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COMPULSORY SERVICE
"Sir, I considered myself as entrusted with
a certain portion of truth. I have given my
opinion sincerely; let them show where they
think me wrong."
Dr. Johnson
COMPULSORY
SERVICE
A STUDY OF THE QUESTION IN
THE LIGHT OF EXPERIENCE
BY GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE
RIGHT HON. R. B. HALDANE
SECOND EDITION
WITH NOTES ON THE ADMIRALTY VIEW OF THE
RISK OF INVASION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
191 1
U3
/fit
First Edition .... November 1910
Second Edition .... January 191 1
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Organisation of the Army — The Anxieties of an Adjutant-
General — The Engagement to Serve Over-soa — British and
Foreign Armies — The British Over-sea Army a Large One — The
Comrnittoo of Imperial Defence — Character of this Committee —
Its Development — Principles laid down by it — Relations of Navy
and Army — The Expeditionary Army — Prevention of Invasion —
Difficulties of Invasion — Function of tho Territorial Force —
The Territorial Force — Its Training — Its Development — Homo
Defence — Future of Territorial Force — The Sceptics — Tho Alter-
natives — Naval Strength— National Service League Plan — Its
Difficulties — Tho Officer Question — A Defoctivo Estimate — The
Other Way — Conclusion ...... pp. 9-42
COMPULSORY SERVICE
Introductory — Tho British Soldier — Stato Policy — Its Instru-
ments — Regular and Militia Systems — Compulsory and Volun-
tary S'Tvico- Drawbacks of Compulsory Service — Two Schools
— Our Military Problem — Foreign Experience — Differences of
I'roblorn — Citizen Armies — Their Limitations — Staying Power
— Tho South African War — Foar of Invasion— Temptation to
C omp r o mise — Fooling in Groat Britain Difficulty of Increasing
Regulars — Continental Opinion -German Experience — German
Ovor-soa Soldiers — Their Cost — Foreign Expeditions— Russian
Experience — French Exporionco — Foreign Legion and Colonial
Army — French Terms of Service — Pay and Rowards in Franco
5
6 CONTENTS
— Government Posts— French Experience— French Soldiers-
Attitude towards Colonial Army— Numbers of French Over-sea
Army— Proportion kept at Home— The British Expeditionary
;F orce _Continental Analogy Fails— Lessons from Home Experi-
ence — The Three-Years System— Its Results— The Lesson— Atti-
tude towards Compulsion— Dangers of Compulsory Service-
Summing Up— Alternative Plans— The German Model— Details—
Our Six Divisions— Drawbacks of Continental Model— Advantages
and Disadvantages— Balance of Advantage— Another View— Loss
of Strength Over-sea — National Service League Plan — Its General
Scheme— Its Financial Aspectr— Recruit Training— Period of
Year— Danger to Regular Recruiting — Current Misconceptions
—Further Difficulties— The Five Alternatives— Their Respective
Merits— Another Possibility— The Territorial Force— Its Value,
Present and Future — Misconceptions — Fighting Quality — Lead-
ing of Territorials— Tho Moral Factor— The Voluntary Spirit
— The Parade at Windsor — Quality of Territorials— South
African Experience— The Imperial Light Horse — The Colonials
— The City Imperial Volunteers — Royal Commission Evidence
— Attainment of Fighting Value — Character of Territorial
Soldier — The Moral Factor— Development of Territorial Force
— Useful Expenditure — Real Alternative Policies — A Continental
Army — Home Defence Policy— Its Danger to tho Empire— The
Better Way PP- 43-139
CONCLUSIONS
Growth of Our System— A Now Factor— A Conception-
Some Fallacies— A Third Line— Compulsion for Third Line-
Final Words PP- 139-148
CONTENTS
APPENDICES
APP.
I Text of the Bill Introduced in the House of Lords
to Give Effect to the Proposals of the National
Service League pp. 151-159
II Memorandum of the National Service League on
the National Service (Training and Home Defence)
Bill pp. 160-162
III Estimate by the National Service League of the
Numbers and Cost involved under its Proposals.
pp. 163-181
IV Parliamentary Paper (House of Lords, July 8, 1009)
containing the Remarks of the Finance Department
of the War Okbice on the Estimate of the National
Service League pp. 182-188
V Notes on War Office Paper " Army, July 8, 1909,"
by the National Service League . . pp. 189-197
VI Supplementary Note by the Finance Department
of the War Office pp. 198-201
VII Financial Notes on a Possible Conscript Army for
Home Defence pp. 202-208
VIII Notes containing the Admiralty View of the Risk
of Invasion pp. 20'J-212
INTRODUCTION
Interest in the question of compulsory
military service in these islands is very
general, and it is important that materials
for forming a judgment on the subject should
be before the public. I have therefore
thought it right to publish a memorandum
written for me by one who has very recently
held the position of Adjutant-General — Sir
Ian Hamilton. It is an unofficial docu-
ment, originally prepared for my private
information, and it does not profess to do
more than record the conclusions about
various alternatives to the existing system
at which he has individually arrived, after
study of facts and figures which came
before him during the period of his work
as Adjutant-General.
For the information of the lav reader, I
may mention that the work of organising
the British Army ;it headquarters is one
which is carefully distributed. The General
Staff plans out the scheme of the various
forces on the basis of preparation for
war ; determines the number, structure, and
u
10 THE ORGANISATION OF THE ARMY
proper size or establishment of the cadres
in war, and the purposes and standard of
their equipment, accessories, and weapons.
These last are supplied by the Quarter-
master-General and the Master-General of
the Ordnance. To the Department of the
Adjutant-General falls, among other duties,
that of finding and organising in peace
the men to fill the cadres which the
General Staff demands for war. These
cadres may be on paper the best in the
world, but their reality depends on whether
it is possible to get recruits, adequate in
number and in quality, to fill them. To
an Adjutant-General, therefore, the idea of
compulsory service is naturally an attractive
one. He looks with envy on the easy
fashion in which cadres are filled in Germany,
France, and Switzerland. He thinks of
the physical training and habits of exactness
which compulsory service makes general.
But, as a great critic of life has told us,
he who acts on only one maxim is a pedant
and spoils things for himself and for others.
The Adjutant-General of the British Army
has more than one thing to consider, and
he must resist temptations into which the
abstract mind is prone to fall. He has to
approach the proposition to fill cadres by
ANXIETIES OF AN ADJUTANT-GENERAL 11
compulsion, even for preliminary training,
with anxious regard to certain peculiarities
which are characteristic of the British Army,
and of it alone among the armies of the
world. What he has never to lose sight of
is that the little islands on which we live
are the centre of an enormous and scattered
Empire, the parts of which are separated
by great stretches of ocean from the parent
islands and from each other. No other
nation possesses this peculiar feature to
anything approaching the same extent.
It is therefore no accident or result of
haphazard conjecture, but rather a deep-
seated instinct, that has, for generations
past, led our rulers and our sailors and
soldiers to base their strategy on a principle
to which they have held tenaciously. It
is that, first in the order of importance
comes sea-power, backed up not only by
adequate over-sea garrisons, but by an
expeditionary army, kept at home in time
of peace, but so organised that it is ready
for immediate transport by the fleet to
distant scenes of action, and is capable
of there maintaining long campaigns with
the least possible dislocation of the social
life of the nation. Such an expeditionary
army is essentially a long-range weapon
12 THE ENGAGEMENT TO SERVE OVER-SEA
and can be raised only on a long-service
basis.* Those who compose it must there-
fore accept the Service as their profession
for some years, and with it the obligation
to embark without any delay. Modern con-
ceptions of mobilisation preclude any idea
that time will be available for a search for
those willing to go. The undertaking must
be a term of service agreed to from the
very first day the recruit joins. Sir Ian
Hamilton's conclusion is that it is only from
a volunteer recruit who proposes to make
the Army his profession that we can suc-
cessfully ask for such an undertaking.
It is customary to speak of the British
Army as a very small one. But for purposes
of comparison like must be compared with
like. Our Home-Defence Army ought, for
reasons which I will develop later on, to
be small relatively to that of continental
nations. This is a further result of our
geographical conditions. The Home frontiers
* By long service, I do not hero mean the pre-Cardwell
system, under which soldiers served in the ranks until
they were pensioned, but a system under which men
continue in the ranks long enough (six or seven years) to
give a fair period of service abroad after they have been
fully trained, and thereafter serve a further period (six or
five years) in the Army Reserve, liable to be called up and
sent abroad in a national emergency.
BRITISH AND FOREIGN ARMIES 13
of this country are not land but sea frontiers.
But considerations of strategy require that
the other force, which is raised for the
purpose of service over-sea, should be
relatively greater than would suffice for
other nations that have not, to anything
approaching the same extent, to reinforce
distant over-sea outposts. As the result, it
is in point of fact enormously larger than
the similar forces of Germany and France
put together. These countries have not
had our obligation in this respect, but they
have had a quite different obligation, under
which they have fashioned their armies on
another principle. Their main anxiety is
as to how they may best defend open land
frontiers ; and to this end they have found
that the only adequate means is to sub-
ordinate all other considerations to that of
organising the nation through compulsory
service into a huge short-service Army.
Their ordinary citizens are trained thor-
oughly as soldiers, but in reality with a
view only to serving in a brief though
colossal campaign which must be brought
to a decision comparatively speedily ; and
are passed to the Reserve as soon as their
training is finished. When war breaks out,
the cost of keeping such an army mobilised
14 BRITISH OVER-SEA ARMY A LARGE ONE
is enormous. Not only the outlay on pay
and equipment, but the indirect cost
arising from dislocation of industry and
civil life generally, is such that these cam-
paigns speedily end in exhaustion, and the
final question is as to which nation, by
the perfection of its military organisation,
can count on wearing out the other before
it itself collapses. Such national armies
are therefore in substance, and of necessity,
short-service armies, and weapons adapted
only for operations at short range. What,
for the purposes of the present question, is
of importance is that, as Sir Ian Hamilton
shows, they preclude that other sort of
army, which is essential for long-range
operations over-sea, from being raised along-
side of them out of the same material.
But just because Great Britain is not
compelled to maintain enormous armies
for the defence of its home frontiers against
invasion, it can organise a relatively very
large over-sea professional force, and keep
it, even in peace time, not only in being
but in a high state of training, and fit to
serve for a prolonged campaign without
exhausting the country in either men or
money. We have nearly 76,000 British
soldiers in India, and some 37,000 in other
THE COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE 15
over-sea garrisons. We possess at home, in
addition, the Expeditionary Army, the annual
training of which now culminates regularly
in the autumn manoeuvres, and with which
the public has thus become familiar. This
force mobilises, with its accessories and
Army troops, at a figure of about 170,000.
In other words, we recruit and maintain
a professional long-range army of nearly
300,000, and we are able to do so because
our geographical position leaves us free to
concentrate on this. We accomplish the
result on the only basis on which it can be
accomplished — by making service in the
Army a voluntary profession.
One of the advantages which followed on
the foundation by Mr. Balfour of the
Committee of Imperial Defence was that
the subjects assigned to that Committee
began to be systematically and scientifically
studied. The Committee affords to the
Chiefs of the Staff at the Admiralty and at
the War Office a meeting-place where they
li;ive a constant opportunity of bringing
their operations into harmony, and of
working out in detail objects and principles,
common to both Services, which arc to be
followed by those who serve under them.
But the Committee does more than this.
16 CHARACTER OF THIS COMMITTEE
Recently it has developed the scope of its
procedure. The Foreign and Colonial Of-
fices, the India Office, the Home Office, the
Treasury, the Board of Trade, and the Post
Office are now, not only through their
Ministerial Chiefs, but in the persons of
the permanent heads of departments, called
into council whenever occasion renders it
useful. The organisation works largely
through carefully chosen sub-committees,
of which several are always sitting and col-
lecting and investigating materials. When
the main body assembles the Prime Minister
presides, having summoned not only the
permanent members, but colonial statesmen
who may be in London and are concerned
in the particular problem of defence which
is under investigation. More and more
each year the Committee is being trans-
formed into a body, of which the Prime
Minister is the controlling head, but which
works mainly through experts. The Sub-
Committees, which report to the main
body, deal with work much of it so highly
technical that it is necessarily carried out
by experts. This work the highly qualified
secretary, Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Ottley
and his special staff, arrange, under the
eye of the Prime Minister. With the Ad-
ITS DEVELOPMENT 17
miralty and the War Office the Secretary
is in daily communication. The Defence
Committee thus organised contains the germ
of a Great General Staff for the Empire.
The Admiralty consults it on problems that
are more than merely naval. The Imperial
General Staff of the Army is in constant
relation with it over matters that concern
the defences of the Empire. The Committee
has now become a body which is in effect
sitting and working, largely through the
medium of its sub-committees and officials,
almost as continuously as is the General
Staff of the Army. If war were threatened
it could develop into a War Council for
the Prime Minister, the duty of which
would be to furnish him, and through him
his Ministers, with the expert knowledge
required before policy could be settled in
the Cabinet. It is a body the function of
which is to study in time of peace, as a
Great General Stall' ought, possible situa-
tions with a view to the nation and the
Empire knowing what to do should war
come. Whenever the day arrives at which
Mr. Balfour is again its head I think he will
find that the organisation which he founded
has developed under Sir Henry Cainpbcll-
Bannerman and Mr. Asquith as nearly as
2
18 PRINCIPLES LAID DOWN BY IT
could be along the lines he originally laiddown.
Continuity in organisation for defence is a
great advantage, and the leaders on both sides
have been loyal to each other in insisting on it.
Now, one of the most useful contributions
which this Great General Staff of the Empire
has made to the problem of Home Defence
in particular is the laying down of funda-
mental principles with great distinctness.
First under Mr. Balfour, and again under
Mr. Asquith, certain conclusions have, after
prolonged investigation and examination of
expert opinion, been affirmed and re-
affirmed. I will set out the substance of
these conclusions as they have been in-
dicated by Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, and
others in Parliament.
The primary proposition is that command
of the sea is the essential foundation of our
strategy, not only for Imperial but for Home
defence. The Navy undertakes to protect
British shores from invasion on a great
scale. Writing as a layman who has had
the duty of endeavouring to weigh the state-
ments on the question made by the only
people whose opinions are of real weight
on this point, the responsible representatives
of the Navy, I add here that I have reason
to believe that the Admiralty is to-day in a
RELATIONS OF NAVY AND ARMY 19
position to make this undertaking good,* and,
if we do not in our policy stray away from
first principles, and divert our resources into
a wrong direction, I see no reason to doubt
that the ability to afford this protection will
continue. Moreover, the undertaking of the
Admiralty extends to this, that on existing
lines of policy the guarantee will be made
good without tying to these coasts ships which
are required for command of more distant
waters. Our first and fundamental duty in
the organisation of our defences is thus to
keep the Navy at such a strength as will
maintain this strategical position. Although
my immediate connection is with the Army,
I call this our basic principle. It is the clear
outcome of accepted premises that it should
be so, and, looking to our geographical
position, it is vital that the Army and the
Navy should be organised with this conclusion
in clear view. When, therefore, expansions
of the Army for Home defence purposes are
* "In Appendix VJ1I I have, with their permission,
printed the notes supplied by the Hoard of Admiralty for
the nee of tho War Office in a debate which was to have
taken place last November in the ||., ii e of Lords, on a
motion by Lord Roberta, From these notes it will he seen
that our naval line of defence ifl now not tingle but
twofold. The first line consists of the Fleet; the second
of a separate coast defence organisation of subinarino
and destroyer flotillas."
20 THE EXPEDITIONARY ARMY
proposed which would add largely to the Esti-
mates, the first question I ask is whether those
who propose them are holding firmly, in spirit
as well as in words, to the basic principle,
or whether the new expenditure would have
as its tendency, intentional or unconscious,
to trench upon what is requisite for the main-
tenance of the proper standard of sea-power.
The second conclusion is that to make
the Navy an effective weapon we require a
military instrument capable of being used
in conjunction with it. This must not be a
mere force for Home defence. The true
strategical foundation of all adequate de-
fensive preparations is the power of rapidly
assuming the offensive by striking wherever
a blow will be most effective, it may be at
some distant point in the enemy's organisa-
tion. To this end a highly trained army for
over-sea work is for us essential, an army such
as can be raised only on a professional and
therefore voluntary footing. Such an army
can never be large compared with those that
can be raised for the mere purpose of domestic
defence. But with us it is and ought to be
much larger than the over-sea force of any
inland nation with comparatively little to
garrison abroad, whose military strength has
to be developed and concentrated in the shape
PREVENTION OF INVASION 21
of an army to guard land frontiers capable
of being guarded in no other way.
It follows inevitably that in shaping our
military preparations for Home defence we
must bear in mind the purpose to which they
are shown by these two conclusions to be
limited. A first-line army for Home defence
we do not want. The first line here is com-
posed of the divisions of the Fleet in Home
waters and the flotillas of destroyers and
submarines which guard our coast-line.
These we have to keep at such a strength
that they can afford adequate protection
against the advent of hostile transports.
But it is at least conceivable that some
hostile transports may succeed in evading
the observing fleet, to the extent of landing
a force of moderate dimensions or a series
of small detachments. That such attempts
at landi ng are, by reason of wind and weather,
very uncertain and very difficult operations
of war, the experience of the Territorial
Manoeuvres of this autumn shows. But
they may succeed ; and in a matter of
such vast importance the risk must be
provided for. Therefore, although the
Admiralty accepts the duty of maintaining
the command of the seas which surround
our coasts, a second line of security is re-
22 DIFFICULTIES OF INVASION
quired against forces which are small enough
to have a chance of slipping through — a
second line that can fulfil the double function
of being able either to deal with such
forces if they do arrive, or to compel the
enemv to send them in such magnitude
that they cannot escape the Fleet. The
method approved by the Defence Committee
for this purpose is to raise and train a citizen
force which will be greatly superior in
numbers to any force that can slip through,
and will drive the adversary on to the other
horn of the dilemma — that of his transports
becoming the target for a superior navy.
It does not matter how secretly or how
swiftly the enemy could, in his own territory,
and with a view to crossing the sea, bring his
troops to the ports of embarkation. Wire-
less telegraphy, the vigilance of those who
live by watching indications that affect the
Money Market, and other reasons besides,
make, it is true, even the most admirably
planned of such operations difficult of execu-
tion without warning. The real question is,
however, one for seamen. Those who desire
to learn what the transport across the ocean
of a force of, say, 70,000 means ; what sort
of target the transporting vessels and their
convoys would present, and what are the
DIFFICULTIES OF INVASION
23
difficulties in point of place, time, and
weather of the process, will find light upon
them in an article which appeared in The
Contemporary Review for February 1909
under the signature " Master Mariner."
This expert seaman calculates that an
invading force of 70,000 men — with horses,
guns, and transport — would need at least
150 vessels of sorts, or about 200,000 tons
of shipping. Three or four days would,
in his opinion, be required to get the troops
on board ; one or two days to get the ships
clear of the harbours ; and another two or
more days would be needed for the passage.
Allowing two days for news of such a venture
to leak out, our Admiralty would thus
get at least five days' notice of a threatened
attack. The convoy of ships would, he
estimates, cover at least twenty miles from
van to rear, and would throw up smoke
visible for another ten to fifty miles. On
an ival off our coasts, the business of getting
the ships in their proper places and rightly
anchored would, he says, be "a colossal
insk f;ir exceeding anything <»f the kind
ever attempted before." Even given fair
weather throughout, and assuming that
there was do opposition afloal <>r ashore —
1 an assumption that no seaman will con-
>/. c«. f
•
24 FUNCTION OF THE TERRITORIAL FORCE
cede " — the writer concludes that three
weeks would elapse from the first move in
the game to the day on which the invading
army would be ready to advance inland.*
The question whether the Admiralty are
right in the view they take, that the transports
of a force of probably a great deal less than
70,000 could not escape them, is essentially
a naval one. It has been closely considered
in the Defence Committee, and the answer
is that if the force exceeds 70,000 the opera-
tion has no chance of success. But, if so,
then all that has to be done is to provide
against a force of 70,000 at the outside, and
against those small and subsidiary opera-
tions of war called raids, whose purpose is
the secondary one of effecting, not a great
defeat, but disturbance and damage.
For the fulfilment of this purpose the
Territorial Force is being organised. Only
those who know what ground has to be
covered in the construction of a field army of
fourteen divisions and of fourteen mounted
brigades can appreciate how large and how
long an operation this is. It is all very well
* It must not be assumed that the General Staff adopts
this conclusion as the basis of its preparations. In plans
providing for risks of such supreme importance the factor
of safety always is made large and always ought to be so.
THE TERRITORIAL FORCE 25
to criticise. Differences of opinion as to how
best to proceed and where and to what extent
money has to be spent, will abound. Mis-
takes on the part of those responsible there
are certain to be. But with time and
patience these difficulties will be got over,
and the mistakes will be corrected, provided
only the public care sufficiently. And if
the conclusions of the Defence Committee to
which I have referred have been genuinely
adopted by the country as its policy, then
it seems to me that this nation, sensible
and wise as it has proved itself to be in
practical matters, will do what is necessary
in providing the men. The Force has been
in legal existence for little over two years,
and, though practically nothing but the In-
fantry and Yeomanry existed at the begin-
ning, it has already attained to five-sixths of
the numbers of its establishment. It is large
enough for further valuable developments
of its training. Surely the wise course for
doubters is to do what they can to assist
its further growth, rather than to indulge
in discouraging criticism. The; reports on
this year's training show not only that
definite progress lias been made, even in the
case of the Artillery, but that the volunteer
citizen soldier — with whom his work is a
26 ITS TRAINING
i labour of love — has been putting in training
in excess of what the Regulations require of
him. There are many difficulties still to be
overcome ; there is much to be accomplished,
in the light of the experience which even two
years has given us, in the way of effecting
improvements in certain directions. But,
if there is steady persistence, there seems to
be good ground to hope that the Force will
before very long attain to its full establish-
ment and become efficient up to the standard
that is necessary. To the standard of our
very highly trained Regulars the Terri-
torials, notwithstanding their keenness and
intelligence, cannot hope to attain, at all
events on this side of the outbreak of serious
war and a long embodiment. But it is equally
untrue, as Sir Ian Hamilton points out, to
say that they can never be expected to take
the field until after six months embodied
training following on mobilisation. That
amount of training, and probably more,
would be requisite were we asking them to
be ready to hold their own against picked
Regulars whom they met in equal numbers
and on equal terms. But it is not too much
to say that, if the present rate of progress in
training continues, the Force, stiffened with a
small number of Regular units and a much
ITS DEVELOPMENT 27
larger number of Special Reserve and
surplus Regular soldiers who would remain
at home even were the expeditionary force all
gone abroad, would be a formidable barrier
in the path of any invading force that had
succeeded in escaping the Navy. On a general
mobilisation the Territorials ought automati-
cally to be embodied under the Act of 1907,
and before the whole of the Expeditionary
Force could have left us they would be well
on with their embodied training. Therefore,
although it would not be prudent to dismiss
the Territorials from that training back to
their homes before six months had elapsed,
it is a fallacy to say, as is sometimes said,
that for six months they would be a non-ex-
istent or negligible defence to the country.*
* It may be convenient to state here the numbers and
organisation of the forces normally at home and available
for meeting a sudden invasion.
Ah regards numbers, there were serving at home on
Octobor 1, 1010, under legal liability for service in war :
Officers Other ranks
Regular* serving .. .. 8,658 121,802
Regular Reserve (after making
nffcssary (IfdiKtions) .. 2,000 128,688
Special Reserve . . . . 1,07:5 01,116
Territorial Force (including Per-
manent Staff) .. .. 11,002 289,698
In addition there will, in fu*ur«\ bo the nun of the
Territorial Force Reserve and of the Veteran Reserve;
28 HOME DEFENCE
Such are the principles for guarding
these islands from invasion which have
been worked out under the supervision of
the Committee of Imperial Defence. Such
is the citizen army which is being organised
under the eye of the General Staff, in com-
pliance with the principles so laid down.
Its function is to compel an enemy attempt-
ing invasion to face the dilemma of either
having his force destroyed at sea, or of
having any part of it that has a chance
of slipping past the British Navy surrounded
both these Reserves being at present in their infancy.
The men of these Reserves will be available to fill up any
shortages in Territorial cadres and for other purposes.
As regards the Veterans, these are men who exist in large
numbers. They have passed out of the Regular Reserve
and are highly trained, and many of them are still botween
thirty and forty years of age.
As regards units, there exist in the United Kingdom
the following :
Cavalry and Yeomanry :
Regular regiments . . . . . . . . 17
Irish Horse . . . . . . . . . . 2
Yeomanry regiments . . . . . . . . 56
75
Mobile Artillery :
Regular service batteries (horse, field, and
heavy) . . . . . . . . . . 101
Territorial batteries (horse, field, heavy, and
mountain) . . . . . . . . . . 182
283
HOME DEFENCE 29
by greatly superior numbers and worn to
pieces.
Whether we succeed in making the system
thus planned complete and effective at all
points seems to me now to depend on the
spirit of the nation itself. That the men
required are available, and are willing to
make the requisite effort, does not seem to
Infantry :
Guards battalions . . . . . . . . 8
Regular battalions . . . . . . . . 74
Special Reserve battalions . . . . . . 101
Territorial battalions (including Cyclist bat-
talions) . . . . . . . . . . 204
387
These units again are organised into formations as
follows :
Cavalry Brigadi - . . . . . . . . 4
Mouuti-d Brigades
Territorial Force Mounted Brigades
Regular Divisions
I • rritoria] Divi iions
2
14
8
14
Thorn am thus in organised form twenty divisions at
pre 'nt in thn United Kingdom, the equivalent of ten
Army Corps, without counting the Coast Defence and
Line of Communioation units, which amount to a largo
amber.
Had the Expeditionary Force left the e shores, the
Territorials would have commenced their embodied war
training before any part of that Force bad begun to
embark.
30 FUTURE OF TERRITORIAL FORCE
me doubtful. It has been my duty to
visit many parts of the country during the
last three years, and I have come into
contact with much that we have not yet
touched — an apparently very large number
of willing citizens who, to-day outside the
Territorial Army, would gladly join it if
they could get the chance. It may well
prove unnecessary to resort to these further
sources. I think that, with the Force at a
strength of five-sixths of the establishment
after a couple of years of the new system,
we may now concentrate our energies on
improvements in the training and condi-
tions as to which experience is already
instructing us. As the Force improves
its very reality will probably gradually
bring in the remaining sixth that is still
wanting. But there are regions which lie
close at hand where we could apparently
without delay wipe out the deficit by
merely extending the organisation which
the General Staff originally planned. The
question is one of the reality of the spirit of
voluntary service to the State, and of this
reality the best judges are not soldiers but
civilians. It is no matter of imposing con-
ditions for their good on the great mass of
the population. The real point is whether
THE SCEPTICS 31
among the thirty-nine million inhabitants
of Great Britain there are to be found
three hundred and fifteen thousand young
men who have in them the spirit of
patriotism.
The Churches constitute a voluntary or-
ganisation, and they maintain a far larger
establishment with little effort, simply be-
cause the sense of religious duty is a real
one. Not less real, and probably at least
as general, is the sense of the obligation of
social service, a sense which has grown
with the growth of democracy. Are we
then to despair of modern capacity for
patriotic duty ? If the natural leaders of
opinion elect to sit down in doubt and tears
over the incapacity of their fellow citizens
for the higher aspects of life, doubtless the
latter will begin to weaken in their con-
fidence in their country and themselves.
But if, instead, these leaders, animated by
feeling even much short of the faith that
moves iiM.uiil.iins, set themselves steadily
and unanimously to that work of encourage-
ment and organisation which is already
being done admirably by those who are
working in the County Associations, then
the result does not seem to me doubtful.
I may be called an optimist, and I shall be
32 THE ALTERNATIVES
glad to be so called. For the belief that is
in me is born of experience. I have travelled
into most parts of the country, and I have
addressed meetings in many centres, great
and small. I have had as much oppor-
tunity as most men of studying the attitude
of my fellow countrymen when the appeal
has been made to them to do that which
love of their country should enjoin. I have
seen party politics put on one side, and I
have witnessed a response from men and
women in every class of society to the call
of duty. And as the outcome I wholly
decline to think so ill of them as do certain
of the prophets. But suppose that we gave
up the struggle, and that we could succeed
in a yet more difficult task. Suppose that,
contrary to the national instinct as it is to-
day — an instinct which some scientifically
minded soldiers and sailors think a sound
one — we had succeeded in persuading the
electors to agree to raise and pay for a
Home Defence Army compulsorily recruited
and trained for a couple of years after the
fashion of Regulars. The Financial Notes
printed as Appendix VII. (written for me
some little time ago) show that an Army
on these lines, to furnish the same numerical
strength as the Territorials for Home De-
NAVAL STRENGTH 33
fence, and as the present Expeditionary
Force for service abroad, would cost about
a million and a half more than at present.*
Suppose we raised the Home Defence Army
to a million men it would cost many
millions more than at present. Suppose,
further, that we had been able to do this
without materially impairing the industrial
capacity which makes our output per head
of the population greater by much than
that of our competitors. Suppose all this
accomplished — what then ? Should we be
better off with this ring of a million bayonets
bristling round the coast ? They would be
more, by a long way, than was necessary to
force the adversary to come in such numbers
;is to constitute the requisite target for the
Navy. But what if the Navy could not
command the sea ? Then we should sooner
or later starve and have to submit, not the
less certainly for having the million men
with us. Command of the sea lies at the
root of the whole matter. We have not a
population that can raise a home army of
the magnitude that is possible for some
Continental Powers. Hut our wealth and
* An Expeditionary Forco raised by Compulsion could
be U-. i| "lily for whorl ciiiiij>iii|/ns, and could not bo bout to
Judin or elsewhere for long Ben ice over-sea.
3
34 NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE PLAN
-x-ti
our great naval tradition make it com-
paratively easy for us to keep well ahead of
any possible adversary in naval strength,
at all events for many years to come, and
after that the development of the Naval
and Military organisation of the Empire
ought to have done the rest. We can there-
fore remain in superior power on the water,
and we ought to do so; for nothing else
can give us security, and under cover of this
superiority we can easily build the relatively
small military structure that is necessary
for a second line for Home defence. I
therefore dismiss, in entire agreement
with Sir Ian Hamilton's view, the pro-
position that an army on the Continental
model is necessary for purposes of Home
defence.
Let us look at another proposal which
has more support at this moment, that of
the National Service League, of which the
details will be found in the Appendix.
What should we gain on balance by sub-
stituting for the Special Reserve 80,000
men less well trained, and for the Terri-
torials 320,000 men compulsorily enlisted
and trained for four months ? * Would this
* This is the figure for Infantry ; for other arms, six
months.
ITS DIFFICULTIES 35
force be a better one ? To begin with,
would they do more than the amount of
training to which the Act of Parliament
compelled them ? The Territorial, as a rule, ]o^^
d oes much more thanJiis standard training. l, 7rt „ aj
He is on the look-out for the chance of
improving it at odd times ; and experience
shows that what he accomplishes depends
on the chances of improving himself that
he can get from his employer and from
his commanding officer. There is a great
difference between the man who has got no
choice and the keen enthusiast who is there
because he is an enthusiast. If the first
or Regular Line must be recruited, as it
is to-day, on a voluntary basis, then, for
the reasons assigned by Sir Ian Hamilton,
recruiting for it would be seriously
jeopardised if a general system of training
were made compulsory during the period
<>!' life al which recruits enlist for the Regular
Army. The risk of depleted cadres is, in
my opinion, too great for any Adjutant-
General to face willingly, and Parliament
ought not to put it upon him. He may
have in :i single year to collect fifty or sixty
thousand men for the Rrs1 line and Special
Reserve -men willing to take the obliga-
tion of ;i Long period of service. !!<• gets
36 THE OFFICER QUESTION
them to-day, and, under present conditions,
without much difficulty. But would he get
them under the altered circumstances ? Sir
Tan Hamilton's observations on past ex-
perience in our own and other countries
should make those on whom lies the burden
of proof pause before they assert that the
change can be made without the risk of
disaster.
Moreover, there is a difficulty hardly less
formidable in the question of Officers. To
train 150,000 recruits annually for at least
four months would require an addition to
the present establishment of officers esti-
mated by the National Service League it-
self at nearly 5,000. For obvious reasons,
these would have to be professional officers,
though the League reckons only 2,000 of
them as such. But where are these addi-
avJ»*-^y [tional officers to come from ? It is difficult
. r °^' 1 enou gh to keep up the present establishment
for the Regular Army ; and to get even
2,000 more for an unattractive service is a
task which passes at all events such wits as
I possess. The figures given in the Re-
marks printed as Appendix IV show the
extent of a difficulty which appears to have
escaped the attention of those who drew
up the programme of the National Service
A DEFECTIVE ESTIMATE 37
League. That programme, which is also
printed as Appendix III, can hardly have
been the work of any one familiar with the
difficult business of estimating the require-
ments and cost of an army. When one
looks at the figures in the light of the
remarks upon them written by the author-
ity to whom Sir Ian Hamilton refers — a
public servant whose name is associated by
those engaged in military administration
with a reputation for far-reaching know-
ledge and experience and for great accuracy
—one finds that the estimate of cost has left
out so much that is essential that it is wrong
by at least four millions sterling. What-
ever else is obscure, it is clear that the
system sketched in the Bill and programme
of the National Service League would cost,
roughly, eight millions of pounds per annum
more than do the Territorial Force and
Special Reserve to-day. Now, if this some-
\\ lintsubstantial addit tonal sum is to be found
by the public, I should, for reasons already
assigned, prefer to spend the money on
increasing the Navy still further, and in
adding to the establishment of the Regular
Army a new Division i<> be kept always at
home. But I do nol 1 hink that any such sum
OUght to be spent, at least on the Army.
38 THE OTHER WAY
Of the size of the Navy I do not presume
to judge ; what is clear is that it is strong
at present. But the scheme for the reor-
ganisation of the Forces which was in 1907
adopted by Parliament seems to me, if
carried out properly, to rest on the right
principle so far as the Army is concerned.
To make a huge addition to the Army
Estimates for the purpose of carrying out
the plan of the National Service League
appears to many soldiers to be not only an
extravagant and unnecessary proceeding,
but to be strategically unsound. It was not
by dwelling on the idea of passive defence
that our forefathers made our country what
it is to-day. It is our inherited tradition
that the real foundation of our system of
defence, at home and abroad, must always
be the capacity of promptly assuming the
offensive and of launching a counter attack
at the points where the enemy is vulner-
able. We cannot by training infantry
recruits compulsorily for four months hope
to raise a force that we can send abroad to
fight battalions that have had two years'
training. The projectors of the system I
am discussing appear to have had no par-
ticularly clear idea of what it was they
wanted to be at. I have read many of their
CONCLUSION 39
articles and speeches, and I hasten to say
that there are some things in them which
I fully understand and with which I agree.
I am with them in thinking that physical
training ought to be organised as an essen-
tial part of an educational system, and I
attach much value to the habit of self-
restraint and co-operation in a common
endeavour which is the outcome of dis-
cipline. The principles of organisation so
admirably illustrated by the Cadet and Boys'
Brigade systems, and by Sir Robert Baden-
Powell's Boy Scouts, appear to me to be
altogether good and proper for adoption
by the State. The point is, not whether
these things are excellent, but whether there
are not cheaper ways of acquiring them
for the nation than one which imperils
the first line of our Army. I venture
to commend to public consideration the
broad question whether it is possible any-
where to establish adequate military systems
of compulsory and voluntary service side
by side in the same country. I doubt
it. At all events, the question requires
much study, far more than it has re-
ceived, before an affirmative answer is
given. Neither the habits and record of
our own people nor the analogies of foreign
40 CONCLUSION
experience appear to encourage such an
answer.
The study of the question of National
Defence which I have made during the four
years in which I have applied my mind to
it as closely as I could, has led me to a
definite conclusion. I now submit it to
the public. On the assumption, not to be
lightly made, that we can get over all
preliminary difficulties, industrial, social,
and financial, it would be possible for us
to substitute a larger force for the Expedi-
tionary Army of six divisions and a Cavalry
division, which we have now organised and
keep at home ready for service over-sea.
This force would be prepared after the Con-
tinental model and compulsorily recruited,
with the minimum of two years' training
that would be requisite. Such a force could
be sent to the Continent for a comparatively
short campaign, but it could not be sent
to reinforce the British Army over-sea in
India and elsewhere for a prolonged
campaign. Yet the scheme of the National
Service League would, to the best of my
judgment, neither give us a Force of Conti-
I nental quality nor leave us our Expeditionary
f Army at anything like its present strength.
This scheme, therefore, whatever its merits
CONCLUSION 41
from an educational and peace point of view,
appears, from that of preparation for war,
to be open to grave objection. It exposes
us to substantial risk of becoming weaker
than we are at present as an armed nation,
and it appears to contain neither the
promise nor the potency of filling up the
gaps which it threatens to make. Its ten-
dency is in the direction of the merely
defensive, and away from the tradition
which we have hitherto believed to be the
inheritance of our people from Chatham
and from Nelson. It was not by waiting
for the enemy to arrive on these shores,
or by wasting their resources in preparations
for it, that these great British strategists
carried on the operations of war. They
defended the Empire, and with it these
islands, not by sitting down and making
preparations for the enemy's coming, but
by throwing their efforts into seeking him
out, and into fashioning their instruments
for offence.
The main reasons for the conclusion thus
indicated are contained in this little book.
Although a layman, I do not apologise for
having taken a part in stating them. For
the problem of our strategy is a problem
which oiu- history as a nation shows to have
42 CONCLUSION
been one not for soldiers alone. It is too
large and too far-reaching to be so con-
fined. Sir Ian Hamilton knows this well, and
because he knows it well I commend his
memorandum to the study of all interested
in the question of National Defence.
R. B. Haldane.
October 1910.
COMPULSORY SERVICE
Dear Mr. Haldane,
You have asked me to consider how
far, if at all, compulsory service could be
made applicable to our Imperial system,
and I gather that your choice has fallen
upon me because, during the year I have
held the post of Adjutant-General to the
Forces, I have been compelled to take daily
cognisance of those recruiting and drafting
problems which underlie the existence of
our Empire. Also, because, having sol-
diered at various times with t lie armies of
Prussia, Saxony, Austria, Russia, Japan,
and the United Slates of America, I have
(as you know from my reports) already
made some attempts to analyse the con-
ditions ol those great Services.
To the best of my belief, there is no good
military work advising as to the problems,
Bocial, political, and recruiting, Greal Britain
would have to face were she to endeavour
43
44 INTRODUCTORY
to shape her land forces on the Swiss,
German, French, or any other European
model. But there are facilities for grasping
at least the outlines and general drift of
conscription in the countries where it has
prevalence. The book " Jena or Sedan,"
written as it is by an officer of high repute
amongst his comrades, renders available to
the world at large a convincing picture of
the German military system with its ad-
vantages and drawbacks. Therein the
reader may study the working of the
greatest engine the world has yet seen for
the manufacture of a particular type of
human intellect and body. He may watch
it turning out sealed-pattern citizens by
the hundred thousand ; backs straightened,
chests broadened, clean, obedient, punctual,
but, on the other hand, weakened in their
individual initiative.
Yes, conscription is a tremendous leveller.
The proud are humbled ; the poor-spirited
are strengthened ; the national idea is
fostered ; the interplay of varying ideals is
sacrificed. Good or bad, black or white,
all are chucked indifferently into the mill,
and emerge therefrom, no longer black or
white, but a drab, uniform khaki.
The best way of getting at the British
THE BRITISH SOLDIER 45
people and of explaining to them the
strong and weak points of voluntary service
would be to write an English " Jena or
Sedan ' entitled, perhaps, " Delhi or Dork-
ing." Therein the fortunes of a young-
recruit might be traced from the day he
enlisted — hungry, hopeless, unable to get
the most poorly paid job — until, as one of
the new Veteran Reserve, he is reviewed
by his King, his broad chest glittering with
medals, a silken hat on his head, and a
pleasant sense of voluntarily performed
duty in his heart. Or, to take the seamiest
side of the garment, he fails, as a pro-
portion must fail everywhere. He has
dropped back, on reverting to civil life, as
low, or even lower, than his starting-point.
This happens, though not very often. Yet
even so ; even at the worst, he retains
one moral characteristic from his experi-
ences in the Army worth a great deal to
the State. English, Scottish, or Irish, once
a soldier always a King's man ; always,
with rarest exceptions, a preservative, not
a disintegrating, element in the population.
Unfortunately, I have neither the ability
nor the leisure wherewith to deal effectively
with an epic such as I have imagined, and
I am driven therefore to the more common-
46 STATE POLICY
place expedient of laying down a few pro-
positions whereby some light may be thrown
upon the fundamental differences between
the two great forms of National Service,
as well as upon the deep, far-reaching
consequences of cleaving to the one, or of
embracing the other.
State policy is the art of carrying into
effect the scheme of existence of a nation.
State policy must be active. Passivity
— the motto "Live and let Live" — will no
longer carry a nation through the strain
and rivalry of this modern world. Hermit
kingdoms have no place assigned to them
in the latest phases of modern development.
When one State policy encounters the
policy of a rival it must either efface itself,
compromise, or stand firm. In the last two
cases the State must be prepared for war.
War is the pursuit of State policy over
the boundary of law and logic into the
domain of force. In war we see the devour-
ing of a moribund by an active policy, or
the clash of two active policies, with their
train of opposing ideas and interests.
Commerce is the leading idea and first
interest of the modern State ; and so soon
as a Government is faced by the alternative
ITS INSTRUMENTS 47
of seeing some millions of workers lose
their livelihood through unemployment or
of losing a few thousand lives in battle, it
will quickly know how to decide.
Armies and navies are the instruments
of this ultimate policy of force.
In a well-governed State the most careful
proportion is maintained between policy
and instruments. So long as a different,
and therefore potentially rival, State policy
exists upon the globe there is no duty so
sacred. For, if the policy is allowed to
become too ambitious or enterprising for
the strength of the instruments, disaster
becomes merely a matter of time. If, on
the other hand, the instruments have been
allowed to become so powerful that they
shape the policy ; if the Home, Foreign,
Colonial, and Finance departments are
directed primarily by strategical considera-
tions, why then the rest of the world take
fright and band together, in hostile array,
like cattle confronted by a wolf.
Generally, the policy of a State may be
gauged by its Army and Navy. Tims, were
Greal Britain to raise her Regular Army at
home to a million bayonets, her claim i<>
possess :i supreme Navy would wear another
significance.
48 REGULAR AND MILITIA SYSTEMS
To keep an army and navy up to the
mark, not only money but also thought, and
(if it is to be had) original thought, must
be freely forthcoming. An army may be
numerous and expensive and yet be un-
satisfactory, owing to its having been or-
ganised to meet conditions which no longer
exist.
Armies may be raised on a Regular or a
Militia basis. Under a Regular system men
are trained in barracks by professional
officers and non-commissioned officers.
Under a Militia system, all ranks are com-
posed of citizens living in their own homes.
A regular army is a more effective instru-
ment of war than a militia, and a militia is
more effective than a mob. Because, for
any work in the world, from writing poetry
to peeling potatoes, professionals are better
than amateurs and amateurs better than
people totally unpractised.
A mob represents the absolute negation,
or zero, of military efficiency. Multiply it
by what you will — number of its individuals,
number of days embodied — it still remains
zero. A militia generally represents a low or
mediocre military standard. But just as
the distinction between a practised gentle-
man rider and a jockey may become ex-
COMPULSORY AND VOLUNTARY SERVICE 49
tremely fine, so, if a militia is embodied long-
enough (especially under the strain and
excitement of actual war) it may draw level
with its regular comrades. Therefore, it
is on the outbreak of war, particularly un-
expected war, that Regulars show their
greatest superiority over Militia.
So much of the life of the modern State
marches with its armies or is embarked in
its navy that the result of the first great
encounter must be infinitely more decisive
than in former times. Hence a growing
inclination to steal a march on the enemy
by dispensing with a declaration of war.
Compulsory service is inspired by the
spirit of self-conservation, by the spirit of
nationalism. Should statesmen endeavour
to use such a machine for distant or dynastic
purposes they betray an idea, and will
ultimately have to pay the penalty.
Voluntary service is inspired by the spirit
of self-expansion, by a spirit of self-con-
fidence so genuine and so deep as to en-
gender a belief that others will be benefited
by being brought under the flag. The spirit
of Imperialism, the adventurous spirit, the
appreciation of the romance of war, the
true spirit of the professional army, can
only there find its free expression.
4
50 DRAWBACKS OF COMPULSORY SERVICE
In one way, compulsory service is cer-
tainly less civilised than voluntary service.
In a conscription country the average
healthy grown man remains a warrior until
he becomes superannuated, as was also the
case amongst the Vikings and Huns. From
another standpoint, it is less aggressive, less
of a danger to the world at large, seeing that,
by its very nature, it is a weapon that cannot
be lightly used, and that its statesmen are con-
stantly sacrificing their Imperial ambitions
on the altar of home defence. I beg of you
earnestly to ponder over the words I have
here italicised. The idea they attempt to
convey lies at the root of the whole problem
we are discussing. If the national mind once
gets set upon the defensive, the Imperial
idea must suffer — as, for example, in 1803-
4-5, when the thought that prepossessed
the people of England was the piling up
of partially trained men by the hundred
thousand.
Voluntary service coincides in one of its
leading attributes with a great principle of
modern life and progress, seeing that it
depends upon specialisation. Two classes
of the community undertake the fighting
part of the national business ; all the other
classes devote themselves uninterruptedly
TWO SCHOOLS 51
to their own private business, and pay for
war, not with their persons but with their
purses. For this very reason the bulk of
the nation views war with a less tragic re-
gard, and is encouraged to run considerable
risks in home defence rather than abate
by so much as one square mile of barren
waste their Imperial pretensions. Thus the
" valour of ignorance " may not be wholly
disadvantageous.
British statesmen have been shy about
pledging themselves definitely to either of
these moral conceptions. When they do
harden their hearts and come down clearly
on one side of the fence, it is usually on
the side opposite to that which a soldier
would have expected. Tims we have the
Imperialist advocating that compulsory
service which, whatever its merits, is
not likely to strengthen our liold over
distant pails of the world; whilst we have
the Anti-Imp* rialisl holding up his hands
in horror a1 that same system, which is,
actually, a training-school for his tenets.
Meanwhile the count i) is becoming uneasy
and perplexed, [nstinctively the dullest
and most iiwIilT. n ni arc aware that the
military Eorces of a State should !><■ raised
and trained expressly to satisfy its needs,
52 OUR MILITARY PROBLEM
only subject to the limitations imposed by
social considerations and by the funds it has
at its disposal. But what are those needs ?
Have they ever been clearly stated ? If
not, it is for you to make the statement,
and it may perhaps assist you to grasp
the essentials of the problem if its military
aspect is here clearly set forth.
The true military policy of any State must
be contained in one of the following three
definitions, or within some combination of
those same three definitions :
1. Imperial defence of distant fron-
tiers such as those of Rome or Great
Britain ;
2. Home defence where imminent
peril overshadows the very existence of
the State, as is the case to-day in France
and Germany ;
3. Home defence where the danger
appears to be less imminent, as is the
case in Great Britain to-day, and as was
the case in Rome during the reign of
Augustus and his successors for a period
of two or three hundred years.
Experience throughout the ages has shown
that the military forces employed as in (1)
must be raised on a voluntary basis. Rome
FOREIGN EXPERIENCE 53
possessed a perfect Militia system, but the
moment she began to expand imperially
she was forced to abandon it in favour of
the professional and voluntary system. The
examples of Spain in Cuba and of Italy in
Abyssinia show how futile, nay, how disas-
trous, must be the attempt to conduct
Imperial defence on the basis of compulsory
service. In Germany certain Generals did
suggest that conscript troops should be sent
for the relief of Pekin. Not only were they
overruled, but they suffered in reputation
for having shown so little appreciation of
whal the country would or would not stand
in the way of forced service.
Besides the troops actually employed on
the frontiers of an Empire as in (1), there
must also be a strong central reserve kept
at home in readiness to reinforce those troops
in case of need. Neither politically nor
militarily would it be just or advantageous
to create such a reserve on a compulsory
basis. Kurop.'it kin lias lold us how poorly
the reservists from European Russia Fought
when compared with the Siberian Reservists,
who were defending their own frontier, and
explains that the distance from their homes
had become so great that the Europeans
were no longer sustained by the national idea.
54 DIFFERENCES OF PROBLEM
The British could not employ a conscript
reserve with good results in such a con-
tingency as another Indian Mutiny or even
in a war in Afghanistan, or Persia, or Egypt.
Who is to guarantee that the parents of the
men would let them go, or that, if they did
go, they would fight ? No instance can be
drawn from history of the successful employ-
ment for such purposes of men compelled to
serve against their will. No ; not even if
they were only wanted temporarily, at a
crisis.
Turning now to (2), the case of immediate
danger to a State. Here readiness to take
the field at short notice is even more essen-
tial than in (1). The Army must be a first-
line Army. Experience proves it must be
raised on a Regular basis, the men being
exercised in barracks under professional
officers and, to a large extent, professional
non-commissioned officers. Modern prac-
tice puts the period of training at from two
to three years. Such a force should be
animated by the spirit of the citizen fighting
for his own home. It may therefore legiti-
mate] v be raised on the national basis —
that is, the compulsory basis. In the fore-
going paragraph I have shown that this
type of army never has been, and cannot
CITIZEN ARMIES 55
now be, used for long-range purposes, for
distant wars. But for offensive purposes
at short range against a neighbouring
country it may be most formidable. Let
it be clearly understood, however, that
offence in this instance is, or ought to be,
simply an incident of home defence. When
I say " ought to be " I mean that the Army
must believe that the offensive is only being
taken to anticipate a blow aimed at the
homeland itself. Thus, were rulers and
Governments always unambitious and
honest, conscription might be actually,
what it so often professes to be, a guarantee
of peace. Unfortunately, history is one
unbroken series of events tending to show
that Governments can very easily impose
upon their people. Some of my reports
have shown you how strongly I am possessed
by the belief that even professed continental
Pacificists will fall quickly into line once
the national spirit has been thoroughly
inflamed. Here and there a pistol shot may
break the smoothness of the mobilisation
period. After that, silence ! Like the Free-
masons of the sixties, the Socialists and
Pacificists of the twentieth century will do
as they are told— though not quite so well,
I humbly submit, as voluntarily enlisted
56 THEIR LIMITATIONS
soldiers. How can the cogwheel jib when
the engine begins to move ?
Still, the limitations of such a force are,
from the military point of view, sufficiently
serious, seeing that it can only be honestly
employed in wars which are believed to be,
in their essence, defensive, and that it be-
comes ineffective in proportion as the idea
of conquest begins to dominate the idea
of defence. Not the German soldier, but
Bismarck, fought for Alsace-Lorraine. A
conscript army then cannot be used at a
distance at all, and can only be used aggres-
sively against a neighbour when the bulk
of the nation are convinced that, by taking
the offensive, they are anticipating some
plot or preparation against themselves or
interposing on behalf of the downtrodden
of their own nationality. The employment
by Japan of her national army in Man-
churia represents the extreme point to
which long-range action by such a force can
be carried. Up to the battle of Mukden
the whole of the officers, non-commis-
sioned officers and men felt they were
fighting for the defence of Japan. After
Mukden, this idea lost force, and corre-
spondingly the energy of the army began
to fade away. The reaction was not very
STAYING POWER 57
pronounced, owing to the intensity of the
initial patriotic impulse and the natural
secretive tendency of the Japanese character.
But it was unmistakable to the initiated,
and the Elder Statesmen were far too wise
to listen to the hotheads who spoke of
marching on Harbin.
The fact of the matter is that a volun-
tarily enlisted army possesses greater stay-
ing power than the force of a nation in arms.
The aching nausea of home-sickness ; the
exasperation to the strained nerves of the
ceaseless danger and intermittent crackling
of musketry, the sheer physical revolt from
dirt and rags and starvation; the enervating
dreams of decent food and of the girls they
left behind them ; all these influence conscript
campaigners in double or treble degree.
For three solid years did our British Regu-
lars in South Africa sec local corps dis-
solved and reconstituted ; see Yeomanry and
Volunteers and over-seas Colonial Corps sail
away to great receptions in their homes ;
Bee them relieved in due course by fresh
substitutes drawing more than four limes
the regular pay for identical work less
efficiently performed. Still, these British
Regulars stuck to if; always ready for a
fight if only their Commander would let
58 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
them go ; grumbling not more than usual ;
and then, at the end of it all, remaining to
garrison the desolated, war-stricken wastes
they had created — but had won ! Search
the world over, you will find no conscript
soldier, European or Asiatic, who could
have done what our voluntarily enlisted
Regulars did in South Africa, only ten short
years ago.
The present generation regard the German
campaign of 1870 with an admiration which
is absolutely justified. But if they had the
privilege of personal friendship with some
of the survivors of that historic epoch, they
might learn from them, though not from
military histories, to what alarming heights
rose the wave of war-weariness in the souls
of the invading armies during January and
February of 1871. Yet France was a plea-
sant, fruitful land compared with South
Africa ; the war was supposed to be essen-
tially a war of defence ; an uninterrupted
series of victories had shed their glamour
over the battlefields.
You remember how in March last year I
took my leave, so as to see as much as
an ordinary traveller could legitimately see
of the mobilisation in Budapest and Bel-
grade. Naturally I have often seen a corps
FEAR OF INVASION 59
raised by voluntary enlistment get the
order to make ready for war. Could you
only share my experiences in these respects
they would explain better than volumes of
writing how it is that volunteers resist war-
weariness better than conscripts.
So far I have discussed (1), where the
home provinces are secure and the question
is that of the defence of distant frontiers ;
and (2), where there is no great outside
Empire, and where the question is one of
the defence of the home provinces. Now
I have to consider (3), where the Empire
has been built up under conditions of home
security, and where a certain anxiety begins
to be felt by statesmen regarding a possible
attack upon headquarters. History has
proved that only when a country is in the
main free from fear of its neighbours can it
spread its wings far abroad. The gradual
shrinkage of the Roman Empire as the home
menace increased is evidence enough of the
converse process. The most perfect of all
imaginary securities occurs when the State
is an island and possesses command of the
sea. As Bacon says, " lie that commands
the sea is at great liberty, and may take as
much and as little of war as he w ill." There-
fore, clearly, when an island has achieved
60 TEMPTATION TO COMPROMISE
world empire, and is then challenged in its
naval supremacy, and threatened at its
heart, a situation of great complexity and
difficulty is certain to arise.
It may be assumed that the strain of
maintaining a long-service professional army
is already fairly heavy, and under such
conditions it will be doubly difficult to
persuade the citizen of the State to assume
the enormous additional burden that an
immediate state of readiness — on a com-
pulsory basis — will entail. Such a burden
is not only personal but financial. Accord-
ingly we expect to find, as we do find, a
tendency, an inclination, to compromise.
The long-range voluntary army must stand
for the defence of the Imperial frontiers ;
but it is in a sense counted twice over. It
is felt that the professional soldiers may, or
a part of them may, be counted upon to
lend a hand to the home provinces in time
of need. Therefore, it is argued, it is not
necessary to go so far as countries which
are not only exposed to greater dangers
on their frontiers but possess no volun-
tarily enlisted regular army. To sum up,
then, in this third case, where the frontiers
of the Empire are being held by a long-
service voluntary army, and where the
FEELING IN GREAT BRITAIN 61
danger to the home provinces has not yet
become very immediate or universally ap-
parent, it will always be difficult to persuade
people to pay very heavily, either in purse,
or in person as well as purse, for a special
home-defence army raised and trained on
a Regular basis. 1
For the average practical statesman, the
conclusion reached in the foregoing para-
graph should, as far as it goes, suffice. So
long as their Navy remains supreme, the
people of Great Britain and Ireland will
regard with aversion and suspicion any
proposal for a large increase in their present
type of regular army or for the adoption of
universal compulsory service of the con-
tinental type, with its two or three years
spent in barracks, commencing not earlier
than the age of twenty. But I am address-
ing you on the assumption that you are in
search of higher truths than those comprised
1 I repeat, in caso of misunderstanding, that, under n
Regular system, men are trained in barracks by prof essional
officers and non-commissioned ollicers. Under a Militia
system, all ranks are composed of citizens, living in tlicir
own homes. Armies are divided materially into two
eate^.H-ics, Kcguiur or Militia j morally also into two
categories, Voluntary or Conscript. These divisions aro
perfectly cloar, and cannot bo confounded by the invention
of question-begging epithets.
62 DIFFICULTY OF INCREASING REGULARS
in the gospel of political expediency. Not
easily will I forget the evening when, in
the interests of the discipline of the Army,
you doubled the powers of Commanding
Officers in a house containing a great
Liberal majority. I assume then, confi-
dently, that you would not exclude from
your consideration an unpopular idea merely
because of its unpopularity. Therefore I
will discuss these alternatives more fully.
From an ex- Adjutant-General's point of
view, from the expert's point of view, any
large increase of our present type of regular
army is impracticable, without an expendi-
ture disproportionate to the results.
There is no great margin of raw material
available over the, say, 60,000 first-line and
Special Reserve recruits we suck from the
unskilled labour market (to its huge relief)
in an average year. It is not a matter of
any moderate advance in rates of pay.
We might, without too much effort, increase
our establishment by 10,000 or 15,000, or
perhaps by 20,000 men ; but then we should
be at the end of our tether, unless the
recruiter was enabled to compete on even
terms with employers in the skilled labour
market. Therefore I definitely discard the
idea of enlarging our existing type of
CONTINENTAL OPINION 63
regular army in normal times of peace by
more than one Division of all arms.
The question of the practicability, as apart
from the popularity, of adopting the pure
continental type of conscription is not quite
so easy to determine. But I have accumu-
lated experiences abroad during the past
few years which may shed some light on
the problem.
After compliments, the first remark made
by a foreign officer to a British officer is
now, almost invariably, " Is it the case
you are going to adopt conscription ? '
To such an inquiry I invariably, if I
have time, avoid making a direct response,
but give my interlocutor instead a brief
sketch of the British Over-seas Army, with
its annual requirement in recruits and drafts.
Having done so, I ask, in the case of a
German, "Now, supposing you wished to
maintain 1 18,000 European soldiers in South-
West Africa, by voluntary enlistment, would
you be able, by the offer of good pay, to
get men to come forward ? ' Whether my
triend happens to be a Corps Commander
or a Subaltern, a Colonel or a Warrant
Officer, I he answer is more or less decisively
in the negative. All arc equally eager to
explain thai German conscripts are proud
64 GERMAN EXPERIENCE
to serve their two years, and that, for the
rest of their lives, they look back upon their
period of military service with pleasure.
None the less they have had quite enough
of it, even before they have finished their
recruits' drill, to make it most difficult to
bribe them to accept a longer period of
voluntary service abroad. Far from being
able to keep 113,000 men abroad on such a
basis, Germany could not afford, unless she
were to cut down other Imperial services,
to increase her foreign-service army much
beyond its present microscopic dimensions. 1
The following facts are put forward in
support of my conclusion :
The rank and file of the German forces
in South-West Africa are recruited partly
from volunteers from the Navy and Army,
and partly from men who elect to do
their term of military service in the Pro-
tectorate.
The period of service is three and a half
years, and may be extended.
Four months' leave to Europe on full
1 The strength of this army is :
German S.-W. Africa
German East Africa
Cameroons
Togo land
2,190
326
170
9
Kiuuchao is entirely under the Naval authorities.
GERMAN OVER-SEA SOLDIERS 65
pay, and with free passage to and fro, are
given during the first term of service. If
the term is extended, leave is again due
after a period of three years.
The annual pay of non-commissioned
officers and rank and file (Infantry) is : —
S.-W. Africa.
Home.
Sergeant
Under Officer
Lance Corporal
Private
. . £70 to £75 . ,
. . £60 .
. . £55 .
.. £50 .
£23 15
. £15 2
£4 17
£3 19
6
£51
14
2
£38
5
£30
8
4
£25
17
1
In addition, a free ration and clothing
are given.
The annual pay (including proficiency
pay) of British non-commissioned officers,
and rank and file (Infantry) is identical in
South Africa, in India, and at home:
Sergeunt
Corporal
i. .hi. . < i.rporal
Private
The cost of passages is ;i very important
item in the cost of an over-sea garrison.
In lliis respect no exact comparison can
be made with the British short-service
man, who, however, usually serves about
five years abroad without furlough, and is
then brought home for transfer to the Re-
serve. But, comparing the German soldier
5
66 THEIR COST
with the British re-engaged soldier, the
former is in this respect nearly twice as
expensive, seeing that he is allowed leave
every third year, whereas our men have
to serve six full years abroad before they
are brought home at Government expense.
Even then, the British soldier can only get
the indulgence provided he has two full
years yet to serve with the colours and is
desirous of remaining abroad. Again, under
such rules, one-ninth of the German garrison
will always be absent on leave, thereby
adding one-eighth to the total cost of a
garrison of given effective strength.
Taking these factors, then, into considera-
tion it seems that the cost to the Father-
land of pay and passages for a private serving
in South-West Africa is about twice as
much as we expend upon his red-coated
cousin serving practically alongside of
him.
Obviously India would ruin the Germans
in a very few years if they had to keep it
garrisoned by Europeans on such terms.
Equally obviously, if Germany did get
British South Africa and India, she would
have to recast in some way that whole
system of military training which some
Britons are now anxious to copy.
FOREIGN EXPEDITIONS 67
In case of long-range expeditions, the
advantage possessed by Great Britain is
fully maintained. An examination has been
carried out of the comparative cost per
sabre, gun, and rifle of the expeditions of
the Powers to Pekin. Excluding the two
Powers on the spot, Russia and Japan,
the most costly was that of Germany, the
next Austria, the third France. Cheapest
of all, by a considerable margin, came Great
Britain. A similar investigation has been
made into the comparative cost per sabre,
gun, and rifle, of the South African War,
the Somali land Expedition, and the Sudan
Campaign, as against the German South -
West African Campaign. As a result, the
South African War and the Somaliland Ex-
pedition were found to be 40 percent cheaper
than the South-West African Campaign,
whilst, although the Sudan Campaign was
considerably more expensive than the other
two mentioned, it was still proportionately
more economical than the campaign con-
ducted by the Germans.
In Russia, the impossibility of combining
voluntary service with the presenl system
is still more emphatically asserted. The
whole of her military forces are recruited
under the uni\ <i sal-service system, and
68 RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
they could not, I will prove, be maintained
in any other way. Officers of all ranks
agree that national feeling, as well as
prohibitive cost, render anything like a
Russian edition of our existing Over-seas
Army inconceivable. The people have a
stronger traditional distaste for mercenary
military service than our people have for
unpaid military service. So intensely is
this prejudice engrained in their characters
that it has been found difficult to persuade
non-commissioned officers, even by very
handsome extra allowances, to prolong their
service with the Colours, and thus subject
themselves to the reproach of being pro-
fessional soldiers.
A Russian company of infantry has seven
non-commissioned officers of whom, by
regulation, three should be re-engaged men ;
but this proportion has never been attained,
and the deficiency has reached as much as
50 per cent. 1 At the commencement of 1904
only about one-seventh of the non-com-
missioned officers were re-engaged, and the
remainder were ordinary serving soldiers,
some of whom, to the astonishment of the
Japanese, were found to be practically
1 Another high authority from Russia put it at 65 per
cent, but I give the most moderate estimate in the text.
RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE 69
uneducated. This lack of good non-com-
missioned officers is what, as much pro-
bably as any other single factor, lost them
the war. At the close of 1905, therefore,
new regulations were issued, trebling the
pay of re-engaged non-commissioned offi-
cers. It was laid down that upon the
expiration of two years' re-engaged service,
suitable men should be promoted to the
rank of sub-ensign. Upon the completion
of ten years' such service, sub-ensigns might
go to the Reserve or National Militia with
a bounty of £106. Upon the completion of
thirteen years' re-engaged service all sub-
ensigns should be discharged or transferred
to the Militia, with a life pension of £10 a
year. These sums may not sound very
magnificent in the ears of a rich Englishman,
but, actually, they arc liberal.
None the less, the amounts offered proved
inadequate to overcome the Russian dislike
of voluntary military service, and the new
regulations failed to attract the number of
men required. Arrangements were there-
fore made with other Ministries in 1009 for
the reservation of Government posts of an
average salary of £30 to £40 per annum for
all sub-ensigns discharged after ten or fifteen
years' extended service. It was further
70 RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
decided that they should be allowed a four
months' furlough on full pay in the first,
fourth, seventh, tenth, and thirteenth years
of their re-engaged service. I am writing
now in St. Petersburg, and I may say that
these new regulations are expected to prove
successful. At all events, they have had
some initial success, for the number of
re-engagements in the first three months
of 1910 exceeded by 4,000 those in the
corresponding months of the previous year.
The total number of re-engaged non-com-
missioned officers is now 25,000. It is
intended to increase it to 73,000.
There is special difficulty in inducing
men to re-engage in the Pri-Amur Military
District. To remedy this, re-engaged men
who are serving in Siberia are to be given four
months' leave every three years, and their
journey to and from Europe will be paid.
Thus we find that Russia has had to go
even further than Germany to get a volun-
tary force of at present only 25,000 non-
commissioned officers. These are men in
authority, whose life is made comparatively
agreeable in many ways. Clearly, Russia
could get no rank and file at all on a volun-
tary basis.
Here, then, we have the national idea
RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE 71
underlying conscription at its highest power.
A Russian regimental officer has told me
how, when his battalion reservists arrived
in Manchuria, the first question they asked
was, " Where are the churches ? " When
the Company Officers were forced to reply
that there were no churches, the men
rejoined, " We must go home. What busi-
ness have we to be fighting for such a God-
forsaken land ? Evidently it does not belong,
and never could have belonged, to the
Tzar." Russia spreads, like the nettle, by
thrusting out roots under the surface of the
ground — not like the thistle, emblem of
Scotland, launching seed into the air on a
distant voyage. It is hard to conceive how
modern Russia could hold the plains of
India or the torrid zone of Africa.
The nearest approach to anything of the
sort in climatic and other conditions is the
Turkestan Military District, with a peace
strength of (X),000 men. The settled Russian
population in Central Asia amounted in
1901 to only 1*2 per cent of the total popula-
tion. Therefore, for some time to come the
reserves on mobilisation will have to be
drawn almost entirely from European Russia.
Still, Turkestan is not detached from the
national soil of Russia, and Russians can
72 FRENCH EXPERIENCE
and do make their homes there. The same
remarks apply to the Far East, only that
there the climate is more suited to the
Russian, and settlement proceeds more
rapidly.
Service even in Central Asia or in Pri-
or Trans-Amur is very much disliked. An
attempt to add to the strain of national
feeling by adding Afghanistan and India on
to the Russian Empire would break down the
conscription system, which could only, as
has been shown, be replaced by the volun-
tary system at enormous expense. For the
voluntary idea is dead and would have to
be nursed at first like a hothouse plant
in a costly conservatory.
Owing to the cohesive force of the national
defence idea, it becomes even difficult for
Russia to maintain an efficient navy out-
side of the Black Sea and the Baltic. Where
her people cannot settle, cultivate, and beget
children, the limitations of Russia's con-
scription system have been overstepped,
and success becomes improbable.
France, again, has her own difficulties,
although they are not the difficulties of
Russia or Germany. Only one generation
has passed since France maintained her
armies on a system so honeycombed with
FOREIGN LEGION AND COLONIAL ARMY 73
exemptions and re-engagements as practi-
cally to amount to a very undesirable type,
but still a type, of voluntary service. France
has also the magnificent memories of Napo-
leon to sustain her. Therefore we need not
be surprised to find that the Imperial soldier-
feeling is still alive in France, and that she
is able, whilst maintaining conscription for
home defence, to raise a foreign service army
(i.e. Frenchmen in the Foreign Legion, and
the Colonial Army) of some 56,000 men, of
whom 28,000 serve in France. If it can be
shown that French conditions closely re-
semble British conditions, then the problem
is in a fair way to solution. That is to say,
our present foreign service could, according
to the French analogy, co-exist with com-
pulsory home service, although it has already
been proved that on the German or Russian
analogy such a thing would be impossible.
The Foreign Legion and the Colonial
Army of France are recruited, with very
few exceptions, by voluntary enlistments
or by voluntary transfer from the Home
Army. Enlistments are for three, four, or
live years; but as men are not sent to the
Colonies until twenty-one years of age, they
must engage to serve for sucli a period as
will admit of their passing at least two
74 FRENCH TERMS OF SERVICE
years in the Colonies. Re- engagements for
periods not exceeding five years, and
extensions of service up to twenty-five
years' service, are allowed.
The inducements offered to recruits are
briefly :
(a) Bounties on enlistment and re-
engagements ;
(b) A daily rate of pay and colonial
allowances ;
(c) Help in obtaining employment on
return to civil life.
The bounties vary, and the general pro-
gress of recruiting can be estimated by the
rates offered by the Government for enlist-
ments and re-engagements. But the fol-
lowing figures give the rates in force since
1908 :
Engagements for
3 years.
4 years. 5 years
Sous-Officier. (N.C.O.
above the rank of
Corporal. )
£12
£24 £36
Corporal or Private . .
£6 10
£13 £19 10
For re-engagements, sous-officiers receive
£12, and other ranks £6 10s. for every year's
service up to ten.
A private who, by successive re-engage-
ments, completed ten years' service would
PAY AND REWARDS IN FRANCE 75
have received £52 in bounties. No bounties
are given after ten years' service.
The Colonial rates of pay vary with
length of service from lOd. to Is. 2d. a day
for a private. In addition, a private would
receive a Colonial allowance (which varies
according to the locality) from \d. to 5d.
a day. A Colonial soldier serving in France
gets about half the daily rate of pay. The
pay of a private in the Home Army, being
\d. a day, comes to 155. 2\d. per annum.
But when the Colonial serves abroad his
pay comes to about £25 per annum or, as
nearly as possible, the equivalent of the
British rate in actual cash received.
The actual cash, however, by no means,
as in the case of the British soldier, exhausts
the pecuniary inducements offered. " Help
in obtaining employment on return to civil
life" stands for a great deal more than the
far-away chance of a pretty hard job as a
postman, which is as much as Thomas
Atkins can expect to get from the State.
For the French Government has provided
for its professional, as distinguished from
its conscript soldiers, 05,000 nice little posts
during the past twelve years. These are
positions as minor functionaries in the
oflices of the State Departments, positions
76 GOVERNMENT POSTS
secured in private business by official pres-
sure, positions in the posts and telegraphs,
positions on the railways, positions as
foresters. What is the cash value of such
inducements ? That depends very much
upon the man. To the superior handy-
man who can always make his living in the
open market, they are worthless. To the
mediocrity, on the other hand, they are
a godsend. But in the Army, as everywhere
else, mediocre men largely predominate.
It is very difficult, then, fairly to appraise
the value of these inducements. Arith-
metic is a noble science, but it cannot build
a bridge between matters of fact and matters
of opinion. Thus, an admirer of voluntary
service may point to the withdrawal of
the conscript citizen for several years from
productive labour. The conscriptionist re-
torts that the man will live longer, will
measure two inches more round the chest.
Who can split the economic difference ?
Therefore here we find ourselves in the
region of guesswork. My guess is, then, that
the certainty, with decent behaviour, of
one of these Government posts is worth
to the soldier during his serving time at
least the sum of fourpence a day. But what
is the cost to Government of providing him
FRENCH EXPERIENCE 77
with the post ? If he earns his wages —
nothing. I believe he does earn his wages
— handsomely. I believe that the French
Government get this sort of service better
performed for them by old soldiers than
they could possibly get it performed by
flinging the appointments into the com-
petition of the open labour market. But
what then ? The French professional sol-
dier, when time-expired, receives a gift that
costs the State nothing. Yet that gift
means something considerable to him, and
by just so much does the French soldier
of the Colonial Army become a more highly
paid article than his British equivalent.
So far as we have gone, there is nothing
to show that the French nation has not
successfully solved our problem. But there
are one or two further points Eor considera-
tion. First, have we any indications to
show us the direction in which the French
system is moving? Secondly, are there
any other special Inducements making Eor
the success of the French system which
would be wanting in Great Britain?
Thirdly, is the French system worked upon
a scale sufficiently important to serve as a
safe guide i (i (ireal Britain ?
The answer i<> the first question is dis-
78 FRENCH SOLDIERS
couraging. True, the French military
authorities have had no difficulty so far in
recruiting for their Colonial Army. But
some keen observers have noticed a change
of sentiment, not only on the part of the
civil population but also in the Army itself,
which seems to indicate a movement to-
wards the Russian mental attitude as re-
gards voluntary service. I have travelled
with a shipload of French Colonial soldiers
from Marseilles to Saigon. They were physi-
cally of an excellent type, and they seemed
to me soldiers of whom any nation might
be proud. The rank and file are bigger,
more mature, better set up, and more
military-looking than the conscripts, by
whose side they are sometimes seen working
at manoeuvres. Yet invariably French
officers and men of other units speak of
them with a certain condescension. Should
a Colonial Brigade make a mistake, " What
else can you expect ? ' is the usual sort of
remark. Let them be late for a concen-
tration, perhaps owing to no fault of their
own, and the attentive ear may hear the
great man mutter : " Ces sacres Coloniales,
Us seront en retard au rendez-vous du bon
Dieu ! ' This phrase fairly expresses the
tone of the rest of the Army towards its
ATTITUDE TOWARDS COLONIAL ARMY 79
voluntary-service comrades. The officers
rarely attain higher command. Whether
this is caused (as Frenchmen will tell you)
by lack of ambition, or whether (as an
Englishman might otherwise have suspected)
lack of ambition is caused by certainty of
non-success, is a point too delicate for a
foreigner to determine. Is it too much,
then, to assume that the French voluntary
system is moving towards unpopularity ?
If so, does not such a fact seem to show that
two such diametrically opposite principles
as voluntaryism and compulsion combine in
one country with difficulty, and that there
is a constant tendency for the weaker to go
to the wall ?
Secondly, as to special inducements
favouring the French system. Here we
strike up at once against the fact that the
French soldier elects for the Colonial Army,
with the negative inducemenl of thereby
escaping home conscription with pay at the
rate of \<l. a day. No one has yet suggested
that either British conscripts or national
defenders should he paid at such a price.
The National Service League, ill their esti-
mate dated February 1, 1!><M>, propose
to pay their recruits only sixpence a day
less than mil' present regular recruits, and
80 NUMBERS OF FRENCH OVER-SEA ARMY
their trained men the same as the regular.
All the advocates of some form of com-
pulsory service appear to believe that the
Labour Members and the organisations of
working men they represent would no more
be likely to agree to a conscript being
paid hd. a day than they would be likely
to approve of the reservation of Govern-
ment posts for retired foreign-service volun-
teers. The stern clangour of the trumpet
of duty summons the British patriot to be
paid through the nose ! How strangely
must such a call to arms sound in the ear
of the \d. a day French soldier serving on
the opposite side of the Channel ! I am
by no means sure that the National Service
League are not here doing their fellow-
countrymen some injustice. Still, so far as
it goes, their opinion must be taken, and it
seems to strengthen the contention that the
British conscript of the future would be
much less likely to volunteer for foreign
service than the existing Territorial.
Thirdly, as to the scale on which the
French system is being worked. It has been
already stated that the French Colonial
Army numbers only 56,000 men, of whom
28,000 men are serving at home. According
to the last returns, our Regular British troops
PROPORTION KEPT AT HOME 81
numbered 244,000 men, of whom 127,000
men were serving at home. Instead of
finding 65,000 posts in twelve years for her
foreign-service troops, as at present, France,
were she to take over our Empire as a
running concern, must find something well
over a quarter of a million posts.
But it may be argued, and is argued, that
if Great Britain and Ireland introduced
conscription, the portion of the existing
Regular Army which happened to be serving
at home would be swept away forthwith.
Therefore it is not correct, so it has been
urged, to count the 127,000 Regular soldiers
serving at home. Then why, may I ask,
does France, in addition to her enormous
conscript army, maintain 28,000 foreign-
service soldiers at home out of a total of
."><», 000 — nearly the same proportion, be it
noted, as our own 127,000 Regular soldiers
serving at home out of a grand total of
244,000 ? The answer is clear. France
requires them. Whether for coast defence,
for reinforcing coaling stations or for supply-
ing drafts to her troops abroad, she requires
I hem. If the whole of Great Britain and
Ireland were one vast armed conscription
camp we would still have to keep up, not
only on the frontiers of the Empire, bu1 here,
82 THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
at home, large numbers of soldiers of the pre-
sent type. True, if we made up our minds
to sacrifice the linked battalions at home,
and adopt depots in their place, we might
reduce the number of Regulars at home by
about half — -but then we should have cut
off our right arm, the Expeditionary Force.
If, going a step further, we reduced the size
of the depots by adopting a true twenty-
one-years pensionable long-service force to
garrison our foreign possessions, we should
destroy our reserves, further weaken our
striking power, and in the end save little
or no money ! For in course of time the
pension bill for a long-service army carries
off the best part of economies at first
effected by cutting down the number of
enlistments. The long-service corps would
be inferior to the present type of corps for
purposes of war, and there would be no
reserves to send out to them in case of
any Asian or African campaign. Therefore,
even the Special Reserve could be abolished
only were it determined that another Indian
Mutiny or South African War must be
carried on, practically from the beginning,
by calling for volunteers from the Home
Army to replace casualties (a method re-
pugnant to any well-regulated military
CONTINENTAL ANALOGY FAILS 83
mind), or by drafting out conscripts and
units composed of conscripts whether they
were prepared to fight or not.
As far as it goes, then, the Continental
analogy is disappointing to those who believe
that a Voluntary Regular Army such as
ours might be grafted on to a system of
conscription as it is understood and enforced
in Europe and in Japan. It is certain,
indeed, that neither Germany nor Russia
could graft the present British voluntary
system on to their own compulsory system,
and it is most doubtful whether France
could afford to do so, or whether, at any
cost, she could find the necessary number of
voluntary recruits. But it may be urged, and
with justice, that our people are so different,
so much more adventurous than Germans,
Russians, or French, that no analogy based
on those nations is convincing. May it
Dot also be urged, however, that it is our
reliance on the voluntary system which has
kept up our adventurous spirit ? However
this may be, it is certain that no sooner
do we endeavour to restricl the inquiry
entirely to the British Isles than we are met
by the difficulty that, there is so little here
to guide us as to the effect of military service
00 the natural bents of the recruiting market.
84 LESSONS FROM HOME EXPERIENCE
Only one narrow beam from the searchlight
of experience illumines the dense'mist of con-
jecture wherein we find ourselves groping.
All the more necessary is it, then, that we
should make the best use we can of it.
The scheme approved by the old War
Office for enlisting men for three years'
Colour service applied to all the principal
Arms : Cavalry and Infantry of the Line,
Artillery, Engineers, Army Service Corps,
and Army Medical Corps. It came into
force from April 1, 1902, and was discon-
tinued from October 20, 1904.
The inducement offered to persuade three-
years men to extend their service was that,
by extending to eight years with the Colours,
they became entitled to " Service Pay."
They might extend at any time, but before
they could draw service pay they must
have completed two years' service — a con-
dition which applied to all soldiers, what-
ever their terms of enlistment. All extended
men with two years' service received Service
Pay, Class II., at fourpence a day. This
was all they could make absolutely sure of,
but, practically, they knew that Class I.
rate — sixpence a day — was attainable by
all who cared to satisfy a very moderate
prescribed standard of efficiency.
THE THREE- YEARS SYSTEM 85
It was calculated that to make the
scheme a success, that is, to ensure the
required numbers being forthcoming for
drafts for foreign service, the following
percentages of men completing three years
must extend their service to eight years :
Cavalry of the Line
Horse and Field Artillery
Mountain and Garrison Artillery
Engineers
Infantry of the Line
41 90 per cent
3123 „
All
20-20
71-68
In the actual event, of the Infantry en-
listed in 1002 about 31*60 per cent eventually
extended ; of the 1903 batch, 36' 53 ; of
the 1904 batch, 40'42.
The refusal of young Infantrymen to
extend came as a great shock to some of our
military authorities. Soldiers by their owl)
choice, their disinclination to continue in
the Service astonished those who had bc-
lieved thai ;i closer acquaintance with peace
service musl render young men desirous of
devoting their lives to it. Certainly I he
originator of the Bcheme had bad luck. If
the unhappy experience of thai experiment
w< ire not behind us it would probably aot
seem too unreasonable to any of us to imagine
that a very large proportion of our well-
cared-for, voluntarily enlisted, apparently
86 ITS RESULTS
happy young soldiers would take on for
sixpence a day extra. Once again the
incalculable idiosyncrasies of the youthful
Briton baffled the theorists. But we are
no theorists now. We have an example to
guide us how not to do it.
The breakdown of the scheme resulted in
our having to send men all the expensive
journey to India merely that they might
remain there for one year. It led to
bounties. In March 1906 bounties were
offered to three-years men serving in India
at the following rates :
£10 to extend to 6 years ;
£12 ,, 7 years ;
£15 „ 8 years.
It was hoped that by these sums, in
addition to the extra sixpence a day, 3,772
Infantry soldiers might be induced to extend,
but only 1,586 did actually take on. The
bounties paid amounted to rather over
£23,400, and yet, despite the extravagant
sending of soldiers for one or two years
to India, and despite these bounties, we fell
short in our duty of keeping up the Indian
establishments. There was a correspond-
ing shortage in all Colonial battalions.
Taking the returns for May 1 — a date on
ITS RESULTS 87
which the " trooping " for the year has been
completed — the figures stood as follows :
May 1, 1906
Infantry in India was 44 over establishment ;
All Arms in India were 746 ,, ,,
May 1, 1907
Infantry in India, 771 under establishment ;
All Arms in India, 558 ,, ,,
May 1, 1908
Infantry in India, 1,585 under establishment ;
All Arms in India, 1,674 ,, ,,
May 1, 1909
Infantry in India, 48 over establishment.
All Arms in India, 445 ,, ,,
It will be seen that whilst we were sending
three-years men to India, the strength did not
f.ill below establishment, but that when the
three-years men were no longer here to be
sent out, and declined to extend in sufficient
numbers, we could not complete the Indian
drafts until the nine-years men and then the
present seven-ye;irs terms <>i' enlistment, had
been some time in operation. Indeed, we
have not got over the ex erimenl yet. To-
day, in August loio, we are si ill suffering
from its indirect disorganising effects.
It has been shown how ihe national
service idea wars against and weakens
88 THE LESSON
the voluntary foreign-service idea in conti-
nental lands, wherever an attempt has been
made, even on the smallest scale, to bring
both systems simultaneously into play. But
apart from these examples from abroad —
not always very convincing to the Briton
— there are certain obvious lessons to be
drawn from the region of common sense,
showing that, under the shadow of a con-
tinental conscription system, the distaste
exhibited by the short-service soldiers of
1902-4 to prolonging their military career
would tend to become greatly accentu-
ated.
1. Their pay as conscripts would be
less ;
2. Their work as conscripts would
be harder ;
3. They would be conscripts.
Against an adverse deduction from (1)
and (2), there may be some room for argu-
ment. The low pay of conscripts might
not of itself give a distaste to military service,
and it might indeed show up in pleasing
relief the larger urns the foreign-service
recruiter would offer. The harder work
necessitated by the shorter period of service
would not necessarily choke off good men.
But (8) ? Which of us, knowing his own
ATTITUDE TOWARDS COMPULSION 89
countrymen, will not allow that the free-
born Briton tends to become incurably
prejudiced against any form of work or
even amusement he may be forced into ?
Let the British workman undertake a duty
of his own free will, and no one will be at
greater pains to execute it thoroughly. To
the authoritative command, " Fall in ! '
his inclination (not always repressed) is to
retort, " Fall in yourself, and be d — d to
you ! ' Suppose that for two or three
years, say from the age of 18 to 21, the
youth of the nation were compelled, under
pain of fine or imprisonment, to attend
three church services daily ; would the
nation become more religious ? Would
such a law tend to swell the attendance at
extra voluntary services ? I think there
are many who would ;msw< r such questions
in the affirmative, Hut I myself deny,
and ever will deny, thai l<> force food down
a Briton's throal with :i stomach-pump will
give him an appetite lor his dinner. I
ard it as certain, then- as certain, thai is
to say, ;is anything concerning the impulses
of young Britons can be that if w<
had universal continental conscription we
should nol be able to get the necessary
number of volunteers from the ranks of the
90 DANGERS OF COMPULSORY SERVICE
Home Army to keep our Foreign-Service
Army alive.
Before proceeding to discuss other forms
of service — and it must be remembered that
until now the adoption of continental con-
scription has not been seriously set before
the country — the alternative should be noted
whereby recruits for the Voluntary Army
should still be enlisted for that Army at a
nominal 18, whereas, as abroad, the com-
pulsory service would not commence until
the age of 20. Such a system would be
very wasteful. Instead of getting trained
conscripts of 21 to volunteer to take ship
for foreign ports at once, we should have to
keep and train our foreign-service recruits
for two or three years in England, very
much as they are kept and trained at present
both in England and in France, and we
should have to do this although, possessing,
as we should, an ample Home-Defence
Army, we should not really require them.
We might get the men. But personally I
should not like to be responsible that they
would be forthcoming in sufficient numbers,
at present rates. With the labour market
cleared of men between the ages of 20 and 23,
it seems to me that the services of the hobble-
dehoy, now so much at a discount, might
SUMMING UP 91
appeal more attractively to the civil em-
ployer. If so, we should certainly fail in
our competition with him unless we doubled
our present rate of pay.
Summarising the conclusions reached thus
far, it appears that, under a system of
continental conscription, it would not be
safe to trust to the maintenance of our
Foreign-Service Army by volunteers from
the Home-Defence Army. We could not,
therefore, as has been suggested, balance
the cost of a Home-Defence Army on the
German model by sweeping away existing
Home-Service linked battalions of Regulars
unless we replaced these by depots, which
would be, as I have tried to show, a very
unsatisfactory method.
I do not propose to carry my examination
of the probable effects of universal military
service on the continental model any further.
The only tiling certain about its cost is
that it must largely increase — perhaps
double — our Army Estimates. Public feel-
ing is nut pipe for it. No one has proposed
its adoption. Hut by taking that extreme
case I have, I trust, been ;il>le to clear the
outline of the general subject before ap-
proaching proposals more modest and, in
so far, less impracl icable.
92 ALTERNATIVE PLANS
When I say proposals, I go perhaps too
far. For the difficulty of the whole of this
question lies largely in the vagueness of
the case for compulsion and in the absence
of detailed proposals from any responsible
person or association. It is the details
that determine how a scheme will work
and what it will cost. Here, however, are
two schemes, detailed up to a certain
point, one of which has been unofficially
discussed by me with friends ; the other,
the only scheme as yet before the public.
(1) A Home-Defence Army, to be raised
on continental conscription lines. The ex-
isting Special Reserve and Territorial Force
to be abolished. The present voluntary,
foreign-service Army to be reduced to a
bare minimum by forming depots to replace
linked battalions, and by turning the Indian
and Colonial garrisons into twenty-one-years-
service pensionable forces. India, South
Africa, and the Colonies to pay the full cost
of their British garrisons and also of the
depots in this country necessary to maintain
them, whereas at present South Africa, for
instance, contributes not a halfpenny to
the cost of the troops we maintain there.
(2) Compulsory Service on a Militia basis,
as proposed by the National Service League.
THE GERMAN MODEL 93
Let us first examine (1).
As a basis of comparison, I will take the
Home-Defence Army at such a strength
that it would give us on mobilisation a
force equivalent in numbers to the pre-
sent Territorial Force. The establish-
ment of the Territorial Force (excluding the
newly authorised first-line reserve, tech-
nical and veteran reserves, which have not
yet taken shape) is 315,000 officers, non-
commissioned officers and men. To pro-
duce an equivalent force on mobilisation by
German methods, a peace establishment of
123,000 officers, non-commissioned officers
and men would be required. Your financial
advisers have worked out the total annual
cost of an imaginary British conscript
soldier, maintained on the German scale,
for housing, clothing, food, and pay, at
£78 per head (including everything), instead
of £103 as at present. Whether the British
conscript would stand this, need not be
argued here. I will only remark in passing
that the pay Is 2§d. per diem. That the food
(one square meal in the t wenl y-four hours ;
breakfasl and supper being supplied out of
messing funds) is good, hut is admitted not
to be sufficient hy itself. Men whose homes
arc in the garrison town receive help from
94 DETAILS
their parents. My soldier servants on Ger-
man manoeuvres have always received postal
orders from their relatives during the period
of absence from barracks. Others whose re-
latives are dead or absent get help from their
comrades, or make cupboard love to cooks,
like comedy policemen. As to clothing,
the men are provided with one good outfit
(not necessarily new), which is kept in
store for them. For every-day work they
have to wear old clothes, which are passed
on from generation to generation for so
long as they decently hang together, so as
to enable the unit to accumulate a large
supply of spare equipment. So much for
the conditions. As to the financial profit
and loss, I do not think I need here take
up your time by going into the further
details or by balancing savings with extra
expenditure. You have the figures, * and
know that we would seem, at the first
blush, to save twelve and three-quarter
millions sterling per annum by such a revo-
lution of system, of which sum six and
three-quarter millions would be increased
Indian and Colonial contributions, leaving
a real reduction of six millions. So far
so good ; but it is the military cost of
* See Appendix VII.
OUR SIX DIVISIONS 95
the proposal which entirely puts it out
of court from my point of view. The
saving, in fact, is far too expensive ! The
whole Expeditionary Force of six Divisions,
composed at present of the finest troops in
Europe, would be wiped out. I repeat
advisedly, the finest troops in Europe, not
as one puffed up with national conceit,
but because they ought to be the finest,
largely composed, as they will be, of young
veterans, men under thirty who have done
seven years' service, including probably
some active service, with the Colours. There
are those amongst us, I am aware, who
adopt the magnificent attitude of despising
six Divisions of British Regulars with the
newly created Special Reserve standing
behind them to keep them up to strength.
They are fond of quoting a remark of Prince
Bismarck's (authentic or not, who knows?)
to I Ik- (licet that if the British Army landed
on the continent lie would have to send
the police t<> make them prisoners. They
forgel that at the lime the mot was supposed
t<» have been made Greal Britain and Ireland
could not, literally, have embarked one
Division lor war within any reasonable lime,
as time in war is counted. They forget
that these six Divisions are not standing in
96 DRAWBACKS OF CONTINENTAL MODEL
the air, but that behind them is the might of
England, her half -trained men, her money,
her horses, guns, munitions, science. Finally
they do not actually, personally, know
the General Staffs of foreign armies, or
realise how hateful to those methodical
minds is the idea of the shifting base and
incalculable line of communications of a
Power in command of the sea.
Under Scheme (1) then, the money-saving
sounds magnificent, but the six Expedi-
tionary Divisions are indubitably lost.
The adoption of such a system must mean
a falling back on to the pure defensive — an
attitude immemorially precursive of de-
struction — and be it noted that the whole
of our existing regular Coast-defence troops
(Artillery and Engineers) at home have
similarly gone by the board. Therefore,
if we are to continue to exist, even on
sufferance, we must, in addition to the new,
315,000 strong, Home-Defence Army, create
a new equivalent to our present Expedi-
tionary Force and our Coast-defence troops
at Home. Working, as hitherto, on the
German model, we must add 100,000 men
to the peace establishment of 123,000 al-
ready given. Unfortunately, the cost of
such an addition will not only eat up the
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES 97
saving of six millions I have indicated, but
would actually cause the new system to
exceed the cost of our present system by a
million and a half.
Militarily we should be practically as we
are at present, only that :
(a) The conscript Home-Defence Army
would always be up to full strength, and
would be considerably better trained, dis-
ciplined, and generally more efficient than
the Territorials whom they would replace.
How much more efficient depends entirely
on the period for which the Territorials are
supposed to have been embodied when the
comparison is made. (I will advise you on
this obscure point later, for to do so here
would break the thread of my argument.)
(b) The conscript Expeditionary Force
would be (as lias been shown in discussing
i he general subject) inferior to our present
Expeditionary Force lor continental pur-
poses and would be useless, or nearly so, for
Asiatic or African purposes.
(c) Our long-service Over-seas Army would
be less effective in war than our present type
of s< vcn-ycars-colour-scrvice Army. It would
have no reserves to hill hack upon Tor any
s< rious campaign.
(d) A certain weakening of central autho-
7
98 BALANCE OF ADVANTAGE
rity must ensue, in so far as we should have
to permit India and the Colonies to establish
by their depots, containing armed men,
an imperium in imperio.
(e) The numbers drawn by the ballot
would be so small compared with the able-
bodied male population, that the conscript
on whom the lot fell would feel that his was
the exceptional rather than the common
lot. A sense of hardship might thus be en-
gendered, from which the universality of the
obligation saves the continental conscript.
(/) Provided that, as abroad, no con-
scripts were taken before twenty, it is pos-
sible that a conscript Home-Defence Army
of such modest dimensions would inter-
fere but little with recruiting for the long-
service Over-seas Army, although I do not
myself believe many recruits would be
drawn from the ranks of the conscripts.
I have tried to put all the points as they
occur to me. What you have to consider is
whether the advantage shown in (a) counter-
balances the drawbacks disclosed in (b), (c),
(d), (e), plus the extra cost of one million
and a half. Under the suggested scheme we
should, I submit, feel absolutely secure from
invasion at home, and we should be at least
as powerful for action on the Continent as
ANOTHER VIEW 99
at present. For, supposing the new Home-
Defence Army to be twice as efficient as the
existing Territorials, then, under many easily
imagined conditions, first a portion and
then the whole of the Home-Defence Armv
might be shipped off to support the Ex-
peditionary Force in any not too distant
part of Europe.
Another way of regarding the problem,
in the light of the assumed superior value
of the Conscript Army to the Territorial
Force, is that if 315,000 conscript soldiers
are really worth G30,000 Territorials, then
we might do with half the number, and
content ourselves with a Home-Defence
Army of, say, a war strength of 1G0,000.
Thus we should save three or four millions
per annum; he theoretically as safe at
home as we arc to-day, and retain an Ex-
peditionary Force as good, or nearly as
good, for service in Western Europe as our
existing six Divisions. Hut here we enter
upon treacherous ground. Alter all, are we
so certain that the number 315,000 hits the
exact mean between economy and safely?
I think perhaps not. The Territorial He-
serve has been recently inaugurated to till
up the gap between establishment and
strength which must, always exist, with a
100 LOSS OF STRENGTH OVER-SEA
voluntary system. The Veteran Reserve,
when, as I hope may soon be the case, it
steps off paper on to the parade ground, will
be extra to the 315,000. Further, and most
important, under our existing system there
is a very considerable margin of enlisted
men available in one way or another to
swell the cadres for home defence should
necessity arise. On September 30, 1909,
our actual number of Regular soldiers at
home, including Army Reserve and Special
Reserve, was 339,000 officers, non-com-
missioned officers and men. Under a con-
scription system there would be no margin.
It would be safer, then, not to look on the
superior efficiency of a conscript Home-
Defence Army as affording an excuse for
cutting down rifles below the present Terri-
torial standard, and to content ourselves
with the fact that owing to that superiority
we should be safe in England, and something
more formidable within a radius of three or
four hundred miles from our island base
than we are to-day.
Against this must be set the fact that in
Asia, Africa, and ? America we should be
very much weaker than at present. Al-
though India now pays for her Army, the
troops remain by tradition, by reliefs of
NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE PLAN 101
units, by free interchange at all times of
officers, non-commissioned officers and men,
essentially a part of the Home army. Were
India to establish her flesh-and-blood markets
in Great Britain, and buy officers for their
effective lives, and men for twenty-one
years, their sentiment of homogeneity with
their conscript comrades in Great Britain
and Ireland would soon begin to wear thin.
Still more so as regards South Africa. If
an African Government enlisted and carried
off officers and men to serve in the Transvaal
for twenty-one years, what would be their
value to Greater Britain ? Add to these
drawbacks the fact insisted upon earlier in
the paper, namely, that conscripts are not
suited for a central reserve Force for
Imperial purposes ! I doubt, Mr. Haldane,
if the game is worth the candle. But let us
proceed to try to find something better in the
proposals of the National Service League.
We now come to (2), the latest scheme
for compulsory service on a Militia* basis
put forward by the National Service League.
For the idea of a force of a million men
trained on a Regular, or Special Keservc*
* Militia in tin- m n-c <|'lin«d at p. ."»(',. n< >t involving
life in barracks, even daring tin- period of recruil drill The
"Special Reserve" peril involves life in barracks foi n oruito .
102 THE GENERAL SCHEME
basis, has been killed by the discovery that
its acceptance would involve an increase to
Army Estimates of twenty millions sterling
per annum.
The proposal which now holds the field
is that the whole manhood of the nation,
subject to certain medical and other rejec-
tions, should become liable to do their turn
of compulsory service on the 1st of January
following the attainment of their eighteenth
birthday. On joining, the recruit is to
receive four to six months' training, varying
with the arm, and in his second, third, and
fourth years he is to undergo fifteen days'
continuous training and to be put through
a course of musketry. From his fourth
year until he is thirty, a man will receive
no further training, but will be liable to
embodiment in case of imminent national
danger. He will not be liable at any time
to be ordered out of the kingdom. The
existing Territorial Force would disappear.
The Special Reserve would be abolished and
would be replaced by men serving com-
pulsorily in the Territorial Force, who would
be induced by a money payment to accept
a liability for service abroad in case of
emergency. The Regular Army would re-
main. It is calculated, correctly I believe,
ITS FINANCIAL ASPECT 103
that 150,000 recruits would be called 4 up
annually. When this machinery was in
full swing its out-turn would be 400,000
trained men, organised in cadres, as well
as 600,000 men in reserve, for which latter
category the scheme provides no arms,
clothing, equipment or organisation of any
sort or kind. The League estimate the
additional cost of adopting their proposals
at four millions sterling per annum.
I will now give you my views on this
scheme.
To take the last point first : your financial
adviser has shown you already that the
estimate of an additional four millions
sterling is under the mark by one half.
Figures, it has been said, can be made to
prove anything. Figures, in fact, are like
8 pile of first-class modern rifles. Each in
itself is accuracy materialised, is gauged
to one-thousandth <>f an inch, is capable
of making a bull's-eye every time at the
distance of a mile. How, then, do we
account for the disconcerting fact that
the marksman often brings down the crow
instead of the pigeon ? Sometimes because
lie is a bad, inexperienced shot. More
often because, also, whilst ostensibly aiming
at the pigeon he deliberately draws a bead
104 RECRUIT TRAINING
on the crow. Everything, in short, depends
upon the sportsman behind the gun — the
authority who manipulates the figures. Here
you are surely on very safe ground. Not
only is your adviser a man of rare ability,
but he has had no brief from one side or
the other, and his experience is absolutely
unique. I take it, then, as certain that
your figures are the best and fairest obtain-
able, and that the actual extra cost of the
proposals just set forth would be some eight
millions sterling per annum.
From an ex-Adjutant-General's point of
view, the arrangement whereby in exchange
for the Special Reserve we are to be given
a number of individuals without any unit
or other organisation, is pernicious. Fur-
ther, the infantrymen, as recruits, would
be two-thirds less thoroughly trained than
are our present Special Reserve.
About three-fifths of the recruits for the
Regular Army enlist between October and
March, and the General Annual Report of
the Army shows that nearly half the total
of recruits raised every year are eighteen and
under nineteen. This is the age at which
the League proposes to claim lads for the
Territorial Force. Neither the Bill nor the
Memorandum supplies direct information as
PERIOD OF YEAR 105
to the months during which it is intended
to train recruits. The League calculates
that there will be 150,000 for training every
year ; but as it apparently does not con-
template the provision of extra barrack
accommodation, it was probably the inten-
tion of the promoters of the Bill that
recruit training should take place under
canvas. It is extremely improbable that
these recruits could be trained during the
summer, for whenever numbers of men
were out of work, public opinion would
bring strong pressure to bear with a view
to ensuring that every man drawn for
service was at least given the option of
undergoing his training during the winter.
The argument that winter is the time when
a recruil would derive least benefit from
his training would carry little weight with
Employers 9 Associations, Trade Unions, and
Benefit Societies. Another consideration
making winter almost inevitably the normal
training season is thai labour is so Bcarce
in country districts tli.it there is no other
time of year when so large a number of
bands could be spared from agricultural
work. These views represenl more than
mere personal observation. They arc the
results of experience gained by a careful
106 DANGER TO REGULAR RECRUITING
and responsible study of the recruiting
market and the various factors by which it
is dominated.
The majority of eighteen- to nineteen-year-
old regular recruits enlist because they have
just ceased to be boys and are unable to find
regular employment as men. About four-
fifths of them come to us because they can-
not get a job at fifteen shillings a week. The
immense work of national regeneration the
Army has been unostentatiously performing
by helping these lads and making fine men
of them is quite unknown to the average
citizen. But that by the way. The re-
luctance of employers to take weedy, over-
grown youths of seventeen and eighteen has
markedly increased since the introduction of
the Workmen's Compensation Act. This is
good for recruiting. But if, under altered
conditions, hungry hobbledehoys knew that
they would be called up for continuous
housing and feeding during the winter, the
Regular Army would begin to shrivel up
from the roots. I know that all this is
not very glorious, but it is true. There
are some youths who enlist because they
have been crossed in love ; some whose
nerve of romance has been thrilled by
stories of heroes and battles of the past ;
DANGER TO REGULAR RECRUITING 107
some who naively confess that they were
charmed into enlisting by music, and that
a military band at guard-mounting first
turned their fancy towards the Army ;
some there are, also — and they are the
very best — whose fathers were old soldiers.
But these, all told, are only one-fifth of
the total in the generality of infantry
battalions.
It may be argued :
(1) That some young men might still
join the Regular Army between their
eighteenth birthday and the end of the
year.
(2) That it is not in any case proposed
to prevent men from volunteering from the
Territorial Force to the Regular Army.
As regards (1), lads who found themselves
out of work towards the end of a year
would have an inducement to try to hold
out till the new year, knowing they would
then get State employment of a sort just
calculated to tide them over hard times
until work grew brisk in summer.
As regards (2), most of those who, under
present conditions, enlist during the early
months of the year would at that time be
alread} paid, housed, and clothed at the
expense of the State. Would the experi-
108 DANGER TO REGULAR RECRUITING
enccs thus gained be likely to tempt 35,000
of them, or, admitting the doubtful assump-
tion that our recruiters are still able to
pick up 10,000 youths in the open market,
say 25,000 of them, to take up the military
career as a profession ? Here is the crux
of the whole matter. I have already ap-
proached it indirectly several times. My
view is clear, that the present type of
recruit would not take on in anything
approaching his present numbers. Our own
experiment of 1902-04 is pretty conclusive
there. It is maintained by optimists that a
new class — the superior artisans' sons and the
sons of small shopkeepers — would acquire
a taste for the military life during their
compulsory training as recruits. To me
this notion appears too fanciful. It would
delight me to believe it, for in believing it
I should be paying a compliment to the
virility and love of adventure of my own
race. But, speaking as an official so lately
responsible, I cannot advise you that the
type of youth referred to, having been
compelled against his inclination to serve,
would be drawn by his experiences volun-
tarily to prolong that service. The only
fact tending to support such a view is that
during the Napoleonic wars a considerable
CURRENT MISCONCEPTIONS 109
number of compulsorily enlisted militiamen
were tempted by bounties to join the
armies in the field. But the compulsory
system had not been fully enough established
then to have got a grip upon the sentiment
of the country, and, secondly, it is not here
a question of war and its excitements, but
of humdrum garrison work in peace. Again,
on page 12 * of the League Estimate it is
argued that because, under the voluntary
system, no difficulty was experienced in
getting militiamen to engage to serve with
regulars abroad in case of war, there is no
reason why a similar bounty of £l 10v.
should not prove similarly attractive to
the new conscript Home -Defence men.
The same idea is elaborated in the League
Journal, where the point is constantly made
that if the voluntarily enlisted Territorial
stimulates recruiting by acquiring a liking
for professional soldiering, so will the COn-
jcripted Territorial of the future help t<>
popularise what will then quickly come to
be looked upon as mercenary service ! I
submit to you thai here is a certain mis-
conception of the working and weight of
moral Forces.
you will gather, then, thai I am by no
* Bee p. 177.
110 FURTHER DIFFICULTIES
means sanguine as to the prospect of
drawing a sufficient number of eighteen-
year-old youths either from the open market
or from the ranks of the Home-Defence
Force, were the National Service League
system now to be put in force.
I fear I have been forced to show that
compulsory home service, with continuous
recruit training, must deprive the Regular
Army of many thousands of eighteen to
nineteen years old recruits. What remains ?
The men over nineteen years of age. But,
obviously, the annual withdrawal of large
numbers of men from civil life would make
it easier for men of nineteen and over to
obtain civil employment. It is true that
men might enlist in the Army after they
had finished their recruit training, but
they would be released from training in
the summer, when work is plentiful and the
winter wolf still seems far from the door.
They might do so ; but would they do
so ? Experience in the Adjutant-General's
Department says No !
Again, coincident with the grave recruit-
ing difficulties I have foreshadowed as a
result of the adoption of the proposals of
the League, more, and not fewer, recruits
would be required for the Regular Army.
THE FIVE ALTERNATIVES 111
For, even when credit has been taken for the
difference between the Regular establish-
ments of the Special Reserve and the Depot
establishments which will still be required,
it would be necessary to increase the estab-
lishment of the Regular Army in order to
provide the larger Permanent Staffs and the
new cadres, especially for Ireland, without
which the annual contingent of Home-
Defence recruits could not be trained.
The course of my investigation has now
led me to touch upon five conceivable
methods whereby our military strength might
be so increased, modified, or redistributed,
as to give us more troops for service in
Western Europe and, consequently, more
self-confidence at home. These methods
were :
(1) The enlargement of OUT present
type of Over-seas Army ;
(*j) Universal Military Service on the
German model ;
(:i) Universal Military Serviee on a
Special Reserve l>;isis ;
(4) A Home-Defence Army and Ex-
peditionary Force on the German model,
but restricted in strength to the
present establishment of the Territorial
Force <>n i he one hand ; on I lie <tt her.
112 THEIR RESPECTIVE MERITS
to the strength of our existing Expedi-
tionary Force of six Divisions ;
(5) Compulsory service on a Militia
basis, as proposed by the National
Service League.
The motive underlying each of these
proposals would be much the same as that
actuating the Admiralty when they strength-
ened the naval position in home waters
partly by drawing in ships from outstations,
partly by actual increases to the Fleet. Our
military problem is less simple. Naval
reductions in the Mediterranean, or in the
Pacific and Indian Oceans, affect nothing,
except perhaps our prestige, so long as peace
is maintained ; whereas any serious reduc-
tion of the white garrison in India might in
itself precipitate bloodshed. As to actual
increases, these are voted readily enough
for the Navy, but only once in a blue moon
do they commend themselves to Parliament
where we of the Army are concerned.
Taking now the five methods aforesaid in
their order :
(1) is impracticable on any sufficient scale.
(2) is far too costly.
(3) is still too costly.
(4) is practicable. The additional cost
ANOTHER POSSIBILITY 113
would not be large. Recruiting for the
Regular Army would be hardly, if at all,
affected. The sum total of our military
strength would be left much as it stands
at present, but, by fortifying the heart
at the expense of the extremities, it would
be differently apportioned.
(5) The expense would be very heavy,
but perl taps not prohibitive. Its adoption
would, however, in all human probability,
gravely prejudice recruiting for the Regular
Army. You have now a new Adjutant-
General, and as soon as he is fairly in the
saddle you should consult him on this
point. Writing as an ex-Adjutant-General,
it is my firm opinion that the acceptance
ol' the proposals of the National Service
League as they stand at present would
within two yens bring about something
very like disaster in I he recruiting market
lor I he Regular Army.
Is there then no method by which we can
strengthen ourselves al and near home,
without greal additional expenditure and
wiilioui weakening ourselves upon the Im-
perial frontiers? I think' there is: hut
before making my recommendations it is
absolutely necessary I should diverge for
i line lii i le i ime into a consideral i<>n ol' t he
8
114 THE TERRITORIAL FORCE
value, actual and potential, of our Territorial
Force as it stands.
The points we must weigh are, briefly :
(1) The actual war-value of the fourteen
Territorial Divisions.
(2) The probable war-value of the fourteen
Territorial Divisions two or three years
hence, when they will contain a due pro-
portion of four-years men ; when the first-
line reserve will have begun to fill up ;
when the Veteran and Technical Reserves
will have taken shape ; when rifle and
artillery ranges will have been rendered
available to every unit, and when mobilisa-
tion, equipment, and stores have been not
only purchased and stored but actually
handed over to the County Associations.
All these improvements will either take
place automatically or have been worked
out and already approved of in principle.
(3) The potential war-value of the fourteen
Territorial Divisions two or three years
hence, were expenditure not yet contem-
plated to be sanctioned. I think you know
how and where the shoe pinches the Terri-
torial, both literally and metaphorically.
A few hundred thousands a year in travelling
expenses to drills and to rifle ranges and in
facilitating week-end camps ; in a carefully
ITS VALUE, PRESENT AND FUTURE 115
guarded extension, here and there, to the
establishment of Permanent Staff ; in mak-
ing it easier for the men to get the right
boots for their training ; such measures as
these would increase both efficiency and
numbers out of all proportion to the extra
cost involved. If, after full consideration,
the General Staff think our establishment
has been fixed at too low a point, I believe
it could then be raised. Add a Cyclist
Company to each battalion of infantry ;
you put on some 8,000 men at a stroke.
Select certain favourable districts for the
creation of corps troops. Or, more simply,
if less symmetrically, permit units up to
strength to recruit above establishment.
The existing fourteen Divisions of the Terri-
torial Force possess better lighting value
than is admitted by their critics or claimed
by their friends. So I must maintain, even
though i la- pronouncement may smack of
presumption. Wan1 of acquaintance with
Territorial standards on the pari of mosl
military officers, and want of experience
of Regular standards by mosl Territorial
officers, are I he Causes Of the double mis-
apprehension. As lo the professor the new
pupil may appear insignificant, so to the
pupil the unknown profeSSOT must seem
116 MISCONCEPTIONS
magnificent. Let them but work together
for a year, and the one may loom less im-
posingly, whilst the other will assuredly grow
taller. When a larger number of Regular
officers are by degrees brought into contact
with our citizen soldiers they will learn to
appreciate the full difference between a
fourteen to fifteen shilling a week hobblede-
hoy and a twenty-five shilling to thirty
shilling a week man (a type they have never
handled). They will then be in a better
position to understand how more instruction
than seemed heretofore possible can be
crammed into a period of time which would
be of very little value to the regular recruit.
Again, if a certain number of Territorial
officers can be sent at State expense to
British and Continental manoeuvres, they
may, whilst learning a great deal, manage
at the same time to acquire a better conceit
of themselves. Thus, from Regulars and
Territorials alike, the cousins and aunts
who practically rule England may grow
to understand that things are not so desper-
ately bad as in some quarters they are
represented to be.
But there is more than mere want of
knowledge at the back of the existing,
almost universal, depreciation of our Terri-
MISCONCEPTIONS 117
torials. There has been put into circulation
a statement, official or semi-official, which,
being misinterpreted, has largely helped to
transform ignorance into prejudice. The
Territorials, it has been said, would be able
to fight Continental troops after being em-
bodied for six months. That is no doubt
the truth, but it is a truth carrying with it
to the uninstructed public the damning
implication that they would not be pre-
pared to fight before that time. Such
generalisations are always extremely unsafe.
This one is particularly dangerous, seeing
it took hold of the mind of the country
before Napoleon himself could have said
how the Territorials were going to turn out.
Now we do know a little about the matter,
and it may safely be said that the statement
went too far or not far enough. II it means
that at the end of six months' embodiment
Territorial troops could cherish reasonable
hopes of defeating first-line Continental
Regular troops in the open field, on even
terms, rifle for rifle, ^un for gun, why, then
it goes tOO Ear. If il is to be held to imply
that Territorial troops arc so want inn- in
soldierly qualities and training that they
could not be n .<■<! I" figb.1 continental troops
to-morrow, then it is at least equally mis-
118 FIGHTING QUALITY
leading. I can name you brigades of Terri-
torials ready and available to be entrained
and sent off at a few hours' notice. Taking
with them three days' rations and three
hundred rounds, they would fight any one
you like to name at daybreak to-morrow
morning, this being 3 p.m. They would
conduct themselves with more zeal than
skill. They would suffer heavy losses.
Proportionately the enemy's losses would
be slight. If defeated, they would go abso-
lutely to pieces for a time. Still, were they
respectably handled and were they in a
superiority of say three to one, they would
fight well enough to give the best of enemies
a bellyful.
Every day would make a difference. At
the end of a month's embodiment it would
be a different story. At the end of six
months' embodiment it would be a very
different story. By that time, in my opinion,
a twenty-five per cent superiority in
numbers ought to give them a fair
fighting chance, and a superiority of half
as many again ought to give them a good
chance of the victory, especially as we
must always bear in mind that after six
months' war a Continental army would
not consist so much of first-line troops
LEADING OF TERRITORIALS 119
as of Reserves. In such case our Terri-
torials should be almost, if not quite, their
equals.
In the foregoing estimates (to which you
will attach just so much importance as
may be warranted by my personal ex-
periences) I am assuming existing con-
ditions. On the one hand, I do not allow
for any further improvement which may,
nay, must, take place in the Territorial
Force; on the other, I assume that even
although our full six Divisions have quitted
the country, there remain (as there must
remain) some thousands of odds and cuds
of Regulars to give here and there some
guidance, example, point, and coherence to
the ranks of the Territorial Divisions.
A few battalions of Guards, some bat-
teries of Horse Artillery, and some bat-
talions of Special Reserve, would also be
available to lend a hand under any con-
ditions I can conceive. Finally, I assume,
as I have already indicated, thai the Terri-
torials will be handled by sonic one who
understands them. A freshly embodied
Militia ni;i\ not be marched < > if their legs
or manoeuvred in precisely the same way
as the Brigade of Guards might with advan-
tage be marched or manoeuvred. If the
120 THE MORAL FACTOR
enemy would like to have the fate of England
staked upon one great battle fought over
open ground, a sort of second Battle of
Hastings, in fact, he must not be indulged.
One of the numerous qualities we demand
(and sometimes do not get) in a General, is
the art of playing up to the characteristics
of his troops. Those, then, who lead Terri-
torials in war should have had some experi-
ence of them in peace.
I have tried to show that want of know-
ledge, aggravated by the misapprehension
of the statement about the six months, are
each in their way responsible for the low
prevailing estimates of Territorial efficiency.
But I think I can lay my finger on one more
reason for this unwonted fit of modesty on
the part of the British nation.
The moral factor, the greatest factor of
all, seems to have received but scant con-
sideration at the hands of any of the critics.
Foreign officers are more generous. They
admit that our Regular Army is sure to fight
well, because the men are volunteers, and
may therefore be presumed to be by nature
combative. But I have explained that only
a small proportion of our Regular recruits
join from a compelling love of soldiering,
whereas in the Territorials there is hardly
THE VOLUNTARY SPIRIT 121
a man who has not joined for the express
object of having a good fight if any fighting
happens to come his way. There is hardly
a Territorial, I believe, who does not, at the
bottom of his heart, hope to go into one
historic battle during his military existence.
Otherwise why should he be there, sweating
and toiling during his holiday — attacking,
defending, aiming ? Defence of hearth and
home ? Yes ; but he will be delighted, not
downhearted, like some others of his fellow-
countrymen, when he hears that the in-
vaders have landed.
Napoleon has told us that the moral is to
the physical as three is to one. The Scriptures
tell us that " where there is no vision the
people perish." Clauscwitz has said, " In
the combat the loss of moral force is the
chief cause of the decision." Blindness to
moral forces and worship of material forces
inevitably lead in war to destruction. All
that exaggerated reliance placed upon
chassepots and mitrailleuses by France be-
fore '70; all thai trash writ ten by M. Bloch
before 190 1 aboul /oiks of fire across which
do living being could pass, h< raided nothing
but disaster. War is essentially the tri-
umph, not <»f a chassepol over ;i needle-gun,
not of a line of men entrenched behind
122 THE PARADE AT WINDSOR
wire entanglements and fire-swept zones
over men exposing themselves in the open,
but of one will over another weaker will.
Are we then to leave our voluntary spirit,
a spirit dead or dying upon the Continent,
entirelv out of the count ? Are we to
imagine young men whose elders, safe from
service themselves, have passed a law com-
pelling them to serve willy-nilly — are we
to imagine them animated by the same
moral force as young men who have joined
the Colours from sheer love of them ? If
so, then all I can say is, Napoleon must be
wrong, and the ideal which has guided
British theory and practice for centuries
must be wrong and doubly wrong !
You remember, do you not, the parade
of detachments of Territorials at Windsor ?
There were assembled together fishermen
from the misty islands of the North, miners
from the West, countrymen from South
and East, artisans from Birmingham, and
all sorts and conditions of life from the
great melting-pot of London. They had
come from all points of the compass to
receive their Colours from their King. At
two continental capitals have I seen a
similar parade ; and you may take my
word for it that in no essential point did
QUALITY OF TERRITORIALS 123
our ceremonial suffer from the comparison.
Regular officers present were amazed. How
could the thing have been achieved ? Some
tried to explain the miracle by saying that
the officer in charge had a genius for
organising and instructing in spectacular
displays. I believe that to be the case. I
believe the Territorials were given every
possible chance to show the metal they were
made of. But can men be taught to march,
to handle arms, to salute and to stand
steady in the ranks, in twenty-four hours ?
The fact of the parade passing off, not only
without a hitch, but faultlessly, lay deeper
than any surface organisation or instruc-
tions issued on the spot and at the last
moment. The men were first-class men —
free men : alive to the business on hand
;iikI previously prepared to perform it so as
to reflecl credit on their corps. To a
civilian, a spectacular show may seem as
Ear removed as anything well can be from the
realities of war ; bul it is none the less the case
thai a greal notion ol Bervice efficiency can
be obtained by watching how men of fighting
race carr) themselves on greal occasions.
It is ;i commonplace <»f military literal ure
lli.it ;i Militia c;innol Ik. Id its own against
Regulars. Bul there is not a soldier who
124 SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
would not admit also that the moral out-
values the material. Indeed, Monongahela,
Lexington, Bunker's Hill, Jemappes, Baylen,
Prestonpans, Falkirk, Valmy, Maiwand, and
Majuba show that there must be another
side to the story, and that, even in days
when volley-firing and close formations lent
special value to strictest discipline, enthu-
siasm has sometimes found means to redress
the balance.
Elandslaagte was a hard-fought action.
Famous regiments were there, well repre-
sented. Joined unto them was the Imperial
Light Horse. The corps held its first parade
as a unit on October 8, 1899, when it was
inspected by Sir Archibald Hunter at Pieter-
maritzburg. I saw the men at work for
several hours next day. The material was
excellent. Mining engineers, lawyers, stock-
brokers, land surveyors, foremen of native
labour gangs, and artisans, shop assistants
and clerks. Morale was exceptional, the
corps being animated through and through
by a burning desire to vindicate the fighting
honour of their race, impugned in South
Africa since Majuba and, more than ever,
since the raid. A fine body of men had
been organised into a unit and had received
its equipment, but discipline and corporate
THE IMPERIAL LIGHT HORSE 125
training had naturally not yet come into
existence. On the 21st of that same month
was fought Eland slaagte, on a small scale
one of the sharpest actions of the war. I
watched the Imperial Light Horse carefully
in the second advance, and was near them
in the fight.
By this time their standard of military
efficiency, from the point of view of the
training ground, was about as near as can
be that of a good British Yeomanry regi-
ment of our existing forces after it has
been, say, one week in camp. Individually
the Imperial Light Horse were better edu-
cated and more able to think and act for
themselves, but what they gained in this
respecl over our Yeomanry (physically fully
their equals) w;is losl again by I heir relative
lack of homogeneity.
In the ensuing action our troops re-
ceived ;i free invitation t<> nil their bellies
full of fighting. tc Lei the little newspaper
boys in London proclaim a British victory
in the streets to-morrow morning," was
the word, or hortative, given. Here are
our losses, surest guide, in victory or defeat,
of t he si illness of t tie affair :
( H\nlry . . . . . . . • '34
Artillery 1*50
126 THE COLONIALS
Devons . . . . . . . . . . 3 - 98
Manchesters . . . . . . . . 12*72
Gordons 28-94
Imperial Light Horse . . . . 15*97
You will observe that the Territorial
regiment, less highly trained than our
own present Yeomanry at the close of their
annual camp, emerges by no means so
badly from a comparison with its Regular
comrades. Also please note, as confirma-
tory of what has been said as to the value
of the moral element in war, that the
Gordons, like the Imperial Light Horse,
were sustained by a special animus, the
rankling memory of Majuba.
When considering the voluntary prin-
ciple, do not (now that the time of danger
seems past) listen to those who would
belittle the services of levies sent us in our
hour of direct need by self-governing and
Crown Colonies. Good wine needs no bush ;
and it would be superfluous indeed were I
to recapitulate the deeds of these corps
who, in their first encounters with the
enemy, were assuredly neither more highly
trained nor disciplined than our existing
Territorials. Also, pause a moment to con-
sider, in the case of each of those units,
whether, had thev been raised on a com-
THE CITY IMPERIAL VOLUNTEERS 127
pulsory basis for home defence, we should
have had the benefit of their assistance.
Yet another example from the South
African War, an example this time which
has been freely used against the voluntary
idea. I refer to the City Imperial Volun-
teers. If you will turn up my evidence
given before the Royal Commission on the
South African War you will see that I,
speaking as their responsible Commander,
expressed the following opinion regarding
the corps :
Question 13005. " I think you had a
good opinion of the City Imperial Volun-
teers ? ' Yes ; they ripened very quickly.
They improved before my eyes. At the
crossing of the Zand River was the first
time J let them go at nil, and I was not
quite Mire of them, but they were .-ill right,
and then they did better still at Doornkop,
and :il Diamond Hill they did very well
indeed."
Again, giving evidence before the Duke
of Norfolk's Royal Commission, I said :
Question lit."). (Chairman) "Now as re-
gards the Volunteers ? " " I had the City
Imperial Volunteers when they Btarted,
and afterwards I had the Elswick Battery
Volunteers; I think I am within the mark
128 ROYAL COMMISSION EVIDENCE
in saying I must have had over 30 Volunteer
Service Companies at different times under
me ; and, generally speaking, I think it
would be difficult to overpraise them. I
think that they were wonderfully good.
Shortly after the City Imperial Volunteers
joined me, in May, we fought the Zand
River action. I was not quite sure about
them then, and I do not think they were
quite sure of themselves, but they did
very well."
Question 1146. " Do you mean that you
were not sure of them before the action ? " —
" When I saw them during the action they
did not show the dash and go and confidence
that they developed later. About a fort-
night later, in quite a serious action at
Doornkop, at Johannesburg, General Bruce
Hamilton, owing perhaps to indistinct orders
from me, extended too far to his left, leaving
a gap in our centre between my two Infantry
Brigades. The City Imperial Volunteers
were on his left, and I had to ask him to
draw them in under fire ; this is a very
high test, and the C.I.V.'s came through it
excellently. Altogether, that day they be-
haved exceedingly well. At Diamond Hill
I had the good fortune to be associated
with some very distinguished regiments,
ATTAINMENT OF FIGHTING VALUE 129
and I can only say I do not wish to serve
with any better regiments than the City
Imperial Volunteers were then. . . ."
This has not been denied, no one being
likely to try to traverse the statement.
But it has been urged that the C.I.V. took
so long to attain to this standard that they
thereby demonstrated what must be the
special weakness of any voluntary militia
system.
Now, the C.I.V. were embodied on
January 4, 1900. One wing embarked for
South Africa on January 13, the other on
January 20. The dates of Zand River,
Doornkop, and Diamond Hill are respectively
May 10, 1900, May 29, 1900, and June 12,
1900. I have, in my evidence above quoted,
stated that at the last-named action the
C.I.V. were the equal, in fighting efficiency,
of a regular battalion of the Line. Permit
me, however, to remind you that, in my
main argument, I have not assumed ihat a
Territorial battalion will he the equal of a
Regular battalion even after six months.
Here the corps in quest ion undoubtedly did
attain the full Regular fighting value within
less than six months of its formation, oik
month of which time was spent COmparal i\ <Iy
ineffectually at sea. Further, it is hardly
9
130 CHARACTER OF TERRITORIAL SOLDIER
fair to compare a scratch battalion made up
from 47 units, commanded by officers drawn
from sixteen different battalions (even if
eight of these officers were Regulars) with a
homogeneous Territorial battalion rooted, as
it must be under the new system, in a life
and local tradition of its own, bearing the
title of an old-established Regular corps and
officered by fellow-townsmen or gentlemen
drawn from the neighbourhood of its head-
quarters. In certain cases the homogeneity
of our new Territorial units is even closer.
I know batteries and companies of Engineers
where the manager of some great factory
commands a rank and file composed entirely
of his own employees, officered by his deputy
managers and foremen. I know of squad-
rons of Yeomanry where the bulk of the
men are the sons of the tenants and small
farmers of the squadron leader. Whether
for war or peace, the value of such a com-
bination is difficult to exaggerate. Under
a system of compulsory service its benefits
must all be surrendered.
A fairer comparison for the purpose of
estimating the potential value of our present
system (although, I admit, not entirely
fair) would be that of the Volunteer com-
panies sent out to join their own Regular
THE MORAL FACTOR 131
battalions later on in the war. Read
the evidence given before the War Com-
mission, and see how, in a comparatively
brief period, these became the acknow-
ledged equals of their comrades of the
Line.
I fear you may think I have been wasting
your time and my own by urging, with so
much insistence, that the moral factor
should be given its due weight in a discus-
sion on the merits of rival military systems.
At the first blush it might seem super-
fluous to vindicate a maxim of Napoleon's.
It would be so were it not that the present
generation seems more inclined to gape
with admiration at a complicated piece of
machinery or at some vast palatial edifice,
than to spare one thought for the high,
resolute intellect of the poor devil who
invented or designed these marvels.
Schemes bused entirely on material con-
siderations may endure for a while in peace.
But war searches t lie innermost part and
the uttermost corner. It is on moral forces
we must stand or fall in battle; and I ask
you to consider whether these are most
likely to be found living and active amongst
volunteers or amongst conscripts.
I do not really know if you were ever
132 DEVELOPMENT OF TERRITORIAL FORCE
imprisoned in that confused region of thought
wherein wiseacres discuss the dates by
which Territorials might be trusted to fight.
If so, I trust I have helped you to escape,
and to realise that our friends the Territorials
may be relied upon to put up a fight, effective
or not according to their standard of disci-
pline, training and equipment, the moment
(be it to-morrow or a year hence) they are
ordered to take the field. They will fight ;
but do not expect miracles. I have advised
you that our existing Territorials, after
being embodied for six months, might
reasonably expect to defeat a first - line
hostile Regular force if they outnumbered
that force considerably. Also that by such
a date they should be able to hold their own
with continental troops consisting mostly of
reserves. In proportion as the period of
embodiment is shortened, so must you
increase your numerical superiority.
So far, I have been writing of the Terri-
torial Force as it actually stands at present.
But obviously the last word has not yet
been said on Territorial efficiency. There
is room for much progress. Partly we may
expect this progress to be automatic : the
annual improvement of officers and non-
commissioned officers ; the eventual inclu-
USEFUL EXPENDITURE 133
sion in the ranks of a due proportion of
men of four years' service. Partly we
must hope, and we do hope, that progress
will be accelerated and brought about by
supplementary expenditure. Many of my
comrades of the Regular Army understand
perfectly well how quickly the Territorial
ship would respond to the provision of the
additional ha'porth of tar. Yet they hesi-
tate to encourage you to be liberal, because
they think that any addition to expenditure
on the Territorial Force must be made,
ultimately, at the cost of the Regular Army.
But I submit that until some such ruinous
proposition takes actual shape, they are not
justified in framing their military opinions
upon suppositions concerning policy. For
myself at least, I do not hesitate to advise
you to brush aside all problematical fore-
casts and to press oil double-quick time with
your efforts to raise the Territorial standard
— provided always you conclude definitely
in favour of the maintenance of the existing
system.
At a length which must, I fear, have
wearied you, I have now .-it b-osi shown you,
as it were in rough framework, the general
shape, scope, and st rud ure of several diverse
military systems. Uul before electing for
134 REAL ALTERNATIVE POLICIES
the type which seems most suitable, I beg
you to have still a little patience and to
revolve in your mind the various military
policies open to such an Empire as that of
Greater Britain. At present I distinguish
three possible policies, and I seem also to
be conscious of a fourth method, although
that, as yet, only vaguely emerges from
the background of my thought :
First Policy
(The Imperial Policy)
(1) A long-range Regular Force raised
by voluntary enlistment.
(2) A Regular, central Reserve based
on voluntary enlistment.
(3) A voluntarily enlisted Militia.
(1) and (2) provide the foreign garrisons
and the Expeditionary Force. (3), stiffened
by such Regulars as are not absorbed by (1)
and (2), supplies the force for Home Defence
in the first instance ; for reinforcement of
the Expeditionary Force (when the danger
of invasion does not exist or has passed
away) in the second. It should be numerous
enough and well enough trained to deal with
any invading army whose modest dimen-
A CONTINENTAL ARMY 135
sions might have enabled it to slip through
the meshes of our naval defence.
Second Policy
(The Continental or European Policy)
(1) A short-range, regular, national
Army raised by conscription on the
German model. (For reasons of ex-
pense, more exemptions would have to
be made than on the Continent, so as
to keep our strength proportionately
lower.)
(2) A Regular force raised by volun-
tary enlistment to garrison India and
the over-sea stations. (For reasons of
expense, linked units serving al home
would be disbanded and replaced by
depots. The men would be enlisted
for long service. Special Reserve bat-
talions would be abolished. Long-rangi
reinforcements could only be obtained
liy tempting individuals from the
national Army t<> volunteer.)
The foregoing is ;i practicable policy. If,
;is w;is stated Mi' 1 other day in thai sober
paper Le Steele, "the destruction <>f the
European equilibrium would bring with it
136 HOME-DEFENCE POLICY
the ruin of the British Empire without
much delay " — if such a statement is ac-
cepted — then an army on a continental
scale may be required for service in
Europe, and it becomes conceivable that
a military system such as I have described
is the paramount necessity for Greater
Britain.
Third Policy
(The Home-Defence Policy)
(1) A Home-Defence Militia raised
on a national compulsory basis.
(2) A Regular Force as in (2) of the
" Second Policy." (It should be noted
that such a Force could furnish few,
if any, surplus troops wherewith to
stiffen (1).)
This third policy (less (2), which is in-
applicable to those countries) is, at the
moment I write, being frankly adopted by
Australia, New Zealand and, possibly, South
Africa. In the widely read editorial para-
graphs of The Observer newspaper of July 8,
1910, a similar system is suggested for our
own adoption ; not, be it remarked, as an
incident of, or auxiliary to, Imperial Defence,
but as a means of making Home Defence
ITS DANGER TO THE EMPIRE 137
our paramount military policy. I quote
the extract, as it will convey to you, with
brilliant clearness and brevity, a conception
of war which has been held in turn by the
Poles and by the Boers.
"... We may have, if we choose, a citi-
zen reserve of some 2,000,000 well-trained
men at a less cost than that of our more
artificial and hopelessly inadequate pro-
fessional Army of to-day. Then, and not
until then, our shores will be impregnable,
our alliances will be secure, our naval pre-
dominance will be indirectly, but most
powerfully reinforced, and the maintenance
of the Empire will be guaranteed. A citizen
force of that kind never could be used as an
instrument of aggression, but it would be a
tremendous potentiality for defence in a
supreme crisis, and it would lay a new
foundation tor national health, as well as
for national safety."
There is nothing equivocal about the pro-
posal. We are i<> destroy our "artificial"
professional Army, Hi*' artificiality thereof
being presumably its military Bpirit. We
are, in lieu, to create an enormous, com-
pulsorily enlisted Militia, and make it the
mainstay of our whole system of Imperial
defence. I am trying to write in an
138 THE BETTER WAY
impartial spirit and to discover whether
anything helpful to us can be found in any
proposal seriously put forward. But here, I
confess, I see nothing but harm and danger.
The threat of invasion either is, or is not,
a reality.
If it is a reality, and if a highly trained
Regular force of seventy thousand men could
be landed in England, where is the General
who is ambitious to face them with such
a monstrous agglomeration of half-baked,
conscript militiamen ? Hannibal, with
20,000 professional soldiers, went near to
destroying the Republic of Rome, which had
some seven or eight hundred thousand men
available for its conscript Militia. He sat
down amongst those Militia conscripts and
lived for a long time happily and well, as
it might be at Birmingham, snug as a snail
in a hive full of honey. Difficulties of
marching and manoeuvring increase with
the numbers employed, and the larger the
force the more necessarv that its com-
ponents should be " artificial," to accept
the new and clever differentiation between
the soldier and the militiaman.
No ; if we are to turn 70,000 continental
Regulars into a monument, let us, whatever
happens, find a few thousand Regulars in
CONCLUSIONS 139
the country at the time we are invaded. Let
their Militia comrades be in manageable
strength and, as far as possible, in spirit,
in name and in associations assimilated to
those Regulars. Our present Territorials
exactly fulfil those conditions. Stiffened by
the Guards, Horse Artillery, and other very
considerable numbers of Regulars and
Special Reserve battalions unallotted to the
Expeditionary Force, they could make a
manageable field army of a quarter of a
million men, sufficient, I consider, for the
job we have under consideration.
If, on the other hand, invasion is so
improbable that it need hardly be taken into
account, our reserves of national strength
should be organised not for a " tremendous
potentiality for defence in a supreme crisis "
(the phrase embodies in highly concentrated
form a maximum <>f military heresy), but
for the purpose Eor which every true soldier
in the kingdom would desire them, namely,
the purpose ol over-se;is warfare. 1
1 W'Ihii the mind i BOnOentrated "ii .^.inHliinR, it i*
Btrango \\<>w > >< >< • k - . papers, Mid conversations teem to
combine to bring grist i" the mill. Sere, tot in.ti<n...
to-day, in Vienna of * » 1 1 places in the vrorld, jusi as I have
got so far, tho London 7 mt . ol AugU I 27, OOim
opportunely to my help. Bpeal I the Canadian
Regiment, its Military < k>] ra pondent says 'The supreme
140 GROWTH OF OUR SYSTEM
CONCLUSIONS
In proportion as I have written so have
I gradually gained the impression that in
course of time political ideals must in-
evitably shape military systems. Our actual
military system has not sprung up in so
haphazard a fashion as has been imagined,
but is actually the result of generations of
endeavour, often by men of superior capa-
city, to adjust our military methods and
expenditure to our needs. In no other way
is it possible to explain how an organisation,
seemingly such a patchwork of expedients,
stands so well the test of careful comparison
with organisations much more logical and
test of war showed the value of a National Militia raised
upon a voluntary basis, well led and stiffened by a small
but very efficient force of Regulars. The glories of Detroit,
Queenstown Heights, Landy's Lane, Chrystler's Farm,
and Chateau Gay still cause a tingle of proper pride in
the heart of every true Canadian. The memorable victory
of de Salaberry, an officer of the 60th Royal Americans,
on October 26, 1813, who, with 360 Militia from Lower
Canada, defeated an American Army of 7,000 men under
General Hampton upon the banks of the Chateau Gay
River, near Montreal, will always be remembered as a
splendid feat of arms. It is an example for all time of
what Militia troops, well led, can do in defence of their
hearths and homes." Never a truer word written —
especially that about the leaven of Regulars.
A NEW FACTOR 141
apparently more effective, but created for
other ends than ours.
A new factor — a danger since several
hundred years not so threatening — now
begins to cast its shadow across the path-
way of Imperial progress. What then ?
Have we not still to hold India and the
coaling stations ? Must we weaken that
hold ? Shall we, panic - stricken, destroy
all that has gone before : priceless regi-
mental traditions ; the voluntary idea,
typical of our race and the creator of our
national glory ? Would it not be wiser,
as well as more valiant, to preserve what
we have and make supplementary provision
for the storm ?
The ultimate conclusions I arrive at in
my own mind are :
(1). Our last shilling must be staked,
if necessary, on the maintenance of
sr a command.
(2) Only sailors can advise us how
far that command protects us iiHaiiisl
invasion.
(:>) When we are advised that no
overwhelming force can be landed, we
should — undisturbed by the considera-
tion of whether this or that land force
is sufficient to ward off invasion — set
142 CONCLUSIONS
ourselves deliberately to perfect the
organisation of our military strength
for Imperial purposes.
If a rich nation turns its mind entirely
to defence, it commits the deadly sin of
tempting others to transgress. By renounc-
ing the offensive idea it goes just half-way
to inviting its rivals to attack ; the whole
way, of course, being disarmament. It is
as if a possessor of priceless jewels, living
in a lawless land (for what is international
law ?) were to break off the point of his
rapier and to turn all his energies to prac-
tising the guards. With such as he every
young braggart must long to cross swords.
There is so much to gain, so little to lose.
The patriotic men who are the driving
power behind the appeal for compulsory
service see this clearly enough, and they
hope, by emphasising the danger of invasion,
to secure from the people authority which
may be used to forge a weapon for attack,
whenever the moment to defend ourselves
arises. Unfortunately, a shield is not easily
convertible into a spear ; still less into a
projectile.
Better, then, be quite frank with the people.
So we may get half a loaf out of them, in
the shape of a force created for over-sea
A CONCEPTION 143
purposes, instead of a stone in the shape of
a great defensive army, of no earthly use
except to hang round our necks whilst we
struggle in the slough of insolvency.
This is the bold game to play ; and in
military affairs the bold game generally
proves safest in the long run.
As to how we should proceed in perfecting
our Imperial military organisation, here is
my conception. You will observe that it
involves the minimum of change compatible
with the large potential forces it brings upon
the scene.
First Line. — The Regular Army and
Special Reserve as we know them.
Second Line. — The Territorial Force, very
much improved as an instrument for offence
as well as defence. In any case it must, in
the ordinary course of things, become auto-
matieally more eflieient year by year. Some
folk have seemed to imagine that fourteen
Divisions can be created, trained, and
equipped, cheaply and on the voluntary
system, within a period of two or three
years. Argumenl is wasted upon ignorance
so colossal. Hut you will have understood,
from what I have said before, I hat I think
the time has come when this necessarily
slow process should be accelerated by the
144 SOME FALLACIES
exercise of greater liberality. The second
line would be ready, just as the old Militia
was ever ready, to come to the help of the
Regular Army in time of real national emer-
gency, wherever that army might be fighting.
The same men who argue that, because
voluntarily enlisted Territorials and Militia
freely enter the Regular Army, therefore
conscripts will also freely volunteer, main-
tain also that the Territorials will not leave
England as units to fight alongside their
Regular comrades. The misleading South
African analogy is trotted out, when the
authorities refused the offer of the Volun-
teers when they were enthusiastic, and then,
when the enthusiasm had burnt itself out,
when the war had officially been stated to
be practically over, asked them to step for-
ward. But apart from this the analogy is,
for other reasons also, absolutely misleading.
The Volunteer could not volunteer to go
abroad in his capacity as a member of the
Volunteer Force. It was not legal. If he
wanted to go and help the Regulars he had
first to be re-enlisted as something else.
The Territorial, like the old Militiaman, can
legally volunteer to go abroad, not only
individually, but in his unit. I may remind
you that it took us the whole period of the
A THIRD LINE 145
Napoleonic wars to arrive at the latter
ideal. Not till 1813 were Militia units
allowed to volunteer for foreign service in
their corporate capacity. But we are going
ahead now, though so many seem to think
we are asleep. Again, during the South
African War the Volunteers were not em-
bodied. They were working men earning
their daily bread in situations not very
easily to be regained if once they were given
up. The Territorials, on the other hand,
will be automatically embodied when mo-
bilisation is ordered. They may be sent
to Ireland or to Salisbury Plain or to the
great fortresses of the South. No question
of giving up employment will arise. The
men themselves, their employers, their
sweethearts, the Cabinet, will all feel and
say the same : " Better fight this out on the
enemy's territory t lian on our own. Help the
Regulars and get the tiling over once for all."
Third Line. — A great organisation which,
for financial reasons, COIlld in peace he*
very little more than a paper affair, bu1
might, after the outbreak of war, become
operative. Remember it was the seemingly
dead paper law of L881, creating the nominal
Garde Nationale, which wenl within an ace
of saving France in '70 l>\ enabling Gam-
10
146 COMPULSION FOR THIRD LINE
betta to call out the nation to fight. Had
the Rhine been the Channel, with even an
occasional French warship interrupting Ger-
man communications, that law would have
won the trick. The avowed purpose of the
organisation would be the maintenance in
the field during hostilities of both first and
second lines. This third line organisation
would be based on compulsion ; but as that
element would be latent, the voluntary
spirit of the nation would not thereby
become in any way impaired. If ever we
had to call upon our third line to advance,
it would be because the nation and the
Empire were fighting for bare life. Only
drafts, and those only for short-range Euro-
pean purposes, could we reasonably demand
from it.
It should be possible enough to pass a
Bill for such latent conscription now, in
time of peace, but it might easily prove
impossible for any one but a dictator to do
so in time of war, yes, even though patriotism
pointed clearly towards such a step. During
perhaps two or three months of the South
African War, conscription would have been
accepted, but I put it to you that the
nation would never have swallowed that
dose of physic during the preliminary or
FINAL WORDS 147
later phases of the campaign. No ; not if
the refusal had involved the loss of South
Africa ; not if the loss of South Africa
had involved a mutiny in India and the
secession of Canada and Australia.
But if the power was there, latent, then
at the psychological moment — the states-
man applies his match to the priming.
Our Expeditionary Force, plus our Terri-
torial Force and its stiffening of unallotted
Regulars, represent between them a fighting
organisation of something like half a million
men. All things — especially finance — con-
sidered, I question whether it is possible or
necessary for us to contemplate larger
military effectives for over-seas offensive
purposes.
One last word. If you wish to count
your bayonets by the million, you must
make up your mind to retrace the steps of
Empire. If you wish to maintain the
Empire you must encourage the voluntary
spirit. The human heart is not a savings-
bank; rich in proportion as nothing is
drawn from it. Speaking of the fountain
of goodness, M;iiciis Aurdius Antoninus
says, ' k Ever dig and it will ever well forth."
The only way to run it dry is to bottle it
up. So with the Voluntary spirit. The
148 FINAL WORDS
greater the demands you make upon it, the
more wonderfully will it rise to meet them.
But whatever you do, remember, I beg of
you, that the best defence to a country is
an army formed, trained, inspired by the
idea of the attack. If I have succeeded in
bringing prominently to your notice the
dangers of the mere defence, then indeed
I shall feel I have not written in vain.
Once we fall into that pitfall, once we
begin to develop (and pay for) " a tre-
mendous potentiality for defence," by just
so much must we paralyse our own attack,
sacrifice our initiative, and imperil all
that we stand for in the world.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Hamilton.
APPENDICES
APP.
I Text of the Bill Introduced in the House of Lords
to Give Effect to the Proposals of the National
Service League pp. 151-159
II Memorandum of the National Service League on
the National Service (Training and Home Defence)
Bill pp. 160-162
III Estimate by the National Service League of the
Numbers and Cost involved under its Proposals.
pp. 163-181
IV Parliamentary Paper (House of Lords, July 8, 1909)
containing the remarks of the finance department
of the War Offi< e on the Estimate of the National
Service League pp. 182-188
V Notes on War Omi ■ Paper " Army, July 8, 190'.t,"
by the National Servp r. Leamt. . . pp. 189-197
VT Supplementary Note by the Finan< i: Dftaktment of
the War Office pp. 198-201
VII Financial Notes on a POMXOT ComamiFl An my fob
Home I r. pp. 202-208
VIII NbZM ffiNTAINIVfJ Till'. Al'MIKAITV Vll.W
of Tin. Risk of Invasion . . pp. L* ' » '. » 212
149
APPENDIX I
TEXT OF THE BILL INTRODUCED IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS TO GIVE
EFFECT TO THE PROPOSALS OF THE
NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE
A Bill intituled an Act to provide for a d. iwb.
National Service in the Territorial Force,
and for that purpose to amend the Terri-
torial and Reserve Forces Act, 1907.
Be it enacted by the King's most Excellrni
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,
in this presenl Parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same, as follows : —
1. — (1) After the commencement of this .Vt , ,,,,,^^1
and subject as hereinafter provided, every male
person who is a British subject and resident in ',''„.' ',". !'*,.'"
the United Kingdom or the [sle of Man, Bhall be
liable during the term of Bervice required under
thia Act to be trained in the manner and to
the extent provided III tlil-.Vt. .1 1 1 d , i 1 1 CI se nf
imminent national danger or great emergency,
to be oalled "nt for service, as a man of the
Territorial Force; said the provi i< d ot Part II. _
of the Territorial and Reserve Forcea Act, 1907
(in this Act called the principal Act) shall, IUD-
151
152 APPENDIX I
ject to such modifications as are contained in
this Act, apply to every person liable to serve by
virtue of this Act as if he had been duly enlisted
in the Territorial Force for the said term of
service.
(2) The term of service required in the case of
a person liable to serve by virtue of this Act shall
commence on the first day of January next after
he attains the age of eighteen years, and shall
terminate on the thirty-first day of December
next after he attains the age of thirty years :
(3) Nothing in this section shall apply to —
(a) Any person in or belonging to His
Majesty's Navy or the Royal Naval
Reserve ; or
(b) Any officer of the regular forces, any
reserve officer within the meaning of
the Royal Warrant regulating the
composition of the reserve of officers,
or any non-commissioned officer or
man belonging to the regular or re-
serve forces ; or
(c) Any person who has attained the age of
eighteen years before the commence-
ment of this Act.
^oMof" ^' — (*) ^ e P rov i s i° ns °f subsection (3) of
ind ri R^lrle section nine °f t ^ ie principal Act (which entitle a
^9°oT 8Act ' man °^ t ^ ie Territorial Force to be discharged
on complying with certain conditions), shall not
apply in the case of a person liable to serve by
NATIONAL SERVICE BILL 153
virtue of this Act, and no such person shall be
discharged by his commanding officer under sub-
section (4) of that section without the consent of
the Army Council.
(2) The provisions of proviso (a) to subsection
(1) of section nine of the principal Act (which
relate to appointments to corps), shall not apply
in the case of a person liable to serve by virtue
of this Act, but every such person shall on being
enrolled in the Territorial Force be appointed to
serve in such corps, and posted to such unit in
that corps, as the Army Council in the prescribed
manner direct :
Provided that, in appointing or posting any
person, regard shall, so far as the circumstances
of the case admit, be had to his wishes in the
matter.
3. Subject to the provisions of this section PmUkm
every person liable to serve by virtue of this training.
Act—
(l) shall, in thf first year of his term of service,
undergo training as a recruit, that is to
say, be trained at such places within
the United Kingdom and at sinli times
.i may be prescribed, and, in the ease
of a man of tin infantry branoh, for a
oontinnons period of four months, and,
in the oase of a man in any o\ her branch,
for snob oontinnons period nol being
less than four nor more than -i\ months
as may be prescribed ; and
154 APPENDIX I
(2) shall, in each of the three years next follow-
ing the year of his training as a recruit —
(i) be trained for a continuous
period of fifteen days at such time and
at such places in any part of the
United Kingdom as may be prescribed;
(ii) fire the prescribed course of
musketry and fulfil the other condi-
tions relating to training prescribed
for his branch of the service :
Provided that —
(a) the Army Council may, if they think
it desirable so to do in the case of
any person, postpone his training as
a recruit till the second or third
year of his term of service ; and
(6) except during any period when a pro-
clamation ordering the Army Re-
serve to be called out on permanent
service is in force, no person shall
be liable to be trained as a recruit
after the expiration of the third
year of his term of service.
Exemptions 4, — (1) The persons specified in the First and
fications. Second Parts of the Schedule to this Act shall be
exempt from liability to be trained under this
Act (but not from liability to be called out for
service in case of imminent national danger or
great emergency).
(2) The persons specified in the Third Part of
NATIONAL SERVICE BILL 155
the Schedule to this Act shall be disqualified for
service in the Territorial Force.
(3) Where in any legal proceedings any person
claims to be entitled to an exemption under this
Act, it shall lie on the person alleging the exemp-
tion to prove that he is so entitled.
(4) Every person declared by the Army
Council to be disqualified for service in the
Territorial Force, and every person who is exempt
from training as belonging to one of the classes
of persons specified in the Second Part of the
Schedule to this Act, shall in each year in which,
if he had not been so disqualified or exempt (as
the case may be), he would have been liable to
be trained under this Act, be liable, if his total
income for the year exceeds fifty-two pounds, to
pay for the use of His Majesty a sum equal to
one per cent, of that total income, and any sum
so payable shall be recoverable on complaint to a
court of summary jurisdiction by the prescribed
officer, and any sums received by him shall
be accounted for by him in the presoribed
manner.
5. Every person liable to be trained anderpoaWuMsi
this Act who without leave lawfully granted, ortoattmd
... . . . for tnialne.
such siekness or other reasonable excuse as may
be allowed in the presoribed maimer, fails to
attend for training in pursuance of tins Act, or
to attend on such ooca iom i he it required to
attend for the purpose of fulfilling the conditions
relating to training prescribed for his branch of
156 APPENDIX I
the service, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour
and shall be liable on conviction on indictment
to imprisonment with or without hard labour for
a term not exceeding six months, or to a fine not
exceeding one hundred pounds, or to both, and on
summary conviction to imprisonment with or
without hard labour for a term not exceeding
three months, or to a fine not exceeding fifty
pounds, or to both.
liability to? 6. If any person liable to serve by virtue of
tions tor this Act is convicted under section twenty of the
evasion.
principal Act for failure to attend on embodi-
ment, the High Court, or in Scotland the Court
of Session, may, on the application of the Army
Council, order that he shall either permanently
or for any time specified in the order —
(a) be incapable of holding any office whatso-
ever in the service of the Crown ;
(6) be incapable of voting at any parliamentary
election ; and
(c) be disqualified for receiving an old age
pension.
Provision* 7. — (1) No person shall be recommended to
oftheTerri- His Majesty for appointment as an officer of the
torlal force. _ .,.,%, ,
lerntorial force who —
(a) has not either undergone training as a
recruit, or held a commission as an
officer of the regular forces for at least
one whole year ; and
(6) does not satisfy the prescribed conditions
as to age, educational qualifications,
NATIONAL SERVICE BILL 157
physical fitness, and any other require-
ments which may be prescribed.
(2) After the commencement of this Act the
provisions of section eight of the principal Act
(which relate to first appointments to the lowest
rank of officers of the Territorial Force) shall
cease to have effect.
8. — (1) The power to make orders and regula- Pow e r *°
- 1 ° make orders
tions under section seven of the principal Act and "guia-
r r tions.
shall extend to the making of orders and regula-
tions in reference to any of the following matters :
(a) any matters by this Act authorised or
required to be prescribed ;
(6) the preparation and keeping of lists and
registers of persons who are, or will
within six months become, liable to
serve by virtue of this Act, and the
obtaining of returns or particulars from
or as to any such persons ;
(c) the attendance for enrolment of persons
liable to serve by virtue of this Act ;
(<l) the notification to persons liable to serve
by virtue of this Act of their liabilities
under this Act ;
(e) the assignment to count} associations of
any powers and dul ie- in connect ion u it li
the oarrying of this Act into effect,
(2) If any person fails to comply with any
order or regulation made under tins section in
reference to attendance for enrolment or in
reference to returns or particulars to lie obtained
158 APPENDIX I
from or as to persons liable, or about to become
liable, to serve by virtue of this Act, he shall be
liable on summary conviction to a penalty not
exceeding five pounds.
(3) Any orders or regulations made under sub-
section (6) of section seven of the principal Act
(which provides for the formation of a reserve
division of the Territorial Force) shall not apply
to persons liable to serve by virtue of this Act.
Raismg of 9. — (1) After the commencement of this Act
Force and voluntary enlistment and re-engagement for the
StiVinK for
men serving Territorial Force shall cease, and the Territorial.
at com-
mencement Force shall consist of the persons liable to serve
of Act. r
by virtue of this Act, and (until they are duly
discharged) of the persons constituting the
Territorial Force at the commencement of this
Act.
(2) Nothing in this Act shall affect the terms
or conditions of service of any person who is a
man of the Territorial Force at the commence-
ment of this Act.
short title io. — (1) This Act may be cited as the National
construction v ' J
and com- Service (Training and Home Defence) Act, 1909,
mencement. \ o '
and shall be construed as one with the principal
Act, and that Act so far as it relates to the
Territorial Force and this Act may be cited
together as the Territorial Force Acts, 1907 and
1909.
(2) This Act shall come into operation on the
first day of January, nineteen hundred and ten.
NATIONAL SERVICE BILL 159
SCHEDULE
Exemptions and Disqualifications
Part I
1. Any person who has held a commission as
an officer, or has served as a non-commissioned
officer or man for not less than three years in
the Navy or the Regular Forces.
2. Any person who has served for not less than
three years in any police force in the United
Kingdom.
:{. Any person being the only son of a widow
who satisfies the Army Council in the prescribed
manner that his mother is wholly or mainly
dependent on him for support .
4. Any minister of religion of any denomina-
tion.
Part II
1. Any person who satisfies the Army Council
in the prescribed manner that by reason of
physical or mental infirmity he is permanently
unlit ted for i raining.
'2. Any person declared by the Army Council
to be exempt as being a person whom it is desir-
able to exempt in the interests ol the public
rvice.
Pari III
Any person declared by the Army Council to
be disqualified for lervioe in the Territorial Port e
as being a criminal, babitual drunkard, «>r othei
wise undesirable by reason oi bad oharaoter.
APPENDIX II
MEMORANDUM OF THE NATIONAL SERVICE
LEAGUE ON THE NATIONAL SERVICE
(TRAINING AND HOME DEFENCE) BILL
This Bill imposes on all male British subjects resi-
dent in the United Kingdom the obligation of serving
in the Territorial Force between the ages of eighteen
and thirty. There are, however, excluded from the
operation of the Bill all officers and men of the
Navy and Regular Army and of the Naval and
Military Reserve Forces (so that the existing volun-
tary system of raising the Regular Forces will in
no way be interfered with), and all persons who
reach the age of eighteen before the date on which
the Bill comes into operation, viz., 1st January
1910.
Subject to certain modifications, every person
who comes under the Bill will be in exactly the
same position as a person who now enlists volun-
tarily into the Territorial Force ; and will thus
during his term of service have to undergo training
and be liable to be called out for home defence in
case of imminent national danger, but will be under
no liability to serve outside the United Kingdom.
160
MEMORANDUM ON THE BILL 161
Under the Bill liability to training will not (as
is now the case) extend over the whole term of
service, but will be limited to four years — normally
the first four years of the term, but in exceptional
cases the second to the fifth years, or the third to
the sixth.
The first year's training will be recruit training,
and will be four months for men in the Infantry,
and not less than four or more than six months for
men in other branches. In each of the three next
years, fifteen days' training as well as a course of
musketry and attendance at certain drills will be
required.
Liability to attend on embodiment {i.e. in case of
imminent national danger) will remain exactly as
it is under the Act of 1907.
The Bill secures absolute equality of treatment
bet ween .ill ola i ins imaon ae under no oir-
cumstanoec will any person be able t'> buj his dis-
charge <>r to procure any kind of exemption bj
means of ■■< money payment .
The Bill provide for the exemption from training
of (i) men who have served ;ii least three years in
tin- Arm} or KTavy, mini ten of religion, and (in
certain oa e ) onlj ion of widows; and (ii) persons
physioally incapacitated and certain persons em
ployed in public ervioe . and al o for the disquali
fioation of criminal and per on ol bad oharacter.
All person inola i(ii) and also persons disqualified,
will, if their inoomi oeed tiiu two pounds per
annum, be required, in each "i the four years
1 1
162 APPENDIX II
during which they should have been trained, to pay
a special military tax amounting to one per cent
of their incomes.
As regards officers, it is proposed that first
appointments should only be given to persons who
have either been through recruit training or held
commissions in the regular army.
After the Bill comes into operation, voluntary
enlistment for the Territorial Force will cease, but
men now in the Force will complete their current
terms of service.
APPENDIX III
ESTIMATE BY THE NATIONAL SERVICE
LKAtJUE OF III i: M'MBERS AND COST
INVOLVED UNDER ITS PROPOSALS
Introductory
In advocating a great national reform which is
nti.illv based upon the principle of national
duty, it has naturally been necessary at final (<>
concentrate most of our efforts upon driving home
the justioe, necessity, and advantage of the adoption
oi compulsory military training for home defence.
It w:ii therefore thought advisable, in the first
in i moi to avoid going into minute detail as to
the precise periods <>i training proposed, as to the
numbers <•! men who would \><- trained, and the
oo i which would !»<• involved tinder such proposals.
The advance which has, however, been made in
the education of public opinion to the acceptance
of the principle oi National Bervioe for Some
Defence put forward by the League, makes it
d irable n<>\\ to deal with them- important practical
que tions <>f oost with all necossarj detail. This
has become all the more urgent in vien <>f the
lt',3
164 APPENDIX III
strangely exaggerated and erroneous figures put
forward by official spokesmen.
Recently, both the Earl of Crewe in the House of
Lords, and Mr. Haldane in the House of Commons,
gave the figure of £20,000,000 as the additional cost
of adopting a system of compulsory military training
somewhat on the lines of the National Service
League. On November 23, 1908, in the debate
upon Lord Roberts's great speech in the House of
Lords, the Earl of Crewe said : ' The existence of
that force, trained in the manner in which the
Special Reserve is trained, which, I believe, is the
demand made, would mean, I suppose, an addition
of something like £20,000,000 a year to the Army
Estimates." Mr. Haldane, speaking at the City
Liberal Club, said that " of course " Lord Roberts
did not trouble about the addition of a trifling sum
like £20,000,000 to the Army Estimates.
Under these circumstances, the Executive Com-
mittee of the League has decided to show in the
following pages the probable number of men who
would be trained under our proposals ; and, further,
the cost of such training, estimated upon two
different bases, but in each case upon official figures.
The proposals of the League are as follows :
1. — One continuous training of four months
for the Infantry (with longer periods, not
exceeding two additional months, for the other
arms) shall be compulsory on all able-bodied
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 165
youths in this country between the ages of 18
and 21, without distinction of class or wealth.
Such training shall be followed annually by a
musketry course* and a fortnight's training in
camp for the next three years in the ranks of
the Territorial Force.
2. — The men thus trained shall be liable to
be called out for service in the Territorial
Force, for Home Defence only, in a time of
grave emergency, so declared by Parliament,
up to the age of 30.
II
Numbers
The number of lads reaching the age of 18 in any
ono year in the I cited Kingdom La (according
tut I,. I. n-ii , of 1'J'M ) aboul
In estimating the number who would come up
for aiiiiiuil Recruit Training we musl deduot —
i^ pear oenl for medical rejections and legal
1 1 1 1 it inns . .
i :• i -i-nit [or \'hv\ and Biarii
l '.< ■ i un foi I ■'• gular A rmj
Emigrant i
Mercantile Marin
l.i n\ in/ to i" ti .mil <i each year
S;iy h'iO.000.
Ili>. tint)
200,000
s.t inn
35,000
10,000
l :..in ii i
ooo
I is. iii in
116,000
In Switzerland the Dumber of medioal rejeotiona
annually amounts: on ao avei to '7 per cent,
* N'mti:. With nioh drill a mi- be pn wribed i"i
Territorial Foroe.
166 APPENDIX III
and a similar result is experienced in France and
Germany. 48 per cent may therefore be taken as
a fair estimate for rejections and legal exemptions
under our proposals.
The number of British emigrants in 1907 was
just under 200,000 (see Board of Trade Return for
Emigration and Immigration, 1907). We have
taken 5 per cent of the number as the proportion
of able-bodied youths of 18. The number of British
sailors in the Mercantile Marine is about 180,000,*
and it may reasonably be assumed that some 8 per
cent of these are youths of about 18 years of age.
Under the above assumptions the numbers trained
annually would be as follows, allowing 5 per cent
for the annual wastage :
Recruits Training . . . . . . . . 150,000
Training in First Year . . . . 142,000
Training in Second Year . . 135,000
Training in Third Year . . . . 128,000
405,000
or, roughly, 400,000.
Ill
Cost
The cost has been calculated on two bases :
(a) On a proportional cost of the Regular Soldier
as given in the Army Estimates (1908-09), with
certain modifications.
* In 1907 the number was 194,848, see page 74, " Tables
showing the Merchant Shipping in the United Kingdom
and the principal Maritime Countries," 1908.
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 167
(6) On Mr. Haldane's figures as to the cost of the
Special Reserve.
In the case of the recruit undergoing his training
a deduction of 6d. per day has been made from the
pay of a Regular soldier, on the principle that, once
home defence is regarded as a national duty in-
cumbent upon all citizens, high and low, rich and
poor, it would be absurd to pay the citizen soldier
the same rate as is paid to the man for whose
services we have at present to compete in the open
labour market, and who enters the Army as a
profession.
With this exception the cost in both Estimates
(a) and (b) is calculated on the cost of the British
Regular soldier, admittedly the most expensive
soldier in the world, except the United States
Regular, and the probable saving due to an army
raised on the compulsory system as compared with
one raised on a voluntary basis has not been con-
sidered.
It si i ou Id also Im- borne in mind thai in Km [mate (a)
proportional charges for educational establishments
(Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Royal Military
Academy, Woolwich), Field Marshal's pensions,
etc. etc., are included, though it if obvious thai
such charges have little relation to ;i Territorial
Army.
The average period of nniiil training lias. 111
both est ini.il | Im . q i., |.. n .-, Ii\ . iim.iiI lis, t In-
mean between tour months for the Infantry and
si\ months for the other arms, and a Full st.di oj
168 APPENDIX III
officers and N.C.O.'s (regular) has been allowed for
these 150,000 recruits. Moreover, charges are
allowed for this staff during the whole year, although
the longest period a recruit would be up for training
would be six months. This has been done in order
that a sufficient staff may be available if it is de-
cided to carry out the training of all the recruits
simultaneously. If, however, the training is carried
on throughout the year half this staff would be
sufficient, and a saving of about £1,000,000 would
result thereby, and would have to be deducted
from our final estimates.
Estimate of the System of Compulsory Train-
ing Proposed by the National Service
League
(1) The method on which the following figures
have been worked out is that of starting with the
assumption that a Territorial Army soldier trained
under the National Service League's system will
cost, time for time, the same as a Regular soldier.
Or, in other words, that if the average cost per
head of the Regulars amounts to a certain sum for
a year, the average cost per head of the Territorials'
training for five months will amount to five-twelfths
of that sum. This assumption may not be abso-
lutely accurate, but it appears to be the soundest
to start from. It is impossible to calculate, in the
abstract, the cost of a Territorial soldier, and in
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 169
taking the regular Army as our basis we rest our-
selves on existing facts and have a sure standard
of comparison.
(2) While, however, the assumption is, in the
main, sound, it is evident that modifications and
corrections must be introduced into it to meet the
conditions of a compulsorily trained Teriitorial
Army. These modifications will act sometimes in
the direction of increasing the cost of such an
army as compared with the Regulars, sometimes in
that of diminishing it. They are dealt with as
they arise in the calculations, and they are alluded
to here only to make the method of calculation
clear.
(.3) Working on this system, all the heads of
army expenditure summarised on pp. 210 and l'II
of the Army Estimates L908 '•», with the exception
of those dealing with the Reserves, have been
taken, and have been examined one by one, so that
under each bead the cos! of the proposed Territorial
Army is calculated at the same rate af the Regulars,
subject to the special modifications which eaoh
bead may seem to call for. Prom the total oo I
thus arrived at the savings on existing expenditure
winch the introduction ol our proposed system
would had to h.i.. been deduoted, and the
i. ult would be the net additional oosl of that
tern.
Annual expenditure only i dealt with throughout.
Capital cost is not entered upon. The figures are
correct to the pounds,
170 APPENDIX III
(4) The following numbers, periods of training,
etc., are taken as bases :
(a) The period of training for the first-year
recruit is taken as averaging five months,
the mean between the four months' training
for the Infantry and the six months for the
Special Arms.
(b) The number of recruits undergoing this
training is taken at 150,000. This number
includes the Territorial N.C.O.'s, but ex-
cludes Regular and Territorial Officers and
Regular N.C.O.'s, all of whom are dealt
with separately.
(c) The number of Regular Officers and N.C.O.'s
required to supervise the five months'
training is taken at the following, per 1,000
men :
1 Commanding Officer.
2 Majors.
10 Captains.
1 Adjutant.
1 Quartermaster.
Making a total of 15 officers of various
ranks, but practically all above subaltern's
rank.
N.C.O.'s :
5 Staff Sergeants.
10 Pay Sergeants.
20 Sergeants.
40 Corporals.
Making a total of 75 N.C.O.'s of all ranks.
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 171
(d) The number of Territorial Officers employed
in the five months' training is taken at 20
per 1,000 men, all of whom would be
subalterns. Opportunities would no doubt
be given to Territorial Officers of higher
ranks to serve, but in this case they would
practically have to be treated as Regulars
and would come, therefore, under (c).
(e) The proportion between the Combatant
Personnel (Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers,
and Infantry) and the Departmental Ser-
vices (Army Service Corps, Army Medical
Department, and Army Ordnance Depart-
ment) is supposed to be the same in the
Territorial Army as in the Regulars. This
would divide the 150,000 first-year men
into 138,000 Combatant Personnel and
12,000 Depart mental Personnel in round
Dtunbera.
(/) The number of nun forthcoming in the
third year of the Annual Repetition i 'iiur.sc ..i
fifteen 'lavs will be MX),000. The Offioers
and N.C.O.'s WOUld be supplied from the
Territorial Offioen and N.C.O.'a already
t rained, and from (c) the Regular < Mb. i r
and N.C.O.'a training the first-year re-
cruits, or serving with the Regular troops
.it home.
(5) The above explains tbe system and the as-
sumptions on which the calculations have been
based. We proceed now to apply the e to the
172 APPENDIX III
heads of Army Expenditure given on pp. 210-211,
Army Estimates, 1908-09.
I
Personnel
(1) Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers, and Infantry
(a) first year's training
The effective cost — i.e. the cost without any
allowance for retired pay or pension, of the Eegular
Combatant Personnel, exclusive of Officers, of
the Home and Colonial Establishment, averages
£63 17s. 10d., say £64 per head per year. Taking
five-twelfths of this, say £26 15s., for the Territorials
training in their first year, 138,000 men will cost
£3,691,000.
To this must be added the cost of the Regular
Officers and N.C.O.'s and of the Territorial Officers
employed. Under the proportions taken in assump-
tions (6) and (c) the numbers for 138,000 men will
amount to 2,070 Regular Officers, 10,350 Regular
N.C.O.'s, and 2,760 Territorial Officers (subalterns).
The Regular Officers and N.C.O.'s would be paid
at regular rates, including non-effective allowance.
For the Territorial Officers £50 for the five months'
training has been allowed. The average annual
cost of a Regular Officer (including non-effective
allowance) is £466 8s. 9d., and this will probably be
a fair figure to take for those employed with the
Territorials, for neither the Field-Marshals and
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 173
Generals on the one hand nor the subalterns on the
other would be required. At this rate 2,070 officers
would cost £965,526.
The annual cost of the Regular N.C.O.'s is more
difficult to estimate, as we have no official figures
giving us their average annual cost, including non-
effective pay. The average annual cost of the
Regular N.C.O.'s and men, taken together, is
*l~,2 9a. W. and the average annual cost of all
ranks, officers included, is £84 4*. <»/. We have
taken the Regular N.C.O.'s at £80. At this rate
10,350 N.C.O.'s would cost £828,000.
The 2,760 Territorial Officers at £50 would cost
£138,000. The gross cost of the first year's training
would therefore come to :
138. M- ii »t fci'ti I . . . . £3,691,1
2,070 !■• <ii H "ii,.-. re .. . . 065,62(1
10,3 ■" r ulai N I O.'a . . . . 828,000
2 760 !• rritorial « tffioers .. .. 138,000
Prom this, however, a deduction has to be made.
The League proposes to paj the Territorial recruit
Qd. a <!.i.\ I. than the Regular. Tins for 138,000
men for 160 days amounts to £617,600. Deducting
tin t be int <ii t be ft e monl bs' I ra ining ol I be
Combat mi Personnel in the firsl year will be
£6,106,026.
//' /'/ lilin/i ( 'nil i
The Territorial soldiei in bii repetition oourses
174 APPENDIX III
will receive the same pay as the Regulars. But he
will not earn pension. The average annual charge
per head for the Regulars of all ranks at home,
exclusive of non-effective allowance, is £72 14s. 9c?.,
or £3 for 15 days. At this rate the repetition
courses for 400,000 men would cost £1,200,000. As
regards Regular officers and N.C.O.'s who might be
required, see (/).
The total annual cost for the training of the
Combatant Personnel will then be :
First Year's Training £5,105,026
Repetition Courses 1,200,000
£6,305,026
(2) Departmental Personnel. — The annual cost of
the Regular Departmental Personnel is slightly
over a sixth of that of the Combatant Personnel.
Taking a sixth for our purpose, it adds
£1,050,838.
(3) and (4) The Labour and Instructional Establish-
ments, as given in the Army Estimates, together add
slightly under a fourteenth to the cost of the Com-
batant Personnel of the Regulars. One-fourteenth
of their cost works out to £450,359, and some
additional sum would certainly be wanted for
special schools of instruction. We take it at
£500,000.
(5) Reserve. — On this sub-head there is no charge.
This concludes the examination of Head I. on
p. 210 of the Army Estimates, " Charges for Per-
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 175
sonnel." For the Territorial Army these charges
will amount to :
Combatant Personnel . . . . £6,305,026
Depart mental Personnel •• •• 1,050,838
Labour and Instructional . . . . 500,000
£7,855,864
And this sum would cover " all emoluments,
allowances, expenses of transport and barrack
accommodation and the provision for the Royal
Military Academy, Royal Military College, Roj'al
Army Medical College, Recruiting Staff, Prison
Establishments, and Regimental and Garrison
Schools." (See p. 210 Army Estimates, 1908-09,
Vote I.)
Special /^serves <tn<l Territorial Forces. — This
head of the Army Estimates deals wit h the per-
sonnel <>l Hi' Reserves, Militia, Territorial Forces,
Volunteers, etc., and we have no additional cost
estimate for any «»l these. On the contrary, most
of these items are matters for deduction and arc
dealt with later.
Ill
( '/in, -if for A, urn mi ni <, Works, Stores, Horses,
and Misot Uutk on ^< rvices
It is difficult to estimate the cost under (Inn
head. With the exception of the item for hones,
almost the whole of the oharg< arc for works,
buildings, and miscellaneous services which would
176 APPENDIX III
not come against a Territorial Army, whose training
would be done, in the majority of cases, in camp.
As regards the horses, a Home-Defence Army to
act in a country as unsuited for cavalry movements
as England is, would require few in comparison with
Regulars. The proportionate method would, in the
case of this head of expenditure, lead to an exag-
gerated estimate, and the best way will be to take
a lump sum. A lump sum of £500,000 has been
allowed for this item.
IV
Staff and Administration
Here, again, the increase of expense would be
nothing like proportionate to the numbers of the
Territorial Force. The present staff deals not only
with the Regulars but also with the existing Ter-
ritorial Army, and a very small addition to its
strength, and that mainly in the lower branches,
would be all that would be required to enable it to
administer the Army proposed by the League.
An addition of £200,000 to the existing vote would,
in the opinion of the League, be amply sufficient.
Summary of Cost
This concludes the examination of the various
heads of Army Expenditure as given in the Army
Estimates, pp. 210-211. The extra cost under each
head for the Army recommended by the National
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 177
Service League will, on the estimates of the pre-
ceding paragraphs, amount to :
I. — Personnel (active) : Cavalry, Artillery,
Engineers, and Infantry
Departmental Services
Labour and Instruction
1 1 -Personnel (Reserve)
III. — Armami ate, Stores, Horses, etr.
1 \ Administration
£6,305,026
1,050,838
500,000
Nil
500,000
200,000
£8,555,864
To this must be added the bounty to be offered
to men of the Territorial Force to engage in a
Special rve to serve with the Regulars abroad
in oase of war. The strength of this reserve is
fixed by Mr. Haldane at 80,000.
Under the <>M system no difficulty was found in
getting Militiamen bo engage in b similar Reserve
for a bounty oi £l 10*. There is no reason why
tlii- Bhould n"t suffice now, as the men will already
done their recruit training. Allowing the
samebounty, this, for 80,000 men, comes to £120,000.
\" expenses will be incurred for the training of
this Re erve, as it will !>■• recruited bom men
who have done their five months 1 training in the
Territorial Army.
Tie- p >( , ni i he Territorial Force b r oom
mended by the National Service League will there-
amount to £8,670 364,
Saving
Against this must be e1 "ii the saving oi the
m) 1 1,. |,r. cut T( rritorial Arm] and of I he
12
178 APPENDIX III
present Special Reserve. The cost of the existing
Territorial Force when complete has been given by
Mr. Haldane (Command Paper No. 3,296, and
Supplementary Estimate of May 22, 1907) as
£3,515,000 per annum.
The cost of the existing Special Reserve has been
given by him as £28 for the recruits in their first
year who serve for six months, and £9 for the men
in subsequent years. This cost is exclusive of
officers. The strength of the Reserve is 80,000,
and the engagement in it is for six years. Its
normal strength will, therefore, be about 13,500
first-year men and 66,500 men of upwards of one
year's service.
Its cost* will be (without officers) : —
13,500 First-year Men at £28 £378,000
66,500 Trained Men at £9 598,500
976,500
The Cost of the Officers will add 25% to this . . 244,125
Allowing 75 Non-Commissioned Officers per
1,000 men at £80 per annum we must add,
for 13,500 men 81,040
£1,301,665
The total savings, therefore, come to :
Territorial Force £3,515,000
Special Reserve . . . . . . . . . . 1,301,665
£4,816,665
* The Estimates for the Special Reserve in the Army
Estimates (1908-9), p. 210, include the cost of the Militia
(now in process of absorption).
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 179
Deducting this from the gross cost already arrived
at of £8,675,864, the net additional annual cost
eomes to £3,859,199.
It only remains i<» point out thai the figures in
this paper apply only to annual cost. Capital
i penditure has not been estimated.
B
This estimate is based upon i he answer given to
Mr. Arthur Lee by Mr. Haldane on December 14,
1!*oh. with regard to the cost of the Special Reserve.
The in »wer \\ as as follows :
dr. Haldane (Haddington): The estimate oi
19 c,/ includei barrack accommodation
clothing, pay, bountj m< ing allowance provisions,
equipment, arms, ammunition and charges for
travelling, fuel, and light, enlistment expenses,
barrack tore and ill other expenditure winch
.'ml' 'I a per i >na I to 1 be man. h dots not
include any portion of the co I ol the establi bmenl
of Regular oldier igned to ;i Special Reserve
battalion. The av< e oost ol an infantrj private
oi i be Special 1 1 er his n oruit year \t about
£9 .i pear
NoU Mr. 1 1 . 1 1 • J . • i * ' - iini.it. '•_•, 16 «;,/. for
1 1 oruit t raining ol i i mi >nt bs include £1 10
bounty. The actual cost ol training for ii tnontb
would therefore be £26 I" or £22 for five month
The e t imate I B p< i annum aftei I be recruit
drill include ' i bounty Deducting this we get
i th of the til U en daj I i.niniig.
180 APPENDIX III
It will be seen from the above that no allowance
is made for the Officers and N.C.O.'s who carry
out the training of these Special Reserves. Con-
sequently we have to estimate this cost.
Fifteen Regular Officers, seventy-five Regular
N.C.O.'s, and twenty Territorial Officers are allowed
in this estimate (as in A) per 1,000 men.
We have, therefore, to add the cost of 2,250
Regular Officers, 3,000 Territorial Officers, and
11,250 N.C.O.'s. The cost is calculated as follows :
For each Regular Officer £466 10 1 (Am ^ . Estimates '
For each N.C.O. .. 80 including non-
For each Territorial Officer 50
effective pay).
The above calculations deal solely with officers
required for the recruit training. We must allow
thirty-five Territorial Officers per 1,000 men for
the fifteen days' annual training of the Territorial
Army (400,000). The cost of these officers is cal-
culated at a proportion of £300, which is the effective
cost of an officer under the Army Estimates (ex-
cluding non-effective vote).
From the total cost of the recruit's training we
deduct 6d. per diem, as Mr. Haldane's figures given
above are based on the pay given at present to a
Regular soldier.
Estimated cost of stores, horses, etc., administra-
tion, and retaining fee must be added. The same
figures are taken as in A. Similar deductions are
also made for the present cost of the Territorial
Force and Special Reserve.
ESTIMATE OF NUMBERS AND COST 181
These Estimates give the following results :
1. 150,000 Recruits at £22 .. £3,300,000
2,250 Regular Officers at
£466 10s 1,049,625
3,000 Territorial Officers at £50 1 50,000
1 1,250 N.C.O.'s at £80 .. 900,000
5,399,625
Deduct 6d. per diem for 150,000
Recruit . . . . 562,500
Total cost of Recruits' Training £4,837,125
2. 400,000 Territorial Force at £5 2,000,000
I 1.000 Territorial Officers at £13
(one twenty-fourth of £300) . . 1 82,000
2,182,000
3. Arraami'iiN. Stores, Horses, etc. .. .. 5(»(),(i(iu
4. Administration 200, I
5. £1 LOW. retaining f. . for 80,000 .. .. 120,000
7,830,125
.\'l<l 10 per oent. for contingencies . . .. 783,012
Ore Total 623,037
Deduct Co ' "I Territorial Faroe 3,615,000
< b of Special Re* n e 1,801 ,(
1,818
\. t total additional oo I of Territorial arm]
and* r I be I* agu< propo al . . • • £3,800
72, ViCToaii Si hi i.i. i Vtbmary 1009
APPENDIX IV
PARLIAMENTARY PAPER (HOUSE OF LORDS,
JULY 8, 1909) CONTAINING THE RE-
MARKS OF THE FINANCE DEPART-
MENT OF THE WAR OFFICE ON THE
ESTIMATE OF THE NATIONAL SERVICE
LEAGUE
1. The numbers which a scheme of compulsory
service would produce have not been examined,
and the estimate of the League in this respect will
therefore be accepted for the purposes of this
discussion.
2. As regards cost, the relation between the
four millions (or rather less) which is the figure
arrived at in the League's estimate, and the twenty
millions which is spoken of in the pamphlet as the
" strangely exaggerated and erroneous figure put
forward by official spokesmen," should be made
clear at the outset. The latter figure was a very
rough estimate of the cost of a force of a million
men on a special Reserve basis ; that is, trained in
barracks for six months on enlistment, paid on the
same lines as the Regular Army, all serving on the
peace establishment and organized in regimental
cadres. The four millions, as is now clear, is the
182
REMARKS ON ESTIMATE 183
excess cost, after deducting the present cost of both
the Territorial Force and the Special Reserve, of the
force proposed by the League. And that force con-
sists not of a million men organised in cadres, but
of 150,000 recruits paid Qd. a day less than the
Regular and trained under canvas, 400,000 trained
men organised in cadres, of whom 80,000 replace the
present Special Reserve, and 600,000 men in reserve
who have passed through the ranks and are liable
to be called out, but for whom no arms, clothing
«-'|uipment or organisation of any kind are provided.
The two figures, in fact, have very little relation to
one another.
3. The figure- arrived at by the two methods of
calculation adopted by the League — £3,859,000 and
£3,806,000 — arc strikingly close, and this at lii
sight appears to confirm their accuracy ; bm both
methods are fallacious and their agreement is a
nun- coincidence. In Estimate A, on page i<>, a
rate oi ±:'< pel bead of all arms and rank i arrived
at a^ th« cost of a repetition ooui i oi fifteen
dag In Est una! e B, on page 14, a rate o\
is taken ai the cost of the same coarse for the
Infantry private -the l0W< I i •• n k <»t the |e.i-t \\<-||
paid arm.
4. The fundamental fallacy in Estimate A i the
a amotion thai a soldier trained for fifteen daj
<<p-t- one-twenty-fourth oi the annual oosl oi b
oldier trained all the year round. Thi implie
in etfeet, t hat the rifle vrhioh la I the Regular fox
twelve yean will la I the Territorialisl for oenturies;
184 APPENDIX IV
that the same suit of clothing will last six successive
Territorialists, each serving for four years ; that
the Territorialists will fire, perhaps, one shillings-
worth of ammunition in the year, and so on.
5. The provision for officers is altogether in-
sufficient. Twenty Territorial Subalterns are to be
employed for about five months in the training of
each 1,000 recruits, at a cost of about £50 each.
The sum is quite inadequate, and, apart from this,
there is no provision for training the Subalterns
themselves, or for Territorial officers of any rank
whatever, except that the rate taken for fifteen
days' annual training is one-twenty-fourth of the
average cost of all ranks of the Regular Army.
6. The £500,000 taken for Armaments, Works,
Stores and Horses is also inadequate. Except that
it is stated (page 11) that a Home Defence Army to
act in a country as unsuited for Cavalry movements
as England is would require few horses in com-
parison with Regulars, there is no indication of what
proportion of the several arms of the Service is
assumed. Taking the proportion in the present
Territorial Force, £500,000 is not enough to provide
horses alone for 150,000 recruits training for five
months and 400,000 men training for fifteen days,
to say nothing of the other items.
7. The rate of £80 taken for a Regular non-com-
missioned officer of the Permanent Staff is far too
low. Corporals would not suffice. Sergeants and
Colour-Sergeants, all pensionable and with the right
to marry, would be required ; and £150 would not
REMARKS ON ESTIMATE 185
be too high a rate to take. This single item would
add three-quarters of a million to the estimate.
8. In Estimate B the fundamental fallacy is that
the cost of an Army is got by multiplying the cost of
the individual Infantry private, and the individual
officer, with small additions of £700,000 for Arma-
ments, Stores, Horses, &c, and Administration, and
£120,000 for retaining fees for the Special Reserve.
The value of this method is best tested by applying it
to the Regular Army. The annual cost of the Regular
Infantry private, on the same lines as the figures for
the Special Reserve given in the answer to Mr. Lee
(on which the Estimate is based) is £57 10s. The
163,700 men on the Regimental Establishment of
the Regular Army at this rate, with 7,225 officers at
>oo (the rate taken in the Estimate) would cost
eleven and ;i half millions, wheieas the Anuy Bsti-
matee, after deducting pensions, Army Reserve,
Special Reserve and Territorial Force, bu< not
deducting (he contributions paid by India and the
Colonies, amount to eighteen and three-quarter
million-.-, a discrepancy of ov< i even million <>n a
fore- of 171,000.
9, A regard an official estimate of the cost of the
mum. no even roughly reliable figure can !»<■
given without lull information ai to the proportion
and establishment! «>t the everal arms, with detail
io organ] ation, t;dT, localities ol training, eU
r.ut ;i, mode of obtaining a very rough idea oi the
minimum cost, upon the \«- < available ■> umptions,
may he indicated.
186 APPENDIX IV
10. It may be assumed that, broadly speaking,
the proposed force would be similar, from an ad-
ministrative point of view, to the Territorial Force
rather than to the Special Reserve, having head-
quarters and drill halls, but no barracks. It may
also be assumed that the proportion of the several
arms, and the establishments, would be those ob-
taining in the Territorial Force ; so that there would
be regimental cadres for 550,000 men, all of whom
would train for fifteen days, and 150,000 of whom
would train for four and a half months longer
(making the five months' average recruit training).
11. Now the Territorial Force is estimated to
cost normally about £10 a head annually, of which
roughly £4 105. may be assigned to the fortnight's
camp (including hire of horses, etc.) and £5 10s. to
administration, clothing, equipment, ranges, build-
ings, etc.
The 550,000 men in the cadres of the proposed force
would similarly cost £10 a head, or five and a half
millions, for administration, etc., including fifteen
days' camp for every man. The four and a half
months' extra camp for 150,000 men, making allow-
ance for items which would not increase in proportion
to the duration of the training, would cost about
six millions.
12. For training staff for recruits the League's
estimate allows £2,100,000. Adding three-quarter
million for underestimate (see paragraph 7), and
allowing something for training of recruit officers,
this may be put at three millions.
REMARKS ON ESTIMATE 187
On the other hand, the Territorial is paid 9d.
a-day (messing allowance) more than the Regular.
The League proposes to pay the recruit 6d. less
than the Regular, and the trained man the same
as the Regular. This would give a reduction of
Is. 3d. a day for 150,000 men for five months, and
9d. a day for 400,000 men for fifteen days, say
£1,650,000.
13. Thus the cost would be —
Administration and annual training .. .. £~>,~>00,ooo
Extra recruit training .. .. .. .. 6,000,000
Training staff 3,000,000
ml K. serve retaining fee (as proposed by-
tin; League) 120,0110
I 1,620,000
/ on pay . . . . . . . . 1 ,660,000
12,070,000
Deduct -. normal cost of —
I • mi. 11. 1 I-. . . . . £8,160,000
ial Reserve
6,160,
\wrcnM! ,000
( )i roughly, eight millions.
1 1. This «• 1 imate, it hould be remembered, is
purely for the normal annual upkeep <>i the f<
and includes nothing for capital expenditure ol any
kind. One item in particular mu I Ix taken into
con nil i,ii ion in t in iniiiM ii ion. At present I be
Territorials largely depend, for manoBUvre ai
188 APPENDIX IV
and artillery ranges, on those maintained for the
Regulars. These would not suffice to accommodate
the larger force proposed. There are no data on
which to estimate what the cost of provision would
be ; but it would certainly be very large.
APPENDIX V
NOTES BY THE NATIONAL SERVICE
LEAGUE ON WAR OFFICE PAPER
"ARMY, JULY 8, 1909"
Befork entering on a detailed examination of
the criticisms in the War Office Memorandum of
July 8, 1909, it may !><■ well to state briefly bow
the question "i fin- cost of a compulsory system of
military training for this country stands al present.
For "iii< years pasl the National Service League,
has advocated the adoption of such a system, .mil
ha indicated the Inn- on whioh it hould be oon-
ducted. On November 23, Mtos. Lord Crewe,
speaking in n ference i<> the propo al <>i the League,
bated that the additional co tof compul orj military
braining would be £20 000,000a j i ai and tlii ban
men! we repeated by Mr. Ealdane on the 26th "i
the lame month. As tin- figure wb entirely al
variance w ii h the calculation made by the League,
the liit. i drew up in February of bhi year its
< i [mate of I he addil iona I coal of I be m ii
advocated, giving in detail the calculation l>\
which this was arrived at, and the grounds on whiob
it was in ed. Lord Lucas's paper, nam under
review, is a ci ii ici m of this i I imate.
180
190 APPENDIX V
The calculations of the National Service League
were, in all cases, based upon official figures, the
sources of which were indicated. They were worked
out on two different methods, each of which was
fully explained, and the results obtained in the two
cases tallied with such closeness as to afford a strong
presumption that neither was far from the truth.
The conclusion to be drawn from them was that if
the system recommended by the League were
adopted, the increased annual cost, far from being
£20,000,000, as stated by the War Office, would not
exceed £4,000,000.
The answer of the War Office is to deny the ac-
curacy of the methods adopted by the League, and
to produce an amended estimate of its own. In
this, the increased annual cost, which ten months
ago was put at £20,000,000, has now shrunk to
£7,820,000. The immediate effect of the League's
calculations has therefore been to reduce the War
Office estimate by considerably more than half.
We venture to predict that a fuller consideration
of them will reduce it still further.
We shall now proceed to examine in detail the
various criticisms and arguments in Lord Lucas's
paper. These will be taken one by one, and,
when quoted, will be distinguished by being placed
between inverted commas.
The paper commences by explaining how it was
that the War Office promulgated the erroneous
estimates to which we have referred. As these are
now abandoned, it is not necessary to pursue the
NOTES BY THE LEAGUE 191
matter further, beyond remarking that the excuses
put forward lor the error simply show that the \\ ai
Office had not taken the trouble to make itself
acquainted with the system of which it professed
to give the cost. We regret to say that the same
criticism applies to the paper now before us.
The Memorandum proceeds to Btate tint both
the methods of calculation followed by the League
" are fallacie , and their agreement is a mer< coinci-
dence," and to give i ason for tln-^ opinion. The
first criticism is :
In Estimate .\. on page I", a run- ( .t i:s per head ol all
,,i in- ami i.ii.i i urrived at a thi ooat ><\ a repel ition
oonrae oi fifteen daya. in Estimate B, on page L4, a rati
,,i i.~> | coat oJ the same ooursi for the lm anti \
l>ii\
We thank the War Office l«»i having, in thi re
in i.i k given hi incidental proof <>i the Boundn<
of the method \\«- have followed. Bj Lord Lucas's
(,u n i.,i. in- ni iii paragraph elevi n oi hif pap< r,
the ooal ol the Territorial soldier training foi fifteen
put at £ I Mte and, ai I he Tei i itoi ial re
oeivef 9d a daj more I ban I hi Eb gular I hi n pre
, h i { :; i g '.i./. on a Regular basi Now the mean
between £3 and £6 i I I w hich ooi r< ipond al I
., it I, i be Wai ( office figun and o fai a n
diffei •!"• "'»ii i be Bid* of i « i \ mon 1 1 iking
n i ,,,,-. ,,i i b< oundm of oui oalculal ioni i h
thi-i mi nichiK.ii.il corroboration from offioiaJ oun
could not hav e be< n a iki d foi .
192 APPENDIX V
The second criticism is :
The fundamental fallacy in Estimate A is that a soldier
trained for fifteen days costs one -twenty -fourth of the
annual cost of a soldier trained all the year round.
If those who drew up the War Office Paper had
read the estimate they were impugning, they would
have seen that it is based, not on the assumption
stated above, but on the assumption that (we quote
the actual words of the estimate) " if the average
cost per head of the Regulars amounts to a certain
sum for a year, the average cost per head of the
Territorial training for five months will amount to
five-twelfths of that sum." It is evident that the
more nearly the period of training, of which the
cost is to be estimated, approaches a year, the more
closely will the result of the proportional method of
calculation approach accuracy ; and, as the greater
portion of the expense is caused by the five months'
training in the first year, the d ifference between the
assumption we have made and that which the War
Office represents us as having made is very great.
Moreover, on December 14, 1908, Mr. Haldane
stated in the House of Commons that his estimate
of the cost of the training of a Special Reserve
recruit for six months was £27 195. Qd. This
included £1 10s. bounty. The League, working on
the proportional method, arrived at the conclusion
that the cost for five months would be £26 15s.
Will the War Office still maintain that our estimate
is an underestimate and our method fallacious ?
NOTES BY THE LEAGUE 193
If there is any error in it, it is that we have placed
the cost too high rather than too low.
The War Office Memorandum then proceeds :
The provision for officers is altogether insufficient.
Twenty Territorial subalterns are to be employed for about
five months in the training of each thousand recruits.
We are perfectly certain the War Office would not
intentionally misrepresent our proposals, but we
can only acquit it of this on the assumption that
it has not read them. Would any one imagine from
the sentence quoted above that our provision of
officers per 1,000 men is not simply " twenty
Territorial subalterns," hut fifteen Regular ollieers
in addition — namely, a commanding officer, two
major-, ten captains, an adjutant, and a quarter-
master ? We 3hal] always he grateful for the
oned examination by the War oilier of any
estimates or proposals we may puf forward; but
We mij-t a 1. it in future to r < ft .tin from statements
bo misleading ae thai the training <>f 1,000 recruits
would be e.uiied out by t wenty Territorial subalterns
when m a matter of fact, thirty-five officers are
provided for tin's purp ad, of these, all in the
higher rani at e not Ten itoi ial . but Regula i
The aext paragraph bate I hat
'I'll'- £j "en taken for armaments, trorl n . and
horn alt ther inadequate. , . £000,000 is net
enough t" provide l » « • r- m for the I B0, recruit* training
for five months and 100,( men training for fifteen d
ay nothing of ■■• b< r Items. "
id
194 APPENDIX V
A 'arge portion of the cost for armaments, works,
and stores (Appendix 17, Head III., Army Esti-
mates) is for fortifications, stations abroad, and
other expenses which have little to do with a Terri-
torial Army. The total amount taken in Army
Estimates (1908-9) for horses for the whole of our
Home Forces, Territorials included, was £913,275.
We have added £500,000, or more than 50 per cent.
We fail to see in what way this allowance is in-
sufficient.
The succeeding criticism is :
The rate of £80 taken for a Regular N.C.O. of the Per-
manent Staff is far too low. Corporals would not suffice.
Sergeants and colour-sergeants, all pensionable and with
the right to marry, would be required, and £150 would
not be too high a rate to take."
It may be that our estimate on this head is some-
what too low. In putting it forward we expressly
stated that this item of cost was " difficult to esti-
mate, as we have no official figures giving us the aver-
age annual cost of the Regular N.C.O.'s — including
non-effective pay." But if our estimate is too low,
that of the War Office is certainly too high. We
provided seventy-five N.C.O.'s for 1,000 men, of
whom forty were to be corporals. The War Office
would have them all sergeants and colour-sergeants.
Is not this an arrangement unheard of in any training
battalion or depot ? Some additions to our estimate
under this head may be required, but to nothing
like the extent proposed by the War Office.
NOTES BY THE LEAGUE 195
We have now dealt with all the criticisms of the
War Office on our first method of calculation (Esti-
mate A). That on the second method (Estimate
B) need not detain us long. It is as follows :
In Estimate B the fundamental fallacy is that the cost
of an Army is got by multiplying the cost of the individual
Infantry private and the individual officer, with small
additions of £700,000 for armaments, stores, horses, etc.,
and administration, and £120,000 retaining fees for the
Special Reserve.
We can only say that in Estimate B we have
followed Mr. Haldane's own figures for the average
cost of the Special Reserve, composed of 60,000 men
and training for six months. If, in these figun
items which ought to have been included have been
omitted t be fault is not ours.
This concludes our answer to 1 be oril icisms in t In-
War Office Paper, We nave Bhown that while the
War Office estimate* have dwindled from £20,000,000
to £8,000,000, the estimate of the League, arrived
at by two different roade and ba ed on official
figures, remain ab tantially unaffected by the
oriticism ed on it. We bave further Bhown
that tie- War Office, both in it original and its
amended estimate, lia^ failed to make itself i
quainted with what the prop of the League
i' ally are, and has, in oon iequ< doubtle unin-
tent tonally, i i ton ly mi n pr< • nt< <l the: <• pro-
posal . We ball dow examine into the ground on
which the late I War Office estimate il « It n te,
with the result that we shall be able to ho^i tl
196 APPENDIX V
the League's estimate of £4,000,000 is far nearer
the truth than the War Office estimate of
£8,000,000.
The whole calculation in this latter estimate is
based upon the following statement :
The Territorial Force is estimated to cost normally about
£10 a head annually, of which, roughly, £4 10s. may be
assigned to the fortnight's camp, including hire of horses,
etc., and £5 10s. to administration, clothing, equipment,
ranges, buildings, etc.
From this annual cost of £10 a head for the Terri-
toria' Army, the writer of the paper arrives at
£11,500,000 as the cost of the annual training of the
force required by the League. But, having done
this, he proceeds to add the sum of £3,000,000 more
for training staff. On what ground is this addition
made ? Either the present training staff or the
Territorial Army is sufficient, or it is not. If it
is sufficient, no addition should be made. If it is
not, then this army is at present insufficiently sup-
plied with training staff, and its proper cost has been
understated. Lord Lucas must not take his own
figures and ours and mix them up to produce a large
result. We are ready to start from his basis of an
average of £10 a head for the whole of the present
Territorial Army, or he can take our basis of £26 155.
for the five months' recruit training, exclusive of
staff, and add to it that of the staff. But he must
not take his own figure of £10, which includes the
staff (as is shown by the fact that in the same cal-
culation the total cost of the present Territorial
NOTES BY THE LEAGUE 197
Army of 300,000 men is put at £3,150,000), and then,
following our method, add to it a sum of £3,000,000
for staff already provided for — a sum which alone
equals the whole cost of our present Territorial
Army. We really must take exception to this.
When this £3,000,000 is deducted from Lord
Lucas's total, the War Office estimate, which, less
than a year ago, was £20,000,000, and which has
now fallen to less than £8,000,000, comes down to
£4,800,000. And the estimate of the League is
£4,000,000.
Is it necessary to add more ? We think not.
For the Executive Committee of the
National Service League,
gned) GEORGE F. SHEE, Secretary.
July 10, 1909.
APPENDIX VI
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE BY THE FINANCE
DEPARTMENT OF THE WAR OFFICE
The criticisms in the memorandum published by
the National Service League on July 10, 1909,
so far as they challenge the figures in the War
Office Estimate, are briefly dealt with below.
(a) To paragraph 5 of the War Office Paper the
League replies :
Would any one imagine from the sentence quoted above
that our provision of officers per 1,000 men is not simply
" twenty Territorial subalterns," but fifteen Regular
officers in addition — namely, a Commanding Officer, two
Majors, ten Captains, an Adjutant and a Quartermaster ?
We shall always be grateful for the reasoned examination
by the War Office of any estimates or proposals we may
put forward ; but we must ask it in future to refrain from
statements so misleading as that the training of a thousand
recruits would be carried out by twenty Territorial sub-
alterns, when, as a matter of fact, thirty-five officers are
provided for this purpose, and of these all in the higher
ranks are not Territorials, but Regulars.
This misses altogether the point of the War
Office criticism, which is that (a) there is no ade-
quate provision for the cost of the Territorial officers
198
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 199
of all ranks necessary for the field units (not depots) ;
and (b) that the class of Territorial officer who will
do five months' continuous work at drilling recruits
for £50 does not exist. This criticism is not affected
by the provision of Regular officers for drilling
recruits.
(6) To paragraph 6 the League replies :
The total amount taken in Army Estimates [(1908-9)
for horses for the whole of our Home forces, Territorials
included, was £913,275. We have added £500,000, or
more than 50 per cent. We fail to see in what way this
allowance is insufficient.
This is a misconception. The sum of £913,275
(as the Estimates show) relates to the 31,913 horses
on tin- fixed establishment of the Army, and has
nothing to do with the Territorial Force.
(c) To paragraph 7 the League replies :
It may be that our e bimatc on this head U somewhat
too low. In putting it forward we expressly luted that
this item of cost we difficult to estimate," as we have no
official figures giving us tin- average annual cost of the
Kr^ular uon commit ioned officers, including oon effective
pay." Bui if our e timate i too low, that of the War
Office i -• certainly too high. We provide seventy-five non-
commie ioned offioei [or a tl w and men, oi whom forty
re to be corporals. The Wat Office would have them all
sergeant i and colour-sergeants. I oof this an arras
ment unheard of in any training battalion or depot 1
Soni'- additions to our estimate under thi head may be
required, but to nothing like the extent proposed by the
\\ at I >':
200 APPENDIX VI
It is difficult to divine the conditions under which
the League proposes to carry out the training of
its recruits. Judged by the proportion of Per-
manent Staff found necessary for the old Militia
and for the Special Reserve, the League's numbers
are inadequate. If Territorial conditions are
taken, it must be remembered that practically
every sergeant-instructor of the Permanent Staff
of the Territorials is of colour-sergeant's rank. The
cost of pensions is a very serious item.
The addition of three-quarters of a million under
this head does not appear excessive.
(d) On paragraphs 11 and 12 the League remarks :
The whole calculation in this latter (the War Office)
estimate is based upon the following statement :
' The Territorial Force is estimated to cost normally
about £10 a-head annually, of which roughly
£4 10s. may be assigned to the fortnight's camp.
. . . and £5 10s. to administration . . . etc.
" From this annual cost of £10 a-head for the
Territorial Army, the writer of the paper arrives
at £11,500,000 as the cost of the annual training
of the force required by the League. But, having
done this, he proceeds to add the sum of £3,000,000
more for training staff. On what ground is this
addition made ? . . . He must not take his own
figure of £10, which includes the staff . . . and
then (following our method) add to it a sum of
£3,000,000 for staff already provided for — a
sum which alone equals the whole cost of our
present Territorial Army."
Paragraph 1 2 clearly states that the three millions
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 201
relates to training staff for recruits. The pro-
portion of training staff allowed to Territorial
battalions and other units is not more than sufficient
— geographical distribution taken into account —
to carry on the training and other duties (corre-
spondence, care of arms, equipment, buildings, etc.)
of the units. Certainly no considerable reduction
of this staff could be made if recruits were concen-
trated in training battalions or depots for four to
six months' continuous recruit drills. The cost of
the training staff for recruits would therefore be
additional to the cost, on present lines, of the per-
manent staff of the units, though apparently the
recruit-training staff would be idle for half the year.
It is just this mixture of the " Militia " and " Volun-
teer ' principles that makes the system proposed
by the League so uneconomical.
C. H.
APPENDIX VII
FINANCIAL NOTES ON A POSSIBLE CON-
SCRIPT ARMY FOR HOME DEFENCE
1. These notes are intended to give a very rough
indication, based on such data as are readily avail-
able, of the financial results of a reorganisation
of the British Army on the following lines :
The present Regular Army to be reduced to the
dimensions required for the Indian and Colonial
garrisons and the depots at home needed to support
them, and the entire cost to be paid by the countries
garrisoned. The Special Reserve to be abolished.
The Territorial Force to be replaced by a Home
Defence Army on German lines, of such a strength
as would give on mobilisation a force equal in num-
bers to the present Territorial Force (assumed to
be at its full establishment).
Numbers in Peace and War : German System
2. There are on the peace establishment in
Germany 621,000 officers and men of all ranks,
including about 504,000 rank and file, and a Reserve
(not including the Landwehr and Landsturm) of
about 934,000, making 1,438,000 " names on paper "
202
FINANCIAL NOTE ON CONSCRIPTION 203
on mobilisation, besides officers and non-commis-
sioned officers.
3. The present establishment of the Territorial
Force is 315,000 officers and men of all ranks,
including about 285,000 rank and file. The pro-
jected Territorial Reserve would increase the
' names on paper " on mobilisation ; but a much
larger proportion of men would be unfit for im-
mediate service than in a Conscript Army where
recruits are taken at military age. For purposes
of calculation, I assume that the Reserve would
just suffice to replace the immature and untrained
and to fill up the casual shortages (differences
between establishment and strength) incidental to
a voluntary system of recruiting. Taking the
' names on paper " of available men as 285,000,
this number would be produced on the German
system by a peace establishment of 100,000 rank
and file, or about 123,000 of all ranks.
Comparative Cost ter Head, British and
GXBMAD A km IKS
4. There arc about 120,000 troops on regimental
e bablishment at borne, omitting the Regulars
serving with special Reserve units. Their cost,
exolusive of reserve pay and pensions, but not
deducl ing the India n Contribution for depot charges,
etc., is approximately eleven and a half millions.
Including a share of works, stores and adminis-
tration, the cost of the Army with the Colours at
204 APPENDIX VII
home may be put at about thirteen millions, or
£103 a-head all round.
5. The German estimates, exclusive of colonial
troops and pensions, amount to about forty millions
for the peace establishment of 621,000 all ranks.
The one-year Volunteers, who cost practically
nothing,* have been omitted throughout. This is
at the rate of about £64 8s. a-head, or £38 12s. less
than the British average.
6. This difference in cost is mainly due to the
higher pay and more expensive clothing of the
British soldier. There is little difference as regards
cost of food. Leaving aside all questions of relative
quality and price, the expenditure on food in
Germany per man is approximately the same as
the British ration with messing allowance.
(a) Pay. — The German infantry private gets
£3 19s. a year, say 2hd. a day, and has to pay
stoppages out of it. The English infantry private
at home, with proficiency (service) pay, averages
Is. 2d. a-day. The difference is ll\d. a day, about
£17 7s. a-year ; or allowing for the British gratuity
of £1 a year on discharge and for the greater differ-
ences in the pay of Engineers and other arms, say
£20 a-year.
(b) Clothing. — The British soldier's clothing, in-
cluding kit allowance, averages £8 a-year. The
German soldier's clothing averages about £3 5s.
Difference, £4 15s.
7. These two items account for £24 15s. out of
* They pay even for the use of their equipment.
FINANCIAL NOTE ON CONSCRIPTION 205
the difference of £38 125., leaving £13 175. still to
be accounted for. It is difficult, without making
very elaborate comparisons, to trace exactly the
differences making up this sum ; but it is to a very
large extent explained by the higher pay and larger
proportion of upper ranks of regimental officers and
non-commissioned officers in the British Army, by
the higher standard of comfort in barracks, and by
the more liberal allowances to those living outside.
8. Whatever legislation might be passed as regards
compulsory service in the ranks, it would always
be necessary to pay officers and non-commissioned
officers sufficiently to retain them in the Army, and
no saving could be looked for in such matters as
barrack comfort ; so that there will be no great
error in regarding this £13 175. a head on the total
establishment as a permanent excess of cost of a
British as compared with ;i German conscript
army, raising the average cost for the British army,
modelled and paid on German lines, to £78 55. a
head.
Financial Kksults
9. TheConBoripl Army of 123,000, all ranks, with
the Colours would co t at this rate aboul £9,625,000
a year. It is assumed, still following the German
model, thai the Army reservisl would gel ao pay at
all.
10. What remained of the present Regular Army
in this oountry would oosl the British Exchequer
nothing, as the soheme lays down that only the
206 APPENDIX VII
depots necessary to maintain the over-sea garrisons
would remain, and their cost would be paid by
India and the Colonies. But in order to form a
rough idea of what this implies, it is necessary to
make some estimate of what those depots would
cost. Taking depots on the present short-service
plan, sufficient to give training as nearly as possible
equivalent to the present (Home battalion) standard,
but without the power of forming fighting units
on mobilisation like those of the present Ex-
peditionary Force, the cost would be about
£3,170,000.
11. Under the arrangements proposed, the foreign-
service army would naturally become a long-service
army. This would reduce the size and cost of
depots, but, as shown in the memorandum of the
Secretary of State on the Estimates of 1908-9, the
saving would be more than outbalanced by the in-
creased cost of pensions. These, it is true, would
not accrue at once : there would be a period during
which there would be a reduction in the annual
cost ; but on the other hand there would be heavy
initial charges to meet, consequent on the re-
organisation ; and ultimately the result as a whole
would be an increase of cost.
As the figure is one affecting not British but
Indian and Colonial exchequers, it is sufficiently
near the mark for present purposes to take the
£3,170,000. I do not here pursue the question of
how far it is practicable to make the Government
of Malta (e.g.), or of South Africa, pay the whole
FINANCIAL NOTE ON CONSCRIPTION 207
cost of the troops there and their depots at
home.
12. Supposing the change made, we should stand
as follows :
Present System
Effective cost of —
Regular troops at home
,, in Colonies
Army Reserve. .
Territorial Force
Special Reserve, etc.
War Office, etc.
Non-effective charges
Stores and works . .
Loan annuities . .
Repayments by India and Colonies
X. t Estimates, 1909-10 ..
£11,550,000
4,140,000
1,400,000
2,690,000
2,050,000
366,000
3,788,000
1,500,000
1,156,000
28,640,000
1,205,000
27,435,000
Pro-posed System
Regular troops in Colonies . . . . . . £4,1 10,000
,, ni home (depots, etc., for India
and Colonies) 3,170,000
tpi Army 9,625,000
Non-effective charges 3,788,000
Limn .lniniit ii-s . . . . . . . . . . 1,1 ..(i.niii)
War Office, ston and works (share due to
troop abri »ad) . . . . . . . . 620,000
kymentsby India and Colonies
Nel El t in.
190,000
7,930,
I 1,669,000
208 APPENDIX VII
13. This shows a reduction of £12,866,000 on the
net Estimates, of which £6,725,000 is the increase
assumed in Indian and Colonial contributions.
As these extra payments might equally well be
demanded under the present system, the real saving
is £6,143,000.
Possible Further Forces Required
14. The suggested reorganisation involves the
loss of the whole Expeditionary Force, including the
present Army Reserve and Special Reserve, and of
our Regular Coast Defence troops (Artillery and
Engineers). If it were held necessary to provide
Regular forces equivalent to these on the German
model (including six months' war wastage for the
Expeditionary Force) we should require to increase
the Home Defence peace establishment taken
above (123,000, giving 315,000 on mobilisation) by
at least 100,000 men. This would add about
£7,825,000 to the Estimates, or over a million and
a half more than the amount saved under para-
graph 13.
All the above figures assume the pay of the
British conscript reduced to the German level
of 2\d. a day.
C. H.
APPENDIX VTII
NOTES CONTAINING THE ADMIRALTY
VIEW OF THE RISK OF INVASION *
The really serious danger that this country has to
guard against in war is not invasion, but interrup-
tion of our trade and destruction of our Merchant
Shipping
The strength of our Fleet is determined by what
is necessary to protect our trade, and, if it is suffi-
cient for that, it will be almost necessarily sufficienl
to prevent invasion, since the same disposition of
the ships to a great extent answers both purposes.
The main objeot aimed at by our Fleet, wheth< c
for the defence of commerce or for any other pur-
pose, is to prevent any ship of the enemy from
gettii far enough to do any mischief before
Bhe ifl brought to action. Any disposition 1 hat is
even moderately successful in attaining thisobjeel
will almost certainly be effective in preventing a
large fleet of transports, than which in. thine j s
nn.re vulnerable or more difficult to hide, from
reaching our shor< .
* These notes were supplied to the We* Offloe by the
Board of Admiralty in November, 1010, for the purp
mentioned at page I '.» .• upra.
209 14
210 APPENDIX VIII
To realise the difficulty that an enemy would have
in bringing such a fleet of transports to our coast
and disembarking an army, it is necessary to re-
member that all the ships operating in home waters,
whether they are in the North Sea, the Channel,
or elsewhere, are in wireless communication with
the Admiralty and the Commander-in-Chief, so
that if a fleet of transports is sighted anywhere by
a single cruiser, or even by a merchant ship if
she is fitted with wireless, every ship which happened
to be in a position to intercept the transports would
at once get the order to concentrate as necessary
for the purpose, whether she was at sea or in harbour.
It is further necessary to remember that, even
supposing that by some extraordinary lucky chance
the transports were able to reach our coast without
being detected, their presence must be known when
they arrive there ; and long before half the troops
could be landed, the transports would be attacked
and sunk by submarines which are stationed along
the coast for that purpose.
Besides the submarines there would be always
a large force of destroyers, either in the ports along
the coast or within wireless call, as, in addition
to those that may be definitely detailed for coast
defence, the system of reliefs for those acting over
sea will ensure a large number being actually in
harbour at their respective bases, or within call
while going to or returning from their stations.
These destroyers, though not specially stationed
with that object, will always form, in conjunction
ADMIRALTY VIEW OF INVASION 211
with submarines, a very effective second line of
defence in the improbable event of such a second
line being required.
To understand thoroughly the small chance of
an invasion from the other side of the North Sea
being successful, it is necessary to put oneself in
the place of the officer who has to undertake the
responsibility of conducting it.
His first difficulty will be to consider how he is
to get his great fleet of transports to sea without
any information of it leaking out through neutral
nations or otherwise.
Next, he will consider that somewhere within
wireless call we have nearly double the number of
battleships and cruisers that he can muster, besides
a swarm of destroyers.
He lias probably very vague and unreliable
information as to their positions which are con-
stantly changii
His unwieldy fleel will cover many square miles
of water, and as all the ships will be obliged to
oarry Lights for mutual safety, they will be visible
marly as far by Qlghl as by day. Bow eau he
hope to e ca pe discovery ?
Many of Ins transports will have speeds of not
more than ten to twelve knots, so that there will
he no hope for e cape by He hi if he is mel by a
Buperior tone.
If he is sighted by any of ourdestroyei at oighi
i hey will have little difficulty in avoiding the men-
of-war a iid t orpedoing t he fcrai poi
212 APPENDIX VIII
Is it possible to entice part of our fleet away by
any stratagem ? Possibly. But even if he succeeds
in drawing off half our fleet, the other half, in con-
junction with destroyers and submarines, would
be quite sufficient to sink the greater part of his
transports, even if supported by the strongest fleet
he could collect. The fleets would engage each
other while the destroyers and submarines torpedoed
the transports.
Finally, even if he reached the coast in safety,
he would see that it was quite impossible to guard
his transports against the attacks of submarines
while he was landing the troops ; and that it was
quite certain that a superior force would be brought
to attack him before the landing could be completed.
Taking all these facts into consideration, he would
probably decide as the Admiralty have done, that
an invasion on even the moderate scale of 70,000
men is practically impossible.
A.K. W.
November 19th, 1910.
Printed by Hazell, Walton & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
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