THE NATIONAL RESERVE.
[To THE EDITOR or Tae "SraCTI.TOE." j SIR,—The National Reserve movement, in which you, Sir, have borne so able a part, has shown us that we possess a con-
siderable potential reserve of men who have at seine time been trained to arms, and it has shown us that these men still have the sense of discipline in their blood and are still ready to respond to the call of duty. I honour them for it., and I am loth to write anything which may appear in any way to discourage the movement, and to ask you to publish it ; but for the sake of our country, and in justice to another move- ment in which you have also taken a prominent part, I trust you will allow me to give a word of warning. There was always a great danger that if we counted up how many old soldiers there were in the country ready to serve again in an emer- gency, they would be counted by the slackers as an army. additional to our other armies, which might save them a little longer from having to do their duty to their country them- selves. This danger has materialized even more rapidly than the National Reserve itself. The spokesman of the War Office in the House of Lords yesterday openly set off the National Reservists against the deficiencies not only of the Territorial Force, but of the Special Reserve as well. He did more. He announced that the War Office intends to bribe the County Associations with from five shillings to ten shillings a man for inscribing more National Reservists on the roll, in order that, nut vi, cut fraude, it may be possible for the politicians to boast that our defensive forces are "up to strength." I trust, Sir, that while continuing to encourage old soldiers to come forward and register themselves, so that their services may be promptly available in case of emergency you will help to make it quite clear to everybody that the men so enrolled do not constitute an army, but only the raw material out of which an army might in time be made. The time required need not, perhaps, be very long; if we allow six months for the Territorials, we might allow less, say four months, for the National Reserve. But the only forces on which we can count are those which are organized beforehand in peace time, and which will be avail- able within the decisive period of the war for which they are provided; and that is not likely to be as long as four mouths, perhaps not so many weeks. The old days when Parliament might discuss in November bow large an army it should prepare for the war in the Netherlands next spring are gone. Forces of which not only have the men been taught to shoot and to march, but whose staffs and services have been trained to co-operate and weld the whole into a single living organism, cannot be improvised after war breaks out. But, on the other hand, to send out any others to fight for us would be to invite another Lule Burgas ; and to represent any others as giving us security is to make oneself a traitor to one's country.—I
Previous page
