285 shortage of officers throughout the Militia, and to that system, which, he was afraid, was widely prevalent, by which a Militia recruit was able to serve in the same year many separate trainings in different parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover admitted yesterday-and the admission counted for a good deal because he was a high authority on Army matters -that the Militia was an indefensible body in the condition into which it had got. What was the proposal of his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War, stated in its simplest terms, in regard to the Militia ? All that belonged to the Volunteers, all the old county force or elements in the Militia, would fall back, under the shelter of the County Associations, into the Territorial Army, and the cost per man would be reduced by that, from the present cost of £22 per year to the cost of a man in the Territorial Army, which, he understood, was calculated, though necessarily the calculation was a rough one, at something like £8 10s. a year. at the front a few months or a year later MR. WYNDHAM (Dover) was under- as the Militia was now spread, to catch stood to question these figures. for the Regular Army the valuable supply His hon. and gallant friend the Member for the Abercromby Division of Liverpool need have no alarm that the Government had any idea of embarking on a vast scheme of militarism with the aid of a professional Army. They were not battalions in the ordinary sense of the word. They were more than depots, because they were recruiting for themselves as well as recruiting for the Line with which they were associated. It was supposed that these battalions would, after a steady supply of 12,000 men a year had been maintained for the Regular Army, on MR. CHURCHILL said he believed his figures were accurate, but in any case they were not material to his argument. All that belonged to the Volunteers would fall back on the National Army; all that belonged to the Line was to go forward, under terms which the Government believed would be acceptable, into the Line. He now drew the attention of the Committee to a serious gap in our military organisation, which would become wider owing to this treatment proposed for the Militia, by the Secretary of State and which must be filled. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon was never tired of declaiming against the enormous number of unfit and immature soldiers who were left behind after their battalions had gone out to the South African War. The right hon. Gentleman mobilisation of their the Member for Dover yesterday showed how large that surplus of men left behind months men yield between 500 and 600 and unfit to serve in the field would men, and these, in addition to the surplus necessarily be when the field Army had of reservists and the immature and unfit gone abroad. Of course it was true that soldiers who would have been left behind would when the field Army had gone, cona great many of these men be perfectly fit to go out and serve stituted formidable reservoirs of men, six who would not be without military or- | Minister of the Crown. All he would ganisation, although admittedly not a very say on those points was that some of the full organisation, and it was from these extreme statements of the Blue Water reservoirs of men that a continual stream school required to be swallowed with of drafts could be sent to refresh the a good deal of salt. After all, the foundafighting units in the field. No one pre- tion for our insular security was not tended that these third battalions could only the Fleet, but the Fleet in conbe created by a stroke of the pen. They junction with all the other peculiar had got to be administratively evolved, circumstances which existed in this and it was a matter in which his right island. The Leader of the Opposition hon. friend was determined to proceed had pointed out in a speech which had tentatively and gradually. The Militia never received sufficient attention from battalions were quite ready to go abroad, military students, that our security against but they insisted on going in their own serious raids depended not only on the units, and the advantages of sending men Fleet, but on the considerable body of to the front to supply the original regular armed men which existed in this country cadres instead of placing new and much whose resistance, on a very extensive scale, less trained units alongside them in the would make it necessary for an invader to fighting line were, he believed, so indis- bring with him such a considerable force putable that they would not be denied that that force could not be landed on by soldiers of accepted authority. That our shores without ample opportunity was, to his mind, one of the most im- being afforded to prepare to meet it. It portant advantages that would be gained was quite clear that the presence of the by the scheme of his right hon. friend. proposed territorial Army in this country He was not going to enter into a dispute was the only thing that would give that with his hon. and gallant friend the strategic freedom to the Fleet which was Member for the Abercromby Division absolutely indispensable to its proper as to the relative value of volunteer and use, and it was also the only thing which professional soldiers, but he believed would enable the expeditionary force to most sincerely that the alterations which be despatched to the seat of war. Therewere taking place in modern weapons fore, the real duties and responsibilities continually increased the power of the which devolved upon that territorial citizen soldier in he defence of his own Army were of such vital importance that country and in fighting for a cause which it was indeed, an honour to all men he thoroughly understood and knew. who were called upon to take a share in The one inspiration which was to call to that most necessary service. His right the service of the Crown these great hon. friend had for the first time atnumbers of citizen soldiers who were to tempted to give a Regular war organifill the divisions of the home army must sation to the Volunteer forces which be the defence of the soil. He might be remained at home. And his right hon. asked how was it possible that men friend had made a discovery. Most could be summoned to defend their people would have said that to increase country if the Navy guaranteed them Volunteer efficiency they must have against all possible risk of invasion? longer annual periods of training and He had great respect for the Blue Water higher standards. It sounded almost a School, but some of their statements, paradox to controvert that statement, such as that not a dinghy load of men vet he believed it was true that the could be landed in this country—— framework into which the men of the territorial forces were to be fitted when war broke out, and the quality of the men who belonged to those forces, were more important than the actual period of the annual training, and that it would be a cardinal error in military policy to refuse good men just because they could not conform on some points to the exact conditions laid down in the regulations, or give full service in MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London): Who said that? MR. CHURCHILL: The late Secretary of State for War said that a distinguished naval officer had said so, and he gave currency to the statement; a currency which it would never have obtained if it had not been uttered by a Mr. Churchill. training camps. He was quite convinced | towards an improvement of the military that the application of that principle to resources of the Crown that had been our Volunteer forces would lead to a attempted or carried through since the notable accession of strength to the great reforms of Mr. Cardwell. whole of the forces composing our national Army. As to the county associations, he had always believed and urged that they could not fail to nourish and sustain the local forces, and that they would begin to feel that they had a real share in the administrative control of them, and that they were closely identified with their efficiency and discipline. The idea was a novel one and it would be, of course, applied with great caution. He welcomed, particularly, on behalf of the Secretary of State, the very proper and patriotic statement which was made by the right hon. Member for Dover yesterday, that if this Bill should pass he would use his personal exertions with his Yeomen by speech and example to make the new scheme a complete success. If that was the spirit in which this great question was approached by all Parties he was convinced that the Secretary of State for War would meet the Yeomanry and Volunteers in a similar spirit. The transitory clauses of the Bill would be applied gradually, and that would give plenty of time to consider all sorts of difficulties that might arise in particular circumstances. He had only attempted to make a raid, not an invasion on the time of the Committee, but as he had taken a very keen interest in those military matters for the past ten years, he wished to pay some tribute to the scheme of his right hon. friend and to point to the large, true, and permanent principles of military organisation which seemed to him to be embodied in it and to underlie it. His right hon. friend had produced a great spacious, glittering, co-ordinated military machinery, every part of which was interdependent; and, although no one sup posed for a moment that it could be brought into immediate operation or that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary there was no room for modification in of State for War, the value of which details, nevertheless, it was a scheme he was the last person to minimise, worthy of his capacious mind and tireless nevertheless were due partly to the comindustry; and if the House was able eventually to allow it to issue un ler the seal of pletion of the guns, partly to the reducits authority future Parliaments would tion of personnel, and partly to the say without hesitation that the work done diminution in the number of horses and this session constituted, whether remounts, he was not sure that regard to the Regular or Auxiliary Forces, they had quite as much reason to conthe most serious and substantial advance MR. A. J. BALFOUR said he had not intended or desired to take any part in the debate that day, but had rather intended to defer anything that he had to say on the matter until the right hon. Gentleman had introduced his Bill. But he was sorry to say that his right hon. friend the late Secretary for War, who was to have spoken early that afternoon, was prevented from attending by illness, and he did not think it courteous to the Government to leave the speech of the hon. Gentleman (the Under-Secretary for the Colonies) without notice. The hon. Gentleman had made a most interes ing and able speech which had the very great merit in his eyes that it dealt with the larger aspects of this great problem. It was almost inevitable that the hon. Gentleman should have dealt first with the subject of economy, for he had delivered a large number of speeches in the previous Parliament upon the iniquitous character and intolerable burden of the Army Estimates. Everybody thought-certainly he himself did-that anything which could reduce the great Army Estimates of the country without diminishing the efficiency of the forces of the Crown must be welcomed, not in the interest of a Party but of the community as a whole, either in peace or war. Certainly he had rather understood from the philippics of the hon. Gentleman when he was in a position of happy irresponsibility that he anticipated-he thought quite vainly-some enormous reduction due to some revolutionary change in the system. The hon. Gentleman spoke, as was fitting, in far more guarded terms now, and when it was remembered that the economies of in gratulate themselves upon the magnitude of those economies as might, perhaps, have appeared from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman and certainly from the speech of the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. The truth was that, with the improved organisation initiated by the late Government, and carried on by the present Government, some economies indeed, some had been accomplished-but further economies, he hoped, might be accomplished. He did not believe it was possible to make the vast reductions in the Army Estimates which were the dream of some ardent reformers if they were to keep the Army at the level required by Imperial obligations. The Government were constantly taking credit to themselves for having abolished the system of loans. He believed they had made a great and profound mistake. It was true the system of loans might facilitate, though he did not think it had ever facilitated, indulgence by the Government in unnecessary expenditure; but the abolition of the system carried necessarily in its train the imposition of burdens on the country which really ought to go to capital expenditure, which must have the effect of preventing proper capital expenditure being undertaken. Luckily for the Army and for the country, the work of rehousing the troops had been largely carried out, and he believed the need for loans-not from the policy of the Government, but from the policy of their predecessors-was much smaller now than it had been in preceding years. He hoped they would not as a consequence conceive that capital expenditure was no longer required, or that the Government would not leave their successors any arrears to be made up; for their successors would be abused, although the true criminals would be those who were at this moment responsible for the financial arrangements of the country. The question of the reduction of personnel was intimately connected with the whole scheme of the Government. It must have been obvious to the Committee, both from the Speech of the Secretary of State for War and from the speech of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that while they had been told very clearly the magnitude of the expeditionary force which the Government hoped to be able to send abroad at a moment's notice when their reforms were carried through, Mr. A. J. Balfour. they had not yet had anything in the nature of a reasoned statement of the needs of the Empire. The hon. Gentleman seemed to deride any investigation into the needs of the Empire, and had said that what they had to consider was the number of recruits they could annually obtain. It did not need as able an orator as the hon. Gentleman to make the selfevident proposition that they could not have a bigger voluntary army than the number of people of a proper standard who were prepared to serve in that army. No human being denied that the possibility of getting troops was a factor which no army organiser desired to forget, or was allowed to forget by the hard necessities of his position. Still, it might be that, while they could not get more troops than the recruiting market would allow them to obtain, it was only by an analysis of the needs of the Empire that they could determine whether thev ought to go to the full extent that the recruiting market would allow them to go. He could not doubt that any reduction of the Regular Army would be a most fatal mistake for the country to indulge in. The hon. Gentleman, basing himself upon the investigations of the late Defence Committee, stated truly enough that the great military problem they had to face was the defence of India. The Estimates connected with the defence of India were subjected to anxious investigation before the late Government left office, and he was confident that the present Government were continuing those investigations, and had probably greatly advanced upon the stage at which that subject was left by their predecessors. But he greatly doubted whether any investigation would show that they were indulging in mere terms of militarism when they warned the Government that it would be a most dangerous step to diminish the number of Regular troops which they now had at their disposal. The danger was real and great, and he hoped that in any fit of imaginary economy but real wastefulness the Committee would not consent to a repetition of the step of last year. The hon. Member for the Abercromby Division gave fair warning yesterday that he approved of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme because it made it easier on some subsequent occasion to reduce the number of Regular units of the British Army. He did not see anything in the scheme which made it easier, but if it was made easier he hoped the Government would not attempt to take advantage of the opportunity. But, after all, their interest at the present time was fixed on two other points of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme, which really were novelties-the third quasi-battalion which he proposed to add to the two battalions of existing regiments, and the scheme which he had proposed for reorganising the Volunteers. They were all agreed, he thought, that the Militia force could not be left in its present condition. The observations made by the hon. Gentleman opposite who had just sat down were perfectly sound. The Militia had suffered on the one side from having a large number of men attracted from them to the Volunteer service, and on the other side from having all their best men and many of their best officers taken from their ranks and added to the Regular Army. It was impossible in these circumstances that the Militia should be otherwise than in a somewhat anemic condition. Something ought to be done. Had the Government done the right thing? All would admit that they had taken a huge step. Was the step safe and secure? Ought it to be endorsed by the approval of this House and the country? They ought not to mince matters on this subject. They ought to admit, he thought the Government did admit, that they are going to abolish the Militia. There had been smoother phrases used. He thought the Secretary of State for War and the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down suggested that the part of the Militia which was akin to the Line was going to be formally used for the Line, and the part of the Militia which was akin to the Volunteers was going to turn its patriotic services to the Home Army. But disguise it as they might under felicitous phrases, the fact remained that if the scheme was carried out the Militia were no more. The Militia were the great traditional home defence force of the country. They had behind them a great history. They had not only helped to secure the inviolability of these shores, but, although only bound to serve at home, they had shed their blood on many a great battlefield. He looked with instinctive mistrust upon the total destruction of an instrument which had utility still in it, and which had borne a great and glorious part in the history of the country. Had he been in the right hon. Gentleman's place he would have tried all the ingenuity with which he or those who advised him were endowed to see whether he could not fit this historic force to carry out the purposes required by the modern needs of a modern army. He thought the right hon. Gentleman's motive was that he could not get drafts out of the existing Militia. He suspected that if the Militia had consented not merely to serve abroad in units, but to supply drafts to the Regular Army, he would have been content to reform them and to retain them as an integral part of our military system. He was aware that the Militia ha an objection to sending drafts. He cou'd no help thinking that might have been, at all events, partially overcome by some arrangement between the right hon. Gentleman and those who had a right to speak for the Militia force. He could not help thinking also that he had too hastily rejected that integral part of the Cardwell scheme which consisted in supplying drafts by means of large and efficient depots. He did not know what reason he had. Surely he might have kept the Militia as a channel through which an immense number of recruits went to the Regular Army and served as the necessary drafts, and partly as separate units which could be used as units in time of war. He admitted that the existing Militia regiments, depleted of their best officers, having lost their best non-commissioned officers and men, could not be regarded as anything like equal to the best European troops. Even the hon. Member for the Abercromby Division, who took so sanguine a view of the merits of half-trained troops and thought that they could be made to serve on equal terms with the Regular Army in the firing line, would admit that the Militia, depleted and bled as they were, could not be expected to perform that function. He was sure it would be as possible to give the proportion of Regular officers to the Militia as was proposed to give to these new battalions, and if the Government did that, and improved their general system, they would serve the purpose and |