Sitting of 17 July 1902

Preamble
The House met at Two of the clock.
The Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means.
UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
  MR. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—
  Education Board Provisional Order Confirmation (London) Bill [Lords].
  Gas and Water Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time tomorrow.

  CALEDONIAN RAILWAY BILL, OMAGH URBAN DISTRICT GAS BILL, SALFORD CORPORATION BILL, SOUTH PORT AND LYTHAM TRAMROAD BILL.
  Lords' Amendments considered, and agreed to.
  BRISTOL CORPORATION BILL [LORDS] (KING'S CONSENT SIGNIFIED).
  Read a third time, and passed, with Amendments.
  MEDWAY AND THAMES CANAL BILL [LORDS].
  Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
  ABERDEEN SUBURBAN TRAMWAYS ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL [LORDS].
  Read a second time; to be considered upon Monday next.
  PORTPATRICK AND WIGTOWNSHIRE JOINT RAILWAY ORDER CONFIRMATION.
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Joint Railway, ordered to be brought in by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Solicitor General for Scotland.
  PORTPATRICK AND WIGTOWNSHIRE JOINT RAILWAY ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  "To confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Joint Railway," presented accordingly; and, under 62 and 63 Vic., cap. 47, sec. 7 (2), ordered to be considered upon Monday next.
  MENAI BRIDGE URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [LORDS], WHITSTABLE IMPROVEMENT BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time tomorrow.

  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time tomorrow.

  GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time tomorrow.

  WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time tomorrow.

  LEICESTER CORPORATION BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  HASTINGS TRAMWAYS BILL [LORDS], TAFF VALE RAILWAY BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, without Amendment; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  WREXHAM DISTRICT TRAMWAYS BILL [LORDS], ROSSENDALE VALLEY TRAMWAYS BILL [LORDS].
  Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have agreed to: Rothesay Tramways (Extension) Order Confirmation Bill, without Amendment; East Worcestershire Water Bill, North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply Bill, Cleethorpes Improvement Bill, with Amendments.
PETITIONS.
  COUNTY COURTS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Petition of the Scottish Trade Protection Society, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions against: From Scarborough; Ledbury; South Shields (three); and Manchester; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions for alteration: From Lower Darwen; Rye; Burnage; Tintwistle; Hyde; Hollingworth; King Somborne; Shrewsbury; Melbourne; Rushden; Hanley; East and West Challow; East Hendred; Sparsholt; Wantage; West Bromwich (three); Cowes; Southampton; Lewes; Oxford (three); Manchester; Miles Platting; Penmon; Clothall; Litton; Newark; Blackburn (two); Gittisham; and Eccles; to lie upon the Table.
  GROCERS' LICENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition of the Scottish Trade Protection Society, against; to lie upon the Table.
  LONDON ELECTIONS BILL.
  Petitions from St. Pancras, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  LAND LAW IRELAND ACT, 1887 (EVICTION NOTICES).
  Copy presented, of Return of Eviction Notices filed during the quarter ended 30th June, 1902 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL TAXATION ACCOUNT, 1901–2.
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 17th June; Mr. Grant Lawson]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 274.]
  RAILWAY RETURNS.
  Copy presented, of Return as to the Capital, Traffic Receipts, and Working Expenditure, etc., of the Railway Companies of the United Kingdom for the year 1901 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 8) BILL [LORDS].
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 16th July; Mr. Gerald Balfour]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 275.]
  GAS AND WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL [LORDS].
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 16th July; Mr. Gerald Balfour]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 276.]
  GAS AND WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL [LORDS].
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 16th July; Mr. Gerald Balfour]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 277.]
  EXPLOSIONS (EXPLOSION OF GUNPOWDER ON REGISTERED PREMISES AT MARPLE, NEAR STOCKPORT).
  Copy presented, of Report by Captain M. B. Lloyd, His Majesty's Inspector of Explosives, to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the circumstances attending an explosion of gunpowder which took place on the registered premises of Messrs. James Lee & Sons, New Road, Marple, on the 26th April, 1902 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  SOUTH AFRICA (DESPATCHES).
  Copy presented, of Despatch by General Lord Kitchener, dated 1st June, 1902, relative to military operations in South Africa [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS.
  Accounts presented, of all Deposits received and paid during the year ended 31st December, 1901, and of the Sums received and paid by the National Debt Commissioners on account of the Fund for the Post Office Savings Banks in the same year [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 278.]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1902–3).
  Estimate presented, of the further sums required to be voted for the service of the year ending 31st March, 1903 [by Command]; referred to the Committee of Supply, and to be printed, [No. 279.]

  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 2854 to 2856 [by Command]; to lip upon the Table.
  Papers laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House,

  1. Caledonian Canal, Copy of Ninety-seventh Report of the Commissioners [by Act]; to be printed. [No. 280.]

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  2. Royal University of Ireland, Copy of Account of Receipts and Expenditure of the Royal University of Ireland for the year ended 31st March, 1902, together with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon [by Act]; to be printed. [No. 281.]

  FISHING PIERS (IRELAND).
  Return ordered, "giving the amount of public money spent on the repair or construction of Fishery Piers in Ireland, specifying the amount spent in each county, since the year 1850, stating the Act or Acts of Parliament under which the several expenditures have been made, also whether the funds so spent have been derived from Irish or from Imperial sources, and whether by way of grant or by way of loan; and, in the latter case, on what terms as to interest and repayment."—(Sir Thomas Esmonde.)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Ben Nevis Observatory.
  SIR JOHN STIRLING-MAXWELL: To ask the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that the observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis is about to be abandoned on account of want of funds; whether any application has been made through the Scottish Office for assistance for the observatory from the public purse; and whether, if such application has been refused, he will state the grounds of the refusal.
  (Answered by Mr. Graham Murray.) I have seen the memorandum issued by the directors of the Ben Nevis and Fort William Observatories announcing the imminent discontinuance of these establishments through lack of funds. No application for Government assistance has reached the Scottish Office.

  Waima Arbitration.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state if the Waima award has been received, or will be received in the course of the day.

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  (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) The award of the arbitrator in the Waima case was communicated to His Majesty's Minister at Brussels on the 15th instant.

  British Vice-Consulship at Montreux— Candidature of Mr. Ames.
  MR. YERBURGH: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that Mr. Ames was among the British subjects who were applicants for the post of British Vice-Consul at Montreux; and that he was recommended by the British Minister; and, seeing that no British subject who applied for the post was found to be duly qualified for it, will he state in what respect Mr. Ames was not duly qualified; and what are the due qualifications for the post.
  (Answered by Lord Cranborne I am aware that Mr. Ames was an applicant for the post of British Vice-Consul at Montreux; it is not the case that he was recommended by the British Minister; and the information which reached the Foreign Office induced the Secretary of State to think that he was not the candidate best qualified for the post.

  Aden Defences—Expenditure.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for (India if he will state what sum has been expended on the defences of Aden since they were initiated in 1882.
  (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) About £400,000.

  Pauper Sick—Anæsthetics in Surgical Operations—Payment to Medical Officer.
  DR. FARQUHARSON: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he will explain why, [under regulations of the Local Government Board, no provision whatever has been made for the administration of anæsthetics when operations have to be performed by Poor Law medical officers on sick paupers at a distance from a hospital or workhouse infirmary; and why no alteration has been made in the scale of fees allowed for special operations performed by Poor Law medical officers since the year 1847, many important operations, which have now become general, not having been added to the original list.
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  (Answered by Mr. Long.) The first matter referred to in the Question has been dealt with by the Local Government Board by means of a circular letter which they issued to Boards of Guardians in November, 1894. In that letter the Board recommended that, under ordinary circumstances, a case in which a serious operation was required, should not be treated in a workhouse or at the patient's home, but should be sent to a public hospital. They stated, however, that in any case, when the latter course was not practicable, or when the operation was not of a serious character, they were prepared, if an anæsthetic was required, to consider an application from the Guardians for sanction to the payment to the medical officer of a reasonable sum in respect of any assistance which it was necessary for him to obtain in connection with the administration of the anæsthetic, or of other cost incurred in connection with its use. It has been the invariable practice of the Board to give their sanction to reasonable payments proposed to be made by Boards of Guardians to medical officers in circumstances of the kind referred to. I am not aware that difficulties have been experienced in connection with the scale of fees to Poor Law medical officers for operations, but if representations are made to me showing that alterations are required, I shall be willing to give the subject careful consideration. At the same time I would repeat that, under ordinary circumstances, serious operations should not be treated in a workhouse or at the patient's home, but should be sent to a public hospital.

  Municipal (Non-County) Boroughs— Statistics.
  MR. D. A. THOMAS; To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can give the number of municipal boroughs which contained, according to the last census, a population of under 2,000 inhabitants, of the number containing between 2,000 and 5,000, between 5,000 and 10,000, 10,000 and 30,000, and the number containing over 30,000 inhabitants; and also the number of municipal boroughs other than county boroughs having a population exceeding that of the urban district of Merthyr Tydvil.

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  (Answered by Mr. Long.) The number of municipal boroughs, other than county boroughs, in England and Wales, according to the last census, was as follows: under 2,000 inhabitants, 12; between 2,000 and 5,000, 56; between 5,000 and 10,000, 44; between 10,000 and 30,000, 90; over 30,000 inhabitants, 48. There are 67 county boroughs. All but one of these have a population of over 30,000. None of the municipal boroughs in England and Wales, other than county boroughs, has a population exceeding that of the urban district of Merthyr Tydvil, although there are eight other urban districts with a greater population.

  Royal Marines—Supersession of a General Officer.
  MR. KEARLEY: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether a general officer, Royal Marines, has recently been retired from the staff as being mentally unfit; and whether his name is still retained on the active list in contravention of the Order in Council governing such cases.
  (Answered by Mr. Arnold-Forster.) The general officer referred to has been superseded in his appointment owing to a severe attack of mental depression from which it is thought he may recover in about six months time. As he has not yet been found to be permanently incapacitated for further service, the question of his retirement from, the active list under the Order in Council does not arise.

  Ireland—Alleged Police Assault at Kingscourt, Cavan.
  MR. SAMUEL YOUNG: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that, on the 28th of February last, Constable Kevelehan, of the Kings-court, County Cavan, Police Station, assaulted and robbed a man named John M'Mahon; and will he say whether an inquiry has been held into that case; and, if so, will he state the result.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The constable did not assault and rob this man. But he found him drunk on the street, a bottle containing whisky lying beside him. The man was convicted of drunkenness, and had several times previously been convicted of a similar offence.

  Maintenance Charge of a Police Sergeant Declared Insane.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a police sergeant stationed at Booterstown, County Dublin., was on Saturday last declared to be insane by a local doctor, and was subsequently transferred to the Richmond Lunatic Asylum; and whether a portion of the cost of maintaining Sergeant Morrow will be levied on the counties which contribute to the maintenance of the Richmond Asylum.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The facts are as stated in the first part of the Question. If the ex-sergeant has become a pauper inmate of the asylum, the Treasury grant in aid of his maintenance at the rate of 4s. per week will be payable. Any excess payment incurred in respect of his maintenance will be contributed from local sources.

  Labourers' Cottages—Application of D. Forde of Tincoora.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can say why a labourer, Denis Forde, of Tincoora Division, Kanturk Union, was refused a cottage and plot of ground at the recent inquiry, in view of the fact that the application was not opposed by the occupant of the farm of South Glynn.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The inspector was unable to recommend the acquisition of the site selected, as it was mainly rock, and quite unsuitable for the purposes of the Labourers' Act.

  Education of Non English Speaking Irish.
  MR. O'MALLEY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Census Returns just issued for the County of Galway show that 9,442 inhabitants of that county cannot speak English; and whether he would state what provision is made for the education of this minority of the population, 4,000 of whom are of an age to attend school.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham). The figures in the first part of the Question

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  are correct. Of these, the number of children between three and eighteen years of age is 2,458. The Commissioners of National Education prescribe courses in which teachers who desire to show their proficiency in Irish may be examined. Courses are also prescribed for pupils in Irish, and special fees on a liberal scale are awarded to approved teachers of Irish. An inspector is employed whose special function is to supervise the teaching of Irish, including the examination of schools in which the language is taught. The Commissioners further desire that where there are Irish-speaking pupils in a school the teachers shall, when practicable, employ the vernacular as an aid to the elucidation and acquisition of the English language, and inspectors are at liberty to employ the vernacular in the conduct of their examination.

  Pensions for Relatives of Officers Killed while on Probation.
  SIR ELLIOTT LEES: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will arrange that an officer on probation killed in action shall be considered ipso facto to have qualified himself for a commission, and that in such cases promotion shall be given after death and a pension awarded to the relatives of the deceased; and, if so, whether he will make this order retrospective, to cover the period of the South African War.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) I will give the question careful consideration, but I cannot hold out great hopes of such a concession, as I am afraid that the change in practice involved would be considerable.

  Presteign Rifle Range.
  MR. EDWARDS: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, having regard to the fatal accident which recently occurred on the rifle range at Presteign, and in view of the unprotected nature of that range, he will give instructions to have the range stopped as being a danger to the public.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The matter has been referred to the General Officer Commanding to take any necessary action.

  Cornwallis Charity, Carmarthenshire.
  MR. ALFRED DAVIES: To ask the hon. Member for the Tonbridge Division of Kent, as a Charity Commissioner, in view of the fact that the scheme published in July, 1896, for the Cornwallis Charity, Carmarthenshire, which was amended in that year by the Charity Commissioners, was not opposed by either of the interested parishes of Llansadwrn and Llanwrda, if he will say by whom the scheme was opposed; and, seeing that the then Assistant Commissioner completed his inquiry in November, 1898, will he explain the reason of the delay which has caused no scheme to be adopted for four years after the completion of the inquiry, and two years after the Report has been printed; and will he state whether the funds connected with this charity have been found in order and what they amount to; and whether any, and, if so, what amount is now employed yearly in relief of local rates.
  (Answered by Mr. Griffith Boscawen.) (1) The main reason of the delay which has taken place in the establishment of a scheme under the Charitable Trusts Acts for the Cornwallis Charity is the refusal of the trustees of the Charity to apply for a scheme. The Commissioners have no power under those Acts to establish a scheme for a charity, the yearly income of which exceeds £50, except on an application from the trustees. This application the trustees refused to make, and their refusal rendered it necessary for the Commissioners to bring the matter before the Chancery Division of the High Court. On a summons being issued against them on behalf of the Attorney General, the trustees made, in the spring of 1901, the required application. The Commissioners immediately took steps to prepare a scheme, a draft of which is now, and has for some time been, before the trustees for their consideration. Some delay has also been caused by the difficulty of dealing with the claims of the patron of the alms houses. (2) So far as the Commissioners have been able to ascertain, the property of the Charity is duly vested and secured. (3) The gross yearly income of that property is about £267. (4) No part of the income is directly applied to the relief of local rates. (5) The scheme

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  published in July, 1896, was opposed by the trustees of the Charity, but objections to some of its provisions were also made by the Parish Council of Llansadwrn, the School Board of Llausadwrn, and the Parish Meeting of Llamwrda.

  [2.15.] QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Answers to Questions—Absence of Ministers.
    Prior to the arrival of the Prime Minister, and referring to the absence of the right hon. Gentleman at the moment a Question addressed to him was reached,
    MR.'SWIFT MACNEILLaddressing the Speaker, said—You called me to order yesterday for commenting in a disorderly way on the absence of Ministers. May I ask you, Sir, what is the orderly way of drawing attention to the absence of Ministers?
    MR. SPEAKER: It is possible that the hon. Member may himself discover an orderly way.
    MR. A. J. BALFOURimmediately afterwards entered the House.

    South Africa—Government Legislative Proposals.
    MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government contemplates the introduction of any legislation respecting affairs in South Africa during the present session.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): No, Sir; not before the Adjournment of the House.

    South African War—Victoria Cross—Distribution to Relatives of Deceased Soldiers.
    MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether any record is intended to be made, or anything to be done, for the memory, of those who have been killed in action in the war under circumstances which, had they lived, would have entitled them to a V.C. or other distinction.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK,): It is intended to grant the Victoria Cross to the representatives of those who have been killed during the war in the performance of acts of gallantry which, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa, would have entitled them to the decoration had they survived.

    Censorship.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, if he will say why Sir Edward Hulse, Bart., has been appointed to the position of Military Press Censor in South Africa, having regard to the fact that peace has been established.
    MR. BRODRICK: As I informed the House recently, the censorship has been maintained over press cablegrams. I am not aware of the particular appointment referred to.

    Remounts—The Studdert Case.
    MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can inform the House why the Studdert case was compromised; and whether the defendants could have been prosecuted on another charge.
    The following Questions on the same subject also appeared on the Paper.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he will state whether Colonel St. Quentin is the member of the Imperial Yeomanry Committee, whose duty it was to inspect the remounts for the South African War, who made the arrangement with Major Studdert for the purchase by him of horses in Ireland for the South African War; and will he say why Colonel St. Quentin was not called as a witness at the trial in Dublin of the Secretary of State for War v. Studdert and others.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he was aware of the terms under which the action of the Secretary of State for War v. Studdert, for fraudulent breach of contract as agent

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    and trustee, was compromised by the Solicitor General for Ireland as counsel for the War Office, and did he personally assent thereto; and, if so, will he state the grounds on which his assent was based.
    MR. BRODRICK: In reply to these Questions, I am afraid that I am not yet in a position to add anything to my answer of yesterday, but I hope to give an answer on Tuesday next. I may, however, say that no pledge of any kind has been given as to civil proceedings in reference to the remaining horses, or as to prosecution of individuals.

    Tientsin.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the proposed conditions for the evacuation of Tientsin have been further modified; and, if he can state to the House in what position they now stand.
    The UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,): His Majesty's Minister reports that the conditions for the dissolution of the Provisional Government have been further modified in a sense favourable to China; amongst other modifications the distance within which Chinese troops may not approach the Foreign Troops garrisoning Tientsin has been reduced to about six miles. A Note embodying these conditions, signed by the Ministers of those Powers having representatives on the Provisional Government, was sent in to the Chinese Government on the 14th instant.

    Orkney Foreshore Fishing.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the understanding given in 1899 that there should be no further sales of Crown rights in foreshore fishing by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, he will cancel upon fair terms the sale of foreshore fishing in Orkney which has been made at a small rent.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): I cannot trace
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    any such understanding as my hon. friend refers to in the Question; but, in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury stated on 16th May, 1899, that in ordinary cases the Commissioners of Woods invariably declined to sell Crown rights of salmon fishing in Scotland, and that sales are made only where there are very exceptional circumstances. The circumstances connected with the one case in Orkney in which an agreement has been made for the sale of Crown rights were very exceptional, as explained by me on 17th February last, in reply to two Questions by the hon. Members for Orkney and Shetland and for Wick Burghs.† The Commissioners of Woods cannot undertake to cancel the agreement for sale.

    Coal Duty Rebates.
    MR. D. A. THOMAS: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the refusal of the Customs to remit the coal duty on 10,000 tons of fuel, shipped prior to the 31st December 1901, by the Nitrate Railways Company—a British Company, registered in the United Kingdom—for their own use under a pre-Budget contract entered into on 17th January 1901 with the Crown Preserved Coal Company, and whether he has any reason to doubt the banâ fide nature of the transaction; and, seeing that the difference betwen a free alongside and free on board contract, in so far as the contractors and contractees are concerned, is that the ship owner and not the shipper bears the cost of placing the cargo on board, will he say why the duty was not refunded in this case.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: My right hon. friend, who is temporarily detained elsewhere, has asked me to reply to this Question for him. There is no reason to doubt the bonâ fides of the transaction referred to; but, as the contract was for delivery "free alongside," and not free on board, the vendors were under no obligation to ship the coal or to pay the duty. It was made quite plain last year that there would be no
    † See (4) Debates, ciii., 189.

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    exception from duty on "free alongside": contracts. The object of the concession then made was to avoid hardship to vendors in this country under pre-Budget contracts, and it was never intended to relieve purchasers abroad, whether British or foreign.

    Intermediate Education in Denbighshire.
    MR. HUMPHREYS OWEN: On behalf of the hon. Member for East Denbighshire, I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, if he is aware that the scheme framed for the County of Denbigh, under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, provides that a certain number of local county school governors shall in each case be appointed by the School Boards of the district within which each county school is situate; viz., on the local governing bodies of each of the county schools of Llangollen, Ruthin, Denbigh, Llanrwst, Abergele, and Wrexham, the School Hoards in the respective districts appoint four, and in the case of Ruabon six, school governors; and whether, as the Education Bill now before the House proposes to abolish School Boards, he will state in what manner he proposes that the members of the local governing bodies now appointed by the School Boards shall in future be appointed.
    THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL ON EDUCATION (Sir JOHN GORST,): This matter was mentioned yesterday in the debate on the clause, and will be considered by the Government.

    Achanault Deer Forest.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that the acreage of the deer forest of Achanault, Ross-shire, is quoted in the Deer Forest Return issued in 1891 as 45,000 acres, will he explain why the acreage is not quoted in the amended Deer Forest Return issued by the Crown Agent for Scotland and dated 1899; and, will he state the approximate acreage.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,)I have already fully explained to the hon. Member my position and views in regard
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    to the Deer Forests Return of 1899. I have nothing to add to the answers which I have given.
    *MR. WEIR: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered my Question.
    *MR. SPEAKER: Yes; an answer has been given to the Question.
    MR. WEIR: I wish to know has this forest of 45,000 acres disappeared?

    Wicklow Magistracy.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland if he can state the number of Roman Catholics in the county of Wicklow who are ex-officio magistrates, and the number of Roman. Catholic magistrates who are not ex-officio magistrates.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,): There are four Chairmen of Councils in the County Wicklow who are ex-officio Justices of the Peace. They are believed to be Roman Catholics. I have already stated that, exclusive of the ex-officio element, there are twenty-three other justices in the county who are believed to be of the same religious persuasion.

    Remounts—The Studdert Case.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether the attention of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland has been called to the case of the War Office v. Major Studdert, recently tried in the Vice Chancellor's Court, Dublin; and whether the Lord Chancellor intends to remove Major Studdert from the Commission of the Peace.
    MR. ATKINSON: A report of the proceedings in this case has been referred to the Lord Chancellor.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Is this gentleman a receiver in the Land Judges Court?
    MR. ATKINSON: I am not aware.

    Irish Resident Magistrates.
    MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that of the twenty-two resident magistrates mentioned in the Dublin Gazette of 11th instant as qualified under Section 11 of The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, twenty were declared qualified on the dates between 6th December, 1901. and 8th May, 1902; whether he will state the reason why this number of magistrates have been scheduled in Ireland within the period of five months; and, what test or examination must these gentlemen comply with or pass before being declared qualified under the section referred to.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The facts are as stated in the first paragraph. The qualifications of resident magistrates were considered when it seemed probable, owing to an increase in the offence of unlawful assembly, that resident magistrates might have to adjudicate in cases under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act. Of the twenty, fourteen were certified before the issue of proclamations, and six since. The statute declares that the Lord Lieutenant must be satisfied of the legal capacity of one resident magistrate out of the two composing a Court of Summary Jurisdiction under the Act. No test or examination is imposed by statute.
    MR. FLYNN: Are not these resident magistrates required to be practising barristers or to be engaged in the practice of the law in some way?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I think the statute requires that the Lord Lieutenant shall be satisfied of the sufficiency of their legal knowledge.

    Irish Land Purchase Bill.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is the intention of the Government to proceed with the Land Purchase Acts (Ireland) Amendment Bill in the Autumn session.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I have nothing to add to my reply to the similar question addressed to me on the 7th instant by the hon. Member for South Leitrim.†
    An HON. MEMBER: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman cannot see his way to proceed with the Bill, seeing that he has expressed his willingness to drop the controversial clauses.
    MR. WYNDHAM: If the hon. Member will refer to my previous replies he will know as much about the matter as I can tell him.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I based my question on a statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh.
    MR. FLYNN: And did not the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh say that he made his statement with official knowledge?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Coolnamona Bogs.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the town of Maryborough is threatened with a fuel famine, owing to the action of the owner in depriving a number of small tenants of the right they have hitherto enjoyed to cut and sell turf off the bogs of Coolnamona; and, seeing that these tenants had judicial rents fixed, with a right of turbary reserved to them, whether he can take any steps to preserve their rights to these tenants.
    MR. WYNDHAM: There is no danger of a fuel famine in Maryborough. If the remainder of the question refers to the cases of some tenants whose rents were fixed on the basis of an undertaking given by the landlord to allow them free turbary for the use of their holdings, I would observe that this undertaking did not extend to the right to sell turf, as alleged. In any case the enforcement of the respective rights of landlord and tenant is not a matter calling for my intervention.
    †See preceding volume, p. 938.

    Technical Instruction in Ireland.
    MR. JOHN CAMPBELL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he has received a copy of a resolution, passed by the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland on the 24th June, at Maynooth. protesting against the action of the Treasury in withholding or limiting the grant hitherto offered to all local authorities levying a local rate for technical instruction; and will he say what steps he proposes to take to continue the grant asked for in the resolution.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: A Resolution on this subject has been received, and it is now engaging the attention of the Treasury and the Irish Government.

    Ben Nevisand Fort William Observatories.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that the directors of the observatories at Ben Nevis and Fort William have decided to close them in October next, on account of their inability to maintain them without assistance from the State; and, in view of the value of these observatories in connection with the study of meteorology, will he say whether he can arrange for their whole or partial maintenance.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I can only refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave yesterday on this subject. I may, however, add that the Vote which covers this matter was taken on June 12th. It has yet to be reported.

    Office of Works Vote.
    LORD BALCARRES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if facilities can be given to discuss Class 2, Vote 25 (Office of Works), in view of the importance of the subject during the present financial year.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am afraid I cannot, at all events for the present, promise time to discuss this Vote, but my right hon. friend the First Commissioner of Works is extremely anxious to have the matter debated.

    Civil Servants and Political Controversies.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether his attention has been called to the observations on partisanship in members of the Civil Service contained the Treasury Minute of 12th November 1884, and to the statement that it was intended to embody them on an Order in Council binding on the entire permanent Civil Service of the State; and will he say whether such an Order in Council has in fact been passed.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Order in Council of the 29th November, 1884, was made applicable to permanent Civil Servants.

    Mr. Balfour's Official Title.
    *MR. ALFRED DAVIES: May I ask the First Lord of the Treasury, or the Prime Minister, or the Leader of the House, what is his correct designation; and, secondly, if he can give us any information as to the character of his new administration.
    [No answer was returned.]

  NEW BILL.
    EDUCATION ACT, 1901 (RENEWAL) BILL.
    "To renew The Education Act, 1901," presented by Dr. Macnamara, under Standing Order 31; supported by Sir Albert Rollit, Mr. Channing, Mr. Ernest Gray, Mr, Ernest Flower, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, Mr. Corrie Grant, and Captain Norton; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 280.]

    SAVINGS BANKS FUNDS.
    Report from the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence and an Appendix, brought up, and read.
    Report to lie upon the Table and to be printed. [No. 282.]

SUPPLY.
[EIGHTEENTH ALLOTTED DAY.]
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
MR. JEFFREYS (Hampshire, N.) in the Chair.

ARMY ESTIMATES, 1902–3.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £332,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the charge for the salaries and miscellaneous charges of the War Office, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1903."
SIR EDWARD GREY: I rise for the purpose of moving a reduction in this Vote by £100, in order that I may have an opportunity of bringing before the Committee the unfair position in which, as I consider, Sir Redvers Buller has been placed by the partial and unexplained publication of selected telegrams sent by him or received by him. And, in doing so, I desire to say, to prevent misconception, that as regards my colleagues on this Bench they are in no way responsible or committed either by what I have to say or by my raising the question at all. I say that because nothing would be more painful to any friend of Sir Redvers Buller than to suppose that the position of that distinguished man had in any way become the sport of Party politics. I think hon. Members opposite will do the Party on this side of the House the credit to observe that though after his dismissal in the autumn I and some others, moved by feelings either of personal regard or of local sentiment, which is so wonderfully strong in the case of Sir Redvers Buller, did draw attention to the facts in public, yet the heads of the Liberal Party, and the Party as a whole, have done nothing whatever to make it the opportunity of an attack upon the Government. That being so, I take the sole responsibility of what I am going to say and of raising this question at all. And in what I am going to say, I do not wish to impute motives to the Secretary of State for War, the Commander-in-Chief, or to any other individual at the War Office. I think the facts have done great injustice to Sir Redvers Buller, and it is with the facts I have to deal.
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My position is shortly this. Many months ago attacks began to be made in the public Press on Sir Redvers Buller's reputation, and those attacks have continued up to the present time. Since these attacks began all the documents, so far as I know, most unfavourable to him have been published. All the documents necessary to him to explain his situation, and the special difficulties against which he had to contend, and the documents which he would have quoted, had he been allowed to put his position fairly before the public, are still kept back. Now, that is what I consider is the unfairness of the position in which Sir Redvers Buller is placed. I say that, in common fairness, after all that has happened, Sir Redvers Buller should be set free to tell his own story, laying the whole of the telegrams affecting his own action before some impartial tribunal. I do not ask the War Office to make more selections and publish them. My case, though I impute no motives, is that on the facts, if the facts were known, it would be recognised that the selections made and published have been most misleading and unjust to Sir Redvers Buller's reputation. Let me say that I am not going to raise any question of military skill. I do not propose to deal with the military operations at Colenso and Spion Kop, which have been the subject of criticism. I am not going to argue whether they were conducted with military capacity and skill. It is not of those criticisms that I complain. Indeed, I do not think this House is in a position to review military questions, which can only be reviewed by military experts, and furthermore, criticisms whether the disposition of forces in the field, or the orders given in the field, on a particular occasion, were the best possible, or whether they failed, are questions with regard to which Sir Redvers Buller can defend himself by writing a narrative if he pleases. As to the publication of the Spion Kop despatches, for instance, Sir Redvers Buller has no cause of complaint, because, after all, they do but show that the previously published criticism which Lord Roberts passed on Sir Redvers Buller had been already positively suggested by Sir Redvers Buller himself in the despatches; but Sir Redvers Buller never asked for the publication of those despatches and is in no way responsible

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for them; and as there was no public interest to be served by their publication, I think it was unnecessary cruelty to circulate the criticisms upon other persons who were in no way concerned in the dispute. It is not attacks on Sir Redvers Buller's military operations in the field that I complain of. It is of something much more serious. It is attacks upon his character founded upon telegrams already published. These attacks and criticisms, which are in the public mouth everywhere, amount to this—that after the battle of Colenso Sir Redvers Buller was guilty of a sudden breakdown of nerve, of a failure of moral courage, and of a collapse of character. These are the attacks which I consider unfounded. The answer to them must come from himself, and he is entitled to reserve his answer until he is allowed to publish the documents necessary for his defence. The question I shall end by putting, is this: Has Sir Redvers Buller in this matter of his reputation at stake before the public been treated as a public servant who is attacked should be treated by the Department which ought to protect him? And what were the attacks? Months ago statements began to appear in the public Press, and are continuing still to appear — manifestly originating in a leakage somewhere—of a kind entirely unfavourable to Sir Redvers Buller. This leakage at last came to this, that Sir Redvers Buller discovered that there was known to the Press an inaccurate version of a heliogram which he had sent to Sir George White. Thereupon he naturally expressed the strongest desire to have the accurate version of the heliogram published. Obviously the War Office should have allowed him to produce it.
MR. BRODRICK: May I ask when he expressed that desire?
SIR EDWARD GREY: In his speech for which he was dismissed. I may say, further, that, months before that speech he had complained of the leakage, and had found that it was not possible for the War Office to protect him in the matter. Undoubtedly, he did express a desire to be allowed to publish it. Let me point out this document was
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not a telegram or a despatch from the Government to Sir Redvers Buller or from Sir Redvers Buller to the Government, nor was it one from a superior officer to him or from him to a superior officer. It was one from him to an officer under his command—from a superior officer to one under his command—and I say that the simple and obvious thing would have been to give him permission to publish the accurate version of the heliogram. But he was not allowed to do so. On the contrary, he was dismissed from his command for having made a speech referring to it, and was distinctly ordered not to publish it or anything further at all. Soon after that, when people thought it was likely that he would take further steps to defend himself, there appeared in the Press a statement—I have particularly in my mind an article in the Standard—that if he defended himself further disclosures would have to be made by the Government which would be still more unfavourable to him. It was a most galling thing to have these threats made in the Press. They were widely attributed at the time to official inspiration. I do not bring any charge against the Secretary of State for War or the Commander-in-Chief of having in any way inspired them. But again there was the same leakage of the same unfavourable kind to Sir Redvers Buller which had gone on before. Sir Redvers Buller took no action, but not because of these threats in the Press. Parliament met, and an Amendment was put down to the Address. It was not instigated by Sir Redvers Buller, and the fact that it was not moved was directly due to his influence. The reason was that he was unwilling that there should be in this House any discussion which was likely to embarrass the Government while they were responsible for the conduct of the war. How was the matter next stirred? Again not by him. It was re-opened by the publication of "The Times History of the War." That history repeated the old attacks in a most bitter and concentrated form, and added a new charge. Then Sir Redvers Buller moved. He again appealed to the War Office. "The Times History of

531
the War" purports in its preface—1 have no doubt quite truly—to have had help and countenance from official sources. If it had this help from official sources, surely it would have been at least fair that the writer of that history should have been warned that, as Sir Redvers Buller's mouth was closed by the War Office, and he was prohibited from defending himself, these attacks should be dropped. But instead of that the attacks were made stronger, than ever, and a new attack was formulated, which exalted the Government greatly at Sir Redvers Buller's expense. This was that Lord Lansdowne had sent Sir Redvers Buller a telegram ordering him to persevere in the attempt to relieve Ladysmith, and telling him, if not, to give up his command to a junior and return home — about the most ignominious telegram that could be sent by any Government to any commander in the field. Sir Redvers Buller naturally asked the War Office whether this ignominious telegram, as I have called it, really existed, because he had never received it. He got no definite, straightforward reply as to whether that particular telegram referred to in The Times, existed or not; for the rest he had sent to him by the War Office, with permission—which was really much more a challenge than a permission—to publish them. Sir Redvers Buller never asked for these documents. He asked, in his later correspondence with the War Office, that he might be allowed to publish the correct version of the heliogram to Sir George White, and whether the telegram from Lord Lansdowne, which he had not received, really existed. The answer is that he cannot have access to anything further; but these five telegrams are sent to him under a condition which is really a challenge to publish them, but if he did publish them, to do so textually as they stand, and not to divulge any one separately from the others. What was his reply? His reply was that this he considered an unfair selection as they stand by themselves, that it was bound to do him injustice, and that it was not fair to him to ask him to publish these five telegrams without others. The answer of the War Office was that he could have no others,
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and that the correspondence must cease. I say Sir Redvers Buller was perfectly justified in saying that this was unfair to him, and that he would publish nothing. Anyhow he has never shown any want of moral courage so far as his reputation is concerned. He has always shown that he was never going to shrink from anything, even though it was partial truth; and be published the telegrams as they stood.
Well, now, let us take these five telegrams as they stand. The first is one from Sir Redvers Buller to the Secretary of State for War. I think it would have been fairer that the first one should have been taken in the words he used, and not as a paraphrase, or should not have been published at all. The impression left by that standing alone is that it was a sudden counsel of despair on the part of Sir Redvers Buller, taken in great depression and weakness after his failure at Colenso. Whatever we may think of the policy disclosed in that telegram, that policy was not a sudden counsel of despair on his part, but much more the result of a deliberate view of the situation as he had to face it. The second telegram is one to Sir George White. I do contend that that does not bear out the accusations made against Sir Redvers Buller. Those accusations have been that, in a fit of despair, he ordered Sir George White to surrender, and that Sir George White replied that he could not comply with that order. That is not in the telegram as it stands. There are three things in the telegram. The first is to tell Sir George White that Sir Redvers Buller had failed at Colenso, and that he could not move for a full month. The second is to ask Sir George White whether he can hold out for so long; and the third is to tell him, if not, what he must do in the contingency of surrender. That is the telegram as it stands. Now it is said that that telegram is altered and made stronger by the amended telegram. The only object of amending that telegram, was, first of all, to ask him definitely how many days he could hold out, and next to remind him of the danger of not burning his cipher. On that last point there were special reasons, as Sir Redvers will be able to show, why he thought it important to add that special portion. Anyhow that

533
is a detail. The main object of the telegram was to ask definitely how many days Sir George White could hold out. As the telegram stands it is assumed that that amended telegram, which is made to read stronger than the original, and which is not the intention of Sir Redvers Buller—that amended telegram was sent off before Sir Redvers Buller received Sir George White's reply, and Sir George White had sent off his reply before he had received the amended telegram. He never acknowledged that amended telegram, but his telegram to Sir Redvers Buller is not quite correctly given in the text of the War Office, Instead of being given "Yours of today," it ought to have been given "Yours No. 88 of today," thereby making it clear that it refers to the first telegram, No. 88, and took no notice of the amended telegram. So that it is the first telegram which plays any part in this affair. Well, now, I will ask the Committee to bear this in mind, that you cannot have a full explanation of the situation without other documents. Sir Redvers Buller is not in a position to disclose other documents. He has been forbidden to do so. The Committee must also bear in mind that all these telegrams were written, on the assumption that Ladysmith only had food to last to the end of the year, a fortnight from that time. Had that been true every word in these telegrams would have been regarded universally as the language of a man who had the courage to face the facts and make the best preparations he could to meet them. But it is asked, "Why did he not know, what made him think that Ladysmith had only supplies to the end of the year?" I would like to have Sir Redvers Buller set free to make an answer on that point; to tell us what he knew, or thought he knew, of the state of supplies at Ladysmith; from what source he obtained his information, and why he was reluctant before there was absolute need to put a direct question to Sir George White. As long as he was advancing without check, as long as he expected to be in Ladysmith before the end of the year, it was not absolutely necessary to ask whether the supplies would last to the end of the year, his information being that they would. But the moment he
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knew he could not be in Ladysmith, and could not relieve it, before the end of the year, then it had become urgent to ask Sir George White how long his supplies would hold out; and that is the question he asked in his first telegram to Sir George White, and asked a second time in the amended telegram. The second thing to bear in mind is this, that Sir Redvers Buller considered that no troops could be diverted to Natal without creating greater dangers in connection with Cape Colony, Kimberley, and elsewhere. I say that nobody can understand the situation he had to face when these telegrams were sent, without knowing, and knowing very fully, all that had happened since he landed in South Africa, to enable him to judge of the situation which, in his mind, he had to review at the time. I know that universal comment has been made upon these telegrams. I am not surprised at the comments made on these telegrams standing by themselves; but I am surprised that nobody in the public or in this House has had the curiosity to ask what was Sir Redvers Buller's reply to the telegram he received from Lord Lansdowne. What was his reply? He writes the telegram on the assumption that Ladysmith has only food to last to the end of the year, and that he cannot have any more troops for use in Natal, and that the troops he had under his command were not strong enough to relieve Ladysmith. He received in answer to that telegram, first of all, the intimation that Lady-smith can hold out for much longer than the end of the year; secondly, the permission of the Secretary of State for War to take more troops from Cape Colony. And no one has the curiosity or the fairness to ask in what spirit Sir Redvers Buller faced his task, or what difference it made to him when he gets these two pieces of information. That is, partly, the reason why I think, even without knowing or being able to disclose more than the War Office has permitted hitherto to be published, it is fair to demand that Sir Redvers Buller's hands should be set free.
Let me, Sir, sum up this part of the case. In the first place, his first simple demand to publish the correct version of the telegram from him to the officer

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under his command, not without provocation, but after a garbled version had already been made public, is refused; secondly, when leave is granted to publish the telegram, other telegrams for which he has never asked are sent to him, with strict instructions to publish them all together textually as they stand; and when he protests that that is not a fair selection, the reply of the War Office is that he can have nothing more, that he can take his choice whether he publishes them or not, and that the correspondence must be broken off; thirdly, all through this matter there has been either a leakage or a publication of everything unfavourable to Sir Redvers Buller, while everything necessary to judge his conduct in a true light and in its proper perspective, and the situation in which he was placed, has been withheld. It has been said that Sir Redvers Buller has been treated with generosity in this matter. I do not think he has been treated with common fairness. To say that he has been treated with generosity is to destroy the meaning of the English language. The War Office have conducted the whole question of his defence in the spirit in which people would have conducted a correspondence against a man who was opposing them. They have conducted the matter as if it were their desire and object to substantiate every charge made against him in public, and not to give him any facilities to answer in defence. That is why I say I ask for no more selections from the War Office. The Secretary of State for War may reply with some force that it is impossible to give an officer in the Army leave to publish at discretion anything he pleases. But these documents might be laid freely before some impartial tribunal which may be trusted by the Government and Sir Redvers Buller, and whose opinion, after having reviewed the case, would be trusted by the country. The Government have said they are going to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into matters connected with the war. I will not say that will meet my point, for I know not who are to compose that Commission; but if it does take place, I assume much of their proceedings will have to; be conducted in private, and if it be a fair and impartial tribunal, I see no reason
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why Sir Redvers Buller should not be set free to lay all documents and despatches before a tribunal of that kind. Then let us hear their opinion as to whether justice has been done to him by the publication of selected telegrams. There is one other reason why the Secretary for War might demur to this request which occurs to my mind; he may urge that, if Sir Redvers Buller is given this permission, everybody else who may feel aggrieved by criticisms passed upon his conduct during the course of the war may expect to have the same permission. But, Sir, I do not think this is really a valid reason. In the first place, be it observed, I have not asked that Sir Redvers Buller should submit his military capacity in the field, the merits of his operations, the battle of Colenso, or any of his operations in the field to any tribunal. I have kept all military operations outside of this altogether. But I do say this is an exceptional case as it stands, exceptional, looking to the past services of Sir Redvers Buller, the length of his service, and looking at the high positions he has held, and, above all, exceptional having regard to the nature of the attacks made upon him, and the attitude of the War Office towards him when he asked leave of the War Office to defend himself from these attacks. What I wish to put before the Committee-is that, in common fairness, the case ought not to be allowed to rest where it is; and that is the foundation of my demand to the Secretary of State.
Well, that is the statement of the position, so far as it can he made out without the disclosure of further documents. I ask the Committee to support my demand; but I go beyond the Committee. I know that in this matter of Sir Redvers Buller's reputation, the great bulk of the public Press is now adamant. It has condemned him, and apparently is convinced that there is nothing more to be heard or known, that his condemnation is not to be palliated or modified in any way. We are sometimes apt to regard the Press, because it is so impersonal and anonymous, as though writers were not animated by the same feelings, and actuated by the same motives as ourselves. But these attacks were started

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in the Press, and have been continued in the Press, by mm of the same blood as ourselves, who are open, as we are open, to appeals to chivalry or fairness. However tenacious they may be of their own opinions, and however sure they may be that they are right, I think those who have been the first, the most hasty and emphatic, in passing condemnation upon Sir Redvers Buller, ought to be the first, in common fairness, to support this demand. All the weapons with which he has been attacked have been published and at their disposal, but surely the man who is attacked with those weapons—and by weapons I mean documents—ought to have weapons at his disposal. Once you have the documents published, whether telegrams or despatches, and put a man in the position of having to explain on these, and these alone, without being able to quote from anything else, you put him in an unfair position; and those who have been most strenuous in attacking Sir Redvers Buller, ought to be the first to demand that there should be at his disposal the same power to quote and to bring forward documents as by the action of the War Office they have hitherto had at their disposal.
There is another matter I have to bring before the Committee, and that is the question of the appointment of Sir Redvers Buller to the command of the First Army Corps and his dismissal from that command. With the appointment I have no fault to find—that is my whole case—for if the whole facts were known that would appear a natural and justifiable appointment. If there are any criticisms to be offered on the appointment by people who think otherwise, those criticisms may, of course, tell with force against the Government; but I have no desire to make any points against the Government, except so far as they are points that tend to do Sir Redvers Buller justice. I think the appointment was a natural one. People have now become fascinated by the Lady-smith episode, and their attention has been concentrated upon that; but take the whole of Sir Redvers Buller's services in South Africa. What happened when he landed at the Cape? He found a state of disaster over the whole of South Africa; he landed, as he said
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himself, a general without an army; he found everything in a state of collapse, and he, by the courage and decision with which he faced that state of affairs, was the first to restore matters to a better condition. He it was who, on his own responsibility, first took the decision to go to Natal. If he had been responsible for the state of disaster which he found on landing at the Cape, to dwell upon it would do him no good. That, again, is a matter for inquiry. What was responsible for the state of disaster? Remember what the position was. Not only was Ladysmith invested, but the whole of Natal was invaded. Kimberley was in danger; and, what to many thinking minds was far worse, there was a prospect of a rising in Cape Colony, and an invasion of Cape Colony in force by the Boers might have resulted in the complete loss of that colony. Even now there are people who, reflecting on the history of the war, still say that, bad as things were at first, the situation was as nothing to what it would have been had the Boers, instead of concentrating in Natal, made a rush for Cape Town. Sir Redvers Buller had to face that situation. Want of preparation was responsible for it, but who was responsible for the want of preparation?
We can carry that matter no further now; but, in common justice to Sir Redvers Buller, his attitude in that matter at least ought to come before some impartial tribunal. He had to face the situation, and in it he had an almost impossible task. His very failure to overcome the difficulties of his task surely brought experience, and the lessons by which those who came after him could profit, though the brunt of experience fell upon him. All admit that there were lessons to be learned by everybody engaged in the war, but Sir Redvers Buller was the man who, with the fewest troops and confronted with the greatest difficulties, had to face all the novelties of this Boer warfare without any experience to guide him. What did he do? He decided to go to Natal, and he turned the tide of warfare in Natal; because, not only was Ladysmith invested, but 8,000 Boers had advanced beyond Ladysmith, and he was only in the nick of time to drive them back. He went to Natal, not with the main

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object of relieving Ladysmith—that was not the most urgent thing—but with the object of saving South Natal—which was the thing that had to be done first—and he succeeded in doing it. What troops had he at his disposal? He could have had but about 20,000 in Natal, and of these 10,000 were required to protect South Natal and his communications; so he had, therefore, only about 10,000 to use against the Boers, who had 8,000 in selected positions to be used freely against him, still leaving force enough to prevent Sir George White leaving Ladysmith. If rumour be true, leaders of the Boers themselves now admit that one of the things in the war that caused them most astonishment and admiration was that Sir Redvers Buller should ever have succeeded, even when he had more troops, in turning their position and relieving Ladysmith. ["Oh, oh."] He did relieve Ladysmith. ["Oh."] It is a common belief, but founded, as I believe, not upon actual facts, that when Lord Roberts landed in South Africa the Boers withdrew from their objective in Natal, and that Sir Redvers Buller's task was thereby made easier. But I believe the converse is much nearer the truth. I believe it was Sir Redvers Buller's operations by keeping the Boer force engaged in Natal, and finally overcoming them, that made the way plain for Lord Roberts to advance to Pretoria in the manner he did. I believe it is an entirely unjust assumption that Lord Roberts relieved Ladysmith by drawing away the Boer forces in Natal. Those forces remained in Natal and were beaten by Sir Redvers Buller. Whatever criticisms are passed upon Spion Kop, Colenso, and other matters, his tactics after the relief of Ladysmith were, by common consent, most masterly and brilliant, and they were successful in driving the Boers out of Natal altogether.
People may say I am giving a partial account, but remember that from first to last Sir Redvers Buller's actions in Natal have never been criticised by the War Office. He was never asked to explain anything. When he came home, he naturally received the thanks of the Government for his public services, and I am not surprised that the command of the First Army Corps was given to him. There is but one criticism I would admit on that appointment; and it is that the Secretary of State for War had previously
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stated that he was going to appoint to these commands officers who would command the troops in the field, and it might have been said that Sir Redvers Buller, by the natural course of years, was reaching the end of his active services, and that, in all probability in future operations, independent commands in the field would be given to younger men. There would be some force in that criticism but for the fact that we naturally expect, if it should be necessary to give commands in the field for active service in future years, that younger men would be chosen who had distinguished themselves in this war. But these men were not at home for the command of the First Army Corps to be given to one of them. If there had been at homo any one of the younger men who had distinguished themselves in the war to whom this command could have been given, I admit there would have been some ground for criticism on the appointment. But that was not the case. When Sir Redvers Buller was dismissed the command was given—and I think rightly given—to Sir J. French. But he was not here to take up the command. It was not as if there was any younger or more active man on the staff to whom the Government would wish to give the command, and, therefore, the criticism does not hold.
But though I was not surprised at Sir Redvers Buller's appointment, I am surprised at what followed it. The announcement was that he had been appointed to command the First Army Corps. Then there followed the attacks upon the Government for having appointed him—especially in The Times. The Government did not remain quiet under these attacks; they published another announcement, obviously to emphasize the fact that the appointment was to be limited to two years.
MR. BRODRICK: I beg pardon for interrupting, but may I say that that announcement was the only one published by the War Office?
SIR EDWARD GREY: Then how did the newspapers become cognisant of the appointment?
MR. BRODRICK: That I cannot say. I only know that the only announcement made by the War Office was that to which the right hon. Gentleman has just alluded.
SIR EDWARD GREY: The announcement to which I was alluding was given under the head of "Naval and Military Intelligence," and was this:—
"General Sir Redvers Buller has been appointed General on the Staff to command the First Army Corps at Aldershot from October 1."
That is not a War Office announcement, I admit, but I suppose that there again there has been a leakage. Anyhow the actual announcement which followed it was this:—
"We have received the following from the War Office:—'The First and Third Army Corps commands at Aldershot and Dublin respectively will be formed from October 1. Sir Redvers Buller was appointed to the Aldershot district in October, 1893, and his command will run for the two years of his appointment which are still unexpired.'"
The appointments were originally for three years, and there was no limitation to, the Duke of Connaught's command in Dublin. The important point was the announcement that Sir Redvers Buller's appointment was to be limited to two years. It is quite true that these were the terms. That is the real appointment which was offered to Sir Redvers Buller, but coming as it did, that announcement produced a most unfortunate impression, because it was taken by The Times and other papers as an apology by the War Office for the appointment. The War Office having made the first announcement, I cannot complain of them for having omitted the two years limitation in the first announcement, but I do think the right hon. Gentleman opposite must see that, in view of the fact that no explanation was given to Sir Redvers Buller, and that his appointment was first announced without this explanation, and then when particularly galling attacks were made upon him, and attention was specially drawn in the Press to this statement, it was treated in The Times as a confession and avoidance, anyone must feel that nothing could have been more galling to a man in Sir Redvers Buller's position than to feel that having been exposed to these attacks he was not going to be supported by his superiors at the War Office. As far as he knew it must have appeared to him that having been appointed to this command, the Government were practically apologising
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for the appointment. That is the way it was treated by the public press, and I bring it forward to show that when Sir Redvers Buller made his speech, he did not make it without being under very natural and inevitable provocation. He made his speech, and he was dismissed because of that speech. That was the official announcement. Nobody questioned the right of the Secretary of State for War to remove a General from his command, but I cannot believe that Sir Redvers Buller was removed from the position after that length of service simply because the Secretary of State, or the Commander-in-Chief, did not approve of the tone or temper of that speech. That cannot be the real reason, because the speech discussed no question of policy. It reflected neither upon the Government nor upon any other officer in the Army, nor upon any human being whatever, and though Sir Redvers Buller in that speech defended himself, he withheld everything in his speech which could have in any way touched the conduct of any other man, and it was made in the face of violent provocation. I cannot believe that after that length of service a mere indiscretion, mere faults of tone or temper, or want of judgment were the real reasons for the dismissal. The dismissal was peremptory, and if it was not for indiscretion it must have been for a serious breach of military regulations What were the breaches of military regulations? That is the point that I wish to put to the Secretary of State for War. If there were breaches, why were they not made known? Why was there no military tribunal to try the question of military law! If it was a dismissal solely on the ground of the speech, taking the speech by itself it seems to me that to dismiss such a man from such an office for that speech was harsh conduct beyond parallel. Some of this injury—I would ask the Committee to bear in mind again that I am criticising, of course, a Department which has it in its power to withhold what it pleases, or publish what it pleases, and I can add nothing to what the War Office has published—some of this injury to Sir Redvers Buller's reputation is beyond remedy; the harsh and peremptory dismissal is quite beyond remedy

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and beyond recall; but the worst injury is that which is done to a distinguished reputation. I am fully aware of the difficulty of overtaking an injustice of this kind. When it is once set going it speeds swiftly everywhere, gathers force as it goes, lodges itself in every mind, and impresses in the mind of every man the point of view which is prepared to repel any explanation or justification on the part of the man attacked, for fear the injustice itself will be dislodged. Nothing is more tenacious of life than a prejudice of this kind against a man when once it has obtained a start, but that is no reason why it should be submitted to, or why he and his friends should not do the utmost in their power to demand that the case shall not rest where it is. I have been told that it is contrary to the interests of discipline that a case of this kind should be brought before the House. I do not think it is. The abuse of discipline is its worst enemy, and there are times when abuses of that kind must be brought before the House of Commons, because it is the only tribunal before which they can come. Whether the Secretary of State will do what is still possible and set Sir Redvers Buller free to state his case and the facts to support it, I cannot tell, but this I trust—and I think it is one justification for raising this debate—that the mere fact of this debate having taken place will render it less likely in the future that any man such as Sir Redvers Buller, or any public servant in his position, should be treated as he has been treated when he appeals for protection to a public Department which he has served.
Motion made, and Question put, "That Item A (Salaries of the Staff) be reduced by £100, in respect of the Salary of the Secretary of State."—(Sir Edward Grey.)
SIR JOHN KENNAWAYsaid that amidst all the controversy which had been raised around this question, there was one feeling which would be shared by everyone to whom the reputation of the British Army was dear, namely, a feeling of profound regret that one who had had such a splendid career, a man who had commanded the confidence and devotion, almost more than any one else, of the British Army, a man fearless and gallant, high-minded and humane, should have had his career
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cut short and brought to a sudden and disastrous termination under circumstances so peculiarly painful. He was sure that no one shared that regret more fully than the Commander-in-Chief and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, upon whom rested the great responsibility of dealing with this question, and of judging what would be the effect on the Army and the public of reading that speech, and deciding what course should be taken in consequence of that speech, now that the question had been brought before the House of Commons. Everybody must feel that it was a great responsibility to bring a question involving the discipline of the Army before the House. The question, however, was one of such extended interest, raising so many different and complicated issues, increased by the great popularity of Sir Redvers Buller, that it was bound to come sooner or later before the House, and, therefore, he was very thankful that the task of bringing it forward had fallen, to his right hon. friend the Member for Berwick, and that it had not been left to someone less competent to deal with it. There was no doubt that the ultimate appeal lay to Parliament in everything that affected the interests of the British nation and the British Army. Parliament had made itself very responsible of late for the Army, and the discipline of the Army, and, therefore, it was necessary that the greatest caution should be exercised on a matter affecting discipline, and that it should not be dragged into the arena of party politics, or made the subject of a Party vote. Keeping these considerations in view, he thought they were entitled to ask his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War what were the grounds of Sir Redver Buller's dismissal in November last, what military regulations had been contravened, what danger to the State or the Army was apprehended from the formulation of that speech, and what were the specific allegations made against him in regard to it? He did not think it was sufficient to say it was simply the tone of the speech which rendered the continuance of Sir Redvers Buller in office impossible any longer. They also wanted to know whether allowances were made for the difficult position in which he was placed, and did he receive from the War Office the support which a man selected by the War Office for a

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most responsible position ought to receive. Was he called upon to justify his conduct and explain the allegations made against him.?
He now came to the question of the prohibition of the publication of the telegrams. Naturally, after what had happened in regard to the dismissal, he was anxious to set himself right. Meetings had been held in Hyde Park and all over the country, but in face of all this, when Sir Redvers Buller spoke at the Devonshire dinner his speech was a model of dignity and reserve. Attacks began to appear in the Press, but Sir Redvers Buller took a strong line considering that the war was still going on, for he considered that the Government should not be hampered or damaged by his opinions being given at a difficult time. He believed that General Buller would have been silent now but for the publication of "The Times History." The telegrams, too, had been published in a form calculated to do him a great injustice. They now asked that Sir Redvers Buller should be set free to tell the whole of his case before an impartial tribunal. As the Government had promised an inquiry into the conduct of the war, surely they could not refuse permission to their own Commander-in-Chief in South Africa to come before the tribunal when he asked that his conduct should be inquired into. They wanted to know why he was condemned, and they wished him to be given the opportunity of clearing himself at an early date. There was the greatest danger, he thought, of injustice being done to Sir Redvers Buller in the present temper of the country and the Press by prominence being given to these telegrams after Colenso, which, after all, were but incidents in a far greater campaign, carried to a successful issue. No doubt he made mistakes both abroad and at home. Wellington said that the greatest general was the general who made the fewest mistakes. He did not claim for Sir Redvers Buller that he was perfect, but, looking at the whole situation, the difficulties he had to encounter, and the success he had achieved, and looking at his past history, which was one of the grandest in the records of the British army, they had a right to ask, and they did ask, that he should be treated with the fullest consideration, and that justice, as far as possible, should be done to him.
MR. BRODR1CK: I will make no complaint of the tone with which the right hon. Gentleman opposite and my right hon. friend behind me have addressed themselves to this subject, and I fully re-echo the regret expressed by my right hon. friend that such a man as Sir Redvers Buller should become the subject of such a debate. But I also regret that, after this great lapse of time, such a Motion should be brought before the House this afternoon. I cannot but think that, in matters of discipline, rare should be the occasions when the House of Commons undertakes to review the action of the military authorities. Especially in prominent cases of this kind I cannot help thinking that the earlier such points are brought to settlement the better. Sir Redvers Buller was relieved of his command in October last. This House met early in January; a Motion was at once tabled by the hon. Member for the South Molton Division, challenging the decision of the Commander-in-Chief, and the action of the Government. That Motion, I think, should have been brought to a hearing at once. To hang over the Commander-in-Chief and the military authorities a Motion of that kind is calculated, in the highest degree, to create divisions in the army. It is calculated to impair discipline; and, whether it is the wish of the officer whom it concerns or not, I think once put before the House for consideration it should be brought up for judgment and decision. I regret this Motion for two other reasons. In the first place I cannot recall a single occasion on which a personal Motion of this character, impeaching the action of the authorities in so grave a matter—even after the most earnest consideration—has resulted to the advantage of the individual on whose behalf it has been brought forward. And I regret it on my own behalf, because there has been no one more willing than I have been to follow the example set by my noble friend Lord Lansdowne, in taking full responsibility for anything that has gone wrong in the war on the shoulders of the Government, and for supporting in the face of this House the generals who represented us. But a Motion of this kind, which, although the language used has been to a large extent the language of reserve, traverses the whole field from the

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arrival of Sir Redvers Buller in Natal down to his dismissal from Aldershot, and even of the more recent correspondence, makes it incumbent on me to withdraw from that position of reticence out of respect to Parliament, and to show the House that, so far from the Government having, in any degree, been actuated by any of the prejudice which has been imputed to them outside, and to some extent in the speeches made tonight, they have, if anything, erred on the side of too great consideration in their treatment of Sir Redvers Buller.
In two special points an attack has been made upon me which I should like to clear away before I go into the general question. The right hon. Gentleman opposite based his argument in the earlier portion of his speech on the partial publication of selections from despatches which, he argued, placed the conduct of Sir Redvers Buller in a most unfavourable light. The responsibility for that rests not upon the Government but upon Sir Redvers Buller himself. Two publications and two only have been made. The one was the publication of the suppressed portion of the Spion Kop despatches—the portion suppressed not in the interest of the Government at all, but solely to preserve Sir Redvers Buller from those strictures on his conduct in the field that Lord Roberts had thought it necessary to pass upon him. The right hon. Gentleman said that Sir Redvers Buller had never asked for the publication of that additional portion of the Spion Kop despatches. I think he must have forgotten Sir Redvers Buller's letter to the First Lord of the Treasury, dated 24th March last, in which he says—
"With regard to the continuance of what you describe as reticence, I am not in a position to offer an opinion beyond expressing a pious hope that, if any further publication is intended, my words may be published as written, and without manipulation, and that the opportunity will be taken to correct, in this respect, previous publications."
That was an invitation to the Government, as direct as anything could be, to publish that portion of the Spion Kop despatches which had previously been suppressed. With that invitation in front of us we were not going to sit down under the imputation of unjustly prejudicing Sir Redvers Buller any longer. The reason for reticence had passed away, and the time had come
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when it was necessary to show to the country, as was shown by the universal consent of everybody, that, if anything, Sir Redvers Buller had been the gainer and not the loser by the suppression. And, now, how does the publication of these last four telegrams stand? "The Times History" made two allegations. Those allegations, by distortion of language which seems to me extraordinary from one so careful as the right hon. Gentleman opposite, were stated to be attributed to the official inspiration of His Majesty's Government.
SIR EDWARD GREY: I said the volume purported to be an official account.
MR. BRODRICK: Let me read what was the purport of the volume as stated.
"My thanks," says the author, are due first of all to the Army collectively. To all its members, from its official heads down to the private in the ranks, I owe a great debt of gratitude for the kindness and willingness to help they have invariably shown."
That general expression of thanks to everybody in the army, from its official heads down to the private in the ranks, For their willingness to help, has been distorted into the giving of access to the compilers of this History to confidential information, which they otherwise would not have obtained. Strange as that interpretation is, the refutation of it is found on the face of the telegrams as published. What is Sir Redvers Buller's complaint? His complaint is first, that an inaccurate account of the heliogram to Sir George White finds its place in the History; and, secondly, that a telegram, which he considers to be wholly false, was also attributed to him. Where is the official inspiration? How is official inspiration substantiated by Sir Redvers Buller's charges? The very inaccuracy of these accounts carries on the face of it the refutation of the idea that the War Office, the Government, or any Member of it, inspired any portion of that History. I would also, in reference to the attack that has been made, correct the account which the, right hon. Baronet has given of the circumstances under which these telegrams were published. Sir Redvers Buller wrote to me, and claimed that his legal advisers or himself should have access to the secret documents of the War Office, for the purpose of preparing his defence. I

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declined to allow it. If anybody was to have access to those documents, the House of Commons had the first right. If Sir Redvers Buller and his advisers were to have access, then the legal advisers of the other side would, no doubt, have claimed, in due course, that they should have access. I asked Sir Redvers Buller to tell us, with every desire to do him justice, what were the points, and between what dates statements had been made with regard to him in "The Times History," which he desired to correct. With some difficulty, I secured from him a request, strictly limited to the publication of the heliogram to Sir George White, and to the statement as to whether or not a telegram, which Lord Lansdowne was reported by "The Times History" to have sent to him ordering him either to fight or to give over his command, had been sent. I took the only course which was possible for a Minister to take if such publication was to be permitted. I told Sir Redvers Buller, with the full assent of my colleagues, that he could have the heliogram if he thought its publication would in any way clear his character, but that in justice to Sir George White, Sir George White's reply to the heliogram ought to be published at the same time. The second point was the publication of Lord Lansdowne's telegram. It is true that Lord Lansdowne did not send the exact telegram which "The Times History" attributed to him. On the other hand, he did send a telegram urging Sir Redvers Buller to make a fresh attempt to relieve Ladysmith, and had I written to say that Lord Lansdowne had sent no such telegramas "The Times History" attributed to him, I should have been misleading the public by leading thorn to believe that no situation had arisen between the Government and Sir Redvers Buller, which made it necessary for Lord Lansdowne to urge him to make a special effort to relieve Ladysmith. Again, I sent him the telegram; I told him it was the only telegram we could trace, and, so far from refusing point blank to answer, I told him that it was the only telegram, and I presumed it to be the telegram to which "The Times History" in accurately alluded. I said that if he wished to publish that telegram, which was a reply, he should publish also the telegram of His Majesty's
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Government which brought that about. And I added that as these telegrams had never been given to Parliament, if we published one we must publish all.
Sir, I have no apology to make. Now, one word before I pass away from the right hon. Gentleman's speech to the more important subject referred to later on. As to leakage, a good deal has been made of the apparent leakage of this heliogram. The heliogram was sent to Sir George White at a very critical period, and it was of so extraordinary a nature that it was not believed in Sir George White's camp that it had been intended to be sent by Sir Redvers Buller to Sir George White. If it leaked at all it was because, as I have been informed by officers who were actually there at the time, it was believed that the heliogram had been sent owing to our cypher having been captured by the Boers. And the heliogram was known to a large number of persons, to a considerable number in Ladysmith. I am absolutely convinced that no leakage of the heliogram ever took place at the War Office. There has been but one copy of that heliogram in the War Office; that copy remained under lock and key in my safe from the date on which I received it from Sir George White, after I took up office, until the date on which I interviewed Sir Redvers Buller after he was relieved of his command at Aldershot. I am absolutely convinced that as far as we are concerned there was no leakage whatever. I do not believe that, seeing the large number of secret and confidential telegrams that have passed, and the time—over two years—that elapsed, there has ever been a public office that has more carefully safeguarded its telegrams than the War Office has done during this campaign.
Now, I am told that Sir Redvers Buller's position could not be made altogether clear without a further publication. I feel the greatest difficulty in what I am going to say, but it is imperative for me to say it. In the first place I cannot publish documents which, in the opinion of the Government are likely to embarrass us in our future operations. If any documents are to be published at the instance of the General who considers himself to be aggrieved, it would be impossible to

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make a selection. What was left out we should unquestionably be urged to publish, as it might be felt, and felt honestly, that something had boon kept back which would have elucidated the general position if it had boon published. There is no alternative as between publishing no telegram and publishing all; and if we are to publish all let me ask the Committee to consider what is the position which the General Officer Commanding occupies in regard to the Secretary of State for War in a campaign. He is asked to communicate confidentially on every kind of subject; he is continually asked his private opinions of the capacity and probable achievements, as well as the past achievements, of the officers under his command; and he telegraphs with the firmest belief that those' private informations will never see the light. They are in the nature of the most confidential advices between two men —one of whom, in behalf of the Government, is responsible for ordering operations which may tend to great loss of life, and the other who is responsible for carrying them out to the best of his ability. If I were to publish all these confidential documents solely for the purpose of relieving Sir Redvers Buller from the stigma which he feels to have fallen on his character, I should, I honestly believe, be sapping the whole confidence which exists between Commanders in the field and the Government they serve, and never again would a Commander feel that he could speak confidentially, openly and frankly, without the fear that two or three years afterwards what he had said, possibly opinions he had given which he had long since seen reason to change, would be given to the world, to the detriment of the officers whom he had to criticise. And do not lot it be supposed that I am making this plea in order to protect the Government as against Sir Redvers Buller. May I put this question to the Committee—Can any publication of documents possibly relieve Sir Redvers Buller of criticism which has been passed upon him with regard to special events in the campaign? Could any publications of documents, or any number of papers, alter the fact of the attack upon Colenso, universally admitted by all military men to have been ill-conceived and ill-executed, and could any publication of Papers
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Lessen Sir Redvers Buller's responsibility for the abandonment of the guns after Colenso? Could any publication of papers do away with the painful feeling excited by the proposal to surrender Ladysmith without further combat, after one ineffectual attempt? Recollect what the circumstances were. The right hon. Gentleman, has put the position of the Boers, I will put the position of the British Army. On the 16th December Sir Redvers Buller surmised that he had been faced by 20,000 Boers in that position. On the 16th there were 12,000 British troops in Ladysmith, and there were 18,000 British troops in front of Colenso, the whole of the Aldershot troops—with the exception perhaps of the Guards and the Highlanders—the very flower of the British Army, and the whole of the Aldershot staff; there was another division of 8,000 men to be landed within two or three days; there was another division of 8,000 men just embarking from England; there were troops concentrating in South Africa from all parts of the world; there were supplies to be got from two-thirds of the loyal Colony of Natal at the back of the General, and there was a railway running straight up to the very centre of the position which was under the guns of the enemy. Sir, the proposal, under these circumstances, after one failure, to surrender 12,000 British troops without another blow would, if carried out, have produced a disaster for which there is no parallel in the history of this country. And, if the Government had consented to it, it would have brought upon us the reproach of our children, and our children's children into the third and fourth generation. Nothing which can be shown in any Papers can lessen the effect of these regrettable events.
I pass now to those questions on which Papers have already been given to the House. Can any further publication of papers remove from the people of this country their feelings with regard to what I cannot but call the muddle of Spion Kop, carried out under the eyes, and as we contend, and as the Commander-in-Chief contends, under the direct control of Sir Redvers Buller? But I admit, and I

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gladly pay him that tribute, that from the moment he look command in order to retire the troops, he performed that most difficult operation with the spirit, energy and generalship which we had expected of him. Still, can any publication excuse the fact that mistake after mistake was made upon those days, and that the General in whom the Government had placed their whole confidence, and to whom they had unstintedly given every support in men and in material that he could ask, had failed in that vital case to carry out the operation as might have been expected? When I look at those facts I cannot help asking myself whether it is not a strong assumption for the right hon. Gentleman to make that further publication will relieve Sir Redvers Buller of the responsibility which has now been put upon him. I am bound now to mention another fact. The right hon. Gentleman said that nothing could be assumed against the General until we had heard him as to why he thought it necessary to try to relieve Ladysmith before the end of December. One of the most extraordinary facts in the whole of this tangled statement is this, that Sir Redvers Buller when telegraphing to Sir George White on 16th of December, and asked him how long he could hold out, and suggesting to him the operations he should carry out if he could not hold out, actually had in his possession at the moment Sir George White's own statement, sent to him on the 30th of November, that he could hold Ladysmith with full provisions for seventy days. ["Oh, oh."] I have Sir George White's heliogram, dated 30th November, to General Buller to be repeated to general Clery—
"I have provisions for seventy days, and believe that I can defend Ladysmith while they last."
And yet fifteen days afterwards a note of despair is sounded by Sir Redvers Buller, the superior officer. I cannot help attaching more weight than the right hon. Gentleman does to the loss of nerve of the General who, having that fact before him, hastened to anticipate so disastrous a calamity. I am asked to give- a Committee of inquiry, in order that all these points may be made clear. Sir, I cannot and will not admit the contention of the
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right hon. Gentleman that Sir Redvers Buller is to be treated exceptionally in this matter. As Secretary of State for War, I have to consider the interests and the feelings, not of one officer only, but of all. Sir Redvers Buller is not the only General who, to our regret, has lost reputation during the war. He is not the only officer who has come to us and asked for some inquiry or to be allowed to justify himself in the Press. More than one officer appealed to us, not against the strictures of the Government, but against the strictures of Sir Redvers Buller. How am I to provide special machinery for the examination of the case of Sir Redvers Buller while I deny it to those who have lost as much or more, and whose honour and reputation are as dear to them as the honour and reputation of Sir Redvers Buller are to him and his friends? The answer to all that is this. The House has been told there is to be a Committee of Inquiry. That Committee, it is to be hoped, will take evidence in these important but delicate matters in private. I earnestly hope, on behalf of the Army, that what concerns the conduct of the generals throughout the campaign may be heard with closed doors. Beyond that we cannot go. To admit that any officer who feels aggrieved by the impression produced on the public by his action, or by publication which he himself has asked for, is then to have the right to claim a special court of inquiry would be to reopen every kind of difficulty at the close of the campaign.
I pass from that to discuss the question of Sir Redvers Buller's speech. I am blamed, not by the right hon. Gentleman but in many quarters, for having allowed Sir Redvers Buller to be appointed to the First Army Corps. I will tell the Committee perfectly frankly what occurred in regard to that appointment. After the telegrams had been published, a large portion of those who had previously believed that Sir Redvers Buller had been hardly treated turned round and asked why it was that the Government did not take immediate steps for his recall after the battle of Colenso. The position after the battle of Colenso was a most difficult one, and gave the Government the gravest concern in regard to the future operations

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in Natal. I cannot deny that the confidence of the Government in Sir Redvers Buller's initiative had been shaken, both by the method of his attack on Colenso and by the telegrams he sent subsequently to its failure. But, on the other hand, will the Committee consider what were the difficulties of replacing him at that moment? Sir George White, his second in command, was shut up in Lady-smith. Sir Archibald Hunter, the Chief of the Staff, was also shut up in Ladysmith. Of the three divisional generals, Lord Methuen had just sustained a severe reverse, General Gatacre had also in the same week suffered, and General Clery had had no opportunity of securing for himself any special confidence in the conduct of the campaign. I mean no disrespect. I mean simply that he had had no opportunity up to that moment. I do not think that his division had ever been actually engaged under his command. This is a serious matter. No other officer was then in Natal or South Africa who had ever commanded a large body of troops. General French had not had time to establish the great reputation which he has since fortunately added to the annals of our Army. Neither General Lyttelton nor General Hildyard had ever conducted a whole brigade into action. To pass by them, to pass by Sir Redvers Buller and to give the command to a man unless the Government had supreme confidence that they were improving the position, would have been a folly which could not have been condoned. Let it be remembered, moreover, that Sir Redvers Buller's troops knew nothing of any discouragement he may have felt. Not merely after the battle of Colenso, but up to the day lie entered Ladysmith, the General still retained the confidence of his troops, and perhaps the most important element next to good strategy in the selection of a good general still remained to Sir Redvers Buller. Then there was a question of sending an officer out from England. The disaster took place upon a Friday. No ship sailed till the following Saturday week. Something like four weeks must have elapsed before an officer in England could have arrived to take command. Thus half the time that Sir G. White informed us that Ladysmith could hold out would have gone, and no general,
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however loyal and devoted, could have I been expected to risk his army on fresh plans and lines at a moment when he was liable to have the command taken out of his hand, in case he made a disposition absolutely contrary to what the officer who was to succeed him would approve. The Government may have been wrong; but the course they took was. I think, defensible and arguable. They adjured General Buller to persevere; they relieved him of the supreme command in South Africa, and they sent out Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener to undertake the general conduct of the campaign. What followed? I am asked again, why was Sir Redvers Buller still allowed to continue in command after the battle of Spion Kop? The answer to that is that the despatches which gave us the full report of the battle of Spion Kop never came to hand in this country until after the relief of Lady-smith; and after the relief of Ladysmith it was felt that the force in Natal, which had done such desperate fighting under Sir Redvers Buller's command, and which now became an integral portion of Lord Roberts's army, could still be conducted, by the orders from headquarters which Lord Roberts sent to his various generals.
Perhaps I ought to say that when Lord Roberts came home the Government showed their sense of the merits of the various commanders by asking Lord Kitchener to undertake the command instead of Sir Redvers Buller. Sir Redvers Buller, on his return, was sent back, as other generals were, to the command he had held before he went out. I do not defend that system. In no other war should the system ever be adopted of keeping open commands for officers who may go into the field, and who on coming home may be found to be in a position of doubt as to whether they should be in actual command. The position which I found in November, 1900, when I became Secretary of State for War, was that Lord Roberts had continued to employ General Buller in the field in command of a large body of troops for eight months after the battle of Spion Kop, and that Lord Wolseley had recommended his return to his peace command at Aldershot. The army corps system was introduced in October 1, 1901. The

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army corps system made less change in the Aldershot command than in any other. The district was the same, and the troops were the same, but the powers were large. It was not a question of appointing Sir Redvers Buller, it was a question of dismissing him. I had no ground whatever for his dismissal. It was perfectly true that I had given a pledge to Parliament that the command of the army corps should be given to men who were intended to conduct an army corps in the field. I adhere to that pledge. But in this particular case, in which an officer was already in possession, in which the troops who formed, the army corps were not there, although the troops in the command were just as numerous as the other troops who had been trained in drafts and sent out to South Africa, and above all, when the officer who could have replaced General Duller was not available and could not be withdrawn from South Africa, I could only have removed Sir Redvers Buller—in order to make good my pledge—by substituting for him an officer of less experience who would not have been recommended by Lord Roberts for the command of the First Army Corps in the field. If I erred, I accept the responsibility. I knew Sir Redvers Buller to be a good peace commander. Of course, I mean no disrespect. I mean that I knew him to be thoroughly acquainted and conversant, perhaps more than any other officer in the Army, with the duties which a general has to perform in a large camp in time of peace. I knew that he possessed the confidence of the troops; and if I had gone out of my way at that moment to bring an impeachment against him for operations which had taken place nearly two years before, it would not have been merely unsustainable in any Court before which he could have been brought, but it would have been denounced by the feeling throughout the Army. It is true that the official announcement made it clear that General Buller's period of command was to complete the five years for which he had been appointed in 1898. That is so, and I think that any consideration I could show him under the circumstances was not thrown away. Now, sir, I. come to the question of General
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Buller's speech. I am brought to book because it is alleged that but for the outcry made in the newspapers this speech would have passed without notice. I entirely deny it. I will show step by step that that speech could not he disregarded without sacrificing all the best traditions of the Army, and also without involving us in the gravest difficulties at home. In the first place, it was a grave breach of the King's regulations, which lay it down that an officer whose character or conduct as an officer or a gentleman has been impugned should appeal to his commanding officer. Sir Redvers Buller's appeal lay to the Commander-in-Chief. He did not appeal to the Commander-in Chief. He decided, instead, to appeal to the public. That was a grave breach of the regulations. The regulations preclude the discussion of orders given by superior authority. Sir Redvers Buller discussed in public his own fitness for the command which he had just been ordered by superior authority to assume. I cannot imagine anything more fatal to discipline than that an officer going down to take up his command should proceed, as Sir Redvers Buller did, to address a public audience on his own fitness for that position. The regulations preclude the publication of secret documents. Sir Redvers Buller undertook to publish a telegram, which the Government in this House had already refused to publish; and his conduct was just as prejudicial to discipline as the publication itself could have been. The right hon. Gentleman said that no individual was involved in the speech. I entirely differ from him. There was an allusion in the speech to an order which the Commander-in-Chief had given that Sir Redvers Buller should withdraw a certain instruction issued to the Artillery at Aldershot. Sir Redvers Buller discussed an interview which he said he had had with an unknown individual, who, he said, was a spy and who came to warn him that he had enemies who wanted to get him out of the way, and" who particularly said— "You had an order about artillery the other day. Well," continued the spy," you have enough money to live upon; give up the Aldershot command." Sir Redvers Buller replied — "Thank you very much, why should I?" The spy

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said—"You have got enemies, men who mean to get you out of the way; they will get you out of the way, and you had better get out of it quickly." Sir Redvers Buller said — "If it is necessary for me to use that information, I shall." The headquarters of the Army issued an order cancelling Sir Redvers Buller's instruction about artillery. He takes the warning of a spy who tells him he has enemies who are determined to ruin him. What enemies? Obviously enemies at the headquarters of the Army who were issuing instructions which were likely to do him harm. I cannot conceive anything which is less calculated to promote discipline, in a great command than that the officer in command of it should publicly announce an extraordinary story of this kind as bearing upon his relations with the headquarters staff. Then there was a further and, I think, most injudicious allusion to an order issued to him by the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa, if necessary not to shrink from losing 2,000 or 3,000 men in his attempt to relieve Ladysmith. Sir Redvers Buller had asked whether, if it needed such a loss, he should persevere; and Lord Roberts replied that Ladysmith must be relieved even at that loss.
SIR EDWARD GREY: Read the, whole of the telegram.
MR. LAMBERT: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish the whole of the telegram?
MR. BRODRICK: It has been already published in the despatches.
SIR EDWARD GREY: Has the whole or only an extract been published?
MR. BRODRTCK: So far as I know, the whole of the despatches have been published. I am not aware of any despatch published which has not been given in full. Sir Redvers Buller further said—
"If I ever displayed rash or great courage it was when, having in my pocket the very telegram which was talked about, in which I was ordered to lose 2,000 or 3,000 men, I decided to withdraw my troops because I did not think I could lose them to any advantage."
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Here, again, what is to be thought of a discipline under which after an officer has been ordered not to shrink from losing 2,000 or 3,000 men he goes to a public audience and boasts of the courage which decided him to withdraw his troops without risking them? But those are subsidiary points. What is really the important point is this—who, having read that speech, full of indiscretion as it was, could not but feel that there was displayed in it throughout a want of temper and judgment which threw grave doubts on General Buller's capacity for command? Can any one doubt the example which was set to junior officers of the Army by a man who had set the King's regulations aside, ventilated his grievances in public, and while denouncing the qualifications of others extolled his own qualifications for the most important command in this country? But even the terms of his speech were not the most important element in deciding the Government to take action upon it. Those speeches are calculated in the highest degree to prejudice the British Army in a campaign. When Sir Redvers Buller returned home he came to see me, and told mo in a conversation, of which I reminded him on October 17th last, that he intended to make certain speeches about the campaign. I warned him with all the earnestness which I could command that such speeches would not be permitted by any officer who had been engaged in South Africa. I mentioned to the House a few moments ago that there were other aggrieved officers who desired to make speeches. When I came into office I found recriminations rampant between certain officers as to what had occurred in Natal, and loud words, hard words, were passing on paper with regard to those transactions. I believe that no one in my position could have done otherwise than I did in making it perfectly clear to all the officers concerned that any attempt to-further discuss their grievances in public would meet with disciplinary action by the Commander in-Chief. Officers report what has taken place in the field, Superior officers comment on the reports. The Government decides. The incident must close there. If every man who thinks his character impugned

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comes home and appeals to the Press and public against his superiors, who, possibly, may at the moment be still fighting in the field, the conduct of a campaign becomes impossible. If I, disregarding the Commander-in-Chief's advice, had allowed the recriminations to proceed, I should not only have taken a step that would have been fatal to the discipline of the Army, but should have allowed the British Army to become the laughing-stock of the world. After telling other officers that they would be removed from the service if they took the action taken by Sir Redvers Buller, how could we overlook the most distinguished general in the most distinguished command without admitting —-what, indeed, is proposed to us to admit this afternoon—-that there is one set of regulations for the rest of the British Army and another for Sir Redvers Buller?
Now, Sir, I deeply regret that it has fallen to me to make a statement which must so seriously affect the feelings of all those who have interests in the Army and which must so seriously affect the conduct of one of our most distinguished generals. I can only say that it is the first time that any man standing at this table, during all the chequered experiences and the exciting moments of the last three years, has said one single word which reflected on the character or conduct of Sir Redvers Buller. But I think that, after the insinuations which have been made, it would have been a breach of faith and truth to the House if I had not told the story of the campaign and the true facts as they have affected the general. I can honestly say I have never discharged in this House a more painful or a more ungrateful task. I do not think any man ever had a more cruel duty than that which—with the full assent of all my colleagues—fell to me last October of removing and practically closing the career of a soldier who for more than forty years had commanded so high a measure of public confidence. I have known Sir Redvers Buller with all the intimacy of official converse for more than fifteen years. I have always been on terms of cordiality with him until the last few months. Until he went to South Africa I was
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constantly a guest at his house and he at mine; and, without agreeing with him always, I can honestly say I recognised the force of his character and his rare gift of impressing men, and I felt his failures in Natal to be a private grief as well as a public calamity. But I think that in such circumstances as these no private feelings and no past history justifies us in keeping an officer in his command when his control of it has ceased to be an advantage to the country. In allowing Sir Redvers Buller to continue to complete his time hi October last we endeavoured to show the consideration due to his long years of service and his eminent qualities. I wish that the controversy with regard to him should be allowed to close with the present debate, I would far rather that the recollection of Sir Redvers Buller's services should rest not on these last few months of storm and stress and unsatisfied expectations, but rather on the long years of energy, and courage, and of zeal for reform, at a time when Army reform was not so popular as it is now, which obtained for him, perhaps, the highest thing a soldier can wish for—namely, not merely the confidence of the Government he serves, but also the confidence of the troops he has to lead. I believe, for my part, that it would be for the General's advantage that this controversy should be allowed to close. I ask it still more on behalf of the Army and the country. The reputations of our great military leaders are not merely the property of their friends; they are also, in a peculiar degree, the possession of their fellow-countrymen. It rarely happens to a statesman to take action for his country with the united feeling of the whole Empire at his back, as has been the case of those who have led our armies in South Africa in the course of the last three years. Sir Redvers Buller's failure, so far as it was a failure, has been an uncounted loss to his fellow-countrymen. His gain would have been our gain, his reputation was our reputation, and his loss has been our loss, I cannot help wishing that the House would allow mo to deprecate the undue continuance of this public recrimination about individual episodes, the effects of which are equally damaging to all of us. Do not let the House suppose that I

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deprecate examination. The teachings of the war are being taken to heart; they will reform the whole fabric of our military system. Let the Commission do its part to assist us. Let it examine every detail. For my part, I shall give it every assistance in my power. Is it too much to ask on behalf of the Army that we should now, or very shortly, close these public discussions of our less fortunate military achievements, that we should leave the consideration of reputations which have been damaged, and concentrate ourselves on learning by what has passed, reconstituting our military fabric with the assistance of those great colonies who have come to our aid?
I end, as I began, by deploring the necessity for this debate. I regret what it has been necessary for me to say in the course of the debate, and I appeal to the House that discussion on these things, which tend to damage us at home and disparage us abroad, may now be allowed to close. So far as the Government are concerned, we have done our best to discourage them. All along we have practised reticence; we have taken the whole blame on our shoulders for what has gone wrong; and if there are to be further denunciations of individuals and further attacks on reputations, we shall enter on a course for which we in the Government are unwilling to take any responsibility, and the mischievous results of which we can clearly foresee.
SIR EDWAKDGREY: I do not desire to ignore the appeal which the right hon. Gentleman has made that this controversy should cease, but I want to refer to two things which he has said. To one I give a categorical denial on Sir Redvers Buller's behalf, and the other I wish to correct. The thing I wish to deny is that Sir Redvers Buller held the knowledge about the length of time that supplies would last in Ladysmith at the time he wrote the despatches after Colenso. He denied that in these words—
"I did not know what supplies there were. I thought at that time I had officially in writing that the garrison could not be fed beyond the end of the year."
The right hon. Gentleman has quoted a despatch which, he said, was in Sir
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Redvers Buller's possession, giving entirely different information. Of course, I can quote no despatch, but I do quote Sir Redvers Buller's direct denial as to his information about the supplies in Ladysmith, and if such a despatch, as the right hon. Gentleman says, was in Sir Redvers Buller's possession, I think it is a fair surmise that it could not have been the only information in his possession, or the information on which he thought it safest to rely, because he says himself that at that time he thought he had it officially in writing that the garrison could not be fed beyond the end of the year. Yes; but he may not quote anything. Will the right hon. Gentleman let him tell the whole story?
The next point is this. The right hon. Gentleman quoted a telegram from Sir Redvers Buller asking Lord Roberta's permission to persevere and, apparently, hesitating to risk the loss which would be involved. I state categorically what I think the right hon. Gentleman does not know, that that telegram he has quoted is published as an extract, and that, if the whole were published and the instructions from Lord Roberts to Sir Redvers Buller which produced that telegram, the impression with regard to Sir Redvers Buller's conduct in this matter would not only be entirely dispelled but reversed. If Sir Redvers Buller were free to quote on his side the whole of the telegram and of the orders on which he was acting, it would entirely dispel the impression which has been produced by the extract.
MR. BRODRICK: I think I had better answer the statements of the right hon. Gentleman at once. I can only read it as it roaches me from the official file. As regards the heliogram from Sir George White which I mentioned, and an extract from which I read, the right hon. Gentleman may be in a position to say that Sir Redvers Buller never received it, but I am convinced that that file is accurate, as the telegrams previously quoted from it have not been challenged by Sir Redvers Buller. With regard to the telegram of Lord Roberts to Sir Redvers Buller in reference to the 2,000 or 3,000 men, I will read the messages as they stand here.
SIR EDWARD GREY: And Sir Redvers Buller's telegram?
MR. BRODRICK: Both, premising that they have been paraphrased, and that the original telegrams up to the month of March of that year were destroyed, in order to protect the cipher. This is a telegram dated Cape Town, February 6, from Field-Marshal Lord Roberts to Secretary of State for War—
"Following received from Duller: 'I have pierced the enemy's lines after a fight lasting all yesterday without many casualties, and now hold the hill which divides their position, and which will give me access to Ladysmith; plain if I can advance. I shall then be ten miles from White, while the enemy will have only one place beyond to stand. I must, however, drive back the enemy either on the right or left to get my artillery and stores on to the plain. This operation will cost from 2,000 to 3,000 men. I am hopeful, but not confident, of success. Do you think the change of relieving Ladysmith worth the risk, and how would such a loss affect your plans? This is the only possible way of relieving Ladysmith. I know of no other if I give this up.' Following in reply to Buller: 'Ladysmith must be relieved, even at the loss you expect. I should certainly persevere, and my hope is that the enemy will be so severely punished as to enable you to withdraw White's garrison without great difficulty. Let the troops know that in their hands is the honour of the Empire, and of their success I have no possible doubt."
SIR EDWARD GREY: Lord Robert's orders to Sir Redvers Buller which had preceded and caused that telegram are the important matter. [After a pause.] I may tell the right hon. Gentleman that my contention is this—though I cannot quote—that Sir Redvers Buller had been ordered previously not to risk loss, and that he was bound, in deference to the orders of his superior, not to risk loss without consulting Lord Roberts.
MR. BRODRICK: I have only the telegrams. I have not got all the orders that passed, so, of course, I am not prepared to meet that particular point. But I have read the whole of the telegrams on that point.
SIR EDWARD GREY: That is only a further reason for not letting the matter rest.
*MR. ARTHUR LEEdesired to enter a protest against the prolongation of the discussion, and to state his reasons for so doing. The first and foremost ground on which he based his protest was the injury which must
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necessarily result to military discipline and efficiency if all or any military judgments of this kind were to be discussed by what, with all respect, he thought was an incompetent and scarcely impartial tribunal. How could the House of Commons pretend to know whether this general was, or was not, fitted for a particular command, whether that general did, or did not, conduct certain military operations in a proper and soldier-like manner on a particular occasion, or whether he had been justly or unjustly treated by his superiors in being removed from, or considered un fitted for, a particular command? To attempt such discussions could not redound to the credit of the House, and, in any case, it must have a most deleterious effect on military discipline if every officer who felt himself aggrieved, or whose friends felt he had been unjustly treated, could appeal from the judgment of his military superiors to the prejudiced verdict of a political assembly. Such a practice, if it became established, as it now threatened to be, must strike at the very j roots of military discipline, and inflict real injury on the State. No one would contend that this washing of duty linen in public could possibly do any good to the House, the Army, the [aggrieved individual himself, or, indeed, to anybody concerned.
He further based his protest on the fact that these discussions took up a great deal of the time of the House, There had recently been the "Colville case," now the "Buller case" was being discussed, and he presumed it would be I followed by the "Warren case," and many others which should be nameless. That was bad enough, but how in justice could this vicious form of "appeal to Caesar" be limited to officers of high rank only? There were hundreds of junior officers who, in the course of the war, had been cashiered, or placed on half-pay, and who possibly thought they had been ill-used by the authorities. How could the House refuse them a hearing if it indulged the genera's, and having heard them, it would be only logical and just in these democratic days if they were to go further and allow the appeals of non-commissioned officers and men who had been treated in the

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Same] way. Why, indeed, confine our revising powers to military judgments? Would it not be equally appropriate that this House should extend its revising power to such matters as the grant of a decree nisi when any of the parties concerned considered they were aggrieved? Surely the Committee was at at least as competent to undertake a discussion of that kind. The practical point was, however, that debates of this kind take up a great deal of time, and if this precedent was allowed there was no limit to the amount of time that might so be taken up. As a result, the really important military questions which were ripe for discussion were set aside and crowded out altogether, and what could be more destructive to military efficiency. This was the only remaining occasion this session when broad questions of military policy could be discussed. There were many such subjects fresh in the minds of hon. Members, and one day would be quite short enough to discuss any one of them. Nevertheless, the few hours which were available were to be taken up debating the case of an individual who fancied himself to be aggrieved, and when that was disposed of, they, were to be called upon to discuss whether the Commander-in Chief, with his fifty years of military experience, was, or was not, competent to deal with a petty matter of discipline in one of the military colleges. Could anything be more ludicrous, or more destructive of that spirit of discipline which should animate and pervade the fighting services?
LORD HUGH CECILasked if the hon. Member was in order in referring to the question of the military college at Sandhurst on this Vote?
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: No; it will not be in order to discuss that question.
*MR. ARTHUR LEEsaid he had no intention of discussing the question, and he only mentioned it, in passing, as an instance of the way the time of the House was wasted by the noble Lord and his friends. He contended that the only people who could profit by these sensational debates were the enemies of
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this country, and neither the House, the Army, nor the particular individuals concerned, could possibly benefit by them. As regarded this particular cask of General Butler, he ventured to assert that the British public were only too anxious to hear the last of it. They wore sick and tired of the, whole miserable, humiliating business, 'and would gladly forget it if they could. In any case there was no possibility of any good being done by raking up the embers of these unsavoury pasts. On every ground, therefore, be appealed to hon. Members on both sides of the House not to prolong the debate more than could possibly be avoided, and to pass on to those serious military questions which did arise upon this Vote.
MR. LAMBERTsaid the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of Stats for War had quoted secret telegrams; which were only in his possession, in order to damage General Buller. That was a very grave matter for a Minister of the Crown to do.
MR. BRODRICK: Have I not a perfect right to read any telegram I please, if I lay it upon the Table of the House?
MR. LAMBERT: But you read them first in your speech.
MR. BRODRICK: I take the whole responsibility of doing so, because it is a document which is absolutely necessary, and germane to the arguments before the House.
MR. LAMBERTsaid he did not wish to impugn the right of the right hon. Gentleman to lay telegrams before the House, but he had quoted a heliogram which purported to come from General Buller and which had never seen the light before. That telegram must materially influence the mind of the Committee as regarded General Buller's action at Colenso. He asked the right hon. Gentleman would he allow General Buller to publish any telegram he thought necessary in his defence?
MR. BRODRICK: Most certainly not, His friends have put forth an argument as to his conduct, and I quoted only a

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document which is relevant. They make statements and I refute them, and I give this as one of the grounds of my I refutation. General Buller's proper course is to go before the Royal Commission and let them sec the whole of these documents.
MR. LAMBERTsaid they wanted to know something about the constitution of this Commission first. They did not want to import any heat into this matter. [Ministerial laughter.] He was sure hon. Gentlemen opposite wished to, see justice done to General Buller, and he thought he could show that justice had not, been done. The right hon. Gentleman had quoted a secret heliogram which none of them had ever seen in order to make his case good against General Buller. The Secretary of State for War had published five telegrams.
MR. BRODRICK: No, I did not.
MR. LAMBERTsaid at any rate General Buller published them in response to the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman. These telegrams were selected by the War Office, and General Buller had them thrown at his head to publish if he liked. As the Secretary for War had selected five telegrams for publication would he allow General Buller to publish the whole series of those telegrams?
MR. BRODRICK: I am afraid the hon. Gentleman does not follow my argument. General Buller asked me to allow him to publish one heliogram, and I said he could do so if he would publish the reply. He asked mo to contradict a particular telegram which had been sent. I said he could publish that telegram if he would publish the one to which it was an answer.
MR. LAMBERTsaid that if they published the telegrams which were sent by General Buller during those critical days about the 15th of December, 1899, they ought to publish the whole series of telegrams. It was not fair to publish one or two telegrams which showed General Buller in the worst, possible light. From the 14th of December to
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the 17th, General Buller sent from 86 to 101 telegrams and the right, hon.-Gentleman had picked out five of them."
MR. BRODRICK: No, no.
MR. LAMBERTsaid the right hon. Gentleman selected five telegrams and told General Buller that they were placed in his possession upon the clear understanding that they were not to be divulged to anyone, but if publicity was decided upon, they were to be, published as they stood. Would the, right hon. Gentleman read to the Committee, telegrams which he would ask him for? He would like him to read a telegram from General Buller, General Officer Commanding, No. 86, sent on the 14th of December, also another, No. 49, which General Buller received from the War Office; and another most important one, No. 91, which General Buller sent to the War Office. He had those telegrams in his hand and he would like to read them. (Ministerial cries of "Read.") General Buller had been ordered not to publish a single telegram, and, therefore, he was not permitted to read them without the right hon. Gentleman's express consent. He put this as a matter of fairness to the House. The right hon. Gentleman had made selections from the telegrams, and if he would not allow him to read them he certainly ought to allow General Buller to place them before a properly constituted tribunal. That was only fair. The right hon. Gentleman had said that General Buller suggested that. General White should surrender; that-General Buller sent a heliogram asking General White to surrender; and that it, was so monstrous a thing that the people in Ladysmith believed it to be a forgery. Did the right hon. Gentleman really believe that the telegram which General Buller sent to Sir George White bore out that statement? Did he believe that General Buller's telegram actually suggested the surrender of Ladysmith? The right hon. Gentleman said that if such a stigma had rested upon them it would have been a stigma upon our children, and our children's children. Why did he accuse General Buller of wanting to place that stigma upon this country?
MR. BRODRICK: The telegram to the Government suggested that he should give up Ladysmith and take up another position and wait for the winter.
MR. LAMBERTasked the right hon. Gentleman to tell him where those words "wait for the winter" came in. Could he quote them from any of General Buller's telegrams? That was a perfectly fair challenge. Would the light hon. Gentleman tell him where the words "wait until winter comes on "were to be found? The right hon. Gentleman could not do this. That was a sample of the kind of accusation brought against General Buller. He did not think it was fair that a distinguished general officer should be treated thus by the Minister who ought to defend him in the House of Commons. If General Buller had been guilty of what the right hon. Gentleman had suggested—the sending of this appalling message—he ought, instead of being placed in command of the First Army Corps, to have been brought before a Court Martial. Was General Buller's action ever criticised by his military superiors? Did his military superiors ever ask him for any explanation of any of his actions? The right hon. Gentleman had said that Colenso was badly executed and badly conceived. Why did not the Government ask General Buller for some explanation of that? They never did such a thing. The right hon. Gentleman had told them that the House of Commons was not competent to decide upon a matter of strategy. Let General Buller come before a tribunal by which his action could be tested. Talk about General Buller having done so badly! The right hon. Gentleman talked of the muddle of Spion Kop and of Colenso. What on earth could have made Lord Roberts promulgate the Army Order if all these things took place? If he was so incompetent as the right hon. Gentleman had stated, what was the meaning of the Army Order in which Lord Roberts thanked Sir Redvers Buller for the great services which he had rendered to the country when in command of the forces in Natal? Was it fair of the right hon. Gentleman to make such a strong and bitter attack on General Buller when the Commander-in-Chief had tendered him that vote? That Army Order was either sincere or a
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sham. If the right hon. Gentleman's statement was correct, the Army Order must have been a sham; but he could not believe that Lord Roberts would publish a commendation of an officer whom he believed to be to blame. He could give reasons why General Buller considered that General White could only hold out to the end of the year, but that was not a thing which they could discuss here. They were demanding full information. They demanded that General Buller should be allowed to tell his own story to a properly-constituted tribunal, or that the orders which the right hon. Gentleman had given him to close his mouth should be removed. He was sure he had the House with him on the subject of the Colenso telegrams. If General Buller was to be judged, he should not be judged by isolated telegrams, but by all the telegrams he sent. Notwithstanding the cheers that greeted the right hon. Gentleman, hon. Members, he was sure, were sorry that a Minister had made such an attack upon General Buller. It was not fair to make such an attack, and order General Buller to close his mouth. It was like hitting a man on the face, when his hands were tied behind his back. The British public liked fair play. When he first took up this case he did so because General Buller was a Devonshire man, but since then he had been told many things. He was certain that General Buller had a strong case. When he arrived in South Africa on 31st October he had only 2,500 men to deal with; Ladysmith was besieged three days afterwards; Kimberley was besieged; and Mafeking was invested. The Boers were not only holding in General White, but they were marching towards Maritzburg. What would have happened if General Buller had not gone to Natal to save Maritzburg? The Boers would have gone on to I Durban, but he drove them back. The position in which he found himself at Colenso was so grave that he ought to be allowed to tell that story, because he was the only man who could tell it intelligently. The House should remember that an enormous frontier had to be protected. He could not withdraw a single soldier from the frontier without risking a blaze in Cape Colony. The surrender of Ladysmith, unless forced by

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the direst extremity, was a thing General Buller would not have suggested for a moment. General Buller took Sir George White to be a brave soldier, and did any one suppose that Sir George White would surrender Ladysmith unless in the direst extremity? General Buller sent the telegram to General White, as he Said at Westminster, in order to give him a sort of cover if the worst came to the worst. That was what made General Buller so much beloved by all his men. They knew that he was willing to stand in with them. It was no use saying that he was such an incompetent man when he had the confidence of every man who served under him. General Buller was not the only General who hid made blunders in South Africa. Many others had made mistakes. Did this House imagine that if every telegram were published all the reputations would stand as high as they did now? This controversy could not end here, and he implored the right hon. Gentleman to free General Buller from the silence which had been imposed on him.
SIR EDGAR VINCENTsaid if he ventured to trespass on the time of the Committee for a few moments it was because he represented a constituency which included Sir Redvers Buller among its voters, who regarded that remarkable man with intense affection and respect. No one could have listened to the debate today without coming to the conclusion that the most unsatisfactory method of dealing with this question was the method of the successive publication of telegrams. It appeared to him to be open to every possible objection. He felt sure that the House would recognise that there were only two methods—either to drop the controversy altogether or else submit the whole of the facts to the Committee on the war, which could take evidence with closed doors. The continuous publication of telegrams, some selected by the War Office and others selected by Sir Redvers Buller, could not give the country any clear view of the facts, or conduce either to support General Bailer's case or to the public advantage. Then, again, it was not right to deal only with Natal. There was another important subject on which he felt much more strongly.
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It was that when General Buller was appointed to Aldershot the War ! Office had all the facts with regard to what occurred in Natal. The Government had absolute possession of these telegrams. What he wanted to know was what occurred between the date of the appointment and the date of the dismissal, which rendered General Buller unfit to retain his command? The Secretary of State for War had given the Committee in a clearer manner than had yet been done, the five points in General Buller's speech of 10th October, which, in the right hon. Gentle-man's opinion, rendered Sir Redvers Buller incompetent to retain command of the First Army Corps. The hon. Member held that none of the five points which were brought forward justified any penalty as severe as that which General Bullet received. The, speech night have been indiscreet and unwise. There were points in it which he was sure the friends of General Buller regretted, but he questioned whether any man of common sense would maintain that that speech merited dismissal from the Aldershot command. It appeared to him that one could not introduce any standard of military discipline taken from continental practice. The case must be judged on the general practice of officers in the English Army in high command. He submitted that there was nothing in the words used by General Buller on 10th October, which merited more than a reprimand at the outside. He would venture to ask the Secretary of State to publish all the correspondence which took place between General Buller and the War Office, subsequent to the speech of 10th October. That course did not appear to him to be open to the objection which had been raised to other publications, namely, that it would form a defence for the publication of information with respect to other officers. In this matter the position of Sir Redvers Buller was absolutely unique. So far as he was aware, there was no precedent of a general officer in his position and of his reputation having been dismissed from a high command in consequence of indiscreet words used by him. He felt convinced that if, after the publication of that correspondence,

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the right hon. Gentleman realised that the causes upon which he acted were inadequate and that he committed an injustice, he would not hesitate to take measures to rectify what perhaps he might have done under some provocation and under circumstances of considerable difficulty.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I have listened with a very great degree of sympathy to the speech which has just been made by the hon. Member opposite, and I have come very much to the same conclusion in the matter as he has arrived at. Everyone will agree that this painful matter wag brought before the House with great clearness, fairness, and moderation by my right hon. friend, but he was quite right in saying that he initiated the question on his own responsibility, for there is nothing that I would deprecate more than the introduction of any division of Party in a case of this kind. I am obliged to look at this question as an old and intimate friend of General Buller. There is no one who has a more sincere admiration for him than I have, and my admiration is not substantially diminished by anything that has happened even in Natal. At the same time, I appreciate to an extent it is difficult to convey, the immense inconvenience and almost impropriety of constituting this Committee the tribunal to decide not only questions of military capacity, of the merits and demerits of military movements and the conduct of campaigns and battles, but also of the finer questions of military discipline. I am fully alive to the other side of the question, that discussions on these matters, either in the House or in Committee, seldom result in any benefit to the character and the country. One hon. Gentleman I noticed was so penetrated with an evil habit he has contracted, that he spoke of such a debate as encouraging the enemy— forgetting that while that might have been a very nice kind of thing to say a few months ago, it is not so now when the war has been over for many weeks. I think we are all of one mind with regard to the inconvenience of discussing these questions here; but it is necessary in some cases where, as in such a case
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as this, there is, on the face of it at all events, a primâ facie case of injustice to be cleared up. There are, I think, some points which must present themselves to the ordinary man, not accustomed to the intricacies of military discipline or of departmental regulations. There is the point dwelt upon by my two hon. friends beside me, that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War is able to publish, or to authorise the publication of certain selected passages in the communications that passed in Natal, but it is absolutely forbidden to General Buller, or anybody on his behalf, to publish other passages which might give a different complexion to the whole matter. That is a very serious grievance, and, so far as I know, that is the main grievance of which General Buller complains. He does not ask for a verdict in his favour in regard to anything that he has done. All he asks is that the public should have the opportunity of forming an impartial judgment, and that can only be done, of course, either by the right hon. Gentleman making a larger publication, or by his allowing General Buller to make public what he thinks represents his side of the case. Here, again, I admit fully that we come upon a difficulty because the right hon. Gentle-man very properly said it would never do to publish all the confidential despatches that passed between the General and the Secretary of State for War. No one could ask for, or contemplate, such a thing as that. But what we want is some ground to believe that the case of General Buller has been more impartially considered than it has. Then there is the strange series of proceedings with I regard to General Buller after all this had happened. After these calamitous despatches of his, after his alleged failures in Natal, he was publicly thanked by the Commander - in - Chief, the Government, were almost effusive towards him and appointed him to the principal command in the Kingdom. If that does not constitute condonation of all that had happened I do not know of what condonation could consist. But the right hon. Gentleman implies today that the proper thing to be done would have been to dismiss General Buller at once, and that he was almost waiting for a good opportunity to do so. It would seem that while he was being thanked and

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mentioned in the General Orders, and while he was being appointed to the principal command in England, the Secretary of State all the time had condemned him and was only waiting for a convenient chance of getting rid of him.
MR. BRODRICKdissented.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNEKMAN: It amounts to that.
MR. BRODRICK: I traversed the arguments of those who said he should have been removed at once. I was not hi office at the time.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman was in office very soon after, hut the conduct of the Government is one and the same to successive Secretaries of State for War. Then there is a further point, for it did seem to me, and I think it seemed to the country, that there was a little abruptness and want of consideration, although it is perhaps a smaller matter, in the manner in which so distinguished an officer with so high a standing in the Army, and in the country, was retired from his command. The indiscreet speech of General Buller had nothing in it, if it is analysed, which, as I understand, constituted a breach of any regulation of the Army. It was a grave indiscretion, but it was no more, and therefore I think the judgment measured out was rather hard. The- right hon. Gentleman, however, has twice said something which gives us a ray of hope. General Buller, through his friends, asks that he should have the opportunity of setting himself right with the country. I entirely agree that we must not allow great and eminent men, men of great influence, to get advantages that are refused to other officers, but this is undoubtedly a peculiar and exceptional case. General Buller's distinction, and the whole of the circumstances make the case peculiar, and therefore I think we are right in pressing for some means of getting at the facts and of enabling General Buller, if he can. to set himself right. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of referring it to the Commission which is to inquire into the war. I am afraid this matter has occupied so much of the time available to us to-day that we shall not have much time to inquire into that
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Commission, but I am very curious, and I think the public are very anxious, to know precisely what the nature of that inquiry will be. It must almost necessarily, it seems to me, be divided into two parts—into an inquiry which would investigate all the business part of the war and an inquiry which would deal with the military conduct of the war and with military questions such as we are dealing with today. The class of men whom you wish for each of these purposes is quite different; and if the right hon. Gentleman could appoint a board of general officers, who could without any prejudice to public interests, taking care, as they would be quite capable of doing, that no publicity is given where evil results would follow, to inquire into this matter and report upon it, I do not know whether that would meet the views of my hon. friends who have taken up this matter so strongly, but I think myself that it would meet the justice of the case, avoid the evils which the right hon. Gentleman very properly pointed out as likely to accrue from any other course, and satisfy the public mind.
MR. BRODRICK: I am afraid that I cannot hold out any hope to the right hon. Gentleman that such a tribunal as he proposes will be established. We have given a pledge to Parliament that a Commission will be appointed of the most responsible persons, we can bring together to inquire into the conduct of the war. That Commission will have within its purview, no doubt, the preparations for the war, the military conduct of the. campaign, and the civil conduct so far as it concerns the Department over which I preside. It would be impossible to withdraw from their purview the operations of a particular officer or particular set of officers.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am afraid I did not make myself clear. I did not mean to suggest a special ad hoc tribunal for General Buller's case. But if the Commission consists of a sufficient number of capable and impartial general officers, that. I think, would be a tribunal to which, together with other cases, we might submit this ease of General Buller.
MR CLAUDE LOWTHERsaid he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the case of General Sir Charles Warren, and in doing so, he desired to disassociate himself entirely from those Members of the Houses who gladly seized on any mistake on the part of Ministers for the purposes of belttling the Government. He was animated only by a desire to see fair play accorded, and ordinary justice done to a gallant General whose military and administrative capacities he had had the opportunity of admiring and respecting during the time he had had the honour of serving as A.D.C. in South Africa. He urged on the right hon. Gentleman that it was only bare justice to allow General Sir Charles Warren to controvert the charges brought against him by Sir Redvers Buller. Sir Redvers Buller wrote two separate despatches; the first, which was immediately made public, contained a very scathing criticism on Sir Charles Warren's action at Spion Kop, and the second, which was in the form of a secret despatch, was of so incriminating a nature, that if left unanswered, it must destroy for ever Sir Charles Warren's military career and reputation in the eyes of the public. Sir Charles Warren's demand, either that the War Office should publish an answer to these charges which they had in their possession, or that he should be allowed, through the medium of the Press, to vindicate his character, had been met with a stern and peremptory refusal. It had been urged in General Buller's case that to allow an independent inquiry would open up interminable inquiries, because what was allowed to General Buller could not be refused to other officers who thought their conduct or character was impugned. That argument as a general rule would carry weight, but it would be the quintessence of despotism if it was applied to the present instance. Here was a General, in command of 15,000, whose action had been criticised, and criticised alone by a man whose own conduct had been such as to lead to his compulsory retirement from the Army.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANsaid he must warn the hon. Gentleman that he would be out of order in criticising the
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conduct of General Sir Redvers Buller towards another officer in the field. He would be in order in discussing the conduct of the War Office, but not that of General Buller with reference to other officers in the field.
*MR. CLAUDE LOWTHERsaid his object was to prove that the action of the j War Office was wrong in this matter. All he desired to say was that Sir Charles Warren had been made the scapegoat of this affair. He alone had received the blame. He had no credit where credit was due, but only blame where probably it was not merited. Could it be urged that in this case the criticism of a superior officer in the interests of discipline must remain uncontroverted? Should the comments on the conduct of Sir Charles Warren be taken as fact from the mouth of a man who had proved to the full the measure of his own incompetence? Was it fair that the career of an officer who had given evidence of great intelligence should be blasted by the censure of such a censor? a censor whose brilliant performance at the seat of war had induced the Commander-in-Chief to recall him to the special command of a non-existent army corps at home—a censor whom the right hon. Gentleman himself was compelled to relieve even of that responsible position—owing to an exhibition of such crass stupidity, that every thinker in the country trembled when he considered how two years before the safety of the Empire was in the hands of such a man. He did not stand there to pronounce judgment on General Buller. General Buller stood condemned by the Commander-in-Chief, the right hon. Gentleman and all the Members of the Front Bench. Since when have the condemned been allowed to condemn? He (Mr. Lowther) was not competent to traverse the military strategy attributed to Sir Charles Warren; he did not belong to the army of amateur strategists who, after every reverse, armed with a probably inaccurate map and a box of matches, took positions with ease which it had been found impossible to take with men and guns. He did not pretend to say whether some better road might have been taken to Ladysmith than the one by Spion Kop, but this he

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did say that the position was actually won at sunset by the valour of our men and by the iron determination of General Warren. The message sent out by Sir Charles Warren to his men was that they must fight to the end, and must not surrender; but in the face of that order, Colonel Thornycroft took upon himself to abandon the position.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANagain warned the hon. Member that he must not comment on the conduct of the campaign, but must confine his remarks to the conduct of the War Office.
*MR. CLAUDE LOWTHERsaid all he wished to prove, if he would be in order in so doing, was that but for the action of Colonel Thornycroft, Spion Kop would have been held, and it would have been a victory, and that Ladysmith would have been relieved.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANruled that that would not be in order.
*MR. CLAUDE LOWTHERsaid in that case he would not further detain the House, except to say that, having regard to the whole of the circumstances of this case, it was only just that Sir Charles Warren should have an opportunity of controverting the charges which had been made against him.
MR. PIRIEentirely agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, and in fact went rather farther than did the hon. Member. He could not conceive a much worse method of dealing with these cases than that which had been adopted by the Government by the excessive publication of telegrams and despatches; perhaps a still worse method than that was the method by which this discussion had been forced upon the Committee this afternoon, because no other system prevailed in the Army. It was because he saw no finality in the future in the remedy of similar cases that he urged that the whole of this class of cases should be put on the footing of courts-martial, which should be held by military officers if necessary in secret. Until they adopted some such method as that, and said such cases as these should not be decided autocratically
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by the sole decision of one man, these cases were bound to be repeated in future years. The same thing took place in General Colville's case; and in all these cases it appeared as if the Government shrank from publicity, whilst the officers implicated demanded it. That was so in this case of General Buller, who demanded a public inquiry, which the Government refused. This case could not end here, it would have to go on until it was cleared up in the mind of the public, and however deplorable it might be, the right hon. Gentleman and the War Office would have to make up their minds to the fact. There had been deplorable similarities between this case and others between Lord Roberts and his predecessor in office. He saw a disastrous similarity between the case of Lord Roberts and General Buller and that between Lord Roberts and Lord Wolseley when Lord Wolseley called for Papers to justify certain actions of his at the War Office, and they were refused by Lord Roberts. He thought if they road between the lines they might see something of the frame of mind which brought about this deplorable case of General Buller. He did not stand up now to discuss the military situation, but he did say that never did the House of Commons make itself more ridiculous than by entering into such discussions as were now taking place. He urged that the whole system should be changed entirely, and the autocratic system done away with. Another Secretary of State for War would have at once grasped, with a sympathetic feeling, the necessities of the case. At the present moment the British Army was governed more by terrorism than by any feeling of respect or affection for the Secretary of State for War. In his opinion, the present Secretary of State for War, instead of standing up for his officers, was more prone to abandon them, and unless he could obtain some assurance that the Government would suspend judgment in this case for the time being, until it could be thoroughly cleared up, he should support his right hon. friend when he went to a division.
LORD HUGH CECILsaid his justification for intruding upon the Committee was that, in this matter, he held an opinion which was not shared by those hon.

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Members who had addressed the Committee with so much ability; and he desired to show the Government why he could not support them on this question. His objection to the position taken up by the Government, apare from the question of publication, which, in his opinion, they had not managed very skilfully, was that they had given reason for the suspicion, so ably expressed by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, which he believed to be entirely unfounded, that they were keeping something back, by the very slow way in which they had proceeded with this matter. On the main question there was a great inconsistency which might be briefly stated. His right hon. friend dealt in his speech with two parts of Sir Redvers Buller's career—his career in South Africa and his career here at home. In dealing with the South African part, his right hon. friend used strong language, which nevertheless he (Lord Hugh Cecil) was able to assent to. His right hon. friend had said that Sir Redvers Buller had given advice to Sir George White, which would, if carried out, have produced a disaster without parallel in the history of this country, and would have brought upon us the reproach of our children's children. That was, no doubt, true, but the right hon. Gentleman spoke later of decorating General Buller with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St, George, and appointing him to the most important command in Great Britain. If that is the mode of dealing with a General whose action might have produced a "disaster unparalleled in the history of our country, and brought upon us the reproach of our children's children," the sooner it was altered the better. With regard to the latter part of the attack made against his right hon. friend there was no real defence whatever to it, nevertheless, his right hon. friend had made a very good defence. If, having regard to all these circumstances, the Government, by an unusual exercise of leniency, decided not to proceed against a man, as anyone would have thought they would have proceeded against one who had provoked a disaster unparalleled in our history—be it so. Time went on, and Sir Redvers Buller became guilty of a very indiscreet speech, which his right hon. friend thought was insubordinate, but which the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who had
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had great experience in military matters, thought was not, though no doubt it was a very foolish speech. There, again, there were two courses open—there was the course of passing it over simply with a reprimand, and there was the course of severity. Had it stood by itself he would have thought the Government would have had justification for proceeding with severity; but it did not stand by itself. It stood in the light of the leniency which had already been extended. It was the act of a man who had already boon forgiven for offences of a very much graver character. Then came a point when this subject had to be reviewed, whatever happened. It would be observed that, in this case, there was another aspect, which was a proper matter for the Committee to consider, which was not whether Sir Redvers Buller was ill-treated or not ill-treated, but whether the Government acted wisely or not. Their proper function there was to sit in judgment, not on General Buller but on the Government, and so far as he was able to see, it was impossible to invent any theory which would justify the leniency with which the Government treated Sir Redvers Buller's most serious military mistakes, and also the extreme severity with which he was treated over a few foolish and in-subordinate words. What a lesson to teach the British Army! A General might lose battles, abandon garrisons, send advice which was pusillanimous to his subordinates and panic-stricken to his superiors—all that would be forgiven, and not only forgiven but he would be brought back in triumph, appointed to his old position, and decorated with one of the highest orders in the gift of the Crown. But if, after luncheon, lashed by attacks, in a momentary indiscretion, this same General talks very great non sense indeed, there was no mercy for such an offence as that. To lose battles, to give up garrisons, wore trifles to it. When the British public read the debate they would not think Sir Redvers Buller's character as a general stood high, but they would also think that the War Office had conducted this matter with' that ineptitude which, whoever was the Secretary of State, and whoever the Commander-in-Chief. appeared to hang around the walls of the War Office like a leprosy.
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid he did not propose to defend the War Office against the attack of the noble Lord who had just sat down He quite agreed that all the debates which the House might have upon the subject of the war ought to be for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of the British Army in time of war. Yet the only debates which had taken place were debates on the military conduct of general officers. These matters ought to be looked at from the point of view of how they affected the national interest, and he doubted very much whether the national interest was greatly served by full debates in this House upon the conduct of general officers. Let the Committee consider where they were being led this afternoon. The conduct of General Buller was brought before the House, and that was followed by an hon. Member beginning a speech — which would have been a very long speech if the hon. Gentleman had not been called to order by the Chairman—in which he pointed out that the Committee could not deal with this case without dealing with that of General Sir Charles Warren, who was censured by Sir Redvers Buller. Supposing they took the course of referring these matters specifically to the Royal Commission which was to inquire into the conduct of the war, how were they to be dealt with? Owing to the disadvantages of the country this war had been a long war; a war in which we had unfortunately suffered a great many reverses; a war which had been marked by more surrenders than any other war in which we had ever been engaged. It was those surrenders that were the original ground for this Royal Commission. But was the whole time of this Commission to be taken up by all these matters? And was it likely to come to any useful decision by discussing man after man until every case had been disposed of in which there was any doubt thrown upon the conduct or character of the general officers. From General Buller they might pass to General Warren, and from him to another general officer. In the case of the general officer to whom he referred, the same contention could be put forward as in the present instance,
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viz., that the, actual facts were in dispute. There was a dispute as to the time of leaving the top of the hill at Spion Kop and as to the hours at which certain telegrams were received and despatched. From that case they might pass to the responsibility of Colonel Thorneycroft, and so on to a number of other cases. The Committee was not doing much good in attempting to discuss these questions itself, but it must not try to escape from the difficulty by throwing them at the head of the Royal Comsion It was one of the unfortunate facts attending misfortune in war that there must be a certain amount of rough-and-ready justice, and a certain number of general officers treated in a way which they and their friends resented, and in regard to whose cases it was difficult to establish actual proof. Another point was that the cases which had been brought before the Committee were those of general officers of high rank, and who had had their difficulties directly with the Secretary of State. If the Royal Commission were to be encouraged to undertake the consideration of those cases, where was the line to be drawn? How could any distinction be made between those and the still harder cases of less distinguished officers who had been shelved by the Staff in South Africa. They were officers with less weight in society and politics, and were less known to Members of the House, but they had their grievances and also a very strong primâ facie case. In inquiries held during the progress of a war, justice was seldom done in a manner satisfactory to a lawyer. He had seen the reports of many of these inquiries, and in hardly any case would they pass muster from a lawyer's point of view. The question was whether on the whole justice had substantially been done, and he doubted whether they would ever get beyond that point. The Royal Commission had better devote its time to inquiring into matters concerning the organisation of the Army, and into those questions which would have a subsequent effect upon the deliberations of the Government. While the Government might be open to the taunts which had been levelled against it by the noble Lord opposite, there was reason to suppose that in this particular case justice had substantially

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been done. Most reasonable men were convinced that General Buller could not be approved as a general who successfully conducted military operations in the field; while, on the other hand, his past services to the country, and the great qualities he still possessed, had been freely admitted on all sides. Would they ever get further than that? Would they ever be able to narrow the responsibility in this case down to such a point that anything like a verdict in detail could be submitted either by the Commission or by the House of Commons? Setting aside the points which had raised our military reputation, such as the extraordinary courage of the officers—and also of the men, but not in such absolute uniformity—the facts which had damaged our military record were the matters that ought to be inquired into, so that the defects might be remedied. The matters that had attracted the attention of the country and mainly brought about the appointment of this Commission were the surrenders of troops in the field. From that point of view, it was surely impossible to defend Sir Redvers Buller's action. Every man, who had read much or little about war, could see the importance of Napoleon's maxim as to the absolute necessity of men who were detaining large bodies of the enemy holding on to their position until the last possible moment, as the result that yielding a day too soon might produce on the whole conduct of the war was incalculable. General White was not put forward as being one of the greatest generals in the world, but, holding on to Ladysmith, he rejected the suggestion made to him, and the whole country went with him. In the face of that, he did not sec how they could do anything which might appear to sot the seal of the approval of the House of Commons on the contention that Sir Redvers Buller had boon unjustly dealt with as a general in the field. There were matters which might have been discussed on the present occasion that were more worthy of the attention of the Committee, and the consideration of which would be more useful to the country. Some of the matters referred to in the recent naval debate affected the Army as well as the Navy. The statement of the Secretary to the Admiralty that a reorganisation of the whole thinking department of the country in
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regard to matters of war was needed, the admission that the War Office had been unable to get its way with regard to an increase of strength in the Intelligence Department, and the question of how far the Secretary of State intended to carry out the recommendations of the recent Report upon the education of our officers, were all subjects the Committee would have been glad to discuss. It would now be impossible for them to be discussed this year, and it was to be regretted that so much Parliamentary time should have boon taken up in the discussion of matters in regard to which no real progress could be made.
SIR JOHN KENNAWAYasked whether the Secretary for War could give an assurance that Sir Redvers Buller would be one of the earliest witnesses examined before the Royal Commission— ["No,"]—and would have access to all documents which he thought necessary to make his position clear.
MR. BRODEICK: As to that, I can only say that I shall have no control whatever over the action of the Commission. It will be entirely independent. But I imagine that the Commission will want to examine the general officer who first had the command, and, certainly so far as the Government is concerned, all papers and documents they require will be placed at their disposal. Beyond that it is impossible for mo to promise anything.
SIR EDWARD GREY: In reference to the course I intend to pursue with regard to taking a division, perhaps I may say that if there is a distinct understanding that the Commission will not be excluded by the terms of its reference from hearing General Buller and allowing him to produce the documents on the points in regard to which there has been direct conflict between him and the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and if the Committee is willing that the Amendment should be withdrawn— [Ministerial cries of "No! "] In that case, I have only to ask what the right hon. Gentleman has to say with regard to the request of the hon. Member for Exeter as to publishing the correspondence, and to say that, as far as I am concerned, I shall go to a division.
COLONEL BLUNDELLwas understood to say that as a soldier he did not read Sir Redvers Buller's message to Sir George White in Lady smith to mean premature surrender.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLdesired to reply to certain personal observations. He had asked several Questions with reference to Sir Redvers Buller, not for the benefit of the Army, or for the advancement or detriment of the Government, but because he thought Sir Redvers Buller, as an in dividual, was suffering under a sense of wrong, and that therefore he was rightly using his position as a Member of Parliament in investigating the matter. In reply to the Questions he had put, he had been told that he in no sense represented Sir Redvers Buller. He had never spoken to Sir Redvers Buller, but he represented him in the sense that he had been an honourable and gallant man, and that he believed him to have been unfairly and unjustly treated. Irishmen could never forget what they owed to Sir Redvers Buller, who forfeited his magnificent position at the Irish Office because he raised his voice in defence of Irish tenants, and said they were the victims of the landlords, that the law was no refuge to them, while the Land League was. For his views on that question Sir Redvers Buller was dismissed from his office. When Sir Redvers Buller went out to South Africa he was not one of those hullobaloosters who were so enthusiastic in his favour. He did not go into hysterics about his magnificent services. Upon one occasion he asked the Secretary of State for War how it happened that in the engagement on the 4th of February, 1900, Sir Redvers Buller never mentioned the Irish Fusiliers in his dispatch, although they were praised by all the correspondents as having behaved magnificently, and with great bravery. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman said he would not make any inquiries. A few days afterwards he got a letter from Sir Redvers Buller stating that it was a mere error that the Fusiliers were omitted, and he permitted him to make use of that letter as a refutation of the statement of the
590
Secretary of State for War. That very regiment was now recuperating in the very worst climate in the world. They put the Irish soldiers in the front during a battle and gave them the very worst of everything except the fighting. Sir Redvers Buller had acted most magnificently as an honourable and truthful gentleman. He did not know much about his services in the field, but he had been the victim of a cruel wrong, and all he wished was that he should be able to tell his own story and be accorded the privileges of the meanest subject in the Kingdom. Out of a whole series of telegrams, only some five or six which told against General Buller were chosen. The Committee would remember that for months he was constantly asking for the Spion Kop dispatches, which were produced on the 4th of May, 1900. Then it transpired that Sir Redvers Buller had been asked to rewrite his dispatches, and he had incurred the enmity of the War Office for refusing to do this, and therefore his case ought to be heard before the public. No general officer had ever been previously dismissed for making a speech, even though it happened to be a breach of the Army regulations. That was absolutely true, and he was certain that it was not for that speech that General Buller was dismissed. The Times was against him, and that journal had special information. He wished to give the Secretary of State for War a precedent. It had been stated that Sir Redvers Buller was dismissed for making a speech which was contrary to the King's regulations. Lord Wolseley made a speech in 1889 for which Mr. Stanhope stated in this House there was no defence. Nevertheless, Lord Wolseley was permitted to be the Commander - in -Chief, although his speech was as bad and indiscreet as the speech made by Sir Redvers Buller. He had no sympathy with this war, but he had with an individual who had been subjected to a wrong, and whether he happened to be a British general or a humble person, he should sympathise with him if he thought a foul intrigue had been set on foot against him at the War Office. Under those circumstances he was bound to raise his voice against such a wrong. Sir Redvers Buller

591
had acted as an honourable man, and it was an outrageous thing that in the interests of individuals he should be ousted by backstairs politicians. General Buller had been severely reprimanded, and he ought to be allowed to state his case fairly. It had recently become a habit to depreciate Sir Redvers Buller in order to praise Sir George White. Sir George White told the special correspondent of the Morning Post that if it had not been for Sir Redvers Buller he would have been dismissed from his command.
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: I was only repeating a statement made to me, and I cannot be answerable for the truth of that statement.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: The exact truth for which he was responsible was that that statement, which was made by Sir George White, was telegraphed to Europe. It had never been, and could not be, contradicted. It was absolutely essential that all the telegrams should be published, and that there should be no suppression. The suppression was not in the interests of the country, but in the interest of the War Office, which was a sink of pollution.
COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYappealed to the right hon. Gentleman 'the Member for Berwick to spare them the pain that would be inflicted on many of them if unfortunately this question was pressed to a division. They acknowledged the bonâ fides with which the right hon. Gentleman had approached the question, and they recognised the strong feelings which it had aroused in Sir Redvers Buller's friends and neighbours. There was no class who felt more strongly than soldiers and ex-soldiers, and they would be grateful if spared the great sorrow of having to register a vote which in a sense would be a vote against the reputation of perhaps one of the bravest officers that ever wore uniform. They could not go with the right hon. Gentlemen in the opinions he had put forward, but still they would gladly be spared from appearing to put a stigma on a man whose reputation was dear to every soldier. They had abstained from
592
giving professional opinions to which they might have given utterance. They had done so out of an intense feeling of regard for Sir Redvers Buller, and he would respectfully urge that they should not be asked to register their vote in a division.
SIR EDWARD GREY: In answer to the appeal of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, I have to say that I fully recognise the difficulty of the position he has put forward. I have no desire, as I stated in my opening remarks, to see the debate unduly prolonged, and I am quite prepared, so far as I am concerned, that it should conclude now. I am bound to say that what has come out this afternoon, combined with such knowledge as I have of what there may be still to come out, has deepened my sense of injustice, and although I admit the matter cannot continually be before the House, by nothing which is in his power to help, will the matter be allowed to rest where it is. If it were understood that the matter is not to rest where it is, but may be brought before the Commission of Inquiry, and the Committee will give leave to withdraw, then I will most gladly meet the hon. and gallant Member opposite, but if the Motion cannot be withdrawn it has to be negatived. If it were negatived, there is the stigma which my hon. and gallant friend wishes to avoid. By whatever majority the Motion may be negatived, I, and those who think with me, would prefer, if it is to be negatived, that our votes, at any rate, should be recorded.
*MR. DUKEsaid that a consideration has been overlooked for some time in the debate, and that was the question—What is necessary in the interest of justice to be done in the case of Sir Redvers Buller? There had been a great deal of discussion on the misdeeds of the Government, and as to whether this House should consider the question at all. He had never seen how a debate of this kind could do any good to Sir Redvers Buller, but it was raised from a sense of justice and a desire to show fair play; and fair play was not shown when it was attempted to meet the request for facts with such a catch phrase as chose jugée, and by

593
the proposition that one case of this kind would not be considered because it would involve the heaning of other cases. The man in the street did not look at it in that way. He said, ''Here is a man who during a great career has shown his eminent qualities, and who I has earned in a remarkable degree the confidence of the troops in His Majesty's Army." The House of Commons was the palladium of justice in this Empire and the case of Sir Redvers Buller should not be met by such an observation as chose jugée. If there were other cases they could be dealt with as they arose. He asked for an assurance that all the despatches had been published with regard to Ladysmith which ought to affect the judgment of the country, but he as wholly dissociated himself from the attacks made upon the right hon. Gentleman as from those made on Sir Redvers Buller. It had been suggested that the right hon. Gentleman had dealt almost dishonestly with General Buller.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: No.
*MR. DUKEasked the Committee to recall the attack made less than five minutes before by the hon. Gentleman who challenged him, and who said Sir Redvers Buller had been hardly dealt with because he refused to become the agent of a moneyed ring. If that sort of talk meant nothing, it should not have been introduced into the debate.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsaid he had declared his opinion that Sir Redvers Buller was in no way connected with the financial ring who brought about the war.
*MR. DUKEsaid the hon. Member also referred to cliques at the War Office, to whom he attributed a desire to ruin Sir Redvers Bullers reputation. It was because he did not believe a word of this he wished to entirely dissociate himself from expressions of the kind. Having regard to the position of Sir Redvers Buller, having regard to the confidence, admiration, and affection with which he was still regarded throughout the Army—especially by the rank and file—having regard to the belief of the Colonists in Natal that they were saved by General Buller, he did not
594
think it was unreasonable to ask the right hon. Gentleman before the debate closed, as he hoped it would by the withdrawal of the Motion, whether he could not say to the Committee that, if in reading these despatches over again he found that there were some which, as a man of honour and common sense, he thought might throw some light on the matter he would publish them. He made that appeal to the right hon. Gentleman but if it was refused, he should not feel himself at liberty to join in a vote of censure upon the right hon. gentleman. Confident as he was that General Buller had done his best in South Africa, and that hereafter it would come to be seen that he had done his best, he had no less confidence in the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War that he, too, had done his best and had behaved in a manner which ought to have relieved him from the taunts thrown at him. He trusted that the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite would be withdrawn.
MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid he only wanted to press the appeal which had just bean made, and to say that when he came down to the House he had been thoroughly prepared to support the right hon. Gentleman in everything he had done. But he had one difficulty, and he did not see how any hon. Member could get over it, and that was that the Secretary for War had given no real reason for appointing General Buller to the chief command at Aldershot if he had a case to dismiss him from his command beforehand. The right hon. Gentleman had given two excuses. First, that there were no Army corps to go abroad (there were no Army corps except on paper); and. second, the right hon. Gentleman desired to let General Buller down gently. But they did not want to let any man down gently by giving him the most important military command in England. That was not the real reason if the General was guilty of conduct which deserved dismissal. Nor was the real reason that General Buller had made a speech. If a division was forced, he held that every British officer would find himself in an uncomfortable position, because he would feel

595
that when the reputation of a. British officer was at stake, he ought not to vote against but to stand up for him.
MR. PIRIEsaid he wished to ask two questions, which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War would answer—first, whether the correspondence which led up to the dismissal of General Buller would be published, with the reasons given by the Government for that dismissal; and, second, whether General Buller had asked for a court-martial.
MR. BRODRICK: Sir Redvers Buller asked for an inquiry by a competent tribunal, but the case is not a case for a court-martial; it is a case for the Commander-in-Chief. As regards the correspondence, I do not know of any instance of correspondence between a general officer and the War Office being published. As to the question of the right hon. Gentleman regarding the terms of the reference to the Commission, I can assure him that the reference will not in any way exclude from a consideration of the conduct of the war such, a case us that of Sir Redvers Buller.
MR. HAVILAND BURKEsaid that the military merits or demerits of General Buller did not concern him in the least so far as the vote he was going to give was concerned. He should vote for the Amendment, on the simple ground that whether it was the case of an ordinary postman or policeman in Ireland or a general in South Africa, the incriminated man should not be tried and condemned behind his back. What was the backbone of the charge brought by virtuous England against vicious France in the Dreyfus case? It was that an officer of the French Army had been tried behind is back and condemned on the evidence of witnesses he had no power to cross-examine. That was the true inwardness of the Buller case, as it was also in the Colville case. They had entreated for an inquiry, and the opportunity of leading their own evidence, and the right to cross examine the witnesses brought against them. Another point in General Buller's case was that he asked whether he should sacrifice 2,000 or 3,000 men in an attack on the Boers before Ladysmith, and he was advised to do so; and then, on re-consideration, he failed to do so. He would ask the right bon. Gentleman the Secretary for War
596
why he kept this House and the country in ignorance of the report of Sir William Butler, which he had in the pigeon-holes, of his office, as to the strength of the Boers and the big reserves of guns and ammunition they had. at their command? Had General Buller anything like an approximate knowledge of the strength of the Boers in men and material with which he had to deal on that critical occasion? This was not a question as to a particular man or a particular General, but a question as regarded the dispensation of justice by this country towards public servants which the country was taxed to maintain, He entirely condemned the' cry raised from the opposite Benches that the moment anything was said about the Army, that; was an attack' on the discipline of the Army. That was the plea of the French General Staff. If the conduct of a General was impugned, then it was an attack on the Army. If a suggestion were made of the existence of indiscipline and corruption in the lower ranks of the Army, that was an attack on the Army. He contended that they were entitled to maintain that this House was the High Court of appeal as regarded the administration and management of the Army, and as regarded the treatment of any member of the Army. It was an abrogation of their constitutional functions to tell hon. Members that they were not to raise questions of this kind or discuss them without affecting the discipline of the Army. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War that he was not a military Satrap, and that he had no right to claim immunity from criticism, either for himself or for his subordinates. On that ground, even if for no other reason—no matter how poor his opinion happened to be of General Buller—even if he did not believe—as he did believe—that General Buller did the bulk of the biggest fighting in the South African War—he would vote for the Amendment as a protest against the claim that had been raised, and that the House had no right to interfere in a matter of this kind, which related to the relations between the Secretary of State for War and a general in the British Army.
(6.58.) Question put.,
The Committee divided:—Ayes, 98; Noes,' 236. (Division List No. 302.)

Ayes

Allan, Sir William (Gateshead)

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

O'Malley, William

Ambrose, Robert

Jameson, Major J. Kustace

O'Mara, James

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Jones, David Brynm'r (Swansea-

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Beaumont, Wentworth C. R.

Jordan, Jeremiak

Partington, Oswald

Boland. John

Joyce. Michael

Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Kearley, Hudson E.

Philipps, John Wynford

Burke, E. Haviland

Kennedy, Patrick James

Pirie, Duncan V.

Burt, Thomas

Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W)

Power, Patrich Joseph

Buxton, Sydney Charles

Layland-Barratt, Francis

prce, Robert John

Caldwell, James

Leamy, Edmund

Power, Arthur

Campbell, John (Armagh, S)

Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington

Reddy, M.

Causton, Richard Knight

Levy, Maurice

Redmond, William (Glare)

channing, Francis Allston

Lowther, C. Cumb, Eskdale)

Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

Clancy, John Joseph

Lundon, w.

Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

Craig, Robert Hunter

MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A,

Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

Cremer, William Randal

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Shipman, Dr. John G.

Delany, William

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Soares, Ernest.J.

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.)

M'Arthur, William (Corn wall)

Strachey, Sir Edward

Doogan, P. C.

M'Crae, George

Sullivan, Donal

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

M'Kean, John

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

Dunean, J. Hastings

M-Killop, W. (Sligo. North

Toulmin, George

Dunn, Sir William

Markham. Arthur Basil

Wallace, Robert

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Mooney, John J.

Walton, John Lawson (Leeds, S.

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

Fenwick, Charles

Moulton. John Fletcher

Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

Field, William

Nannetii, Joseph P.

Weir, James Galloway

Gladstone, Rt-Hn, Herbt. John

Nolan, Col. John P.(Galway, N.

White, George (Norfolk)

Grant, Corrie

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

Wilson, Chas. Henry (Hull, W.)

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)

Haldane, Rt. Hn, Richard B.

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Young, Samuel

Harrington, Timothy

O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

Hayden, John Patrick

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Hayne. Rt. Hon. Charles Seale

O'Connor, T, P. (Liverpool)

Sir Edward Grey and Mr.

Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

Lambert,

NOES,

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F,

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Chamberlain, J. Austen (Wore'r

Fisher, William Hayes

Alihusen, Augustus H'nry Eden

Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

Fison, Frederick William

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Chapman, Edward

Fitz Gerald Sir Robert Penrose-

Arkwright, John Stanhope

Charrington, Spencer

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Flower, Ernest

Arrol, Sir William

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Forster, Henry William

Atkin-on, Rt. Hon. John

Cochrane, Hn, Thos. H. A. E.

Foster, Sir Michael (Lond. Univ,

Bagot, Capt. Josceline Fitz Roy

Coldington, Sir William

Gardner, Ernest

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Coghill, Donglas Harry

Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

Bain. Coloel James Robert

Cohen, Benjamin Loms

Gordon, Hn. J. E. (Elgin&Nairn

Baird, John George Alexander

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Gore, Hn G. R. C Ormsby-(Salop

Balcarres Lord

Colomb, Sir, John Charles Ready

Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-(Line.)

Baldwin, Alfred

Colston, Chas. Edw. H, Athole

Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Manch'r)

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Gouldin, Edward Alfred

Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W.(Leeds

Cerbett, T, L. (Down, North)

Greene, Sir E. W (B'rySEdm'nds

Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christck.

Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury

Banbury, Frederick George

Cross, Herb Shepherd (Bolton)

Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.

Bartley, George C. T.

Crossley, Sir Savile

Gretton, John

Beach Rt Hn Sir Michael Hicks

Dewar, Sir T. R(Tower Hamlets

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Bentinck, Lord Henry G.

Dickinson, Robert Edmond

Groves, James Grimble

Bhownaggree, Sir M, M.

Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

Gunter, Sir- Robert

Bignold, Arthur

Disraeli, Coning by Ralph

Guthrie, Walter Murray

Bill, Charles

Dixon Hartland, SirFr'd Dixon

Hall, Edward Marshall

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

Dorington. Rt. Hn. Sir John E.

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Bowles, T. Gibson(Lynn Regis

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Hamilton, Rt Hon L'rd G (Midd'x

Brassey, Albert

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nd'rry

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Hanburv, Rt. Hon. Robert Wm.

Brookfield, Colonel Montagu

Dyke, Rt, Hn. Sir William Hart

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Brotherton, Edward Allen

Elibank, Master of

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Bull, William James

Elliot, Ron. A. Ralph Douglas

Harwood, George

Burdett-Contts, W.

Faber, George Denison (York)

Haslam. Sir Alfred S.

Butcher, John George

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Hatch, Ernest Fred rick Geo.

Carlile, William Walter

Fergusson, Rt Hn. Sir J.(Mane'r

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

Fielden, Kdward Brocklehurst

Henderson, Sir Alexander

Cavendish. V. C. W. (Derbysh.

Finch, George H.

Hermon Hodge, Sir Robert T.

598

599

Hickman, Sir Alfred

Morton, Arthur H A. (Deptford

Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

Higginbottom, S. W

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Smith, Hon. W. F. D (Strand)

Hogg, Lindsay

Murray, Rt Hn. A. Grah'm (Rute

Spencer, Sir E. (W, Bromwich)

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerest

Hoult, Joseph

Myers, William Henry

Stanley, Lord (Lanes)

Houston, Robert Paterson

Nicol, Donal Ninian

Stewart. Sir Mark J-M'Taggart

Howard, Jno. (Kent, Fav'rsham

Palmer, Walter Salisbury)

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)

Parkes, Ebenezer

Stroyan John

Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

Pease, Herbt, Pike (Darlington

Talbot, Lord E, (Chichester)

Hudson, George Bicke steth

Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G (Oxford Univ

Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

Pemberton, John S, G

Thomas, David Alfred Merthyr

Kenyou-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.

Percy, Earl

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Kimber, Henry

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Tollemache, Henry James.

Knowles, Lees

Plummer, Walter R.

Tomlinson, James

Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

Powell Sir Francis Shamp

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw, M.

Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

Purvis, Robert

Tufnell, Lieut-CoL Edward

Lawson, John Grant

Pym, C. Guy

Valentia, Viscount

Lee, Arthur H (Hants, Farcham

Randles, John S.

Vincent, Col. Sir C E H (Sheffield

Lees, Sir Elliott (Brikenhead)

Rankin, Sir James

Walker, Col. William Hall

Legge, Col. Hon, Heneage

Rasch, Majer' Frederic Came

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Ratcliff, R. F.

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Leveson-Gower, Frederick N S.

Rattigan, Sir "William Henry

Webb, Colonel William George

Llewellyn, Evan Henry

Red, James (Greenock)

Welby, Lt-Col A. c. E. (Tauntors

Loder, Gerald Walter Erakine

Renshaw, Charles Bine

Welby, Sir Charles G. E (Notts.)

Long, Col, Charles W.(Evesham

Renwick, George

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon

Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S)

Ridley, Hn. M. W. (Staley bridge

Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. T'nomson

Whiteley, H (Ashton und. Lyne

Loyd, Arehie Kirkman

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Lucas- Col. Francis (Lowestoft

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Williams, Rt Hn J. Pow' ll-Birm,

Lucas, Reginald J (Portsmouth

Ropner, Colonel Robert

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth

Macartney, Rt Hn. W. G. Ellison

Round, Rt. Hon, James

Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

Macdona, John Cumming

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)

Maconochie, A. W.

Russell, T. W.

Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R. (Bath)

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Rutherford, John

Worsley-Teylor, Henry Wilson

M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-

Majendie, James A. H.

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Wrightson, Sir Thomas

Manners, Lord Ceeil

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Wylie, Alexander

Martin, Richrard Biddulph

Sandys, Lient.-Col Thos, Myles

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Middlemore, Jno. Thrugmorton

Scott, Sir S. (Marylehone, W.)

Younger, William

Milvain, Thomas

Seely, Maj J. E. B (Isle of Wight

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire

Seton-Karr, Henry

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Morgan, Hn Fred. (Monm'th sh.

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Sir William Walrond and

Morrison, Jawes Aichibald

Smith. H C (North' mb Tyneaide

Mr. Anstruther.

Original Question again proposed.
MAJOR RASCH, remarking that certain regiments had the privilege of bearing details of the actions in which they had taken part on their colours and accoutrements, reminded the Committee that the Essex Regiment fought in the battle of Salamanca in 1812 and captured a French Eagle. They had applied several times to wear an eagle on their accoutrements, and had always been refused. Up to three years ago they were allowed to wear this eagle on their belts, but then, thanks to an ardent but unpenetrating War Office clerk, they were ordered to take it off. He appealed to the representative of the War Office at that time, who was the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, to direct that this privilege should be renewed- The right hon. Gentleman then said it could not be
600
done then, but that he would make inquiries and see what could be done, They had waited three years without any result, and he thought it was timer they got a direct answer. The matter only represented. a 2½d. piece of brass to a War Office clerk, but it meant a great deal to this gallant regiment, whose history had been so distinguished. This regiment deserved the consideration of the House. Once the old 44th and 56th of the line, it was raised in 1780, fought in the campaigns of North America, the Peninsular War, and Waterloo. In the last century it was present at the first Afghan campaign, when it was killed to the last man. The regiment afterwards fought in the Crimea, and subsequently went up the Nile with Lord Wolesley; and last, and not least, for its gallant service was allowed to form the escort of Lord Roberts in his march to Johannesburg.
*MR. WEIRcomplained of the difficulty of obtaining Information from the Secretary of State for War. He was sorry to sec the right Short. Gentleman rise to leave the House. When information was wanted, the right hen. Gentleman- made for the door, but he was glad to see him return to his place, He desired to have some information with regard to the hospital accommodation at Hong Kong for our sick soldiers, who, he had discovered, were being cared for in rooms over the canteen tap room, That was not the sort of place in which to house our sick soldiers. He understood fresh hospital accommodation was being provided, and he wished to know whether this was so, or whether matters were at a standstill.
THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY, Lancashire, Westhoughton),on a point of order, asked whether this came within the Vote,
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANruled that it was not in order, as there was no item in the Vote for hospitals. This Vote was only connected with the salary of the Secretary of State.
*MR. WEIRpointed out that he was complaining of the action of the Secretary of State for War in his administrative capacity, who sanctioned the employment of men who spent large sums of money foolishly in the purchase of an hotel for conversion into barracks —for instance, the Austin Barracks, on the Peak at Hong Kong, which cost upwards of,£40,000, whilst the building was not worth more than £10,000.
*THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: Order, order!There is a separate Vote for building, and the hon. Gentleman's observations are more applicable to that.
*MR. WEIRthen directed attention to the action of the Secretary of State in allowing the arsenals and small arms factories in this country to be open to the inspection of all and sundry, and keeping the ordnance yard at Hong Kong closed. When in Hong Kong, he had applied to the General in command for permission to inspect the
602
ordnance yard, and was met with the answer that he had no orders to grant admission to any civilian. He thought there should be one rule in these matters, and if one place was allowed to be visited, all should be. He also complained of not being able to get straightforward answers from the right hon. Gentle matt to straightforward questions.
It being half-past Seven of tire clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.
Committee report progress; to sit again this evening.

EVENING SITTING
  RHONDDA URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL TRAMWAYS BILL [LORDS], BYORDER.
  MR. BRYNMOR JONEShad on the Paper the, following Motion:—" That the Rhondda Urban District Council Tramways Bill [Lords] be re-committed to the Committee on Group No. 9, to reconsider their decision upon the Clause (Clause G) brought up by the promoters for the protection of the Glamorganshire County Council." The hon. Member said that, though the Glamorgan County Council had a technical right to have the Bill re-committed, he had, after conferring with the parties, come to the conclusion that it was not expedient to incur the trouble and expense of recommitting it; and, without in any way prejudicing the rights of the County Council in regard to any future Bill, ha would ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

  SUPPLY,
  [18TH ALLOTTED DAY],
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  MR. JEFFREYS (Hampshire, N.) in the Chair.

  ARMY ESTIMATES, 1902–3
  1. £1,381,000, Militia: Fay, Bounty, &c.
  2. £585,000, Imperial Yeomanry: Pay and Allowances.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDSsaid he wished to call attention to grave complaints made in the public Press with regard to the treatment of Yeomanry during the recent campaign. In October of last year a letter appeared in the Standard making a definite charge against the commanding officer of a corps in South Africa of having used an ambulance for the purpose of conveying the luxuries and clothing of officers for a journey of 3,000 miles. He called the attention of the Secretary for War to that statement at the time, and got the usual stereotyped answer—that if he produced facts, inquiry would immediately be made.
  MR. BRODRICK: On a point of order, I must point out that this Vote has only to do with the Imperial Yeomanry at home.
  MR. H. C RICHARDS: Can we have another opportunity of discussing the right hon. Gentleman's salary?
  MR. BRODRICK: The Committee has been doing that all the afternoon.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDS: I have had no opportunity of raising this question.
  THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: It is out of order now to do it. It may be possible later on.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDS: Well, I will hope to have the privilege of reducing the right hon. Gentleman's salary later.
  MR. TOMKINSONsaid he was very much interested in tin Yeomanry, and he felt bound to congratulate the Government on the change which had taken place in regard to the force. The old order of things was fortunately, passing away. The fendal system, under which the farmers on big estates were almost bound to serve, no longer obtained; a class of men better suited to the requirements of the force was being introduced, and they had proved their value by their conduct in the recent South African campaign. He wished to bear testimony to the excellent system, which had superseded the oh one, of sending the Yeomanry into camp Speaking from personal experience, h could vouch for the immense benefit derived from picketing horses in the
  604
  open instead of confining them in cramped huts and inconvenient stables in town. At the last training of the Cheshire regiment, despite- the fact that the weather was cold the health, of both horses and men was admirable. The additional inducements, especially in the matter of pay, which had been held out, were attracting a large and useful class of men. He could not help expressing gratification at the change which had taken place, and he was convinced that in this matter, at any rate, the Government were proceeding on right lines.
  MR. CALDWELLsaid now the war was ended there was no necessity for this large number of men on a peace footing at home. He asked what rate it was intended to pay the Yeomanry in this country upon a peace footing. He noted that the Estimates showed an enormous increase on the year, and he would like to know when the Yeomanry were to be brought back from South Africa.
  LORD STANLEY: Not one penny in this Vote has to do with the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa. It is purely and simply for the Imperial Yeomanry at home under normal peace conditions.
  MR. CALDWELLsuggested that, as the war was now over, the force could be reduced to a peace footing. Men would be returning from South Africa, and there would be no necessity to maintain a large force at home in order to feed the force in the field. Surely they were entitled to ask as to the necessity for so big a number of men as was provided for in the Estimates.
  LORD STANLEYsaid the hon. Member was clearly under a misconception. This had nothing to do with the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa, nor had it been used for supplying drafts in South Africa. Last year an increase was voted for the Yeomanry forces in the United Kingdom. The original establishment; was 11,000, and this figure it was proposed to raise to 33,000. The pay was increased, and at the same time the Government increased the amount of drills and; camp work. An allowance was also s made for horses.
  MR. CALDWELL: To what extent has the force been increased?
  LORD STANLEYsaid that of the 33,000 men whom it was hoped to get, over 16,000 had been obtained on January 1. Since then a large additional number had been enrolled.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTERasked how the new corps were progressing. How were the Sussex Yeomanry going on? He believed the Commanding Officer and Adjutant had been appointed. How strong was the regiment? What prospects, too, were thereof raising the force to 33,000 men?
  LORD STANLEYsaid that recruiting was going on very satisfactorily indeed. They were getting as many men as they expected; the strength of the regiments in existence was very largely increased. On the 1st January—the latest date for which he had the figures—the Surrey regiment contained fifteen officers, fifteen sergeants and 223 rank and file, and seeing that it had only just been raised, be thought that to be a very creditable performance.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTER: And how about the Sussex?
  LORD STANLEY: I have not the figures here in regard to that regiment.
  MR. TOMKINSONconfessed that personally he had considerable doubts as to whether the new conditions were sufficiently attractive to bring the force up to the required strength, but he was bound to say that so far the recruiting had proceeded very satisfactorily. The establishments of some regiments were already complete. New regiments were being raised, and altogether the service was very popular throughout the country.
  SIR JOHN DORINGTONasked if the Government were satisfied with the supply of horses for the Yeomanry. He pointed out that the Government provided £5 in the case of every man who brought a horse, but that some men did not bring their own horses. He wished to know whether the officers were satisfied with the horseless regiments and with men who it was found, when they came on parade, were, unaccustomed to ride.
  LORD STANLEYagreed with the hon. Baronet that the present system was by no Moans perfect. It was difficult indeed to say how far the existing system had been a success, A number of Yeomanry Officers had boon asked to go into the facts and suggest any changes which they thought necessary. Personally he would like to see these regiments provide their own horses and not rely on the Government, but in some cases it would be extremely difficult to enforce such a rule. Still he hoped that in the course of the coming year some more satisfactory arrangement would be come to.
  *SIR ROBERT HERMON-HODGEstrongly advocated the long service medal for Yeomanry. The authorities seemed to hold, he said, that a man of forty was too old to serve in a mounted corps. He did not agree with that, and he thought the War Office might well leave Commanding Officers to weed out of the force men who had ceased to be fit to serve. he would like to see the Yeomanry put on the same footing as the Volunteers in regard to a long service medal. Then, again, there was the question of the position of Regimental Sergeant-Majors. Last year a promise was practically given that these men in the Yeomanry should be put on a level with those in the Volunteers, It was not a very extravagant claim to be made on behalf of men, many of whom had done extraordinarily good service, that they should enjoy the position, ray, and pension rights which Volunteer Regimental Sergeant-Majors had. Then there was the question of riding. It was extraordinary how small a percentage of Englishmen—in this horse-loving and horse-breeding country—were capable of riding. Recruiting for the Yeomanry force was no doubt going on most satisfactorily, but the fact could not be disguised that a large number of the men enlisted could not ride, and he would strongly urge on the right hon. Gentleman the desirability of establishing riding schools -in suitable localities. For instance, one might very well be established in the city of Oxford, for there were a large number of young men passing through the University every year who would be glad to avail themselves of the opportunity of learning to ride. Civil Service students who had to pass a riding test already secured

  607
  the services of the Yeomanry regimental Sergeant-Major to teach them. It was very hard on a Yeomanry officer to find the movements of his squadron impeded by the fact that thirty or forty of his men wore unable to ride. If the Minister for War could see his way to providing riding schools in such places as Oxford, he was sure it would be found that the money would be well invested.
  Vote agreed to.
  3. £1,287,000, Volunteer Corps, Pay and Allowances.
  COLONEL BROOKFIELDasked the Secretary of State to explain exactly what the amended Order in Council as to Volunteers was, and when the next rules would come into force. He regretted to see a tendency in official quarters to neglect and depreciate the Volunteer force at the expense of the Yeomanry and the Militia. By their services in the recent emergency and by the steady progress they had made, he contended the Volunteers were entitled to more encouragement than they had recently received. He also urged that the Volunteer Regulations required amendment in certain important respects. There were archaic regulations, based on the organisation as it existed in 1859 or 1860, which ought to be brought up to date, and made to harmonise with the present condition of affairs. Among the absurdities existing was the right of individual Volunteers to appeal to the Secretary of State if they felt themselves aggrieved. That right was an absolute farce, as was shown by a recent case in Herefordshire. A Corporal Ough returned from the war, and was fêted in the usual way, though being a temperate man, he was not unduly excited. The Adjutant of the regiment, attired in the usual picturesque costume of a British officer—that was, a suit of tweed "dittos"—passed him on a bicycle, and, because he was not saluted by the Corporal, had him brought up, with the result that he was practically expelled from the battalion. This right of appeal was exercised, and eventually, after a deal of circumlocution, a reply was received stating that the Secretary of State was of opinion that the matter should be
  608
  decided by the General on the spot. Why should not all this farce be avoided by stating in the regulations that the aggrieved Volunteer should appeal through the usual channels to his proper superior? As to the general treatment of Volunteers, he thought the rules as to the annual camps required tightening. What the War Office always appealed to be doing was to ask the Volunteers what they would like, and then to adapt the requirements of the country to meet their wishes.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENTthought the new Order in Council was a great improvement on the Order promulgated in November last, and the Volunteer force as a whole was most anxious to do all it possibly could to give effect to the wishes of the military authorities. With regard to camps, he was glad the Secretary of State had taken very wide powers of exemption, and so would be able to discriminate between different regiments. Some regiments found it very difficult to attend camps at certain seasons of the year. It was absolutely essential that some regiments should go into camp, while for others that were constantly training it was not so important. Some volunteers, especially those employed in Government offices, found it difficult to get the necessary leave of absence, and while he recognised the spirit of the Memorandum recently issued to heads of departments on the subject, there were many of those officials who did not appreciate the difficulty which Volunteers had in coming up to the new standard of efficiency unless they had this leave. It was extremely important that it should be understood that it was not a matter of the wishes of the individual volunteer, but that the Treasury and the Government were anxious that every encouragement should be given to the men to attend the camps. He was therefore glad this power of exemption had been taken, and hoped the matter would be looked upon from a commonsense point of view. The proposed appointment of an Advisory Board to the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteer force was a step in the right direction, and would give great satisfaction to the force. As to the Sergeant-majors of Volunteers, he hoped the Secretary of State would give the

  609
  matter renewed consideration. The work attached to the position in the Militia was largely confined to the period of recruit and annual training, whereas in the Volunteers it continued all the year through, and yet in the former case the officer had warrant rank, while in the latter he had not. They were a most deserving body of men, and there was really no reason for maintaining this difference of treatment. He would also appeal to the Department to be very careful how they sanctioned any extension of the present musketry requirements. Metropolitan Volunteers found considerable difficulty in coming up to the standard. Practically, the only available ranges were at Pirbright and Bisley, and a Volunteer had frequently to make four or five visits before he could compete his class. Generous allowances had been made, but it was really a question, not of money, but of time. It was undesirable that a Volunteer should have continually to be asking his employer for an afternoon to go to the range. The less call there was made on employers, the better it would be for the Volunteer force as a whole. The war had shown what a valuable reserve the Volunteer force was, and men should be encouraged to join it by every possible means. As to the large deficiency of officers, he fully agreed that they should be well trained, but the right hon. Gentleman would readily see that the greater the demand upon the time of the officers the more difficult it would be to obtain them. Young gentlemen should be encouraged to accept commissions, and not discouraged by an insistence upon duties which in some respects might be considered to be of a routine character.
  MR. PARKER SMITHreferred to the circular recently issued from the War Office impressing upon officers the necessity of using ammunition for practice shooting instead of in competitions; the effect of which, he believed, would be unduly to limit the amount of ammunition the officers could devote to competitions, and in that way prevent shooting being made attractive to the men. Ten rounds per man was absolutely useless, and if officers desired to encourage shooting they would have to find the ammunition at their own expense.
  SIR JAMES RANKINhoped the Secretary of State I would reconsider the case of Corporal Oud, and that the man, who had borne an excellent character in South Africa, would not be dismissed from his position. With regard to officers and men making themselves efficient, he urged that the regulation requiring attendance at ten drills before going into camp should be so far relaxed as to enable them to complete their drills while in camp. By so doing, the right hon. Gentleman would make it easier for officers and men to make themselves efficient.
  MR. TOMKINSONsaid that, unless an entirely different complexion could be put upon it by the Secretary of State, the case to which reference had been made was one of the most outrageous and amazing of which he had ever heard, and reflected small credit upon the officer concerned. He hoped that upon further consideration restitution would be made, and the man restored to the position he had filled with so much credit.
  LORD STANLEY,replying to the various questions which had been raised, said that nothing impressed the recent Committee more than the absolute impossibility of making hard and fast rules for Volunteers. Rules must be made, as far as possible, applicable to the majority of the force, reserving the right to make exemptions in the case of corps which, owing to local circumstances, could not possibly come up to the requirements. He agreed as to the desirability of tightening the rules with regard to going into camp. The more the men could be got into camp, the better it was for the force, and nobody recognised that more than the Volunteer officers on the recent Committee, but it was clearly shown that more stringent rules on the point would lead to a considerable diminution in the force. To keep up a state of efficiency in the Volunteer force, they must rely upon the goodwill of its members, and the only tiling that could be done was to put before them the wishes of those in authority, to which they had never yet failed to respond, and to be prepared in exceptional cases to exercise the discretionary power vested in the Secretary

  611
  of State. As to officers being permitted to make good their drills in camp, not a single Volunteer officer stood up before the Committee for such an arrangement. They all held that when they went into camp they should be in such a state of efficiency that they should be teaching and not learning drills while there. He was afraid such a concession could not possibly be granted, without, in a great degree, impairing the efficiency of the officers. The point raised by the hon. Member for the Particle Division was one upon which it was very difficult to lay down a hard and fast rule. It was quite true that there were some corps in which great pains were taken over the shooting, but there were others in which the ammunition was kept back, and instead of bad shots being taught to shoot better, the whole was reserved for competitions amongst the better shots of the regiments. That was the worst thing that could happen. What was wanted was not a few really good shots, but a. good average, and the best way to secure that was by using the surplus ammunition for the purpose of improving those who were not up to the average. Personally, he was not cognisant of the case of Corporal Ough, and his right hon. friend, in this as in many others, had been obliged to leave, the question to the officers responsible in the district for the enforcement of discipline. His hon. friend wished him to say that it did look as if this man had not had his case properly considered, and that he would himself inquire into the circumstances, in order that justice might be done. The proposed Advisory Board was very much in accordance with the views expressed by Volunteer officers, and cases brought before the Board from different localities could be thoroughly analysed by those who would have to deal with them in the War Office.
  MR. WYLIEsaid that the Order in Council of 1901 demanded longer and more arduous training of the Volunteer force, but the new conditions were not accompanied by corresponding facilities. There was a wide-spread feeling of dissatisfaction on the part of the Volunteers throughout the country, and the War Office granted
  612
  a Committee to make inquiries. The Volunteers hoped that they would go into the whole question of Volunteer allowances in a broad spirit for the purpose of securing greater numbers and efficiency. In that hope they had been disappointed, because the Order in Council, dated 29th May, 1902, made very little difference on the previous regulations. They expected that the capitation grant would be raised from 35s. to 50s., and also that the camp allowance would be increased from 2s. 6d. to 5s. per day. There should have been a much greater allowance for ammunition to Volunteers for practice in shooting. It was expected also that there would be an allowance for drill halls and rifle ranges, and that there would be, in addition to the Adjutant, a paid Quarter - master Sergeant and Sergeant Major. In these expectations they had been disappointed. The Volunteers expected now that the war was at an end that these matters would receive the attention they deserved.
  *MR. LLOYD MORGANcalled attention to the case of a man who was a Corporal in the Carmarthen Volunteers, and who, though he had been nearly twenty years in the corps, was dismissed because his employment prevented him from attending camp this year. This was not the case of a man wilfully neglecting his duty. He was a tradesman who was unable to attend the camp this year without serious consequences to him as a business man. It seemed to the hon. Member that if members of the Volunteer force were to be treated in that harsh and arbitrary manner the War Office authorities could not expect to increase the numbers. He hoped the noble Lord would see his way to cancel the order for the dismissal of this man.
  LORD STANLEYsaid that if the commanding officer thought that it. would be an advantage to the regiment to retain this man, he had power to do so. The War Office wore asked to order i the commanding officer to keep in the regiment a man whom he did not think; efficient. On the face of it, he could I not sec that there was any grievance.
  *MAJOR SEELYcalled attention to the formation of a large number of rifle clubs in the country. He felt that if the Government took no part in the matter, it was possible that these clubs might become a competing force with the Volunteers. He suggested that the Secretary of State should consider the matter seriously and practically, with a view to seeing that rifle clubs did not compete with the Volunteer force. There were signs already that it was possible that some of these rifle clubs might become sufficiently powerful to seriously prejudice recruiting for the Volunteer force. He considered that this matter was somewhat urgent, because, if steps were not taken to see that those who had an earnest desire to learn shooting were directed into the right channel, it was quite possible that those clubs might do more harm than good. A very real difficulty to these clubs was the expense of the ammunition; the Government could therefore retain a hold on the clubs by supplying ammunition at a greatly reduced charge, on certain conditions. These rifle clubs, instead of competing with, might be made valuable adjuncts to the Volunteer force. The same difficulty had arisen in some of the Colonies, and had been satisfactorily dealt with. It would seem advisable to take some action in this country on similar lines, before the movement had grown beyond the control of the Government.
  SIR WILLIAM TOMLINSONalso urged that some system of organisation should be devised in connection with rifle clubs.
  *SIR CHARLES DILKEpointed out that this Vote contained certain allowances in respect of field batteries. In his Army corps organisation the Secretary of State provided for fifteen batteries of Volunteer field artillery. On the last occasion when the subject was debated in the Mouse the Secretary of State seemed to have come round to the view which some hon. Members had previously expressed, namely, that he would be likely to do better with Militia field artillery than with Volunteer field artillery. He wished to know how far the right hon. Gentleman had got in this direction, and whether he would have to fall back on the Militia.
  *MR. WYLIErequested information as to the position of the Volunteer Reservists scheme.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid he hoped to be able in the autumn to make a statement on the Volunteer Reservists scheme. With regard to the field artillery, the right hon. Gentleman had raised a serious and important question.. They had hoped that they would be able to rely upon the Volunteers for fifteen batteries of field artillery, but the War Office authorities, after carefully considering the matter, had come to the conclusion that there was great difficulty in finding Volunteers who were able to give sufficient time for training as field artillery, and it had been thought desirable for the present to restrict Volunteer artillery to the heavier guns. They were considering whether they could induce Militiamen to give as much service as would make them competent field artillerists, and he was not sure that they would not be able to form some part of this artillery, to a large extent of men who had already passed through the Reserve, and who, would be very eligible still to servo for some years for home defence. He hoped to be able to report satisfactory progress next year
  Vote agreed to.
  4. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £1,025,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge for the Pay, etc., of the Medical Establishment, and for Medicines, etc., which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1903."
  MR. MACVEAGHcalled attention to a grievance felt by certain medical officers whose claims had been adjudicated upon by officers who were junior to themselves. Decisions had been given which would involve these officers in considerable loss of money in the shape of pension. He hoped the Secretary of State would give his persona attention to the appeals which had been lodged by the aggrieved officers.
  MR. BRODRICKreplied, but his remarks were inaudible in the Gallery.
  COLONEL WELBYasked whether the Secretary of State for War had under consideration the future of the Army Medical Department. It was well known that when the late war broke out officers and men suffered terribly from the inefficiency of the Medical Department. He urged the desirability of keeping up the efficiency of the Medical Department, so as to be able in future promptly to meet the exigencies of war. He feared that in the economies that followed the conclusion of war and the shrinkage of the Army this necessity might be overlooked.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDSsaid the system of requiring signatures and counter-signatures to be obtained during the late campaign before the necessary appliances could be received was found to be very inconvenient, both for the doctors and the unfortunate sufferers. He hoped that something would be done to alter this system. What he wanted to know was why all these signatures and counter-signatures wore necessary before appliances required for unfortunate sufferers in war could be obtained from the stores. He had seen a paper demanding a paltry eighty yards of cloth which had no fewer than sixteen signatures. If the Advisory Board had on it representatives of civilian commonsense there were hopes that reforms would be introduced which would prevent the recurrence of such scandals as that of Bloemfontein, where dying men had rugs taken from their beds because the supply required could not be obtained without the signature of the commanding officer. Any sensible man would have gone to the stores and at his own initiative would have got everything necessary. That was what a German field officer would have done. The Secretary for War was well aware that the War Office system would not be tolerated for a moment in any business house in London. As long as the War Office was controlled by permanent officials and old fogeys, there would be no genuine reform. The Secretary for War, instead of pursuing his earlier purpose to reform a system of the evils of which the right hon. Gentleman himself had given examples, had allowed himself to he over-ridden by the antiquated notions of permanent officials. The Minister who was popular at the
  616
  War Office was the man who allowed himself to be ruled by the permanent officials under him. Directly the war was over there ought to have been a clean sweep of the War Office, and the old men paid off whoso motto was "What is now, has been, and ever shall be." Questions of accounts, supplies of stores, and many other matters, not only in the Medical Department but in the Clothing Department, should be dealt with on common-sense and commercial lines, and by men of business habits and training.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid he was afraid he was under considerable difficulty in following his hon. friend, who had told stories of what had occurred at Bloemfontein before the Army Medical Department had been reformed. The hon. Gentleman might have favoured the Committee, at all events, with his views as to the state of things as they were now, and not as they were in the early part of the war, in the very crisis of the emergency. He might be allowed to say that he had scarcely ever heard a general attack on the administration of a Department made on less sufficient ground than that which had been advanced by his hon. friend. The hon. Member had made a number of general statements, unsupported by facts, and he challenged them all. He asserted broadly that, both with regard to correspondence and general administration, immense progress and amelioration had taken place in the last two years. This House had done good service by calling attention to the weakness of that part of the administration of the Army Of course, there had been great difficulties in supplying a huge army in the field, but he believed that the system now established, which involved a largo increase in the number of medical officers, increase of pay, and the provision of things that had not existed before, and a variety of changes which had brought the Army Medical Service into line with the best civilian practitioners of the day, ought not to have been ignored by his hon. friend.
  MAJOR JAMESONsaid that he thought the criticism on the Army Medical Department was right and just, and that practically there had been no alteration in the old system,

  617
  which had been the curse of the Army since the Crimean War. He agreed that the right hon. Gentleman had, to a certain extent, been the first to bring about a partial reform of the Army Medical Department. But the doctors were not well enough paid to give inducement to good men to enter the medical service of the Army. That was the secret of the horrible and disgraceful breakdown at the beginning of the war. The right hon. Gentleman said that all that had been remedied; but he denied it, and he maintained that the forms made use of by the Army Medical Department were a disgrace to any nation. He knew that old forms had been sent out to men who had fought in South Africa, and who were sick and ill, telling them that if they were not well by a certain time their names would be removed from the Army. If that was the way the War Office was going to encourage recruiting for the Army, a greater mistake was never made. In his opinion, the old War Office civilians had been the curse of the Army, and the ruin of its administration. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government was going to appoint a Commission. If that Commission went thoroughly into the Army Medical Department, it would have far more effect than a debate on the conduct of our generals. The right hon. Gentleman smiled, but he knew what he was speaking about from bitter experience, for he had lost two or three of his dearest relations in the war. His heart was big for the welfare of the old Army in which he had served for ten years. The right hon. Gentleman should approach the task of cleansing this Augean stable, for until a strong man was appointed at the head of the Army the country would never have a Medical Department worthy of the name. There were many ways in which the Department could be improved. Unless the men were properly paid, and given a chance of rising and doing good to themselves, they would never get a proper and efficient Army Medical Department. At the outbreak of the war they had to scour the highways and highways in order to get doctors for the Army. Many of these men were, of the highest order of Christian doctors, and he hoped they would be
  618
  properly rewarded. He had heard only that day of a distinguished civilian doctor who had gone out to the war, but who was now to be thrown out, and not to get a step in rank. He believed if the right hon. Gentleman had the pluck to tear himself away from officialism he would make a success of the War Office.
  COLONEL WELBYsaid he wished to ask his right lion, friend the Secretary for War a practical question. In the future, would the members of the Army Medical Department be transferable, by a single stroke of the pen at the War Office, from one Army Corps to another, or would they belong to those Army Corps and only be removable by the commanders of them?
  MR. MARKHAMsaid he hoped it was not a fact, as stated by the hon. and learned Member for East Finsbury, that before a medical officer could obtain medical stores for the sick and wounded, it was necessary that his order should be counter-signed. Surely commonsense and reason would say that one signature was all that was necessary to get the stores.
  SIR J. BATTY TUKEsaid he could not but think that certain hon. Members who had spoken were not aware of the important steps taken by the Secretary for War to re-organise the Army Medical Service. They had gone back in the past, and there was a great temptation for one who had followed the history of that service from the Crimean War down to the present time to do the same. But he was content to refrain from doing so, as far as possible, as he believed the scheme now at work was a whole-hearted attempt to reform the service and do justice to the Army medical officers. He congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the adoption of a new administrative principle. All previous Ministers for War had proceeded on the assumption that they could work the machine independently of the great medical schools and the feeling of the medical profession at large. As a consequence,

  619
  all previous attempts to reform the service had failed, mainly, though not entirely, from the non-recognition of the principle. He said not entirely, for failures had also been due to maladministration of former warrants, and retrocession on the part of the War Office in carrying out their provisions. That the right hon. Gentleman had become convinced of the necessity of recognising this principle, was shown by the fact that, of the eleven members of the Committee appointed by him, in 1901, to consider the reorganisation of the Medical Service, seven were civilians, all men who were connected with important medical schools, and by the further fact that, on the advice of that Committee, an Advisory Board had been established, four of the members of which are civilians. he congratulated the Minister for War on the establishment of this principle, which would, he believed, be of great service to the country, notwithstanding that he could not agree with him entirely on the manner in which it had been applied. His first objection was that it was impossible for these four gentleman to perform all the duties laid upon them. The Board had to meet at fortnightly intervals; it had to report on all matters connected with medicine, surgery, sanitation, as they affected the military services; to advise on the provision and equipment of hospitals; to submit a scheme for the expansion of the service to meet the needs of war; to report on plans for hospitals, barracks, and camps; to arrange for the annual inspection of each of the military hospitals, such inspection to be usually made without notice; to super vise the examinations of candidates; and to consider the promotion of officers. How was it possible for men in active practice to perform such multifarious duties for a mere pittance of £200 a year! It was impossible; and it would be found in practice that these four gentlemen could only have referred to those special points for their advice and consideration. This would be a most important function for them to perform, but that they could carry out all that was imposed on them by the Report was impossible. Further, he wished that the hon. Gentleman had carried
  620
  out the special recommendation of Sir William Thomson, who did such excellent work in South Africa. Sir William, as a member of the Committee, in a Minority Report, recommended that the Advisory Board should be composed of representatives of the Medical Schools in the several divisions of the Kingdom. The Secretary for War had accepted this principle as regards Ireland and England, but had evaded it so far as Scotland was concerned. It was true he had appointed a gentleman in London, who held a Scottish degree but had no other connection; he had lived all his life in London, could in no way represent the feeling in Scottish schools, or adequately represent the genius of the country, and had not had any connection with military matters. He was aware that the Secretary for War took a great deal of trouble to secure a practitioner resident in Ireland, but he never once entered into communication with anyone connected with Scotland, or in any way consulted the feelings of the schools of that country. The right hon. Gentleman might ride off on the statement that of the military members of the Advisory Board, two or three were Scottish graduates. Such an argument was futile, as those gentlemen had lived their lives in the service, and could not be en rapport with professional feeling in the North. He might as well argue that because the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were both Scots, the electoral representation of Scotland was on an equable footing with that of Ireland. It should be remembered that about one-third of the medical recruits came from the North, which afforded the highest class of candidates. he did not argue this from a mere provincial point of view. It was impolitic to ignore and flout these great schools. When it was considered that any scheme for the expansion of the service must depend on the assistance provided by universities, schools and hospitals, it was evidently a wise policy to keep in close touch with teaching institutions, on which must depend, to a great extent, any scheme for an Imperial Medical Reserve. The establishment of an Imperial Medical Reserve must be a chief object to be kept in view by the Secretary of State. It was impossible to keep up a standing medical force during

  621
  times of peace sufficient for the sudden emergencies of war. This was one of the lessons we had lei rub from the late war. The Army Medical Service must be made capable of rapid expansion, and this could only be effected by appealing to civilians. This was not the time to propound a scheme for the establishment; of such a body; but it might be said with certainty that the War Office would have to come to the teaching institutions of the country, and demand their assistance in formulating a scheme by which a system of units could be established, ready to act under any emergency. Under these circumstances, it would have been more politic for the Secretary for War to do everything in his power to maintain the entente cordiale with important centres of medical education. What we did in haste during the late war must be provided for at leisure. He urged this point on the right hon. Gentleman in the interests of the Army at large. He was sure that if he would so act, he would find a ready answer to his demands. As to the New Royal Warrant, he should have liked to have spoken at more length, but other medical members were present who might desire to speak. He believed it would work well. The pay was fair; the system of examination for promotion was sound. It would do much to prevent slackness, and would give an opportunity for the bettor men to show what they were made of. In every service there were two curses—seniority and private influence. If the system of examination was made to exercise its due influence—if it was taken along with each man's service record, it would serve a most important function in neutralising these curses. But it must also be remembered that the thorough working of the now warrant depended on the maintenance of the Royal Army Medical Corp at a proper level. The arrangements for leave and study leave could not be worked unless the service was numerically sufficient. The warrant might easily break down in many of its most important provisions if the service was starved. But, in the hope that no retrocessions will occur, as they had occurred as regards previous warrants, he begged to congratulate the Secretary for War on the earnest effort he was making to produce a really efficient service.
  DR. FARQUHARSONsaid he had always taken a great interest in the Army Medical Department since he entered the House of Commons, and since he had the honour of serving his Sovereign in his old regiment. What was wanted was to try and get into the service a good running supply of the best candidates, in order that they might be able to carry out the important duties entrusted to them. In former years, the Army authorities attempted to manage medical matters without consulting the wants and wishes of the great universities and medical schools from which the candidates had been, drawn. He thought, however, that his right hon, friend, who so ably occupied the position of War Minister, sincerely desired to take into his confidence the great medical schools and teaching bodies, in order to get the best possible students for the Army Medical Department. The right hon. Gentleman deserved great credit for that, and also for having taken into, consideration the representations of the British Medical Association, which represented the great mass of the profession. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman and his advisers had made a large number of very valuable improvements in the original warrant, by which it was made more acceptable to the profession generally, and by which a larger number of candidates for the service would be obtained. The new warrant was extremely good, and he thought its terms were, extremely favourable. He only wished he had had such terms when he was serving his country in the Army Medical Department, nearly thirty years ago. They almost made his mouth water. The right hon. Gentleman was also well advised in instituting study leave. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman had carried out many of the reforms in the Department which had been advocated year after year in Parliament. He wished to express his most emphatic admiration of the admirable work of the Army Medical Department in South Africa. There had been criticisms on its general administration, but no one had a word of criticism to offer regarding the admirable devotion of the individual members of the Department; who had to face great danger and difficulty to carry out their work, and who

  623
  had to sacrifice, not only their comfort and convenience, but, in many eases, their lives. If they looked back on the medical history of the South African campaign, he thought it would be found that in no former war had the general results of medical and surgical treatment been so admirably successful. Of course, there were difficulties—he did not mean difficulties due to the Government, but to the exigencies of the military situation—which made the work of the Army Medical Department arduous, and occasionally impossible. But, speaking as a medical man, he said that in no former war was the medical treatment of enteric, and the surgical treatment of wounds, on anything like the same plane of success; and he thought the Army Medical Department had earned immense credit for the results which had been obtained. There were certain points in connection with the new warrant on which he most heartily congratulated his right hon. friend. One was the new position given to the Director-General of the Army Medical Department. It was always felt in the old days that the position of the Director - General was not sufficiently authoritative. Now he would be a much more authoritative person than he was before. Perhaps, he might be a little old-fashioned, but he confessed he was not quite so enthusiastic about the inclusion of the civilian element. He thought the old plan was better where the Director General had two or three experienced subordinates, each for a different Department, all of whom combined to discuss questions from the medical point of view. He agreed with his hon. friend the Member for the Edinburgh and St. Andrew's Universities that the civilian element was not of a sufficiently authoritative character. The only object of the element was to bring the Board into touch with the great medical schools, and unless they had men of great distinction on the Board that might not be achieved. He did not say a word against the members of the Board, who were all able men; but they had not that professional standing which was requisite. He hoped, however, that the arrangement might work well. He agreed also with his hon. friend that £200 a year was not sufficient for men
  624
  who joined the Board, as it might involve the dislocation of their other professional work. He thanked his right hon. friend cordially on behalf of the medical profession, which he only represented in a subordinate way, for his very admirable warrant, which he believed would bring peace and contentment to the Army Medical Department, and which he hoped would bring the Board into immediate and effective touch with the medical schools, with the result that there would be a good flow of the very best candidates into the service. Competition was what was wanted. When he entered the service there were nineteen competitors for sixteen vacancies. The new regime was a very good one; but he hoped that his right hon. friend would be prepared to take even still further advice. He wished to know the exact constitution of the new hospital to be started for the Army, and what its relations to Netley would be.
  MR. BRODKICKsaid he could not specifically answer the hon. Gentleman's question, as the arrangements had not yet been completed. But they were pressing the matter forward. He was very glad to listen to the speeches which had just been delivered, because both hon. Gentlemen spoke with great authority on the subject. He was all the more gratified at the commendation which the hon. Gentleman opposite passed on the scheme when he compared it with a speech which the hon. Gentleman delivered to his constituents a few months ago, in which the hon. Gentleman denounced his administration of the War Office as being a total failure in all its branches. That speech was doubtless dished up for the consumption of the hon. Gentleman's constituents; but when the hon. Gentleman tackled the practical working of the Department, it was a great satisfaction to find that he was clothed in his right mind. He thought that, both from the hon. Gentleman's speech and from the speech of his hon. friend, the Committee would perceive that the reform of the Army Medical Department which had taken place last year had, in the main, commended itself to the medical profession. Of course, there had been criticisms—which I they were glad to have; but an immense

  625
  change had been made by the introduction of civil members to the Advisory Hoard. That change would, he believed, have a great and permanent effect on j the Department. His lion, friend read out a long list of subjects which the Advisory Board had to deal with. No doubt the number was great, but he saw the minutes of the fortnightly meetings of the Board, and he could assure the Committee that the work was done in a most thorough and efficient manner; and he thought the Committee and the Army could not be too grateful to those medical gentlemen who, although in large practice themselves, had given their services to the Government. Nothing that could be offered to them in the way of money was in itself sufficient compensation. They were all eminent men, and there was every reason to be grateful to them. Some little complaint was made by his hon. friend as regards the composition of the Committee for the inspection of the hospitals, and he confessed that his lion, friend forestalled him in the line of argument he intended to take up. It was quite true that in selecting a Scotch graduate to attend the Committee, they had not asked the leading man in the profession in Scotland to attend in London, but they had set themselves to get a man of experience who, being in London, could attend the Board. There was, however, really nothing to complain of. As a matter of fact, half the members of the Advisory Board were Scotch graduates, although not the actual representatives appointed by Scotch schools. He thoroughly re-echoed what the hon. Member had said about the personnel of the Army Medical Department, With reference to the larger demand for officers
  626
  which would have to be met in case of war, they desired to act as closely as they could, not only with the London schools, but also with the Scotch and Irish schools; and he was glad that his hon. friend included colonial schools also. The system had already produced one remarkable result. Up to last year they had not been able to obtain a sufficient number of candidates for the vacancies on many occasions; and he would admit that last year the candidates were not up to the standard. Within the last few days, however, as the result of the change, and the general increase of confidence on the part of the medical profession in the intentions of the War Office in regard to the Army Medical Department, there were between seventy and eighty candidates for thirty-two vacancies. That was a very marked change, and he hoped it would continue. He was quite certain nothing would be wanting on the part of the War Office to secure its continuance. He attached the greatest importance to the arrangements which were being made for study leave. They had adopted in the Army Medical Department practically the system of short service which had been adopted for the Army. If a man did not like the service after two years or more, he had an opportunity of going back to civil life. He believed that to be a sound arrangement, and he also believed that the arrangement by which the medical I officer &t the beginning of his military career would have some sort of home would also work satisfactorily. In that respect, and in many others, he recommendations of the Committee over which he presided last year would, he thought, produce excellent results in the Army Medical Department. They could not,

  627
  in the few months which had elapsed since the adoption of the reform, see the results to any large extent at present, but he had great confidence in the future. He was quite aware that they had arrears, both of knowledge and of organisation, in that and other respects, to pull up. They were learning hard the lessons of the war, and he was very sanguine that those who followed him would be able to say that, whatever else had or had not been done for the Army during the period he presided at the War Office, at all events a long step forward had been taken in the Army Medical Department.
  MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid he desired to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his statement, and especially on the fact that there had been between seventy and eighty candidates for thirty-two vacancies. It was a great satisfaction to the Committee to hear such a statement as that, as it showed that good work was being done in the Army Medical Department. There was one point on which he was not quite clear, and that was the question put by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Taunton as to the organisation of an Army Medical Corps together with an Army Corps. It was quite true, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, that doctors, at the beginning of their career, would be attached to a unit, but he desired to know whether the organisation of a Medical Corps would be co-ordinate with the Army Corps system. There was another question also asked, which, perhaps, could not be answered off-hand; and that was the difficulty of getting medical stores without a lot of red tape
  628
  and the signatures of a number of non-medical officers. He thought there were cases during the war in which two, three, and even six signatures were required. Medical stores were sent out in great quantities, and in the hurry and hustle of the war it was inevitable, perhaps, in many cases, that they should fall short; but he was not sure that a great deal of the shortage was not due to the system under which the stores could be drawn. He hoped; the right hon. Gentleman would give attention to the matter with the view to simplifying the system.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDSsaid he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he intended to continue the system of requiring a number of signatures for medical stores, practically on the battlefield, when men were dying for the want of articles which were, perhaps, within twenty yards of them. It was not a case of the stores being at Capetown; they I were within rifle range of where the unfortunate people were dying. A nobleman sent out a hospital at his own expense, and it was monstrous that the patients who were being attended in it should be deprived of what they required merely for the want of a few signatures. Necessaries should not be doled out on the field of battle as if they were supplies from a canteen. It was all very well for an old Army doctor like the hon. Gentleman opposite to butter up the Department. His hon. friend the Member for the Edinburgh University was far more practical. He said—what they all knew to be true—that they could not get a leading physician for £200 a year; why, they could not get a country attorney at that price.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid it was a sufficient answer to his hon. friend that they had on the Board two such surgeons as Sir Frederick Treves and Mr. Fripp. He merely mentioned their names as an illustration, and was not putting them in any way in front of the other gentlemen on the Board. With regard to the signatures for stores, he could not speak off-hand; but it was perfectly obvious that there was no period where it was more necessary that stores should be carefully husbanded than during a campaign, or given out except under proper authority. He, however, demurred to the idea that the system was due to red tape. During the campaign an enormous number of doctors had to be sent out, many of them not conversant with the rules and regulations of the service; and stores were often delayed because men did not know their own powers, or how to order what they required.
  COLONEL WELBYsaid he appealed to his right hon. friend to give an answer about the future of the Army Medical system in connection with the Army Corps system. If not, his only alternative would be to move a reduction. He begged to move the reduction of the Vote by £100.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £1,024,900, be granted for the said Service."—(Colonel Wellby.)
  MR. BRODKICKsaid he would be very glad to answer his hon. and gallant friend. As regarded the Army Medical Corps, with the exception of a very few officers, they Were at the present time
  630
  relying to a very large extent on civilians for the different stations at home; and until they could bring the medical officers home from South Africa in large numbers, which he hoped would be shortly, it would be impossible to put the new i scheme into working operation. When that was done, they would endeavour to work the Army Corps system and Medical Corps system together, with the proviso that it should not extend to India.
  COLONEL WELBYsaid that if his right hon. friend would answer the question I whether an Army doctor could be moved from one Army Corps to another, without any reference to India, he would be prepared to withdraw his Motion.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid they were establishing a great variety of changes, and he could not answer the question off-hand.
  MAJOR JAMESONsaid it was perfectly plain that the right hon. Gentleman could tell the Committee whether it was, or was not, necessary to have five or six signatures to a requisition for stores in the field. The right hon. Gentleman insinuated that the reason for the mistakes which occurred was because civilian doctors were employed. He never heard a more lame or wretched argument in his life. That had nothing whatever to do with the question. Surely the right hon. Gentleman could tell the Committee whether the wretched old forms, which had not been changed for forty years, would be altered. If the right hon. Gentleman wished to keep to the old forms, he ought to let

  631
  the Committee know. What he wanted to know was whether the right hon. Gentleman had taken any steps to simplify the old forms. That was a perfectly plain question, put in a perfectly plain way.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid he had already informed the Committee, and thought he had made it clear, even to the hon. Gentleman, that the forms did not require six signatures. So far as he was concerned, he was perfectly ready to undertake that full attention should be given to the simplification of all medical forms. As a matter of fact, a Departmental Committee under Sir William Butler was now engaged in simplifying the medical and all other forms.
  COLONEL WELBYsaid his only object in moving the reduction was to try and make the Army Corps, which the right hon. Gentleman himself had instituted, realities and not shams. He was quite ready to withdraw his Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £120,800, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge for Establishments for Military Education, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 3lst day of March, 1903."
  *SIR ARTHUR HAYTERsaid it was within the knowledge of the Com-
  632
  mittee that the question of military education generally had been dealt with very ably by the Committee presided over by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the St. Augustines's Division of Kent. He had no intention of referring to the outbreak at Sandhurst, much as he regretted it, but he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State whether he was satisfied with the arrangements for military education which had now be placed under the Military Secretary. He had read the evidence on the subject with as much care as he could, and he considered that the late Military Secretary gave away the whole case. That officer said that they were prevented from carrying out the recommendations with reference to military education by the war, and that they had been entirely unable to deal with it. Lord Roberts gave very important evidence, in which he said that the existing arrangements were not satisfactory, and he added that it was not the examinations that were at fault but the way that they were carried out. Lord Roberts appeared to think that the best plan would be to have a general officer as the director of military education with an Advisory Board, consisting more or less of experts, on which public schools, universities, and other educational centres would be represented. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would take that suggestion of Lord Roberts into his very serious consideration. He considered that the present arrangements were very hard on Sandhurst. The pupils remained there only one year, which was practically only eight months; and it was impossible to teach them very much in that time. That was a very serious condition of

  633
  affairs, and he hoped that, with the cessation of the war, they would return to the normal period, if it were decided to keep up Sandhurst at all. Two radical changes were required at Sandhurst. What could possibly be more disadvantageous to a young man than to put him through a very severe examination on entering the College, and then leave him absolutely without any competitive examination at all when leaving. The whole system was on a wrong basis. They might have a competitive examination at the beginning and the end; but certainly they ought to have a competitive examination at the end, and not allow it to be said, as was said by the Committee, that a great many of the students who Came in at the top of the list went out at the bottom, because they had no stimulus to continue their education. The second change had reference to the professors. He thought the way in which they were chosen was lamentable. Of course, there was great difficulty in selecting any man for teaching until he had been tried; but he would suggest a probationary term, after which the professors could be dismissed if they were not proficient. At present they were not selected for their teaching powers; they were not dismissed for their incompetence; they were not rewarded for ability, and they were chosen because they wore men who wished to have an easy berth during the next five years. Such appointments were regarded as the backwater of the Army, since the officers hardly ever came back to military positions. There was one other thing on which he thought the right hon.
  634
  Gentleman would agree with him, and that was that the teachers should be more in touch with the classes. At present they seemed to give a lecture, and never see their pupils afterwards. Again. there were two subjects which ought not to be in the curriculum at all, namely, military law and military administration. Every experienced military witness who gave evidence before the Committee said that the men learned these subjects much better after they had joined their regiments. Military administration was comparatively simple, but could not be learned without dealing practically with the accounts of a company. With reference to military law, regimental Court Martials were nearly abolished, and no officer would serve on a District Court Martial under two years service. The young officer would be able to make himself acquainted with it after he had joined the service. If these two subjects were taken away, there would be an opening for foreign languages and other subjects. He regretted to see that the German professor had been struck off. Woolwich had a German professor with only 305 students, but Sandhurst with 360 students was only to have the occasional advantage of a German professor. He could not conceive what reason there was for that arrangement, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would reconsider it. The bright spot in the Report was the evidence as to the University candidates. There appeared to be no complaint against them with reference to discipline; and he thought it would be a very

  635
  excellent thing if the right hon. Gentleman would take into consideration the question whether the age should not be raised in favour of the University candidates.
  MR. COURTENAY WARNERsaid he thought the Vote should not he taken tonight; it would be a useful way of discussing certain questions concerning Sandhurst.
  It being Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
  Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next; Committee also report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

  DAY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (IRELAND) [CONTRIBUTIONS].
  Resolution reported—
  "That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of money to be provided by Parliament, of Contributions towards the custody, industrial training, elementary education, and meals of children sent by on Order of a Court (other than an attendance order) to a certified Day Industrial School, of sums not exceeding one shilling per head per week, and in the case of children without an Order of the Court of a sum not exceeding sixpence a week, in pursuance of any Act of the present Session to provide for the further establishment of Day Industrial Schools in Ireland."
  Resolution agreed to.

  DAY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Order for Committee read.
  MR. BANBURY: I object.
  MR. HARRINGTONappealed to the hon. Gentleman not to persist in his objection. The Commission recently appointed by the Lord Lieutenant had reported in favour of the Bill. There was nothing contentious in it, and Amendments which had been moved by the Chief Secretary had been agreed to.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND(Mr. WYNDHAM,)said he wished to point out to his hon. friend that there were similar schools in England and Scotland.
  MR. BANBURY: I object.
  MR. HARRINGTONsaid he would withdraw the measure. The Government were responsible.
  Order for Committee read, and discharged.
  Bill withdrawn.
  Adjourned at five Minutes after Twelve o'clock

Preamble
THE LORD ORANMORE and BROWNE took the Oath.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:—
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 3).
Commons Regulation (Sodbury) Provisional Order.
The same were ordered to lie upon the Table.

RICHMOND HILL (PRESERVATION OF VIEW) BILL.
Judges' Report received, and ordered to lie upon the Table.
LONDON, TILBURY, AND SOUTHEND RAILWAY BILL,
  WHITECHAPEL AND BOW RAILWAY BILL,
    FINCHLEY URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
    Reported, with Amendments.
LONDON UNITED TRAMWAYS BILL.
Moved, That the Order made on the 14th March last, "That no Private Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after the 19th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a; I agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed. The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
BRYNMAWR AND WESTERN VALLEYS RAILWAY (VESTING) BILL,
  LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL,
  Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING ACTS AMENDMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the borrowing provisions of the Electric Lighting Act, 1882, and the Electric Lighting (Scotland) Act, 1890, was presented by the Lord Balfour; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Tuesday next. (No 152.)
  GLASGOW AND SOUTH-WESTERN— RAILWAY ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899) deemed to have been read 2a— (The Lord Balfour)— and reported from the Committee. (No. 154.)
  PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 4) BILL.
  House in Committee (according to order). Bill reported without Amendment. Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a on Monday next.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
  House in Committee (according to order). Amendments made. Standing Committee negatived. Report of Amendments to be received tomorrow.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 12) BILL.
  Committee of the Whole House (which stands appointed for this day) put off to Monday next.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAM-WAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
  The order made on the 3rd instant appointing certain Lords the Select Committee to consider the Bills, discharged.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (SUBWAYS AND TRAMWAYS) BILL,
    LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAM WAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL,
      LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL,

        LONDON UNITED TRAMWAYS BILL.
        Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bills (viz.)—

        E. Denbigh,

        E. Yarborough,

        L. Muskerry,

        L. Brassey (Chairman),

        L. Ludlow;

        agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly. The Committee to meet on Monday next at twelve o'clock; and all

        467
        petitions referred to the Committee, with leave to the petitioners praying to be heard by counsel against the Bills to be heard as desired, as also counsel for the Bills.

  RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  Trade Reports, Annual Series—

  No. 2854. Turkey (Smyrna);

  No. 2855. France (Marseilles);

  No. 2856. Spain (Barcelona).

  WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.
  Despatch by General Lord Kitchener, dated 1st June, 1902, relative to military operations in South Africa.
  RAILWAYS.
  General Report to the Board of Trade on the capital, traffic, and expenditure of the railway companies of the United Kingdom, for the year 1901.
  LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1887 (EVICTION NOTICES).
  Return of the number of eviction notices filed during the quarter ended 30th June, 1902.

  EXPLOSIVES (EXPLOSION OF GUNPOWDER ON REGISTERED PREMISES AT MARPLE, NEAR STOCKPORT).
  Report to the Right Hon. the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Captain M. B. Lloyd, His Majesty's Inspector of Explosives, on the circumstances attending an explosion of gunpowder which took place on the registered premises of Messrs. James Lee and Sons, New Road, Marple, on the 26th April, 1902.
  Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  GAS COMPANIES (METROPOLIS).
  Accounts of the Metropolitan Gas Companies for the year 1901.
  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION(IRELAND).
  Additional Rule made by the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland, dated 4th July, 1902.

  POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS.
  Accounts presented of all deposits received and paid during the year ended 31st December, 1901, and of the sums received and paid by the National Debt Commissioners on account of the Fund for the Post Office Savings Bank in the same year.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  PUBLIC LIBRARIES (IRELAND) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed. (No. 153.)
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (LICENCES) (IRELAND) BILL.
  Amendments reported (according to order); further Amendments made; Bill to be read 3a tomorrow, and to be printed as amended. (No. 155.)
  PAUPER CHILDREN (IRELAND) BILL. [H.L.]
  Returned from the Commons agreed to.
  MUSICAL COPYRIGHT BILL. [H.L.]
  Returned from the Commons with the consequential Amendment made by the Lords to the Amendments made by the Commons, agreed to.

  SOUTH AFRICAN WAR — VOTE OF THANKS TO THE FORCES—LORD ROBERTS'S REPLY.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (The Earl of HALSBURY): My Lords, I have received the following letter from Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, K.G., Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Forces, in return to the thanks of this House, and to the Resolutions of June 5th last, communicated to him in obedience to the order of this House, viz.:—
  "War Office, July 10th, 1902.
  "My Lord,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter forwarding to me Resolutions passed by the House of Lords thanking His Majesty's forces by land and sea for their gallant and distinguished services during the late war in South Africa.
  "I shall esteem it a great privilege to convey to the forces I have the honour to command this expression by the House of Lords of its appreciation of the work they have accomplished in South Africa, which I am confident they will highly value. The message of sympathy with relatives of the fallen contained in the Resolution will, I am sure, be gratefully received by them, not only as a

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  mark of the kind feeling which prompted it, but as a recognition of the services rendered to their country by those whom they have lost.
  "I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's most humble, obedient servant,
  Roberts, F.M.
  The letter was ordered to be entered on the Journals.

  POST OFFICE SITES BILL.
  Order of the day for the Second Reading read.
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (The MARQUESS of LONDONDERRY): My Lords, I do not think that many words are necessary to commend this Bill to the favourable consideration of the House, its object is to enable His Majesty's Postmaster-General to acquire two sites in the County of London, for the purpose of erecting post-offices thereon. The Bill is not an innovation, but is similar in character to those measures which have been introduced in previous years by my predecessors. It was referred to a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and passed through that House with no alteration beyond the insertion of a Clause providing that nothing in the Act should affect any rights or jurisdiction of the London County Council or any Metropolitan Borough in relation to any sewers, drains, or water-courses. If the Bill is read a second time today it will be referred to a Committee over which the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees presides, and will then come before a Committee of the whole House. There are certain details in regard to the sites proposed to be taken with which I do not think I need weary your Lordships, but if any question is asked I shall be glad to give an answer.
  Bill read 2a (according to order), and committed.

  SHOP CLUBS BILL.
  Amendments reported (according to order).
  THE SECRETARY you SCOTLAND (Lord BALFOUR of BURLEIGH): I have an Amendment to Clause 7, which relates to a question of machinery, and is not conceived in any hostile spirit to the Bill. The facts are these. In this Bill the word "registrar" occurs in more than one clause. That is, of course, the
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  Registrar of Friendly Societies; but the Bill is not made to read in connection with the Friendly Societies Act, 1896. In that Act there is a definition of the "Registrar" for England, Scotland, and Ireland, and both for Scotland and Ireland he is denned in each case as the Assistant Registrar who is located in the respective capitals. So far as Scotland is concerned, I am advised that the Amendment is necessary, and I daresay those interested in the matter, if they will look into it, will find that it is expedient to apply the Bill to Ireland in the same way.
  Amendment moved—
  "In Clause 7, page 2, line 32, after 'branch,' to insert 'and in application to Scotland the word "registrar" means the registrar as defined in that Act.'"—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
  On question, Amendment agreed to.
  Bill to be read 3a tomorrow, and to be printed as amended (No. 156).

  MILITARY EDUCATION.
  *LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords, I rise, in accordance with the notice standing in my name on your Lordships' Paper, to call attention to the Report of the Committee on Military Education, to ask His Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to carry the recommendations of the Committee into effect, and to move that in the opinion of this House immediate steps should be taken with a view to remedy the deplorable state of things disclosed in the Report, and in particular that an Inspector-General of Military Education, with an adequate staff, should be at once appointed in accordance with the recommendations of the Report. Three mouths ago the public were very disagreeably startled by the Report of the Committee appointed by His Majesty's Government to inquire into this subject. The Report, as is well known, condemned in scathing terms the present system of military education. I do not want to be unduly pessimistic, nor to use language of exaggeration. I am perfectly aware that successive Governments have done their best to deal with this subject, and I say at once that I think the results of the labours of the Committees and Commissions that have sat and reported on the subject have not been altogether fruitless.

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  There can be no doubt that the subject of military education has made much progress within the last forty or fifty years. Things were very different from what they are now in the time of what one of the witnesses described as the early Victorian Major, who knew nothing himself, and did not see why anybody else should know anything. But just now the subject is in a backwater. I have received a letter today from perhaps the most distinguished of Army coaches, who writes to say, that at this moment, owing to the inertia of the War Office, things are worse than ever. He states that there is no military training worthy of the name at Aldershot or at any other station; that the ordinary general education of officers is going from bad to worse, and that it is a public scandal that young officers sent to India have to be taught arithmetic by the regimental schoolmasters. I venture to think that everybody will agree that the Report of the Committee on military education is worthy of the respect and attention of the public and of this House. The Committee was presided over by a Cabinet Minister—Mr. Akers Douglas. There were six other members on the Committee, three of whom were civilians. Of the three civilians, two—Dr. Warre and Mr. F. W. Walker—are headmasters of great public schools, viz., Eton and St. Pauls, the other being Sir Michael F. Foster, a. distinguished scientist and a Member of Parliament. The other three members were the present Governor of the Royal Military Academy (Major General Jelf), Captain A. H. Lee, M.P., and Lieutenant-Colonel F. Hammersley, who are all well-known educational experts. There are two aspects of military education—education as regards the efficiency of the Army, and education as regards the status of the officer at home and abroad. I am perfectly ready to admit that in the late war, as in previous wars, it has been shown that it is quite possible for an officer to be extremely illiterate and yet an excellent soldier. But we have not only to look at military efficiency. If the officers of the British Army have not the ordinary education of an English gentleman, their status in this country and in other countries will be greatly reduced. I have met with men not Pedants nor particularly addicted to
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  culture who have spoken in contemptuous terms of officers in the Army because they are so extremely ignorant. In this connection I should like to say that the chief complaint on the score of education, which is repeated over and over again in the evidence — and it is an extremely important one from a military point of view—is that a very large number of officers are unable to write an intelligent report.
  THE EARL OF CORK: Many of them cannot even write a letter.
  *LORD MONKSWELL: At all events; a large number of them cannot write a report which is intelligible. That is very serious from the point of view of military efficiency. At the present time it is more than ever necessary that a British officer should be sufficiently intelligent—I do not say that it is absolutely necessary that he should know much about grammar—but that he should have sufficient powers of observation and be sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently master of the English language to write a report that can be understood by those to whom it is sent. In former days, under the old system of artillery and rifles of very short range, the commander in the field of battle had a great many of the operations under his own immediate supervision, and was not so dependent on reports from officers as he is now, when, owing to the vast range of artillery and rifles, it is impossible for a commander to know all that is going on. The one bright spot in the Committee's Report is the evidence of the excellence of the officers who come from the Universities. Probably the reason why these officers are so popular in military circles is that they have that general education of an English gentleman which, I am sorry to say, some officers from Sandhurst appear to lack. The Committee mention in their Report what they consider to be the principal cause of this ignorance, and it is quite sufficient to account for everything. They state that there is absolutely no incentive to learning at Sandhurst. It seems to me, as a civilian, to be a perfectly astounding state of things that absolutely no notice is taken of superior merit in the various examinations at Sandhurst. We all know that there is an entrance examination for Sandhurst,

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  that there is an examination out of Sandhurst, and also examinations to qualify for promotion; but the unanimous verdict of the service members who were witnesses before this Committee was that absolutely no account whatever is taken of whether a man just scrapes through his examination or passes with distinction. The remedy proposed by the Committee is promotion by selection in all ranks of the Army, but the Commander-in-Chief takes a different view, and thinks that in the lower ranks promotion should be by seniority. That is a very grave divergence of opinion. I am not at all sure, speaking for myself, that the Commander-in-Chief is not right if human nature is not equal to the task of honest selection by merit. Not very long ago the Secretary of State for War said he would never be influenced in the slightest extent by social considerations. Those are brave words, and I hope the Secretary of State will always act up to them, but is he quite certain that other people will never be influenced by such considerations? It all depends upon this: Does a system of promotion by selection mean promotion by merit or promotion by favouritism? If it means promotion by favouritism, then promotion by favouritism tempered by seniority is better than promotion by favouritism tempered by nothing at all. I put it to noble Lords opposite whether it is not possible that there should be a working compromise between the view of the Commander-in-Chief and the view of the Committee on that extremely important point? Is it not possible to introduce into the Army the system that works so well in the Navy, by which officers who pass well out of the "Britannia," and also well in the examination for the rank of lieutenant, gain automatically about three years' seniority over those who are last on the list, without any suspicion of favouritism at all? I suggest that perhaps that compromise might be a solution of this very great difficulty.
  Now, as to the terms of my Motion. The Government will not deny that the state of things, as disclosed by the Report, is deplorable. To show how deplorable that state of things is, I propose to make a few comments on the Report and the evidence. I do not propose to go into the evidence as to Woolwich, because I think Woolwich has come out of the ordeal
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  fairly well; but there are certain considerations which apply both to Woolwich and to Sandhurst. The Committee report that cadets, having no incentive to learn, join more ignorant than they ought to be, and that when they are officers they have no inducement to keep up even the little knowledge they ever possessed. The words of the Committee in paragraph 93 of the Report are—
  "The Committee regret to report that the general condition of education at the Royal Military College is far from satisfactory. In the first place, the cadets cannot be expected to derive much benefit from their instruction at Sandhurst, when it is clearly established that they have absolutely no inducement to work. This inducement is not afforded by the number of marks necessary to qualify for a commission, nor by the fact that those who fail to reach the low qualifying standard demanded, are excluded from the Army. Indeed, there is too much reason to fear that even those cadets who fail to attain this standard have been commissioned none the less."
  General Sir Ian Hamilton was interrogated by the Committee as to the keenness of the Sandhurst cadets, and he was asked—
  "Have you found in your experience in South Africa that there is a tendency among young officers, after they have joined their unit and have got their commission and passed oft Barrack Square, to think there is nothing more to do for a good many years and to take it easy?"
  Sir Ian Hamilton replied—
  "There is a very lax standard in that way; it is perfectly extraordinary. I was at Hythe the other day, and the Commandant told me what a pleasure it was to him to have a Volunteer and Yeomanry class there. After his lecture the officers would crowd round him and argue and dispute on points, and show the very greatest interest; whereas, on the other hand, Sandhurst boys who had been there did not at all display this interest, and the young officers in the regular Army were chiefly concerned in thinking very much of when the afternoon train went up to London."
  Sir George Clarke was questioned by Captain Lee on the subject, and he replied that—
  "A naval sub-lieutenant, if he gets at his examination a certain number of stars—that is, first class in certain subjects—is a made man from that time, and he knows it; but as to the Army Promotion Examination, if you scrape through it does not matter whether you do so by the skin of your teeth or whether you get honours. I have never heard of its making the slightest difference."
  The evidence of Major Edwards, R.E., of the Intelligence Department, was to the same effect. He said—

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  "Officers are selected for appointments for various reasons, but not on account of any previous record to be found in papers."
  The Governor of Sandhurst, Sir E. Markham, said that he had known the case of a cadet removed for misconduct by the Commander-in-Chief being gazetted in five weeks to the Militia and joining the Cavalry within a year. Colonel Lonsdale Hall, a well-known authority on the subject of tactics, aid—
  "There is no incentive to the boy at Sandhurst to work, absolutely no incentive of any kind whatever."
  With regard to the complaint that there is no inducement to keep up knowledge after joining the Army, I would quote from the evidence of that well-known Army Coach, Lieut.-Col. Moores. He said that his pupils often came to him after they had been some time in the Army, and he was greatly astonished at their want of knowledge in military subjects. Their excuses generally for this falling off had, he said, been—
  "I have never looked at a military work or at the subjects since I joined the regular Army so many years ago; I have forgotten all the military subjects I knew on joining; no person has ever encouraged me to keep up my knowledge of the subjects, and, in fact, if I were to read or talk about reconnaissance, or field work, or strategy, or military history, the senior officers would not be pleased with me, so I fell into the groove of doing only what the others did, which generally was playing billiards or cards, or smoking cigarettes or reading, or talking in the mess or quarters, for some hours daily when not on parade or at the orderly room."
  Colonel Moores gave an instance. He said—
  "One officer, who made over 1900 marks, and was the second or third from the top of the list at the Militia Competitive Examination about five years ago, came to me for tuition just before the Boer War to enable him to pass the examination for promotion, and his excuse was: 'I have forgotten all the subjects which you taught me so thoroughly; I am in the old groove again, forgetting all I should retain; I wish we had a system of regular professional work. I suppose I shall have to ask your aid again later on to be crammed for the rank of Major.'"
  Colonel Lawley, who is in command of a cavalry regiment, said that he knew of a cavalry officer who had been eight years in the service, and had never during the whole of that time had a favourable report, and yet he still remained in the service. If the cadets have no incentive
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  to learn, it is equally true that the instructors have absolutely no incentive to teach. On that point the Committee say—
  "The weight of evidence, however, leads to the conclusion that an instructional appointment is regarded in the Army generally as a shelf on which an officer may spend a few years comfortably, avoiding the monotonous routine of life in barracks and the constant changes of station, which constitute such a serious tax upon the pocket of the married officer."
  The Committee go on to say that the year's probation, which every instructor is supposed to undergo, is practically a farce. They state that—
  "In the replies to a series of questions submitted to the Governor by the Committee will be found, in the reply to question 21, the statement that it has never been necessary in recent years to cancel such an appointment or to revert an officer to his regiment at the end of his year's probation. The Committee are, however, unable to share in the Governor's satisfaction with this fact, or with the present method of selecting instructors as described in. his evidence."
  I can understand that to instructors who merely instruct to obtain a livelihood, and not because they have any special aptitude for teaching, or wish to identify themselves with the teaching profession, the life may be tolerable; but I cannot imagine anything more disheartening than the position of instructors whose duty it is to instruct young men animated by no desire to learn, and who, if by any chance they are successful in making them learn, get no credit for the result. The position of the Assistant-Commandant at Sandhurst would also appear to be by no means a bed of roses, for though he works exceedingly hard he is obliged to administer a system of which he entirely disapproves. He was questioned, for instance, about the-system of teaching cadets to ride. I am not going into the question whether the present system of teaching is a good one or a bad one, but it is condemned by the Assistant-Commandant as an iniquitous system and most injudicious. This does not matter very much, for, as a matter of fact, the cadets have hardly any riding at all at Sandhurst. In the whole course, which has now been cut down to a year, the cadet is only about thirty-five hours in the saddle as contrasted with an hour daily spent in barrack square close-order drill One

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  would suppose that the military authorities would see that good text-books were provided, but the text-books are universally condemned, and Captain Lee, a member of the Committee, observed that the text-book on topography was "probably one of the worst books of its kind in the world."
  Then the Committee comment on rather a singular circumstance connected with the training of cadets. They say in paragraph 101—
  "As an illustration of the system pursued, it appears that the cadets are required to pipe-clay their own buff waistbelts, but that their rifles are cleaned for them. This is remarkable, for while a cadet might acquire a familiarity with the mechanism of the rifle from being required to clean it, the educational value of pipe-claying a belt is extremely slight."
  Again, my Lords, going back to paragraph 99, the Committee express surprise at learning that the cadets are not instructed in either musketry or revolver shooting at Sandhurst, though range accommodation is available in the immediate neighbourhood. They add—
  "The Committee are still more surprised to learn that such cadets as were able to find time to shoot have to join a club and pay a subscription of £1 a term. This may be contrasted with the system at Woolwich, where, though musketry is impossible owing to there being no range, all cadets are required to shoot with the revolver, and are put through a regular course and provided with free ammunition."
  There is another matter with which the Committee are not particularly pleased, and that is the question of tipping the servants, about which we heard something the other day. The system of giving gratuities I attribute to the payment of insufficient wages to the servants, and the authorities have set their faces against a system of tipping which they themselves were responsible for setting up. At Woolwich the cadets are told that they must not tip the servants, but it is a well-known fact that they do tip them, and there the matter ends. But with regard to Sandhurst, the authorities have taken a further and a very foolish step. They put before the cadets every month lithographed forms, which they are required to sign, declaring that they have not tipped the servants. The appreciation which the cadets entertain for this document is shown by the fact that they call the paper the "monthly
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  lie." With regard to this "monthly lie," I should like to quote what Dr. Warre said—
  "The point I want to urge is, that there being things of that sort, gives an opportunity for the less scrupulous to formulate a habit which becomes a habit of mind and tradition, and it seems to me it does go dead against the sense of honour and the sense of right. If it is the case, as we have certain reason to believe, that these certificates are not regarded by the cadets as a very serious thing, and are often signed pro forma, then it seems as if it was allowing to grow up in the mind of a young fellow who is to be an officer a very queer notion of honour and right."
  The whole matter is summed up in the following short sentences in paragraph 131 of the Committee's Report—
  "The Committee are compelled to report that the evidence laid before them has brought out in the strongest light the grave fact that the military education of the junior officers in the Army is in a most unsatisfactory condition…. By no part of the evidence laid before them have the Committee been more impressed than by that which shows, in the clearest manner, the prevalence among the junior commissioned ranks of a lack of technical knowledge and skill, and of any wish to study the science and master the art of their profession."
  I have carefully gone through all the evidence with a view to finding out whether the scathing Report of the Committee is justified or not. I need not have given myself that trouble; it would have been sufficient to read the evidence of the Commander-in-Chief, who endorses the principal complaints made in the Report, though he differs as to the remedy. In reply to Question No. 8431, the Commander-in-Chief said—
  "I think the general standard of education is not sufficiently high in the Army."
  Replying to Question No. 8434, he said—
  "Officers when they join very often are unable to make a satisfactory report."
  Questioned as to the text-books (Question No. 8522), the Commander-in-Chief expressed the opinion that—
  "The text books are susceptible of improvement."
  Asked in Question No. 8529 whether it was the fact that an officer had no inducement to work, and, if he wanted to work, had no opportunity of getting at books, the Commander-in Chief replied, "That is true." Can there be a more

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  scathing condemnation of the present state of things than that? I quite admit that the responsibility falls to some extent upon previous Governments as well as upon the present Government, but though I may be prejudiced, I think that the present Government are the chief sinners in this matter. Dr. Maguire, the great Army coach, when he was examined, said that military education had been extremely bad since 1897. He drew a great distinction between military education before and after somewhere about that date. I say that the Government were guilty of a retrograde step when, in 1898, the Militia qualifying marks were reduced from 5,000 to 4,500, subsequently increased to 4,600. Since 1895 extra pay for languages has been greatly reduced; and in 1899, before the war, it was decided to reduce the course at Sandhurst from eighteen months to twelve months, and the office of Director General of Military Education, which had existed since 1869, was abolished. Without going into idle recriminations, I think I may be allowed to point out that in July, 1898, I remonstrated against this course, and was told that the abolition of this office was only experimental, and that the experiment would be carefully watched. Considering the deterioration of military education during the last four years while this experiment was being carefully watched, I should have thought that His Majesty's Government might have come to some decision in the matter, even before the Committee reported. I need scarcely say that my remonstrance was justified by the Report of the Committee, and also by the evidence on which the Report was based. I cannot understand how it is that the Government have allowed three months to elapse since the publication of the Report without taking the first and most necessary preliminary step of appointing a high official, with an adequate staff, to supervise the military education of the country. If they are not going to appoint a Director General or an Inspector General of Military Education, the Government will not only be flouting the Report of their own Committee — a thing they have done before—but they will be flouting
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  the strongly expressed opinion of the Commander-in-Chief himself, who condemns the present system of handing over the whole supervision of military education to a Colonel with £800 a year. In answer to Question No. 8509, the Commander-in-Chief explained that there used to be a Director General of Military Education, and added—
  "A few years ago it was altered and put under the Military Secretary's Department with an Assistant Military Secretary for Education. I do not think it is satisfactory."
  Further questioned, the Commander-in-Chief said (Question No. 8510) that the Military Secretary had absolutely no time to supervise his subordinate, and added —
  "I do not know why it was ever put in the Military Secretary's Department. I agree with you (Mr. Akers Douglas) that he ought to be an officer acting on his own responsibility and of sufficient standing really to supervise education."
  The Commander-in-Chief also expressed the opinion that the Inspector General must have Assistant Inspectors. The Committee suggest an Advisory Board. I have not made any reference to an Advisory Board in my motion, because I think the first thing to do is to get your Inspector General, and then consult him with regard to the Advisory Board. I cannot understand how, in the face of this evidence, the Government can hesitate for a moment to make this appointment. In Paragraph 141, the Committee say —
  "The Committee must lay stress on the vital importance of making one central authority responsible for the general supervision of the military education of the officers of the Army. The Committee would desire to see the office of Director General of Military Education revived, though they would prefer that this officer should bear the title of Inspector General of Military Education."
  I do not think I am unreasonable. I do not suggest that the Government should by this time have formulated a complete scheme. All I ask is, that the Government will at once take the one absolutely essential preliminary step in the reform of military education, and appoint someone to supervise that eduation. If anything is to be done, there must be some great official responsible, who, in colloquial language, can be hanged if anything goes wrong. No one is now responsible, and it is unsatisfactory and unfair to hang a subordinate.

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  The Military Secretary has been nominally responsible for four years. But how can we place the responsibility on him when the Cominander-in-Ghief says that the Military Secretary has not a moment to spare for educational duties? Many of your Lordships are soldiers now, many have been soldiers, and every noble Lord takes a great interest in military education; and if the Government is against me, I appeal to this House, not in the interests of Party but in the interests of the Army and of the Empire, to affirm that this state of things shall go on no longer, and that the recommendations of the Committee and of the Commander-in-Chief shall prevail.
  Moved," To resolve that, in the opinion of this House, immediate steps should be taken with a view to remedy the deplorable state of things disclosed in the Report of the Committee on Military Education, and in particular that an Inspector General of Military Education, with an adequate staff, should be at once appointed in accordance with the recommendation of the Report."—(Lord Monkswell.)
  *LORD HARRIS: My Lords, having had similar experience to that of the noble Lord as Under Secretary for War, I desire to offer a few remarks upon the Report of this Committee. In the first place, I cordially agree with that part of the noble Lord's speech in which he commends in very high terms the work of the Committee and the time and attention they gave to the subject. Having had some experience of the trouble of getting evidence by Departmental Committees, I am sure your Lordships ought to be most grateful to this Committee for the immense time they gave to the subject and the very great pains they took to collect all available evidence. But I am afraid I cannot agree with the final conclusion to which the noble Lord has arrived. Having studied the Report and the evidence, he arrives at the conclusion that what he describes as a deplorable state of affairs can be remedied by the appointment of an Inspector General of Military Education. That is where I cannot agree with him. If he will eliminate the last sentence with reference to
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  the immediate appointment of an Inspector General, I think I can agree with his Resolution. I quite concur with him that the present state of things is deplorable, but I do not think it is going to be remedied by the appointmeut of an Inspector General. I have had experience of this matter, and I must have been less fortunate than the noble Lord opposite, for I cannot conceive of such an Inspector General as I remember doing much to improve the Military Education of the Army. Of course, it depends on the man, and if you can find the right man, I daresay considerable improvement could be introduced in many ways, which I will indicate directly. But when a post has been created, there is always a tendency to put an officer into it who has done good service of some kind or another, and not necessarily the man who is most capable of carrying out the duties of that office. After the experience which I personally had, it would be impossible for me to agree that the first thing that is necessary is to appoint an Inspector General. I think myself that "Director General" would be the more appropriate title, because at the present moment I do not know what there is to inspect.
  The Report of this Committee deals with two entirely different subject—with the education of the young gentleman who is going to adopt the Army as his profession, and with his education at one or two Military Institutions like Sandhurst or Woolwich which precedes his getting his commission. It also deals—and this is more important still—with the education of the officer after he has obtained his commission. What is the Inspector General going to inspect with regard to that? I think the noble Lord could easily count on his fingers the number of educational establishments in the Army for young officers. I suppose that nearly every officer goes to Hythe, that every Artillery officer goes to Shoeburyness, and every Engineering officer to the School at Chatham. There are also the signalling classes, but there is not room at those classes for all the officers of the Army. As regards Chatham and Woolwich, they are, of course, technical schools. There is nothing similar for the line officer, or the cavalry officer, to enable him to carry on

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  his education after he has got into the Army. That is, I submit, why it would be difficult for an inspector-general to find anything to inspect, and therefore I think the title of director-general is more appropriate. The noble Lord referred to the fact that University candidates are more appreciated because they show sounder education; but then, they have had a longer education before they go into the Army. They are older men, for one thing, and they have had greater opportunities of study, and I should think that the general effect of a University education is also more likely to encourage them to work at their profession than what we know to be the case at Sandhurst. That is merely an opinion; but Sir Evelyn Wood, in his Paper, on page 129, which I am sure the noble Lord has read, refers to a very important point. He compares the length of the course which the officer of the American Army goes through with that which the officer of the British Army is required to undergo, and he refers to the United States Military Academy at West Point as an ideal cadet school. But the course at West Point extends over four years. Sir Evelyn Wood therefore strongly endorses what the noble Lord said with regard to the length of the course at Sandhurst, but the length of that course is largely affected by the demand for officers in the Army. If there is a sudden demand for a larger number of officers they have to be got through somehow or other, and the result is a pressure on the military authorities to reduce the length of the course at Sandhurst or Woolwich, as the case may be. That was, no doubt, the reason which induced the noble Marquess to consent to the reduction of the course at Sandhurst, which I agree with the noble Lord opposite was most undesirable. But he knows, as well as I do, that it is impossible to extend the living accommodation at Sandhurst suddenly, and, therefore, when there is a sudden demand for officers, I suppose the only alternative is to reduce the length of the course there.
  The noble Lord, as far as I could gather, paid more attention in his speech to the education of the cadet at Sandhurst and Woolwich than to the chances of education which the officer gets after he has entered the Army. I, on the other
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  hand, attach far more importance to the education of the officer after he has entered the Army, and, as regards that, I cordially agree with the noble Lord opposite that the present state of things is deplorable, but I cannot agree with him that an inspector general is going to rectify it. You have to create the educational institutions at which the young officer can receive this education. It has, I confess, hurt me, and I should think it must have hurt a good many of your Lordships, to read for some weeks, if not months past, in the daily press the opinions passed upon the British officer. During the war the greatest responsibilities were thrown on our young officers, who had frequently to lead their men in the face of certain death, to set an example to the men by being the first to rush into danger, to help the men to learn a new condition of warfare; and when I have read the criticisms to which these brave young officers have been subjected, I frankly say that my blood has boiled with indignation. If the young officer has not shown all the intelligence he might have, if he is not possessed of the best education he ought to have received, it is the system which is at fault and not the officer. I note the cheers of noble Lords opposite, but I am afraid I cannot agree with the noble Lord who moved the Motion now before your Lordships that a greater meed of blame is to be attached to the present Government than to the Government which preceded it. I do not think the system now in vogue is very different from what it was when the noble Lord was at the War Office. So far as the chances of education, after the young gentleman has got into the Army, are concerned, the system is the same now as when the noble Lord was Under Secretary of State for War. I am, however, quite ready to take my share of responsibility for not having done more while I was at the War Office for the education of the young officer.
  What I want to show is that the young officer has no chance of going on from that stage of education at which he has arrived when he enters the Army, and of improving himself. Dr. Maguire, the Army coach, to whose opinion much value must be attached, states emphatically, on

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  Page 77 of the evidence in the Blue-book that this is so. Elsewhere in the evidence it is pointed out that there are no textbooks. Therefore, how the young officer is to learn I do not know. Dr. Maguire says that the text-books should never be allowed to run out of print, as has been the case lately, but I do not know that that is a serious matter, because some officers have described the text-book as valueless. Dr. Maguire concluded—
  "There is at present no pretence to a proper system of education in the Army."
  That, I agree, is most deplorable. As there are no text-books opportunities for theoretical study are wanting, and the evidence of Sir Evelyn Wood (Pages 124 and 125) clearly shows that the young officer has little opportunity, when once he has got into the Army, of practical study. Asked whether he thought sufficient steps were taken to encourage young officers to continue their studios, Sir Evelyn Wood replied that there were no adequate steps taken, nor was there any possibility of their continuing their studies. This evidence must be borne in mind when reading the somewhat scathing remarks of some officers with reference to the young officer. As regards text-books, General Ian Hamilton admits that there are no text-books on the subject of military history; that a blue pencil had to be freely used to make the text-book on topography useful, and that there should be official text-books on all these subjects. On the subject of the education of the officer I will quote the opinion of Lord Roberts, who said—
  "It is true that the officer of the present day, although he may pass a competitive examination, has no inducement to work, and, if he wants to work, no opportunity of doing so."
  So that it is really not the fault of the young officer if he does not get on.
  This is a question altogether above Party, and if the noble Lord opposite would put his Motion in another form I should be very glad to vote with him. It is a very serious matter to think that our young officers should have no opportunity of improving themselves in the profession they have taken up, but I cannot admit, as I have said, that an Inspector General is the person to effect a very great change. It requires a great deal more than that. After the young officer has got into the Army, Dr. Maguire tells
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  us that he should have text-books to study theory and ground on which to be able to apply that theory to practice. Sir Evelyn Wood tells us that in many of the stations there is no ground on which they can carry out practice. It is a serious affair, and I urge that pressure should be brought upon the Treasury for more money, not only for educational purposes, but in order to acquire more ground, so that the officers can be adequately trained in the business of their profession. All this will cost money. You cannot set up schools of instruction for young officers without its costing money, and you cannot draw young officers away from their regiments for the purpose of instructing them without having more officers. At present officers dislike going away to schools of instruction because they know the amount of labour which their departure throws on their brother officers. Therefore, more officers will be required, and also a great deal of money, for the acquisition of more ground upon which to train them.
  I quite admit that the Government is doing a great deal. It has obtained several good training grounds, but there are many stations in England where the troops cannot move off the road. How can a cavalry officer learn the important duties of reconnaissance — and the Report admits that these are the most important duties that can fall on a British officer at the present time—without the opportunity of crossing country over which manœuvre rights have been obtained? I submit that the pressure that ought to be brought to bear on the Government is not to appoint an officer with a high-sounding title, who may or may not be competent for the position, but to acquire more ground in the neighbourhood of military stations for officers and men to learn the business of their profession; and if my noble and gallant friend below me was personally responsible, I would take the liberty of asking him not to be afraid of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I remember the noble Marquess, whose departure from the high position of Prime Minister and Leader of this House we all deplore, making a speech early in the war in which, I will not say he complained of, but in which he described

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  the power that the Treasury had in recent years obtained over all Departments. I should like to quote a case within my own memory in which a Secretary of State for War was too strong for a Chancellor of the Exchequer. I refer to Mr. W. H. Smith, who, when Secretary of State for War, successfully carried his point against so strong a Chancellor of the Exchequer as Lord Randolph Churchill, and, by sticking to his guns, obtained the money necessary for the efficiency of the Army. I do venture to suggest that in the present state of affairs, which, I agree with the noble Lord opposite, is deplorable, it is essential, for the proper education of the young officer after he has joined the service, that proper opportunities should be given him of studying the profession which he has taken up; and in order to enable him to do so, an increase of educational establishments is necessary, as well as more ground for training purposes.
  *THE LORD BISHOP OF HEREFORD: My Lords, I have been for nearly thirty-three years intimately associated with the training of young men for the Army. As head master of Clifton College, I established and developed its military side; as head master of Rugby, it was my duty to organise the military department; and as head of a college at Oxford, I was intimately concerned with the education of a good many young men who were hoping to become officers of the Army. That must be my excuse for venturing to detain your Lordships for a few minutes with some observations on the Report of this Committee. This Committee, I take it, is one of the results of the South African War, and, looking at the very stimulative and in many respects admirable Report which the Committee has presented, I venture to think that it is by no means the least valuable result of the war. But it does not seem to me to demonstrate that anything has occurred in the war to show the defects in the early training of the British officer. And for this reason: The war has been one of an extremely novel character; we have been fighting an unusually brave and determined white race of men, all horsemen and all sportsmen, with a passion for independence; and I
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  anticipate and hope that never again will any of us see a British Army engaged against such a foe as that. The conditions of this war were so novel that for my part I do not believe that any amount of scientific training would have enabled our Army to do better than it has done. If this were the proper time, I should say that the war had rather demonstrated some deficiency in the training of some other parts of our English system, and especially of our politicians; but this is not the time to refer to that. The Report of the Committee lays stress on the need of the preliminary training of candidates for the Army being of a general character. I do not understand how the training of schoolboys is to be anything else but of a general nature, and I feel that the general education of the country in this connection can take care of itself.
  The duty of the War Office is not to think of the general education of the boys, but to make it very clear what things the soldier should specially learn—what languages, for instance, what mathematics, what science, what draughts man ship, what geography, what history, and so on—and what physical aptitudes and accomplishments are of the greatest value to him. The curricula of the great military schools should be very carefully drawn, and the preliminary education of the officer subordinated to them. Here we have a great defect. Many of my old pupils have come back to tell me how their time at Woolwich and Sandhurst has been wasted by their being compelled to go over elementary work which they had done long before at school, under instructors who were, to say the least, as good. If there is one thing which is likely to extinguish the zeal of a young man for the profession, it is that kind of early experience; and therefore I say that one of the first things to be considered is the scheme of education at the military colleges. I pass over many interesting minor points, but there is one such valuable suggestion in the Report which deserves to be emphasised, and it is that a far more liberal supply of commissions ought to be offered to the colonies. I venture to think that this is a very valuable suggestion, because our colonies would be likely to contribute some of the finest officers procurable; and, in the

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  second place, I know of nothing that would be more likely to weld together our groups of colonies into one harmonious Empire.
  The Report recommends that Woolwich and Sandhurst should be maintained. My experience has led me to a somewhat different conclusion. My view in this matter, which I venture with all humility to put before your Lordships for what it is worth, is that for any real reform of the training of officers it is most important that both Woolwich and Sandhurst should be reconstituted; and my belief is that the best of all possible reforms would be to unite them into one great military school—you may call it your military Eton if you please—governed by a body on which the civilian element should be strongly represented. By way of indicating the sort of civilian element I should like to see on such a body, I would suggest that such representatives as the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Warden of All Souls', Oxford, and perhaps a representative of my own profession, might be of service on it. One great national institution such as I have suggested would tend to economy in administration; it would secure better instruction; and it would bring the whole body of cadets together and give them a knowledge of each other which would be of great advantage to them in after life. Moreover, I hold that in such a great institution you would of necessity have to depend to a, considerable extent on that form of self-government which Dr. Arnold did so much to introduce into our great public schools, and by means of that self-government you would introduce into the training of the great body of your cadets an element which some recent incidents at Sandhurst have shown to be lacking. And, again, in the course of the training in such an institution so governed you would find that the best soldiers would come to the front. That is my reason for dwelling with emphasis on the desirability of considering the reconstitution and the uniting of our great schools at Woolwich and Sandhurst.
  There is one point which, singularly enough, has not yet been mentioned in this debate—the question of reducing the expenses of officers. Most of your Lordships know the inevitable
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  expenses of a young officer which fall, on his parents. There are, I am sure, no parents who grudge any reasonable expenditure, but my conviction is that we shall never get a real body of working officers until we have very radically reduced the expenses of living that fall upon the young officer. The British Army wants working officers, and not young men with pockets full of money, a strong taste for amusements, and social aspirations. I am convinced that if the life of officers was so re-arranged as to make them working professional men, instead of amateurs, the best officers would come from homes where they have looked from their infancy at the pictures of their fighting ancestors, and they would be moved to devote themselves heart and soul to the work of their profession, with an ambition to do something worthy of their names. That is my feeling with regard to the question of expenses. I think the recommendation of the Committee on this point is far too timid; it only speaks of reducing expenses in cavalry regiments. But there are many infantry regiments in which the expenses of officers are far greater than they ought to be. There is a double waste in this system, for it often keeps out the poor man who might make the best soldier, and diverts the rich man from the pursuit of his profession.
  There is another somewhat delicate point, which, to my mind, goes to the root of the whole matter. I refer to the question of promotion by selection, which, I presume, means promotion by merit, instead of by seniority. This is really a question whether officers shall have an open field to rise to lucrative and honourable places in the Army without any help from social influences and connections. I have ventured to say that this goes to the root of the matter, and, so far as I have been able to observe, there is a good deal of truth in the reports which are prevalent that there is no real inducement to a young officer to devote himself to his profession with zeal and industry, because, without family connection and without being known in the higher circles of society, he has not an equal chance of showing what he can do. It is commonly stated—I do not endorse the statement, but it is prevalent both in the Army and outside—that an inordinate proportion of

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  opportunities, and even of distinctions, in the Army go to such favoured regiments as the Guards. If there is any foundation for that complaint, it ought to be met. It is also commonly said that positions on the staff of the Army in a war are given in very large proportion to persons with family connections, and not in due proportion to those working soldiers who, in far-off places in the Empire, have, if there was a system under which their merit was really known, shown that they are preeminently the men to occupy these positions.
  If these complaints are well founded, then I venture to say that the remedy is to make the military profession an open profession — as open as the great profession of medicine or of the law. We all turn in our moments of anxiety to the men who have made their names in the great profession of medicine, but in almost every case these men have worked their way to the front without any help whatever beyond their own industry and ability. I turn, again, to the law. The men who come to the front are the men who have fought for and won their positions in the open field. That cannot be said of the military profession. I say nothing of my own profession, because I am not infrequently reminded by those who differ from me that my promotion was due to a political accident. I must confess that I have no liking for the stream of tendency which is turning our freedom-loving, industrial nation into a military empire, with the taint of commercial greed in it; but we must have an Army. Let us, then, make it efficient; and to make it efficient we should make it more democratic. The three reforms—putting aside all the minor recommendations—which are of primary importance are, firstly, the reconstitution of the great, schools of military education in the way I have described; secondly, a reduction in the expenses of the officers of the Army—in other words, that we should close the door resolutely against the influences of plutocracy, so as to get the best working officers; and, thirdly, that we should, by way of self-denying ordinance, insist that through all grades the profession of the officer should be absolutely open. If these three main reforms are set on foot, we may very soon have the best army in the world,
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  as I venture to think we have some of the best material. Failing these reforms, whatever else may be done, our last state may be no better than the first.
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Lord RAGLAN): My Lords, I do not propose to detain your Lordships very long. This subject is one of the most important that could possibly be brought before the House. I very much regret that I am not in a position this afternoon to be able to give the noble Lord the information for which he asks in the question which forms the first part of the Motion on the Paper. The reason why I am not in the position to do so is, very briefly, as follows. There are few things which can be of more importance as regards the efficiency of the Army than the education of the young gentlemen who are candidates for entering the Army as commissioned officers, and also of those young officers who have entered the service of His Majesty. In this country, as in all other countries, there has always been the greatest difficulty in ensuring that the training of the Army does not deteriorate during peace time. In this country the difficulty is enhanced by the fact that we have to keep an enormous proportion of our regular forces scattered about in small garrisons all over the world, many of them in unhealthy climates in which much exertion is apt to bring on illness, and many in small islands in which there is no ground available for manœuvres. In the matter of training, the Army is at a great disadvantage compared with the Navy. The Navy is practically always engaged in war—always at war with the elements. If an officer makes a mistake while in charge of one of His Majesty's ships, the mistake may be fatal both to the safety of the ship and the crew. In peace manœuvres, an officer of the Army may make a mistake, but that mistake, after all, is more or less a matter of opinion. General A may think the officer was acting wrongly, while General B may regard his action as quite right. These are matters which render the question of the education of officers of the Army always more difficult than that of officers of the Navy.
  The noble Lord referred to the fact that it is three months since the Report of the Committee, presided over by Mr. Akers Douglas, was issued, and he seemed

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  to think that little or nothing had been clone in the direction which he desires during that period. In the first place, I. would like to point out that those three months have been months of considerable stress at the War Office. Although peace has been declared, I can assure your Lordships from personal experience that the work of the War Office has by no means fallen off to the extent to which people who are not acquainted with what is going on there may imagine. A question so important and so far-reaching as this is not one to be taken up in the few intervals which can be devoted to it during the present time of strain and stress. The whole question is so important that any step which is taken should be most thoroughly and carefully thought out beforehand, and we ought to be quite sure that no step is taken which is not in the right direction. The question must be viewed as a whole. Any false step, any alteration which is not in the right direction, may produce an effect which would be incalculable. I can assure your Lordships that the subject has not been lost sight of by my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War. It has occupied a very large amount of his attention, and he has been almost daily engaged in discussing these educational matters with those who are best qualified to give him proper advice. It is the intention of the Secretary of State to formulate as soon as he can some scheme which will improve the education of the British officer. With regard to the particular question to which the noble Lord's Motion is directed, I would point out that the subject of the appointment of a Director General of Education cannot be regarded by itself. It must be considered as part of an entire scheme, and I therefore hope the noble Lord will not press his Motion.
  LORD DENMAN: My Lords, I should not have ventured to interpose in this debate were I not able to lay claim to some slight knowledge of the subject under discussion. About ten years ago I entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst as a cadet, and, since passing out, I have spent the greater part of my life in the service. I have, therefore, some slight acquaintance with
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  the educational methods at present in vogue in the Army. The principal defect that a good many officers have noticed in the course of instruction at Sandhurst is that it is of rather too ambitious a character. I will take one instance, namely, that of tactics. In tactics, the cadet is taught the employment of cavalry and trained artillery; he is taught how to handle a division, and how to wield an army corps, how to march his army corps to the front, and how to manœuvre it on coming in contact with the enemy. All this, and a great deal more, forms part of the instruction of cadets at Sandhurst, and the cadet is a little disappointed on joining his regiment when he is put back for three months recruit drill on the barrack square. I think that such an elaborate course of instruction, useful though it may be later in life, is hardly the most suitable for boys just fresh from school, who have probably never set eyes on a battery of artillery in marching order in their lives, and who have probably never seen more horses together in one place than at a meet of their local pack of hounds. I cannot help thinking that it would be more useful to give the cadet thorough instruction in the duties of the ordinary private soldier, and to begin to inculcate into him some of those principles of military discipline which seem lately to have been somewhat lacking at the college.
  I think it is a matter for regret that the recommendations of the Committee as regards Sandhurst have not gone a little further in the direction in which they have begun. We are all, I am sure, glad to hear from the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for War that the War Office is shortly going to take this matter in hand, and I think, therefore, I might deal somewhat in detail with the course which the Committee recommend. They do not really propose to make any very radical alterations in the course of instruction at Sandhurst. What they recommend, roughly, is that there should be more out-of-door work and more riding—a; most excellent recommendation; that the length of the course should be extended to two years, and that musketry and s gnalling should be taught. When

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  I was at Sandhurst, musketry was taught, and I cannot help thinking that signalling is a thing which is equally well learnt with the regiment. At any rate, such a smattering of signalling as can be acquired at Sandhurst will not be sufficient to obviate the necessity of going through the signalling course at Aldershot. The objection against the present course of instruction at Sandhurst is, I think, to be found in the Report itself. The opinion of the Committee was practically unanimous in favour of the University candidate. That amounts practically to this, that the University candidate who joins the service, as a rule with no military I training at all, becomes just as efficient an officer as the man who has had eighteen months technical instruction. I think this is a very curious anomaly, and I do not suppose it exists in any other profession except the British Army.
  We see in the Report that a circular was sent to officers commanding regiments to ask for their opinion on the respective merits of the candidates who join through the Militia and the Sandhurst cadets, and the universal opinion was that the Militia candidate made the better officer. I think the reason for that is not far to seek. It is because on joining his regiment the Militia officer knows something of regimental duties. I think this emphasises the point to which, in my opinion, the Committee has hardly sufficiently drawn attention, that the school for the young officer should be his regiment. The objects of military education are, I take it, first of all to turn out a good regimental officer, a secondary object being, I presume, to give him such a groundwork of instruction as to enable him to learn, and later on to take up the duties of a staff officer. I do not think the course at Sandhurst is sufficiently devoted to teaching an officer regimental duties. As the Report points out, when a cadet leaves Sandhurst he is under the impression that, as far as his technical military education is concerned, he has learnt all that will be required of him, and that is probably the case, as he is never likely, unless he chooses to go to the Staff College, to require very much more training than he gets
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  at Sandhurst, in order to pass the examination for promotion which is the only further test to which he is subjected. With regard to Woolwich cadets, who have been on the whole favourably reported upon, the case is somewhat different. The engineer officer has to spend two years after he leaves Woolwich at the Engineering School at Chatham, and the artillery officer is obliged to go through a course at Shoeburyness or the other centre. Therefore, I think that probably some other course will have to be found that goes more thoroughly to the root of the matter than the course recommended by the Committee.
  I should have thought that it might be possible to institute a new college altogether, to which officers, or at any rate a large proportion of the officers in the Army, might go after some two or three years' service, and that then they should learn thoroughly a good deal of what they are now taught at Sandhurst. It would then be possible to cut down the course at Sandhurst to one year, to teach a cadet thoroughly the duties of a private soldier, and to pay a great deal of attention to his physical training. I think that the advantages of such a course of instruction would be great. They would ensure, in the first place, a continuity of education for the young officer. As the noble Lord opposite (Lord Harris) pointed out, it is the education subsequent to his leaving college that is, after all, the most important thing. He would also have technical military instruction at a time when he is better able to appreciate the value of it, and it would foster to a certain extent that spirit of keenness and competition which at present, as all the speakers have agreed, is absent. It would also, I think, in the long run, tend to raise the course of instruction at the Staff College. The disadvantages, of course, would be that it would take away an officer for a year, or a year and a half, from his regiment, and, no doubt, that is always a bad thing, because it puts the regimental duty on the other officers. The other great objection, no doubt, would be the expense. Of course, that is a serious question, and one which meets people who deal with Army questions at every turn. But it is

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  surely not unreasonable to expect that a Government which is going to spend such large sums on the general education of the country, and which is at present devoting so much time and trouble to the piloting of an Education Bill through Parliament, should make some adequate provision for the education of officers in the Army. I think the whole tendency in the Army is to teach men a little of a great many subjects, but to teach them nothing very well. I believe that in most other professions special knowledge is almost a necessity, and it is special knowledge which is, after all, of the utmost value. I will take the case of topography. I do not think our generals in South Africa can have thought very much of the capacity of the officers who served under their command to make maps or sketches, because there were so very few indeed made of the country; and I am afraid that there are not many officers in the Army, either serving with their regiments or on the staff, who would be able to turn out a really accurate road sketch at the pace at which a column is marching. When I was in South Africa, and trekking along roads where columns had been before, I was often obliged to risk valuable lives in finding out information which I ought to have had given me on a map. I hope that when the War Office docs deal with this question they will take a wide and broad-minded view of it, and not content themselves with renovating antiquated methods and tinkering up institutions which are themselves so sadly in need of drastic reform.
  LORD RIBBLESDALE: My Lords, I am sure we all desire to congratulate the noble Lord who has just sat down, on his first speech in this House. It was an interesting as well as a useful speech, I am very glad to hear from the noble Lord the Under Secretary for War that this subject has not been lost sight of by the War Office. We all recognise the great amount of work which the War-Office and the noble Lord himself have to do, and it is unreasonable to expect, particularly in this hot weather, that as a means of relaxation they should turn their attention to the carrying out of the recommendations of the Committee on Military Education, Pleasant as the
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  noble Lord's speeches always are in form, I am bound to say that tonight his speech was a little disappointing in substance. I think it is a pity that he is going to resist this Motion, the area of which is, after all, limited to a very small point, on which we are all agreed. I would suggest to my noble friend that in order to secure the acceptance of this Motion, and to save this important debate from ending up in the newspapers with the words "the subject then dropped," he should take out the word "deplorable," and should make the Motion end at the word "report." I cannot agree that the regimental officer is the ignorant person he is made out to be. What you have to remember is that after a certain ago people have to educate themselves. In the journey of life we are divided into people who are inclined to forget and people who are inclined to learn, and I do not think the appointment of an Inspector General would make much difference in that. As has been said, this is not a Party question, and I think that if the noble Lord will amend his Motion in the way I have suggested it will be acceptable to the House.
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of LANSDOWNE): My Lords, I think the feeling must be general that it would be impossible for us to accept the Motion in the form in which the noble Lord opposite placed it on the Paper. This Report covers an immense deal of ground. It deals not only with the antecedent education received by our officers, and with the intermediate education which they receive at the Royal Military College and the Royal Military Academy, but also with that, as I think, far more important education and training which they receive after obtaining their commissions. It would be out of the question that after the few weeks during which this Report has been in our hands we should at this moment announce to the House in detail the steps that we intend to take in order to give effect to any part of its recommendations. But if the noble Lord will be content to stop at the word "report," as proposed by Lord Ribblesdale, to substitute for the words "immediate steps" some such

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  words as "the earliest possible steps," and to leave out the word "deplorable," then we might very well agree to the Motion. But the speech in which the noble Lord opposite commenced the debate renders it absolutely necessary that I should inflict a few words on your Lordships' House. The noble Lord traced the failure of our system of military education more especially to the fact that in the year 1899, when I had charge of the War Office, we abolished the office of Director General of Military Education. Some of the noble Lord's criticisms show how necessary it is to examine matters of this kind with a little more care than he bestowed on this part of the subject.
  What were the facts with regard to the abolition of the office of Director General of Military Education? A vacancy occurred in that office, and it became my duty to consider whether a new appointment should be made. The office had existed for a considerable number of years, and I suggest, for the noble Lord's consideration, that, if during these years military education has been as deficient as he believes it to have been, if Sandhurst has got into a bad way, if the Civil Service examinations are not what they should be, this at any rate shows that the existence of the office of Director General did not afford a guarantee against that deterioration of our educational system in the Army which the noble Lord so much deplores. The position of the Director General was this. He had the charge of the whole of military education, including the Army schools, at which the children of private soldiers are educated, everything from that up to the examinations for promotion to the rank of Field Officer. The Director General was not under the military side of the War Office, but he was an official subordinate to the Secretary for War—an arrangement which, as the Committee point out, had the effect of accentuating the distinction between military training and military education which we all desire to efface as much as possible. To the best of my belief, it was not always possible to discover for that high office an incumbent possessing any special aptitude for dealing with educational problems. I
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  will not put it more strongly than that. I made inquiry into the work conducted in the Director General's office, and I came to the conclusion that a different distribution was desirable. We separated that part of the work which concerns the Army schools from the rest, and we put the education of officers under the Military Secretary, the training of officers being under the Adjutant General. That arrangement had the effect of bringing the training and the education together and placing them both within the immediate ken of the Commander-in-Chief and the high military authorities of the War Office.
  In my belief it would have been quite impossible to have found, in or outside the office, any official more competent to take charge of military education than the then Military Secretary, Sir Coleridge Grove, an officer with a brilliant University career, who has seen service in the field, who has filled many important appointments at headquarters, and who enjoyed in the highest degree the confidence of the Commander-in-Chief. We associated with Sir Coleridge Grove a very able officer, Colonel Delavoye, who had for a long time been in special charge of educational question sunder the Director General. I am prepared to say that that arrangement, although it may, perhaps, not have been a perfect arrangement, was a very much better one than the arrangement which it replaced. I think, if the noble Lord will refer to the Report of the Committee, he will see that that is so. In fact, I think it would be correct to say that if at this moment you were to give Colonel Delavoye a step in rank, and associate with him that Advisory Board for which the noble Lord did not particularly press, you would have the arrangement which the Committee desires to see introduced. I believe it was a better arrangement in theory as I believe it was a better arrangement in practice, and I am almost tempted to say that one of the consequences of the change was the appointment of this Committee. I say what I know when I tell your Lordships that Sir Coleridge Grove, after taking stock of the educational arrangements which he found in existence, came to the conclusion, which he recorded in a Minute, that a Committee of this kind on which the public schools

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  and universities would be represented, was necessary in order to get to the bottom of these educational problems; and, although it is possible that my right hon, colleague would have appointed this Committee whether Sir Coleridge Grove recommended it or not, it was certainly from Sir Coleridge Grove that the Motion for the appointment of some such Committee as this first proceeded.
  There is another result of the change which I should point out. I doubt very much whether, if the old arrangement had remained in force, it would have been possible for the War Office to provide the large extra number of officers of whom we stood in need when the great demand created by the war came upon us. The figures are striking. In 1896, the year in which I went to the War office, there were just over 500 first appointments to the Army; in 1899 the number had risen to 1,000; in 1900 to 2,274 officers. I maintain that, if at that time of stress you had had two different officials, the one responsible for testing the fitness of candidates and the other for appointing and selecting them, it would have been impossible to bring that great number of young officers into the Army as rapidly and as smoothly as we did. The change was, I need not say, not made for economical considerations. These did not enter into our minds at all. It was suggested by the noble Lord that we had economised in the rewards for foreign languages. It is true that the sum taken four or five years ago was £4,000, and that it fell to £1,000. Why? Because the number of officers who came forward to claim these grants was not sufficient to absorb the £4,000. We did what is always done—namely, to include in the Estimates for the coining year a sum corresponding to that which had been actually spent in the past year.
  I am not going to enter into the details of the Report of the Committee. It contains a good many statements and recommendations which, in my opinion, require a great deal of careful consideration before we can venture to act upon them. I hope, in regard to what is called antecedent education, that we shall be slow to give up the principle which has hitherto been accepted by
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  successive Governments, that we should endeavour to attract to the Army the best young men from our great public schools. That principle was laid down by Lord Dufferin's Commission many years ago, and we have acted upon it consistently. If the best lads we can get from the public schools are not good enough for us, that suggests to my mind the idea that there is something not quite right with the education given in the public schools themselves; and I trust that the learned headmasters who have given us so much valuable and admirable advice, which we shall take to heart, will turn their eyes towards matters nearer home, and consider whether they cannot do something in their own schools to bring up a race of lads better grounded for the great profession of arms. Certainly in the case of Sandhurst there is a great deal to be done; and I am able to say that long before the incidents which have lately taken place there, my right hon. colleague had fully made up his mind that radical changes, both in the personnel and in the system of Sandhurst were inevitable. There remains the third branch of military education, which seems to me by far the most important of all—I mean the training which the officer receives in his regiment, an education which, to my mind, should never stop from the day he receives his commission, until the day he goes on half-pay. It seems to me that by far the heaviest count in this indictment is that which suggests to us that that particular branch of the officer's education has been grievously neglected. I believe the raw material we get is good enough. If the manufactured article does not turn out as well as it might, I am afraid it is because there is something wrong in the process of manufacture. To my mind the mill in which that manufacture should go on is the regiment; and if it is the case, as we are constantly told, that it is bad form for young officers to pay attention to the details of his profession, if it is true that their brains are allowed to lie fallow between one examination and another, if the indolent and ignorant are advanced and the meritorious are not recognised, and if extravagant habits prevail, I say that the remedy is to be careful in the choice of the men to whom you give the command of regiments,

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  and to be ruthless if you find that they do not do their duty by the fficers under their command.
  But I believe that these allegations, so easily and glibly made, are to a great extent exaggerated. With all their faults, my Lords, our young officers at the present day, in point of character, manliness, and good physique, will bear comparison with their predecessors at any period in the history of the Army; and, although there is a great deal of room for improvement, I believe that they take more interest in, and thought for, their profession than was the case twenty or forty years ago. Merit may not always, perhaps, work its way to the front, but it has a much better chance of doing so than it had when it was the power of the purse which bought a man his rank in the Army. If I wanted proof of that I would ask your Lordships to consider how admirably these officers acquit themselves when the opportunity is given to them. I will not repeat what has been said about their behaviour in the South African war, but I ask you to consider what the Indian Army—whose representatives we have been admiring so much lately—owes to the handful of British officers who are placed in charge of every regiment; and what does not the Egyptian Army, regenerated by British officers, owe to them? All over the world, wherever there are irregular levies, military police, and those improvised forces on which we have so often to rely, there you find the young officer who gets a chance rising to the occasion and making an indelible mark on the people placed under him.
  One other illustration. I spoke just now of the number of officers now employed extra-regimentally in the Colonies and in different parts of the Empire. If we do not appreciate our officers, other people do. Ten years ago there were only sixty-two British officers on extra regimental employment of this kind. At this moment there are no less than 525, and the demand is continually increasing. It is a demand from people who are not obliged to take these officers, but who come as suppliants to beg for these men, because there is no one else who can do their work so well, and if we are sometimes disappointed, do not let us forget that
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  we expect now a great deal more of every officer in the Army than we ever expected before. The conditions of war in the present day require qualities which were not expected of the old race of officers. I saw lately a most interesting statement to this effect—that at the battle of Waterloo, 68,000 British troops were extended over a front of only three miles, and that at the battle of Diamond Hill a British force of 40,000 men was extended over a front of no less than 23 miles. What does that mean? It means that not only brigade is separated from brigade by a great distance, but battalion from battalion, company from company, section from section, and man from man; and in fighting in these conditions you must have in your officers qualities of decision and self-reliance which were undreamt of in the philosophy of the older race. They are qualities which no examination, and which not even rows of Directors-General, will discover for you. They can be imparted only by men who possess those qualities themselves, and who owe their high position to the fact that they possess them. I believe that such men do exist in the British Army; and if, as the result of this Report, they are given a wider scope and a greater opportunity of making their influence felt, its pages will not have been written in vain.
  *LORD MONKSWELL: I am much obliged to the noble Marquess for his suggestion, and I shall the more cheerfully amend my Motion in accordance with that suggestion because he, unlike the noble Lord the Under Secretary, gave me some valuable information as to the attitude the Government are going to adopt in the matter of military education. He said that Colonel Delavoye will probably have a step in rank.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANDSDOWNE: I said that if Colonel Delavoye were given a step in rank the arrangement would be very much what the Committee recommends.
  LORD MONKSWELL: I hope Colonel Delavoye will be given a step in rank because, as the Committee point out, it is impossible that a colonel should have

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  authority in educational matters over the Governors of Sandhurst and Woolwich. My point is that there should be some central body for education, and the noble Marquess suggests that something in the nature of a Council of Military Education should be set up. But whether that be done or not, I am quite certain that there must be a central body. With regard to the amount given for languages I regret that I was misled, and I accept the noble Marquess's explanation. My Motion, as amended, will read as follows—
  "That, is the opinion of this House, the earliest possibly steps should be taken with a view to remedy the state of things disclosed in the report of the Committee on Military Education."
  On Question, resolved in the affirmative.
  House adjourned at ten minutes past Seven o'clock, till tomorrow, half-past Ten o'clock.