The rest of Monday's debate, with the exception of Mr.
Auberon Herbert's speech, was very dreary. He made a very good point by showing that if purchase gave rise to efficiency, the infantry and cavalry officers ought to be much more efficient than the artillery officers, who do not buy their way up ; but the remark- able point of his speech was his appeal for a genuinely national army, without the professional military vices, but with a good deal more than the professional military virtues, such as the Ger- man Army of to-day is. Mr. Herbert maintained that in modern battle you can do nothing without self-dependent soldiers, sol- diers who can act at a distance from their officers, for an engage- ment is now a long, loose "line of skirmishers," and the mechani- cal cohesion of a regiment has lost its value, while the individual steadiness of the single soldier is of infinitely more value than ever. He urged the formation of a thoroughly national army on the Swiss system, and calmly intimated that one of his reasons for wishing to get rid of a professional army, and for training and arming our whole population instead, is that Ireland, once trained and armed, would no longer be subject to English dicta- tion ;—amidst the general shiver which greeted this suggestion he sat down.
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