Part 17

At the end of '04 the territorial force would come to an end and in '05 there would be:--

(Old regulars, 24,000, after waste just enough for drafts.)

New regulars 200,000

Mounted troops, second year 20,000

New reserve 478,000 Less to paid reserve 20,000 -------- 458,000

Paid reserve 120,000 -------- Total, all liable for national war 798,000 ========

In these tables I have taken the drafts for India and the Colonies from the old regulars. But they can just as well be taken from the new regulars. If need be the old regulars could, before the fourth year, be passed into the paid reserve, and the full contingent of 200,000 one year's men taken.

The men of the special reserve and territorial force would on the termination of their engagements pass into the second line reserve or Landwehr until the age of thirty-one or thirty-two.

It will be seen that during the years of transition additional expense must be incurred, as, until the change has been completed, some portion of the existing forces must be maintained side by side with the new national army. It is partly in order to facilitate the operations of the transition period that I have assumed a large addition to the number of officers. There will also be additional expense caused by the increase of barrack accommodation needed when the establishment is raised from 138,000 privates to 200,000, but this additional accommodation will not be so great as it might at first sight appear, because it is reasonable to suppose that those young men who wish it, and whose parents wish it, will be allowed to live at home instead of in barracks, provided they regularly attend all drills, parades, and classes.

It has been necessary, in discussing the British military system, to consider the arrangements for providing the garrisons of India, Egypt, and certain oversea stations during peace, and to make provision for small wars or imperial police; but I may point out that the system by which provision is made out of the resources of the United Kingdom alone for these two military requirements of the Empire, is, in the present conditions of the Empire, an anomaly. The new nations which have grown up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are anxious, above all things, to give reality to the bond between them and the mother country. Their desire is to render imperial service, and the proper way of giving them the opportunity to do so is to call upon them to take their part in maintaining the garrisons in India and Egypt and in the work of imperial police. How they should do it, it is for them to decide and arrange, but for Englishmen at home to doubt for a moment either their will or their capacity to take their proper share of the burden is to show an unworthy doubt of the sincerity of the daughter nations and of their attachment to the mother country and the Empire.

If Great Britain should be compelled to enter upon a struggle for existence with one of the great European powers, the part which Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa could play in that struggle is limited and specific. For the conflict would, in the first instance, take the form of a naval war. To this the King's dominions beyond the seas can do little more than assist during peace by their contributions, either of ships, men, or money, in strengthening the British navy. But during the actual course of such a war, while it is doubtful whether either Canada, Australia, or New Zealand could render much material help in a European struggle, they could undoubtedly greatly contribute to the security of India and Egypt by the despatch of contingents of their own troops to reinforce the British garrisons maintained in those countries. This appears to me to be the direction to which their attention should turn, not only because it is the most effective way in which they can promote the stability of the Empire, but also because it is the way along which they will most speedily reach a full appreciation of the nature of the Empire and its purpose in the world.

XXI.

THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED

I have now sketched the outlines of a national military system applicable to the case of Great Britain. It remains to show why such a system is necessary.

There are three main points in respect of each of which a choice has to be made. They are the motive which induces men to become soldiers, the time devoted to military education, and the nature of the liability to serve in war. The distinction which strikes the popular imagination is that between voluntary and compulsory service. But it covers another distinction hardly less important--that between paid and unpaid soldiers. The volunteers between 1860 and 1878, or 1880, when pay began to be introduced for attendance in camps, gave their time and their attention with no external inducement whatever. They had no pay of any kind, and there was no constraint to induce them to join, or, having, joined, to continue in their corps. The regular soldier, on the other hand, makes a contract with the State. He agrees in return for his pay, clothes, board and lodging to give his whole time for a specific number of years to the soldier's life.

The principle of a contract for pay is necessary in the case of a professional force maintained abroad for purposes of imperial police; but it is not possible on that principle to raise or maintain a national army.

The principle of voluntary unpaid service appears to have a deeper moral foundation than that of service by a contract of hiring. But if the time required is greater than is consistent with the men's giving a full day's work to their industrial occupations the unpaid nature of the service cannot be maintained, and the men must be paid for their time. The merit of the man's free gift of himself is thereby obscured.

Wherein does that merit consist? If there is no merit in a man's making himself a soldier without other reward than that which consists in the education he receives, then the voluntary system has no special value. But if there is a merit, it must consist in the man's conferring a benefit upon, or rendering a service to, his country. In other words, the excellence of the unpaid voluntary system consists in its being an acceptance by those who serve under it of a duty towards the State. The performance of that duty raises their citizenship to a higher plane. If that is the case it must be desirable, in the interest both of the State and of its citizens, that every citizen capable of the duty should perform it. But that is the principle upon which the national system is based. The national system is therefore an extension of the spirit of the volunteer or unpaid voluntary system.

The terms compulsory service and universal service are neither of them strictly accurate. There is no means of making every adult male, without exception, a soldier, because not every boy that grows up has the necessary physical qualification. Nor does the word compulsion give a true picture. It suggests that, as a rule, men would not accept the duty if they could evade it, which is not the case. The number of men who have been volunteers since 1860 shows that the duty is widely accepted. Indeed, in a country of which the government is democratic, a duty cannot be imposed by law upon all citizens except with the concurrence of the majority. But a duty recognised by the majority and prescribed by law will commend itself as necessary and right to all but a very few. If a popular vote were to be taken on the question whether or not it is every citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of a national war, it is hardly conceivable that the principle would fail to be affirmed by an overwhelming majority.

The points as to which opinions are divided are the time and method of training and the nature of the liability to serve in war.

There are, roughly speaking, three schemes of training to be considered--first, the old volunteer plan of weekly evening drills, with an annual camp training; secondly, the militia plan of three months' recruit training followed by a month's camp training in several subsequent years; and, lastly, the continental plan of a continuous training for one or more years followed by one or more periods of annual manoeuvres. The choice between these three methods is the crucial point of the whole discussion. It must be determined by the standard of excellence rendered necessary by the needs of the State. The evidence given to the Norfolk Commission convinced that body that neither the first nor the second plan will produce troops fit to meet on equal terms those of a good modern army. Professional officers are practically unanimous in preferring the third method.

The liability of the trained citizen to serve in war during his year in the ranks and his years as a first-class reservist must be determined by the military needs of the country. I have given the reasons why I believe the need to be for an army that can strike a blow in a continental war.

I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system, because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for, cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers, continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that another nation can produce.

Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on their fifty years' work in vain. They have, little by little, educated the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier, and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his country's cause is a part of every citizen's duty, for which he must be prepared by training.

The adoption of this principle will have further results. So soon as every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority. The citizen's interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect. He will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of England.

XXII.

THE CHAIN OF DUTY

The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which will be of some use to us.