. It would be in the nature of a definite suggestion that this could only he done through the associations. Is it not much better in a matter of this gravity and urgency, where speed is desirable, to throw the whole responsibility on the War Council? If the War Council choose to avail themselves in any quarters of the services of the associations there could be no objection to their doing it, as they have done heretofore. But to put this subsection into the Bill would have the effect of imposing the associations upon them, which would be open to the difficulty pointed out by my noble friend Lord MacDonnell. It would also tend to somewhat more complication in the working of the Bill, and lessen that responsibility which many of us think ought to be borne by the War Office alone.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Area of service
4. An officer or member of a Volunteer corps whose services have been accepted under this Act shall not be liable, as such, to serve outside England and Wales, unless he voluntarily accepts liability for that purpose
LORD NEWTON: I move to leave out "England and Wales" and to insert "the British Islands." The term "British Islands" is a somewhat unusual one, and it is, of course, a much wider term than "United Kingdom" By the Interpretation Act, 1889, Section 18 (1) the expression "British Islands" means the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland), the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. Were the words "England and Wales" retained, obviously the impression would be that the Bill was limited to England and Wales; but if the Amendment which I move is substituted there is nothing in the text of the Bill to exclude any part of the United Kingdom.
Amendment moved —
Clause 4, page 2, line leave out ("England and Wales") and insert ("the British Islands"). —(Lord Newton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
The Report of Amendments to be received To-morrow, and Bill to be printed as amended.

THE HEADQUARTERS STAFF AT THE FRONT.
LORD ST. DAVIDShad the following Questions on the Paper—
To ask His Majesty's Government whether their attention had been called to a number of reports in the Press stating that during the recent fighting in France there had been man complaints as to failures in Staff work; and whether they could, with advantage, give any information as to the composition and numbers of the British Headquarters Staff in France, and of the Army and Divisional Staffs, and as to how they compare in numbers with the Headquarters Army and Divisional Staffs of the French Army.
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any information as to the numbers of the Headquarters Staffs, and also of the Army and Divisional Staffs in the German and Austrian Armies.
The noble Lord said: my Lords, I have two Questions on the Paper. I propose to address myself to the first and to reserve my right to put the second and say something about it if necessary later on, according to the course of the debate, if there is any debate, upon my first Question. I have been very slow to move in the direction of putting this Question on the Paper. I had thought of doing so a good many months ago, and looking back at what has happened I wish now that I had. But I want the House to understand that I have not put this Question until I have endeavoured, without discussing the matter in public, to remedy a state of things which appears to me to be wrong. I have delayed putting the Question down for a number of reasons. One was that a man who is living at home at ease does not like to take up the position of criticising to any extent men who are serving their country abroad and risking their lives. That, I think, is a natural feeling. But in my case it has been modified by observing from statistics that nowadays, what with Zeppelin raids and the Lighting Order, life in London is, I think, quite as precarious as any chance of serious casualties among the members of the Headquarters Staff in France. That is, at any rate, my observance of the casualty lists. At a
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very early stage in the war I often heard regimental officers say that the difference between the service of an officer on the Staff and of a regimental officer was that on the Staff you got fifty per cent. of the decorations and two and a-half per cent of the casualties, while the regimental officers got fifty per cent. of the casualties and two and a-half per cent. of the decorations. That was at a very early stage in the war. I think this state of things would be even more observable now
In my Question I call attention to a number of reports in the Press. I have always endeavoured in your Lordships' House to be as concise in my remarks as I can. I have a number of Press reports here, but unless the Government wish me to do so I will not occupy time in reading them. I did not begin to look for these reports immediately after the battle of September 25. If I had begun to take heed of them then, I should have had many more. But I have reports here all criticising Staff men in France, some very severely, some less severely. I have in my hand extracts from fourteen different newspapers—the Morning Post, the Daily Express, the New Statesman, the Glasgow Daily Record, the Naval and Military Record, the Scotsman, the Daily Telegraph, the Sussex Daily News, the Nation, the Liverpool Courier, the Globe, the Evening Standard, the Army and Navy Gazette, and the Daily Chronicle. It is a sufficiently varied list. What these extracts, if I may be allowed to sum them up in a nutshell, say is this-that our Staff in France is larger than any Staff in the world's history, and that the Staff has been built up very largely not on account of the military records of the men put on it, but from I family and other considerations. These newspapers allege that the Staff work has been bad, that over and over again victory has been stopped because of the badness of the Staff work.
But I would build up a case to-day not only upon what newspapers have said, I but upon what everybody in England is learning from his own friends who have been home on leave. I should say that with certain exceptions, which I will give, the reports of officers who have returned from abroad are practically unanimous. They make certain notable exceptions. Everybody who has spoken to me has said one thing—namely, that the com

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missariat is excellent. Every one has referred to that, and that, I think, is a very gratifying feather in the cap of the War Office. The commissariat has hardly ever broken down, and if it has it has probably been because a sudden movement of troops made its normal working almost impossible. As I say, all these officers praise the commissariat; and as regards some of the Staffs they have nothing but words of praise. I have never heard anything but praise for the Staff of the Guards' Division and for the Staff of Sir Douglas Haig. The men from the trenches tell you that the members of these two Staffs go to the trenches and know what is going on—they are soldiers. But as regards the Headquarters Staff, for months past I have not heard one soldier from abroad—and I know very many—say a good word of the Staff and its works. If any noble Lord thinks I have pitched this too highly, I would challenge him to do this. When this sitting of the House is over, I challenge him to ring up on the telephone the first half-dozen of his friends, taken at random, who have sons in the Army whose sons have been on leave, and ask what their sons say about the work of the Staff. If every member of the House did that I do not believe you would get even half-a-dozen reports that men on leave had said that the Staff work was satisfactory. That is the Army view; I am convinced of that.
That being so, I, who am a civilian and am confronted with this position of affairs and this practical unanimity of Army officers, ask myself, Why is it? I have seen one or two criticisms of my action. It has been said, "What is the good of putting this sort of question? Can it do any good with the Headquarters Staff? Can the Staff be changed?" These people take a pessimistic view. They seem to regard the Headquarters Staff of the British Army as if it were an act of God, as if it were a visitation like a plague, a thunderbolt, or an earthquake. It is not an act of God; it is the act of man. This Staff was made by man, and it was not made in the usual way. Most great Generals of modern times have tried to get a band of expert soldiers round them. What has happened in this case from the beginning of the war? I ought to give figures, but I cannot; I am asking the Government for figures. I cannot give figures because the usual methods of
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informing myself are not open to me, the Army List being no longer on sale. But I would observe this—and anybody who has read the Gazettes from the beginning of the war must know it—that you have had men crowded on the Staffs, men of rank, men of position, men of money. I am not going to say for a minute such an absurd thing as that men of rank amt position should not be on Staffs. Far from it. I know only too well the excellent, the magnificent work that men of rank and position are doing in this war, and the obligations we are under to them. I do not want my observations to be taken in that sense. The men I am alluding to are men who for years had been out of the Army. At the beginning of the war we saw many cases where men who had been in the Army for a few years and then had retired to take up polities, to take op business, or to amuse themselves in social life, who had had for years no experience of soldiering whatever, were crammed on to the Headquarters and other Staffs. Why was this done? Then you had other eases where men who had never been in the Army at all joined the Army at the beginning of the war and were put straight on to Staffs. You had other cases too, cases where men did not even join at the beginning of the war. There have been cases where men have only joined the Army in the last six months, men who had no burning patriotism that drove them in at the first minute, men who joined late: they, too, have been put upon Staffs.
When you see all that, are you not entitled to put two and two together and to say that these Staffs have been constituted as no Staffs in the world have ever been constituted before? And when you find that the result is bad—the result is admitted to be bad—are you not entitled to suggest that it may be no accident but simply a case of cause and effect? I would like to see an inquiry. It could be private if you wish, as private as ever you like, but it should be made. I would like to see any soldier at the War Office go through these Staffs one by one to find out how the men got there: and then I venture to say that no soldier, if he had to make a report upon his honour, could deny that numbers, large numbers, of men had been added to the Staffs for no military reason whatsoever. There are some things so ridiculous that one can

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hardly say them. I will tell you my own belief. If I were challenged to go through the list of Staffs with a soldier, I believe I could point to the names of one or two who had been put on for the most absurd reason you could think of—because they are men who could give you a good tip and give you a winner if you were racing. It seems incredible, but I believe it is absolutely true—they are men, at any rate, whose other qualifications are not outstanding—and that in itself, though it may be an estimable quality, does not seem to me to be a thing which entitles a man to be put upon one of the Staffs of His Majesty's Armies.
I am not going for a moment to say that there should not be a few men upon every Staff who did not need any military experience. I know as well as anybody that a General wants some aides-de-camp to run about and do his odd jobs, and that they may very well be young men of no military training and experience. But, after all, the number of men who can be wanted upon a Staff for purposes like that is very small. Therefore I ask the Government, What is the number on the Headquarters Staff; and what are the numbers on the other Staffs? As I said, the Army List is not published and one does not know, but I have been told that the number on the Headquarters Staff is 150 or 160. I have even been told they number 200, and I have heard people give still larger figures. At any rate this is information we are entitled to have, because a large body on a Staff means taking a very large number of men from the ordinary duty of soldiers. It means servants, grooms, chauffeurs being employed in looking after them. It means an army of clerks, if, indeed, these Staff gentlemen do any work at all. It means an absolute small army who might very well be employed in the trenches, especially when yon know that the one thing our Armies are short of is trained regimental officers. All these young men could be very useful in the trenches, and I venture to think that it is in the trenches they ought to be and not in a place of comfort and of safety.
In my Question I also ask how the numbers of this Staff of ours compare with General joffre's Staff. Our Army at the Front, we know, is not anything like so large as the French Army; yet I have been told—and my information is only
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what I have picked up from officers who have returned—that our Headquarters Staff is five or six times as large as that of General Joffre. If so, my Lords, and if the result is not good, surely we are entitled here to ask why. Then I have had a hint that I think is probably an uninformed one—that Sir John French did not have the choosing of his own Staff, that he is not responsible for the enormous number, whatever it may be, and that a great many of these people were forced upon him. I cannot think that this is the case. I put the suggestion with very great deference, not believing it to be true. I should like, however, to be told whether it is true or not; and, if anybody has forced people upon the Staff, who it is that did it, and why. Surely this is a matter that it was time should be raised. We are in the greatest, crisis the nation has ever gone through. We are pouring out our money as if it were water. We are losing the best of the young lives among our people, and we are entitled to give our men at the Front the best, the very best of everything this country can produce. They are entitled to the best arms, to the best munitions, and I think we ought to be grateful to the Government for the efforts they are making fully to equip our Army. They are entitled, as I say, to the best arms and to the best munitions. Are they not entitled, still more, to the assurance that in the directing force of the Army there should be the best brains the country can produce? That is what we want to see.
I know it has been said that at the beginning of the war you had not the Staff officers. At that time you had a little Army of under 200,000 men and only a trained Staff equal to that Army. You had not a Staff equal to cope with two millions of men or more; that is very true. But what I would point out is that these ornamental members of the Staff were added very largely in the first months of the war, when our Army was a tiny Army of under 200,000 men. Supposing the Government say they had not then enough trained Staff officers and had to put upon the Staffs a number of men who were untrained, am I not entitled to reply "At the beginning of the war you had very few Staff officers, but that is not the case now"? After all, what was Staff training? A man was taken from the Army and sent through the Staff

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College, where he was shown what was likely to happen in war and what he was likely to deal with. That, I take it, was the essence of Staff training. But you have had the finest school of war for fifteen months; you have had hundreds of regimental officers who have gone through that hard school for fifteen months, who have survived its dangers and learned its lessons. If at the beginning of the war there was a case for putting untried men on the Staff there is now no such case. To-day from the best of the regimental officers I am sure you could find the finest Staff that it would be possible to produce. Considering that now all the best young brains of the country are in the Army surely we can call upon the Government to use them.
I have to be shy of dealing with definite cases. I am a civilian. I do not claim any expert knowledge. I do not want to pose as an amateur strategist like many other people, or as a military expert, and what I have heard from officers from the Front—specific cases naturally—I cannot put before you with their authority and with their names. But here is a definite thing that I think the House ought to consider. In June last—ten months after the beginning of the war— our men in France, when they were not in the front trenches, were employed two or three nights a week digging a second line of defence only three or four hundred Yards from the German lines. Three or four hundred yards from the German lines our men were digging a second line of defence! Why was that not done eight months before? For eight months our men had been more or less on those lines. Surely we are entitled to ask that the men who direct our Armies at the Front shall use every reasonable caution. What is genius but an infinite capacity for taking pains? We know about the German lines. Our men broke through them the other day for from two to three miles. They had to get through three entirely separate lines of defence, and if they had gone on further we do not know how many more there were behind. What is the advantage of piling up line after line of defence? It means that the Germans are able, and have been able, to hold those lines of theirs with an inferior force. In France where we are opposed to the Germans we know that our Armies are more numerous than theirs, yet because they have built up these
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repeated lines they are able to hold us back with a smaller force. Are not we British civilians entitled to say that our Generals ought to have put us in the same position? Our Generals from the beginning ought to have said, "We may some day be in inferior force here as regards numbers; some day Great Britain may want to use her Army in other fields, and therefore we will build up line after line all the way, if necessary, to Calais." I say this, and I challenge the Government to answer it, that the fact that our commanders in France did not have even a second line as near as three to four hundred yards from the German trenches is a very grave case of neglect and typical of very much else that has happened in the management of our Army abroad.
There are one or two other matters upon which I will say only a word. One is this. A good many months ago, at the beginning of the war, it was stated that there were ladies visiting at the British Headquarters. The names were given in the papers at the time. Since then no names have appeared in the papers, but, if report is true, those visits then were not by any means the only ones. I am not going into that at length. I merely ask this question. Do the Government defend the presence of ladies at the Great Headquarters, the thinking machine, of the British Armies in France? I am not going to ask how many there have been—I only ask Aye or No, do you justify it, do you defend it? There never was a time when the debates in this House were as important or read with the same interest as they are to-day. I am very glad of it. This is the one place in Great Britain where you can put questions and get an answer; this is the one place in Great Britain where you can expose things that ought to be exposed. Therefore to that question I want the Government to say "Yes" or "No."
One thing more, and this I heard from a friend of mine on whose judgment and truthfulness I can absolutely rely—he is not and never has been a soldier; he is a civilian. Some three or four months ago he was visiting Army Headquarters on Army business and arrived early in the morning. He went round to the office with which he had to deal, but there was nobody there. He went round again, and nobody arrived at the office until just upon half-past ten. Some people came then,

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and they apologised for not being there before. They said that they were later than usual because they had been up very late the night before at bridge. And that is the Headquarters of the British Army in France! We are sending our sons out there to be commanded in the field and to risk their lives under the direction of men who act in that way. Is it not about time that some of these things that every regimental officer knows, that every regimental officer talks about, that every regimental officer tells his people about, were said in public? I think so, my Lords, and that is why I put down this Question to-day.
I would say this to the Government. Do they not think it is about time they gave our gallant Army a fair chance? A noble Lord with whom I very seldom agree, Lord Courtney, made a speech a few days ago in which he asked your Lordships, to put it shortly—I do not want to misrepresent him—to "throw up the sponge" on the first available opportunity, because, as he put it, both the German lines and the Anglo-French lines in France were unbroken and unbreakable. He thought that those lines were unbroken and unbreakable. What are the facts? On September 25 our gallant men broke the lines, all three of them—they were clean through them. There would have been a great victory. But there was bad Staff work; there were no reinforcements, and the whole thing fell through. The lines unbreakable? Why, they were actually broken. Pretty much the same thing in France has happened not once but several times. I ask, When are the Government going to take steps to stop it? Mr. Bonar Law, in the House of Commons yesterday, used a phrase which I have myself used in this House; he adopted it and made it his own. He said that in these times no Government could justify its existence unless it had success. He said it very markedly, and I was glad to read it. Ought not you to say the same thing, quite as markedly, about a General in the field? Do not you want success among your Generals even more than among your Statesmen? Over and over again you have had this gallantry of our soldiers and regimental officers—gallantry the world has never seen surpassed—and you have witnessed the whole of these efforts and results thrown away at horrible loss of life because of muddling in high places.
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I ask the Government this, Is it not about time that the efforts of these men should be recognised, that a General who is never successful should be removed, and that our men at the Front should be given a fair chance for life and for victory?
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, like everybody else I am quite aware of the fact that in the Press and elsewhere there has been unfavourable criticism of the Staff. I believe that this is by no means an uncommon phenomenon. At all periods of history there have always been irresponsible critics who are ready to find fault with the operations of armies in the field, and I expect that if the noble Lord were to search the columns of foreign newspapers he would find a certain amount of criticism—perhaps not quite so vigorous as his own—in French, in German, and in Austrian newspapers directed against the operations of the campaign as conducted by their respective Staffs. However, I am not going to undertake the defence of this body. There are noble Lords present who are far more capable than I am of dealing with the somewhat remarkable and sensational charges and allegations which have just been made, and I shall leave that task to them.
With regard to the Question that appears upon the Paper I am unable, for reasons which have been given already in the House of Commons, to disclose the numbers of the General Administrative Staff. But with regard to the other points I am able to inform the noble Lord that the Divisional Headquarters Staff consists of seventeen officers; that the Staff of an Army Corps Headquarters consists of twenty officers; and that the Headquarters of an Army consists of thirty-five officers. As to the second portion of the noble Lord's Question—that which deals with the numbers of the French General Headquarters Staff—that request has already been put in the House of Commons, and the Government, for reasons given at the time, found themselves unable to accede to it. But if the noble Lord likes to accept unofficial information from myself, I may tell him that when I visited the French Headquarters Staff at an early period of the war I inquired what the number of officers was, and I think I was told that the number approximated to 100. The noble Lord, however, must not take that figure as official, because it is quite possible that my information

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may not have been absolutely accurate. In any case the organisation and functions of the French General Headquarters Staff and our own are, I believe, in many respects entirely different.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, it is always good that Parliament should be open for such criticism as is necessary for securing that affairs which have gone wrong are straightened out. But I cannot but regret that my noble friend should have launched the charges he has against the Headquarters of the British Army and the Field-Marshal Commanding in France without more adequate information than I think he possesses. He told us tales which came from newspaper correspondents and from officers who have come home and from all and sundry who have accumulated the mass of tales which always exist about an army in the field. I do not know of any campaigns of which I have read in which the kind of criticism to which we have listened to-night has not been constantly made. These criticisms are founded very largely upon a misunderstanding of what is the organisation in the field. I do not think that anybody should venture to criticise the arrangements of the Army in France who has not looked at the pattern upon which it is based—the pattern which is laid down in the Field Service Regulations. I will say a word about those in a moment.
I wish to point out, in the first place, that my noble friend seemed to have a very vague notion of the distinction between the Staff and the General Staff. If you go to that quiet little town in France which is the Headquarters of the British Army, as I have done more than once, you will find a certain number of officers who have had very little to do with military affairs in the early part of their life, and who are there to carry out the business and everyday administrative arrangements of the General Commanding-in-Chief. But if you walk a quarter of a mile away you will come to a plain building where the real staff of the Field-Marshal Commanding is at work. You will find there just about as competent a General Staff as anybody could wish to see, presided over by General Robertson, one of the most competent heads in any Army that is engaged in this great war, who has some twenty-four experts under him, many of whom I know personally to be
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about the best trained officers we have turned out in the last ten years.
It is quite true that we have suffered in this war from the want of an organised Staff, and by that I mean a General Staff, not what is commonly known as the Staff. The General Staff is an evolution out of the Staff which there has always been at the Headquarters of armies; it is an evolution which has taken place as the science of war has become more and more difficult and complicated. As armies have grown greater and the strategical problems have become more difficult and much more intricate, the General Staff has become a college of high priests trained to sit apart and work at these great problems of war. When we are comparing our Army with Armies that have had a General Staff for a hundred years or more, as is the case with the German Army, no doubt we have been at a disadvantage, and no doubt our disadvantage has been the greater because we have had to expend our Army in France to something like five times the size at which it started. But none the less there has been General Staff work of the highest order. The General Staff is composed of men who have had such a training as has fitted them for the work, and these men have been of the utmost value and have shown the most praiseworthy diligence in the war which is now going on. In the building of which I spoke just now, at the Headquarters of the British Army, there are, as I say, twenty-four or twenty-five of these extremely competent officers, not of the kind my noble friend has in his mind but men who have spent laborious days and nights in the study of their profession, and who have brought the training of the Staff College to great perfection by their own studies in the field. These men are the advisers at Headquarters of the Field-Marshal Commanding, and these are the men who constitute the real working Staff of the British Army.
It is all very well for people who have not the vaguest notion of the difference between a General Staff and the personal staff of the General or the Administrative Staff and the other Staffs there necessarily are to come home and tell the sort of things my noble friend has recounted to you to-night. These are people who do not know what to look for, and if the noble Lord had told you that any competent

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person had seen in the General Staff things of the character one would gather from my noble friend's speech to-night then I, for one, should have been very astonished, and should have felt bound to offer the strongest contradiction. What is true of the General Staff Headquarters is also true of the General Headquarters. A better Headquarters Staff than that in General Haig's Army I defy anybody to find. I doubt if there is a better in any Army. I doubt if there is a General who has more aptitude for General Staff work than General Haig and the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief; and if the General Staff works up to the level of the chiefs it would be of the most efficient kind in the field.
My noble friend, as I have said, has a somewhat vague notion of the relation of the different sections of the Army to one another. If he will read Part II of the Field Service Regulations, in that little book which anybody can buy in the shops for sixpence or a shilling, I forget which, he will find a description of the Army in the field which will enlighten him as to what to look for. The Field Service Regulations were finally completed by the General Staff, I think after some two years work, in 1910, and they govern the whole of the arrangements of the Staffs in the field. Under the plan of these Regulations, all that the Army Council does is to send in men, supplies, munitions, and the thousand and one things that an Army needs. They are sent in to be dealt with in the theatre of war in this fashion. There are three sections of the Staff of the General who will ultimately command in chief, three sections which are prepared for him in advance. There is the General Staff. Then there is his Adjutant-General, who looks after discipline and personnel. His relation to the General Staff is this. The General Staff makes the plans, advises the General, and prepares the operations; the Adjutant-General supplies the Army and the personnel required. Then the Quartermaster-General looks after the whole of the business concerned with supplies and the medical arrangements in time of war. Under these circumstances each of these great officers has his own Staff, and each Army commander has a Staff fashioned upon the same pattern, with the division in the General and Administrative Staffs. Over and above the whole of that there is the personal Staff of the General,
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his aides-de-camp, officers he has who must be there to entertain distinguished foreign officers who are coming to see him, to take people about, and look after things. And if you go to France you will find that it is such there as you will find in any Army. You will find always with the General Commanding-in-Chief a certain number of Staff Officers who are there for the very purpose of keeping the Commander-in-Chief free.
What does my noble friend think is the life of Sir John French? I will tell him from my own personal observation. He gets up at six o'clock every morning. He is at work with his General Staff from a very early hour. He then goes down to a conference with his officers at half-past nine, having been already at work in the morning. He is conferring with them when he is riding round a little later on. His day is spent in visiting troops over the large theatre of war or holding conferences with his Army commanders. He comes back in the afternoon for further conferences, and goes down again to Headquarters and holds long conferences up to dinner-time. He goes in to his dinner at a late moment and leaves early for yet further conferences, and then goes to bed at 11 o'clock to rise again at six o'clock the next morning.
As to the place where the officers were said to have been playing bridge and were late in the morning in consequence, I for myself do not recognise any such picture among the many Staffs I have visited at Army Headquarters. No doubt in every Army there are a certain number of people who are slack, but I am satisfied that this has not been the character of the Staffs we have in the British Army, who, remember, were carefully selected for this campaign, and who had worked and thought everything out in order that, in the event of war, they should fulfil the supreme conditions of an efficient Staff—readiness to take responsibility, the possession of initiative, and the ability to give counsel.
It is true, of course, that when you get to what one may call the subordinate Staffs you get less and less efficiency How are you to find adequate Staff officers for all the Divisions and Brigades that have come into existence during the war? It is impossible. The expansion of the Army has made it hopeless to do those

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things. In the year 1806 the German General Staff came fully into being. The German General Staff developed and enlarged the great War College for the training of the General Staff which was set up in Berlin and brought to perfection about that time. Ever since then they have been training General Staff officers and sending them into the Army to permeate the command and other kinds of Staffs. They have had a hundred years in which to do what we have been trying to do in ten years, and they have probably a very much larger proportion of men who have gone through the mill, so to speak; but we, although it has been done under a good deal of pressure, have been turning out progressively more each year of trained Staff Officers both for the General Staff and for the Administrative Staff. The result has been that, although we have been comparatively at a great disadvantage in the field owing to not having the large reserve of thoroughly trained Staff officers which foreign Armies have, we have still not been as badly off as people might conceive. No doubt it has been true that on the Staffs there have been a considerable number of people who have not been able to do the work as well as they ought to have been able to do it, and front no fault of their own, but because they did not have and could not have the opportunity of going through the proper training. These are the improvised Staff officers who have been called into being. But to generalise from mistakes which have been made through the absence of a sufficient number of thoroughly trained Staff officers is very unfair to an Army which has been tried as our Army has been.
My noble friend instanced two or three cases. The first was a very vague one—of trenches not being dug. He said the second line trenches should have been dug much earlier than June last. This is one of those questions which has to be decided upon the field and by the military experts. The only thing I am certain of is this. If the noble Lord thinks that any of the Army commanders, or the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, or the General Staff of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief failed to realise what ought to be done because they did not go there, then I am sure he is mistaken. The Staff is moving about a good deal, and although in some Armies there has been much more visiting of the trenches than in others, in this case
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I am sure it was not through want of zeal that the work had not been done.
Then my noble friend spoke of September 25. He said there were no reserves ready to bring up. He is quite wrong. There were reserves ready, and the Field-Marshal Commanding was down there the night before seeing that the reserves were up and in their places ready. Into the reason why, although they were there and ready, they did not succeed in what they ought to have done I will not enter. It is a matter which concerns the Divisions themselves; it had not in any material degree, as far as I can judge, anything to do with any question of organisation. Certainly it was not from any want of care and attention on the part of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief that the mishap occurred, if it did occur.
My noble friend said something about ladies being at Headquarters. Let me assure him in that that is mere gossip. Personally I doubt if there have been a couple of ladies at Headquarters since the beginning of the campaign, and if they did get there it was in spite of many great difficulties put in their way and owing to the determination which is characteristic of their sex. At any rate their stay there would be very short. I made inquiries and was informed that the apparition was mythical.
It is quite true, as my noble friend has said, that in a War like this a great deal depends upon Staff work. In the old days we used to win by bravery and determination, and sometimes by numbers. In these days you cannot win by mere bravery and determination, and you may not be able to win even by numbers. The military problems are of a difficulty and intricacy which require mind to be brought to bear. For years I thought that where we were asleep in connection with the Army was in our want of recognition of the absolute fact that the next great war would be a war of mind against mind. If you are going to play chess against a body like the great General Staff of Germany you must train your chess players for a long while beforehand. I have felt for long that the really great problem of the British Army was the problem of its General Staff, and I rejoice to think that among our Generals to-day there are some men who, sharing that conviction, have made

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it the business of their lives to train as General Staff officers ought to be trained. We cannot give too much attention to that. We cannot overlook the necessity of so fashioning our organisation that brain and organisation may be the chief things, with the confidence that the national spirit will add everything else. But brain and organisation cannot be improvised. You have to prepare beforehand, and if we have too small a Staff to-day, or if it is not perfect, it is because, as I said, we did not wake up to this great military problem early enough but frittered away our energies in controversies between voluntary and national service and other matters which were really irrelevant to the great point on which we were to be tested.
I felt that I could not sit still after listening to what my noble friend said—I am sure with absolute sincerity and with the greatest desire to serve the public—I could not remain silent because I know that much of what he said does not represent the facts, and because some of those who are leading the troops in France, some in supreme command, are not only old friends of mine but old colleagues with whom I have worked side by side, and whom I have seen perfecting the organisation which they are now administering. They are men who have put passion into their work, and to say at the end of fifteen months that their work has been a failure is to give expression to what is very far from the truth. After all, it is a great feat to have held and to have reduced practically to impotence—perhaps to permanent impotence—that tremendous organisation, that tremendous military machine, greater than any one realised, which Germany brought to bear at the very beginning of the war. We owe a great deal to the leaders of the French and British Armies who brought that about, and I, for one, am not disposed to look closely at defects which are of an ordinary character compared with the sterling qualities which those leaders have exhibited.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, I think that as a general rule criticisms of all operations in the field during their progress ought to be avoided; and I feel that we who sit at home at ease find it difficult if not impossible to realise the tremendous responsibilities that fall upon
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our Generals in the field in the special difficulties which the circumstances impose upon them. I feel also that without full and complete knowledge no one is justified in attempting to impute blame or to accord praise to anybody. Still, in spite of the eloquent and learned dissertation on Staff duties which the noble and learned Viscount has given us, I think no harm will be occasioned by the question which the noble Lord has raised.
The noble and learned Viscount did not explain certain phenomena with which we are faced, and to which the noble Lord (Lord St. Davids) briefly referred. The Censor has permitted us to know that in the great attack in the region of Loos in September a great victory was all but gained. There must be some reason why that victory was not won. Some reason must be assigned. Most undoubtedly it was not want of gallantry on the part of our troops. The noble Lord who raised this question hinted that it was due to such faulty Staff arrangements as prevented the bringing up of the reserves at the proper time. I understood the noble and learned Viscount to say that the reserves did come up to time. If so, why was not the ground which was carried, and carried without very much difficulty in the first advance, held afterwards? In this trench warfare, which is not new, as is often assumed, but which is now on a far vaster scale than has happened before, we have learned that the most important thing of all is to bring up your reserves and supports at the right moment. Therefore in the framing of orders the essential matter is that the vital element of time should be so studied as to ensure the reasonable certainty that sufficient reserves will arrive at the right moment. If that is not secured then there is at least some evidence of faulty Staff work—
VISCOUNT HALDANE: The noble Lord has missed the point of what I said. I cannot say that the reserves got there in time. I said that they were in their places in ample time. It was not faulty Staff work at all; it was that they did not get from their places across the ground in time.
LORD SYDENHAM: I am afraid I cannot follow the noble and learned Viscount. The Staff work should be so calculated as to bring the troops up at

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the moment when they are wanted, and if the time was miscalculated I should certainly say that was bad Staff work. I turn to the handling of the reserves as a whole. The main reserves might either have been retained in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief of the whole force or given over to the General in command of the army directed to make this great attack. The distinction is very important. In the one ease, the Headquarters Staff of the whole force would be responsible for the arrangements for bringing up the reserves. In the other, that responsibility would fall on the Army Staff concerned. I do not know what actually happened; but in any case it must be clear that the proper arrangement would have been that the reserves intended to be used should have been under the Army Stall which was about to make the attack. The reason for that is obvious, because it would concentrate the responsibility in one man, and in such matters as this any division of responsibility is always dangerous.
We have been told—and I think the Censor let us know—that in this attack two divisions of troops which had never been under fire and knew nothing of trenches were hurried up and flung tired and hungry, after a long march, into the fiery furnace of this great attack. Why was that? I fear that that must be explained by some faults in the Staff arrangements. It is certain that the Divisional Commanders would have made arrangements for the feeding of their men, and if those arrangements miscarried, as they must have miscarried, it must have been that they clashed with orders from superior authority; in other words, the orders were not as harmonious as they should have been. Some features of the story of Loos bear a strong resemblance to what occurred in the great attack at Neuve Chapelle in March last, where for some reason—whether bad Staff arrangements or not, I do not know—a great victory was not gained as there was every reason to think would be the case. And, as the noble Lord has said, there have been other occasions in Flanders where some of the same occurrences have taken place.
Again at Suvla Bay either the time arrangements were faulty or t he movements of the troops did not correspond to the plan. I am sure we all feel that the drafting of
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orders for great attacks like these cannot be an easy matter, and one speaks with great diffidence in criticising them. Their main feature must be that each subordinate commander of a unit must be told exactly what is expected of him and must communicate all necessary information to all those under his command. The orders must be harmonious and perfectly free from ambiguity, and, as I have said, the vital element of time must dominate the movements of supports and reserves. In this quasi siege warfare, no plan of attack should be drawn up without consultation with some one who has all possible personal knowledge of the ground which has to be covered. I may be wrong, but I am informed that that has not been the case in many instances in the recent fighting, and that the consequences have been naturally unfortunate. Mistakes, even great mistakes, will always occur in war; but they ought not to be repeated. The experience of many months ought to have eliminated some, at least, of the possible sources of error. I have not the slightest wish to impute any blame, and I have not nearly enough knowledge to enable me to arrive at a clear judgment. But I hope that the Government have made careful inquiry into the circumstances, because these circumstances seem to have robbed our splendid troops of the full reward of their great efforts and heavy sacrifices. I am sure that no one in your Lordships' House desires scapegoats in any form. But I believe—I say so most seriously—that there is a strong feeling in the Army and among the gallant troops from the Dominions that no steps should be neglected which will enforce the great lessons of these fifteen months on all those who are entrusted with the conduct of our operations in the field. If this feeling exists, it ought not to be ignored.
LORD TENTERDEN: My Lords, I am averse to offering any criticisms on this subject, but I should like to ask two questions. First, whether the telephone wires now in use are encased in armour plated cables so that the trenches can be properly communicated with with less fear of the wires being broken by artillery fire; and, secondly, whether bomb-proof shelters have been provided with first-aid for the wounded in the support trenches. Those are matters of vital importance in the public interest, and it is only for that reason that I bring them forward.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUERS OF CREWE): My Lords, with reference to the two questions just asked, my noble friend (Lord Newton) who represents the War Office will be obliged if the noble Lord would place them on the Paper in the ordinary course, because we are not able to answer them off hand.
The speeches of the noble Lord on the Cross Benches (Lord Sydenham) and of the noble and learned Viscount below the Gangway (Lord Haldane) have covered a great part of the ground on which my noble friend who started this discussion ventured, and so far I am relieved front discussing it; but at the same time it will no doubt be desired that a member of the Government should give some reply to specific questions raised by my noble friend Lord St. Davids. I confess I was not a little sorry in observing the tone of my noble friend's speech. Throughout it he seemed to suppose that there is a sort of natural hostility between the regimental officer and the Staff officer, that they must be regarded as sets of men carrying out almost opposing functions, and not united, as one would hope, by ties of comradeship. I do not think that is at all a fair description of the position. The most successful Staff officers have served a long apprenticeship with distinction as regimental officers, and, so far as my personal acquaintance goes, they are all most willing to admit the supreme advantage which that part of their career has given them, and they always speak with the utmost respect and regard of regimental work and of those officers who perform it. I was sorry, therefore, that my noble friend Lord St. Davids repeated the remark as to the large proportion of casualties suffered by the regimental officers. In the natural course of things that is bound to be so; and I cannot believe that if the remark was made with some resentment, as I gathered from what my noble friend said, it could be intended to refer to those genuine Staff officers who actually do the Staff work, but possibly more to the quite different class of Staff officer of the more ornamental although by no means useless kind to whom my noble friend alluded.
Then my noble friend stated that he had a number of newspaper criticisms which he refrained front reading to the House. Some of those I have no doubt are of high value; others, probably, are of less value
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because founded upon less knowledge. I assume that he was referring all through to newspaper criticisms by military correspondents—many of whom are, as we know, soldiers who have served with distinction in the past—and not to the extracts from letters which we so often see printed in newspapers, because although extracts of that kind may also contain criticism it is, of course, of an entirely different character from that contained in the articles and almost essays which we see written by the regular military correspondents in the Press. But on this question of criticism I am sure there is no need to remind my noble friend—although it may be necessary to remind some outside—that it is important to keep clearly in mind the distinction between criticism which is founded upon genuine military appreciation of a military situation and that kind of rather random gossip which is naturally prevalent where large bodies of men are gathered together. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is as much gossip going on at the front of any Army of any country as there is behind the scenes of a theatre. It is quite inevitable that it should be so. But it is important to draw the careful distinction which I have ventured to point out. Therefore when my noble friend suggests that we should ring up On the telephone friends of our own who might have obtained information or criticism about the Staff work in the Army from sons of theirs, lads home on leave, he, I am sure, would be the first to admit that that sort of criticism is not of the same kind or possibly of the same value as the more serious military appreciations to which he also alluded.
I have no doubt that the Headquarters Staff would fully agree that it is subject to criticism, and would welcome the criticism of informed persons like my noble friend on the Cross Benches (Lord Sydenham), either in or out of Parliament. I was very grateful to my noble friend Lord Haldane for drawing the distinction he did between Staff and Staff in a manner which was not made clear by my noble friend who initiated this discussion. The distinction between the General Staff under the Commander-in-Chief and the personal Staff at Headquarters is one which ought to be borne in mind with the utmost care. The same term is applied to two entirely different things. In passing, I should like to express the pleasure with which I heard the tribute

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which Lord Haldane paid to Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Staff, of whose energy and capacity, so far as I know, only one opinion exists both in and out of the Army. My noble friend (Lord St. Davids) spoke of people who were inadequate to their duties, whatever they might be, having been forced upon Sir John French by some person or persons unknown. As to that, I am afraid I cannot give him any information; but from a long knowledge of Sir John French I should think it is exceedingly unlikely that he would submit to have people forced upon his personal Staff, or upon any Staff which he commands, by the very small number of persons, if any such exist, who could possibly be in a position to do so.
Then my noble friend spoke of the apparent neglect of employing capable regimental officers instead of the incapable figures who, it is said, are engaged in doing Staff work at the Front. There, again, I think my noble friend was not drawing the distinction which I have endeavoured to emphasise between the working General Staff and the personal Staff. But in any ease I must remind him that Staff training is not the same thing as war experience. It may be, of course, that among regimental officers there are men possessed of the highest possible qualifications for Staff officers, but even they are bound to go through a certain round of technical training before they can attain to the merit of a man of equal capacity who has had the advantage of a Staff College training. Staff duties, I take it, can no more be learned without practice than can playing the violin, and all the qualities which go to make a first-class regimental officer which may be super-added to those qualities which make a first-rate Staff officer will not, without the training, enable a man to do the work as well as it, must be done. Therefore it is by no means impossible that the deficiencies or failures of which my noble friend speaks may be due in some cases to the very men whom he wishes to see employed—that is to say, officers of capacity and willingness and excellent brain, but who, owing to circumstances, are not provided with the particular kind of knowledge on a large scale which is necessary for Staff work in a high position.
My noble friend next spoke of the question of a second line of defence which, as he said, was only being prepared in
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June a few hundred yards from the German front, and he implied, I think, that that was due to Staff neglect, and I think also to the neglect which in one sense comes to much the same thing—the neglect of the Generals to visit the front themselves as often as they should. As my noble friend Lord Haldane said, there is no doubt a difference between the amount of personal inspecting and visiting which is carried on by Generals in high command, and I doubt if it is too much to say that to a great extent the success of a General, and to a greater extent still his popularity with his men and the confidence which he inspires in them, is due to that habit of regular visiting and of continual inspection. But in this particular instance I do not know, of course, to what precise area my noble friend alluded, and, supposing I did, it clearly would not do for me to say; but having at that time had a fairly accurate knowledge of what was going on I cannot help wondering whether my noble friend is strictly accurate in his statement. It may have been possible that there were places of short length where the defences second, third, or fourth, as many as may have been necessary, had not been finished or perhaps even begun at a particular time. I am speaking purely from conjecture. Is my noble friend quite certain that the particular instance he is thinking of may not have been due to the country having been flooded and therefore unapproachable for a certain time?
LORD ST. DAVIDS: As the noble Marquess asks me a specific question, I may say that my information comes from officers of high authority at the Front. It is obvious that I cannot give names and places.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I entirely appreciate my noble friend's discretion. He and I are equally debarred front naming either the officers who give the information or the places in respect to which they give it, but it is obvious that I cannot give a Satisfactory answer to my noble friend without knowing a great deal more than he can tell me.
Then my noble friend asked a question which the noble and learned Viscount also touched upon—namely, that of the presence of ladies at Headquarters; and he asked me to state, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, whether I thought ladies ought to go to Headquarters. I have no hesitation in saying that unless they have

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business there they most certainly ought not. If there were a Miss Florence Nightingale to-day we should be glad if she would spend the great part of her time at Headquarters or wherever she could do good work, but the idea that Headquarters should be visited for social objects is obviously one that would not commend itself to any of us any more than it does to my noble friend, and I am altogether unable to believe that such is the case then my noble friend mentioned an instance of a man who went to Headquarters on business and could not find anybody to attend to him because certain officers had been sitting up late the night before playing at cards. There, again, we have to bear in mind the distinction between the different kinds of Staff officers. In the one case a late appearance in the morning would involve a gross and grave neglect of duty, which obviously ought to be dealt with; in the other case—and the story sounds as though this were more likely to be the explanation—it appears to involve a neglect of courtesy in an officer not being there to receive those who presented themselves at Headquarters.
I come now to the infinitely more serious question which was indicated by my noble friend. I am bound to say with great care, and more fully developed by my noble friend on the Cross Benches, Lord Sydenham.
I mean the question of the attack at Loos in the later part of September, when, as was currently reported and as has been repeated by my noble friend to-night, a success was missed owing to the failure to bring up reserves at the proper time. Well, I am not able to enter into the discussion of that question at all this afternoon. The whole matter is in this sense sub judice that it is the subject of close military inquiry at this moment by the highest authorities; and in those circumstances it clearly would not be becoming in me to say anything upon it at all—in any case I should be most unwilling to embark on a discussion of the merits or demerits of a particular strategical movement undertaken on their own responsibility by Generals. But that, of course, is not precisely the point, because the question is rather one as to whether in this particular instance neglect took place, and, if there were neglect, who ought to be held responsible for it.
Here again I think it is important to draw a certain distinction. It is some
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times thought—I do not know whether it was said in so many words by my noble friend—that a lack of success, which on more than one occasion has attended an advance of that kind, is nothing more nor less than the difference between failure and a great victory. It is important to weigh one's words carefully in speaking of those results. If by a great victory is meant the throwing back of the German line—and I do not think that anything ought to be described as a great victory which does not bring about that result—it is not to be hoped that an operation carried out on a comparatively small front can produce that result. The progress of the war has shown that it is only by breaking through on what would be considered even now an enormously long front that you can hope to bring about the change in the general line of the enemy which alone ought to be described as a great victory. That is one of the lessons, as I understand, which this war has taught us—that even to break through the line of the enemy on either side, whether we broke the line of the Germans or the Germans broke the line of the Allies, for five or six miles, although it might be regarded as a considerable success and resulted in the taking of a great number of prisoners and loss to the enemy, as happened the other day in Champagne, yet even a success of that kind does not bring about those conditions which alone ought to be described as a great victory. I venture to impress that distinction on my noble friend, because we are sometimes apt to speak of successes which, though substantial and real as victories, yet are not victories in the sense that the battles of, for instance, Marengo and Austerlitz were.
I think I have covered most of the ground which was raised by my noble friend; and although, if I may quote from an illustrious example in another place, I would say that there are one or two things he said which I should prefer he had left unsaid, yet at the same time, like my noble friend on the Cross Benches. I do not complain of his having raised this subject or of his having given vent to some outspoken criticism, because I think it is not at all impossible that those who are the subject of it would prefer that it should be made in public rather than bandied about in private.
LORD ST. DAVIDS: I now put to His Majesty's Government the second Question which stands in my name on the Paper—namely, whether they have any information as to the numbers of the Headquarters Staffs, and also of the Army and Divisional Staffs, in the German and Austrian Armies. In doing so I may, perhaps, be allowed to make one or two remarks on the speech of the noble Marquess who has just sat down. The noble Marquess said that I had seemed to assume a position of hostility between the regimental officer and the Staff officer as being a natural thing. I think it is a most unnatural thing. It is most deplorable that practically every regimental officer who returns has only one opinion about the officers on the Headquarters Staff—it is an undoubted fact, as any noble Lord can find out for himself. The noble Marquess said that criticism by young officers was worthless or of not much value. These are not all young officers. The people who have been in London criticising the Headquarters Staff are many of them officers on leave from France in very high positions indeed; and their criticism is in much stronger terms than anything I have said this afternoon. I do not desire to follow the noble Marquess into detail, but I want to call the attention of the Government to the fact that they have given the numbers of the Staff of the Divisions but have refused to state the numbers on the Headquarters Staffs. The noble and learned Viscount (Lord Haldane) has given, I think, the numbers on the Headquarters Staff of the working men, of the men who are actually doing work in offices.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Only one section.
LORD ST. DAVIDS: But what the Government have refused to do is to give the number of these young men in France on the personal Staff who cannot, in the vast numbers in which I believe they exist, be doing anything useful. Let us speak plainly. Those young men are not out there for anything useful. They are put there because the place is comfortable. At this moment, while we are sitting here nice and warm, there are in the trenches tens of thousands of young men up to their knees in icy water. I saw a letter only to-day from a man who was up to
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his waist in icy water. It is not a very gratifying thing for regimental officers to think that there is a great number—the Government refuse to state the figure, though surely it is not a military secret—of young officers of high position, of good connections, of influence—that there is a number of those young men who ought to be in the trenches and doing regimental work who have got on to the General Staff by influence, and are kept there because it is comfortable and safe. It is not a nice thing. It is a scandal, a scandal which the Government refuse to abate, but which I say they ought to abate.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I do not propose to follow the noble Lord in the remarks which he has just made and which refer to the previous Question. But in reply to his second Question I can inform him that according to the "Handbook of the German Army, 1912," the following would be the war organisation of Staffs:—Imperial Headquarters Staff: total strength about 225 officers and 46 officials. This would include the personal staff of the Emperor, his Military Cabinet, the Adjutantur, the Great General Staff, the Inspector of Field Artillery, the Inspector-General of Foot Artillery, the Inspector-General of Engineers and Pioneers, the Inspector-General of Lines of Communication and Railways, and various details. Army Staff: total strength about 37 officers and officials. Army Corps Staff: total strength about 27 officers. Divisional Staff: total strength about six officers. I should like to add that these numbers are only approximate. They are based upon the war of 1870, and it is highly probable that the numbers are at the present moment considerably greater. Then I come to the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the Headquarter Staff of an Army, including the Army Commander, his personal staff, and officers of Staff and train troops, there are altogether 50 officers and officials. In the case of the Headquarter Staff of an Army Corps, the number is 30; and the number on the Headquarter Staff of a Division is 23.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.