COULD UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING- BE AN OPEN QUESTION P
[To Fes ]6DITO4 Or was o SFICOT AMR."
SIR,—Your exeellent article on "The End and the Means" in last week's spectator gives me hope that you may publish a letter on the subject. The Prime Minister and Mr. Balfour are both dead against, universal military training became) they think it would cause them to lose votes at the next Election. Probably both leaders would be willing to agree to it if they were fairly certain that it would do them no harm politically. Could not political leaders on both sides agree to leave it an open question, and allow the National Service League and the peace-at-almost-any-price people to fight it out P It would then be possible for Liberals and Unionists to advocate it if they liked.
My experience at meetings in Shropshire is that you cannot get anybody to oppose universal training, nor, as far as I can remember, has any voter in the Ludlow division remonstrated in any way with me for trying to help Captain Kincaid- Smith against the official Unionist candidate. In the Stratford election, at the ton or twelve meetings which I attended, there did not appear to be any hostility at all to universal training, and it was certainly put very plainly. Old soldiers who had passed out of the Reserve wanted to know why they could not be organised so as to be available in case of invasion or the danger of it, and old soldiers in other• parts of the country have asked me the same question. I cannot help thinking that we might get two or three hundred thousand of these men available for an emergency, with rifles, &c., all ready at a cost of under £2 a head. They would certainly be available for garrison duty, and many of them would be far more useful than the new recruits of seventeen or eighteen years. of age. Our present danger is just as urgent as that of France in 1868. We want these men organised; and we want them now, though of course after six years of universal training they would not be required. Our great political leaders on both aides have told us of our great danger, and even pointed out the remedy ; but they do nothing, and there does not appear to be any prospect that they will do anything. Mr. Haldane's idea of waiting for twenty years is childish. The force of circumstances, and their rapidly increasing population, will compel the Germans to try to expand long before that, and we should have no just cause to blame them if they took from us by the sword the Empire which we have gained by the same means. What will history say of political leaders who pointed out the danger and the remedy, but took particular care not to provide the remedy or prepare for the danger
As you so rightly say, Sir, many young men are prevented by the struggle for existence from learning to defend their country, and it must also be remembered that universal training is all in favour of working men, because, unlike the rich, they must work for their living in any ease, and military training would be no harder than their ordinary work, and probably pleasanter and more interesting. They would get good food and clothes, fresh air and healthy exercise, and many a town lad would get a chance in life of recovering his health and strength. Under the system it must also be remembered that the rich would have to do their share, which is not now the case. I cannot believe that the working classes would object if the whole case and the necessity were plainly and fairly put before them.
Will our political leaders rise to the occasion before it is too late, before we suffer a far worse fate than Denmark, Austria, and France P—I am, Sir, ice
ROWLA.NP RUNT.
[Mr. Rowland Hunt will, no doubt, be interested to hear that the Territorial Association of the county of Surrey is understood to be about to take steps to ascertain as many as possible of the names and addresses of the trained men resident in the county who do not at present belong to any unit of the national forces. If it should prove possible to get into touch in Surrey with even a half of the trained men, a very valuable piece of information will have been obtained, and on such information may later be based some kind of skeleton organisation, The first thing, however,' is to get the names and addresses, and that, thanks to the careleesness of our military administrators in the past, is a most arduous and perplexing task.—ED..Speetator,]
Previous page
