THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE ARMY.
THERE is something almost pathetic in the helpless struggles of the House of Commons to do what it con- ceives to be its duty towards the British Army. It has a broad general idea that for the sum paid by the taxpayer— now exceeding thirty millions a year in England and India— the country ought to possess a stronger, a better equipped, and, above all, a readier Army than it does. It has also an idea that the Empire is ill-protected, that it is threatened by Governments wielding new resources, that the vulnerable points, such as the great military ports and the principal coaling- stations, are much too open to attack, and should be protected better, whatever the necessary expenditure. And, finally, it has an idea, unfortunately rarely expressed except by extreme Radicals, that even if it votes the money, the work will not be done ; that either the estimates will be all erroneous, or that the guns will not be sent, or that there will not be men for the guns, or that in some other way the country will not in the end get its pennyworth for its penny. Allowing for the exaggerations inevitable when all who describe defects wish to catch the popular ear, these ideas are tolerably correct. Were the British Army governed on Hohenzollern principles—that is, with a view to the highest efficiency compatible with severe thrift, and under the conviction that an officer, like a Catholic priest or a Cambridge Professor, should always be a poor man—it could undoubtedly, while still remaining a voluntary army, be increased in strength by one-fourth, without increase of ex- penditure, Indian allowances, for example, being reduced to the West Indian level, the pension system being superseded by deferred annuities purchased by officers themselves, and the whole scale of living being revolutionised by a plan not greatly differing from that adopted in the Navy. Every expert endorses the complaint about the ports and the coaling- stations, and most of them allow that the mode of devising and controlling what may be called the "arrangements of pre- vision "—the precautions which are useless now, but will be invaluable in war-time—though impi-oving, are still exceedingly bad. The House of Commons, in fact, is on the right tack more or less, and might, if it were competent to the work, in the end reform things ; but then, it is hopelessly incompetent. Such work cannot be done by any public meeting, least of all by an English one. In the Prussian Reichstag, the majority of Members have, we believe, been officers, and all must have passed through the military mill, while all, owing to the situation of their country, are penetrated with certain " hard " ideas about recruiting, discipline, and the necessity that officers should do their duty, or be shot for not doing it, which of themselves conduce to the formation of effective armies. Yet we venture to say that if the Prussian Reichstag governed the Prussian Army, instead of the group of soldiers, headed by a soldier-King, who do govern it, the military superiority of Prussia would in five years be as much a thing of the past as it was when the ruin at Jena fell upon it. No representative body whatever can found, or organise, or keep up an efficient Army. It can settle its total cost ; it can decide whether it will obtain recruits by bribing men to enlist., or by compelling them; and it can prevent capricious changes ; but the moment it touches organisation it becomes an incompetent body. Its members may be the picked men of the land, they may be thoroughly familiar with soldiering, they may be even competent officers individually ; but they cannot in the nature of things possess either the power of adhering to leading ideas, or the untiring persistence in minute work, or the spirit of reflective yet pitiless despotism and indifference to popular judgment which alone enable a great "organiser of victory" to make and keep up his vast automatic and yet sentient and self-willed machine. No Chamber ever succeeded in doing any work of the kind, not even the Convention, which is supposed to have done it, but which really delegated the task of organisation to experts, and the task of providing sup- plies to the localised dictators whom it called Commissaries, or "Representatives of the Republic." Even the Roman Senate never governed its armies, though it must have laid down and enforced the severe conscription by which its armies were fed. Great armies have either grown, as seems to have happened repeatedly in Asia, and once in Europe when the feudal armies developed themselves, or they have been deliberately and, so to speak, consciously made by Kings, Generals, and persistent self-renewing" Departments." The House of Commons, which half-unconsciously has assumed all power in the State, does not yet recognise that truth, and feebly tries to do its duty by debates which always end in this,—that a few experts and a few faddists make their speeches, sometimes good speeches, to no end. The faddists, of course, are mere nuisances, to be tolerated because they are a natural product of Parliamentary government ; but even the experts accomplish little actual good. They may occasionally warn the departments or the chief professionals of a weak place in the system—this has happened, we con- ceive, about the coaling-stations—but they are seldom willing, for professional reasons, to hit very hard, to hit, for example, as Lord Charles Beresford hits when criticising the Admi- ralty. They always injure their hold over the country by proposing fresh expense, often most useful expense, if only it were kept within the totals the country has accepted as needful, and they yield to the temptation to propose too wide reforms. We are, for instance, entirely at one with Sir Henry Havelock- Allan about universal military training, and make no doubt he understands the way to secure it. If he were invested with power to carry out his schemes, he would probably in six or seven years so organise the youth of England that invasion would be impossible. But what is the use of proposing vast changes like that, which could hardly be adopted without a dissolution ad hoc, in a debate on the Army Estimates ? It may be, if the speech is widely read, that opinion will be slightly advanced ; but nothing will be done, and the advance of opinion on that subject does not improve the condition of the existing Army. Or what is the use of proposing, as so many skilled Members did on Monday and Thursday, another Commission of Inquiry into our defences, when what is wanted is defence, and the Government, if there are fifty Commissions, must decide on what ought to be done, and what it will ask the country to do No Commission can organise and keep up the force of trained gunners needed at each great coaling-station, and that is what is now required, not more information as to necessities already fully admitted. But then, we shall be told this argument is merely an argu- ment that a Parliamentary State cannot have an Army, and that such an argument is inadmissible. It is nothing of the kind, any more than the argument that Judges should be independent is an argument that the distribution of justice and a sovereign Parliament are incompatible. Parliament controls the railway system, but it does not produce daily smashes by an absurd attempt to become the universal many- tongued Traffic Manager. Parliament must settle about terms of service, about the liability to service, about the extent of force it wants, and about the money it will give, and there it should stay its hand. If it wants a good Army, let it appoint the best man it can find—say, Lord Wolseley for choice, though there are at least three good alternatives— make him War Minister and Commander-in-Chief, with right of speech in both Houses ; and authorise him to pass bye-laws which, after being placed on the table of the House for two months, shall have the force of Acts. Charge him with the making of a cheap but effective Army of a certain size and a defined total cost, and let him work away with his Staff steadily for ten years to secure the desired result. If he blunders, or is too tyrannical, or irritates too deep a popular sentiment, remove him ; and meanwhile use in moderation that liberty of criti- cism which, when it is grave but does not involve removal, keeps even Judges from mistakes. We venture to say that at the end of ten years the Empire would have an effective Army, that the total cost would be less than it is at present, that the unreadiness of the organisation would have dis- appeared, and that "jobs," scandals," and " discontents " would be fewer than they are now. Parliamentary control would be just as perfect as it is now, but the actual working of the machine would be in the hands of a group ready to toil persistently on one line, as much interested in success as other great captains of labour, and as able as those captains to remedy defects or meet unexpected contingencies. That is the way a modern ship is made into such a perfectly effective machine ; and that is the only way in which grand executive work, requiring special knowledge and dependent on personal ability—for a fool could not make an Army, though the House did nothing but criticise—will ever be accomplished. The House at present will not trust its post-captain at all, but besides settling his sailing orders and controlling his outlay, insists on interfering with his management of his ship. Of coarse, an "accident" is some day unavoidable, and the country can only pray that it may not be also a grand disaster. For ourselves, we are not seeking armies on the Continental scale, or denying the power of democracies to remedy many defects by energy, or asking for conscription, or pleading for any military "cause" whatever. What we ask is that the Empire should have a sufficient force—the present one might do, if every man were effective and ready—that we should have forty thousand men prepared for action at forty-eight hours' notice, and forty thousand more requiring only a fortnight for com- plete mobilisation, and that this, with a heavy Reserve, an effective Militia, and the present Volunteer organisation, should be secured for the present money. A really responsible and oompetent Lord Constable of England, entrusted with the powers we have described, would, we are certain, in ten years secure these objects ; but the House of Commons never will. We might as well ask a Committee of the ablest writers, or thinkers, or popular men, to make us an electric battery.
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