Sts,—Some time ago you were good enough to publish a

letter from me in which I endeavoured to warn the friends of the Auxiliary Forces against a too-ready subscription to the

view that Mr. Arnold-Forster had abandoned any part of his original programme with regard to the Volunteers. The peg upon which I hung my remarks was a letter from Sir Howard Vincent, which, nevertheless, bore strong evidence of being written ironically, headed " The Conversion of Mr. Arnold- Forster."

My contention has since been confirmed in the most over- whelming manner, and I shall be greatly obliged if you will grant me space to comment more particularly on two recent series of correspondence. The first is the remarkable exchange of letters between the Times Military Correspondent and a gentleman who writes under the name of "Student" Perhaps, in the circumstances, I may be pardoned for regarding Mr. Arnold-Forster's own letter to Sir Gilbert Parker as forming part of this correspondence, for, if it would not be correct to say that the Secretary of State is "Student," nor possible to prove actual collaboration, at least it may be said that he and " Student " are arcades ambo. The second correspondence is one which has passed between Sir Howard Vincent (how sadly fallen away from his comforting belief in the War Secretary's conversion !) and Mr. Arnold-Forster, a correspondence which has already been published in the daily papers of Friday.

What emerges chiefly from both these sets of correspondence is that Mr. Arnold-Forster has not diverged by one hair's-breadth from the original cut-and-dried scheme for Army reform which he brought with him in his pocket into office, and which I earnestly trust he will not forget to take away with him in his pocket when he leaves office. Like the Times Military Corre- spondent, I have no patience with Mr. Arnold-Forster's "debating tactics." This scheme has received universal condemnation, whether at the hands of Parliament, or the Army and Reserve Forces generally, or, as I believe, of the Army Council, and even of the Cabinet itself.

One might indeed applaud the courage, if not the discretion, of such obstinacy if Mr. Arnold-Forster were prepared openly to avow it ; but, unfortunately, his methods of controversy lay him open to the charge of persisting with the scheme in Pall Mall, while publicly avoiding criticism by evading a plain answer to a plain question, and raising up a dust of irrelevant verbiage, behind which his real movements are obscured. For instance, the Times Military Correspondent, backed by the authority of the Times newspaper itself, would be satisfied at once if Mr. Arnold-Forster would give him an answer to two questions :—(1) Has the two years' service scheme received the approval of the Army Council? (2) Are the figures which he uses for his arguments endorsed by the Adjutant-General ? It is only because the answer to both these questions is in the negative that Mr. Arnold-Forster refuses to answer them.

Sir Howard Vincent, again, asks nine questions. Will Mr. Arnold-Forster, or will he not, give a guarantee upon these nine, the first of which asks whether any idea of the compulsory re- duction of the Volunteer Force is definitely abandoned? But in his reply of November 3rd Mr. Arnold-Forster avoids a direct " Yes" or " No," and begs leave to be excused from "answering in detail." Mr. Arnold-Forster proceeds : "I have frequently ex- plained my policy with regard to the Volunteers, and have no desire to modify what I have already said in public on many occasions" ; and he goes on, as ever, to argue that officers in all parts of the country are with him, and adds that the Army Council "is in continual communication with Volunteer officers," with whose wishes any change that is made will be in " harmony."

That these phrases are nothing less than a deliberate attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the public will be evident to those who remember that only last week the Institute of Com- manding Officers of Volunteers was forced by a " confidential" Order from the War Office to agree to a restriction of their liberty of speech so complete that their views, which have never been asked, can now never even be proffered to the War Office.

I now pass to a consideration of the attempt to form a Regular Army for home defence on the basis of two years with the colours and ten in the Reserve. This scheme for a home service Regular Army, side by side with a foreign long-service Army, has always been the keynote of Mr. Arnold-Forster's policy. Nevertheless, as Major Seely has pointed out (Times, October 26th), this policy, so far from receiving the consent of Parliament, has met with " its strongly expressed disapprobation." We know now, from Mr. Arnold-Forster's refusal to meet the challenge of the Military Correspondent of the Times to deny the fact, that the Army Council is also strongly opposed to it. No doubt it would appear that the members of the Army Council have the remedy provided for them by their constitution (i.e., the Esher scheme as approved by Parliament) of resigning either as a body or individually. But here they are con- fronted with a difficulty. The Secretary of State informs them that the scheme has received the approval of the Cabinet ; and accordingly there is much in the contention that it is the duty of the Military Members of the Council to submit under protest to the direct orders of the Executive. The real responsi- bility therefore rests with the Cabinet, who have thus weakly, and even unconstitutionally, consented to override the wishes of the House of Commons on the one hand, and of the authorised expert representatives of the Army on the other. Not that these members of the Cabinet are by any means enamoured of the short-service Army themselves. But their absolute rejection of Mr. Arnold-Forster's scheme would be tantamount to a demand for his resin-nation. Unwilling at this uneasy period to face the awkward task of finding a new War Minister, with all the dangers of yet another by-election, Mr. Balfour, as usual, has taken refuge in a compromise. Seven battalions have been banded over to Mr. Arnold-Forster, upon the corpora rata of which he has been allowed to experiment.

For the sake of the present Government even the security of India is jeopardised, for every Regular unit taken away from the manufactoty of long-service men of course entails a corre- sponding diminution in the number of the drafts available for India, at a time when, by Mr. Arnold-Forster's own admission to Sir Gilbert Parker, "the shortage in the drafts in 1906-7 and 1907-8 will be about 5,600 men"; and the total supply of lona- service recruits in these two years but 44,000 to make good's waste of 80,000 passing into the Reserve. It is inexcusable that the Cabinet should have submitted to Mr. Arnold-Forster's importunities and allowed, at this moment of all, a return, even partially and experimentally, to a system which recruits a single man not available for the Indian garrison.

The Cabinet will, when the House meets, doubtless excuse this action as an experiment. There is no defence. What is worse, there is no sign in Mr. Arnold-Forster's letters that he takes this sanction as given for an experiment only. No sooner has he left Downing Street and re-entered his room at Pall Mall than the experiment becomes an essential feature of the whole military scheme, the naturally small beginnings of a short-service Regular Army for home defence.

What, then, are the objections to such an Army? Putting aside the grave doubt whether the annual supply of Regular recruits will ever be sufficient to give us both the long and the short service Regular Armies, the utmost that Mr. Arnold- Forster can claim is that the full scheme will give us a Reserve of 130,000 infantry soldiers. This, according to Lord Roberts and the unanimous opinion of all the military experts, is quite insufficient for the defence of the Indian frontier alone. More- over, it will cost us the present inflated sum of £31,000,000 a year. Lastly, it deprives us of the Militia, and involves the reduction of the Volunteers.

Mr. Arnold-Forster, through the pen of "Student," repudiates the suggestion that anything can be made out of the Militia. In his eyes, the professional standing Army for home defence is the one hope of salvation. He informs Sir Howard Vincent that he would "greatly object" to spending more money upon the Volunteers, if that money " were taken from the sum avail- able for the Regular Army." Under the head "Regular Army " include the new short-service Army, and it is evident that Mr. Arnold-Forster stands exactly where he did last year. He is determined to give us a force which will perpetuate all the defects and none of the merits of our present Regular Army, and this at the cost of that really national military system, based upon voluntary service, which is desired by an ever-increasing number of Englishmen.

I submit, therefore, that every succeeding month only accumu- lates the evidence in favour of my original contention that Mr. Arnold-Forster, since he came into office, has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He is deaf to the counsels of his expert advisers, he ignores the growing disapproval of his countrymen. Perpetual criticism is to him only " perpetual misrepresentation." " From the beginning," he informs Sir Gilbert Parker, " I have laid down a clear and consistent policy, some portions of that policy have already been carried into effect, and in every single case the result I ventured to anticipate has followed Many things remain to be done The need for their accomplishment is as great or greater than ever." These words are not the words of a convert or of one who has been allowed to make merely an experiment. Nor do they reassure the members of the Volunteer or Militia Force, present or prospective. Mr. Arnold-Forster stands by the whole scheme and nothing but the scheme.

But the eventual victors in the long struggle will assuredly be those who, in common with the Times Military Correspondent, believe that for the second-line Army we not merely can only, but should only, look to men who in time of peace are employed in civil avocations, and that accordingly the scheme for this Army "must fit in with their employments, and not the employments with the scheme." Lord Esher has well said that Mr. Arnold-Forster and his scheme " block the way." Not only is any real progress impossible, but incalculable injury and deterioration are inevitable to all branches of the Service, and even to that most valuable of all military assets—the civic virtue of our people—so long as he remains " unconverted" at the War Office.

—I am, Sir, &c., VOLUNTEER FIELD OFFICER.

chapter :—

"I am glad to think that a system has just been inaugurated which, if carried to its reasonable and logical conclusions, will for the first time furnish us with a kind of force which the country requires, and will give us a trained infantry Reserve of no less than 140,000 men, commanded by trained Regular officers ; and if this Reserve be regarded as insufficient, by merely reducing the initial term of training from two years to one, the total can be raised to 240,000 men, apart from the men with the colours."