The Tap and the Plug-hole
WHEN the United States Secretary of Defence arrived in London this week it was reasonable to suppose he had come to request British co-operation in strengthening NATO forces in Germany. President Kennedy has made it clear that he is determined to stand firm over Berlin; and he is naturally anxious to show Mr. Khrushchev that all his NATO allies are just as determined—particularly Britain, who has been accused of hankering after appeasement; and what simpler way could there be for Britain to demonstrate het deter- mination than by returning that division which was withdrawn from the Army of the Rhine over the dispute about maintenance costs'? Yet on the same day that President Kennedy was an- nouncing that, in order to meet the Berlin crisis, he was proposing to add over 200 million dollars to defence expenditure and to increase the size of the armed forces in the US, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was telling the Commons that Britain cannot afford to keep her present NATO obligations under the Brussels Treaty—a threat which means, if it means anything, that unless somebody else is prOared to pay more for our contribution to Western defence in Europe we will have to withdraw still more men.
One British division more or less in Germany is not obviously going to worry Mr. Khrush- chev. A massive and well-publicised build-up of allied forces, too, is not necessarily the best way of finding a settlement to the Berlin question; there are other ways of demonstrating Western resolution. Nevertheless, the reasons for the British rejection of the request, even before it was formally made, are embarrassing. The blunt fact is, we cannot raise the extra division. We cannot even keep the Rhine Army at proper strength. According to conservative estimates it is down about 4,000 (out of a total of 55,000); Washington puts the deficiency twice as high. Except by withdrawing garrisons from overseas, there simply is no way in which Britain can fulfil her NATO obligations, let alone do more, should the need arise.
The reason is in the failure of the Govern- ment's plans for raising a volunteer army large enough to take over when conscription came 10 an end, a failure which last week compelled the Secretary of State for War to offer yet farther inducements to regular soldiers coming to the end of their time to sign for an extra tall' According to Mr. Profumo : It is now quite clear that TV advertiiing i' proving a most successful way of turning 011. the tap. There is another side to the picture and this 1 call the plug. Clearly if we are 101 reach our minimum target on time we must do' everything possible to stop soldiers leaving the army once they are in it. There the picture 15 not so bright.
'Not so bright' is an understatement, becauJe the present recruiting methods virtually guarall' tee that even if the Government's safety mini' mum—substantially below its own earlier esti• mate, which itself was a long way below the army's--is reached, the required quantity will he attained at quality's expense. Many a young # dazed recruit is bound to be dissatisfied whf° the adman's vision turns out very different NI the reality: and a regular who needs a bonus?' £200 to induce him to stay on is unlikely to hale found the army his real vocation .3 In any case, the safety margin is now da4' gerously small. At an international conferel1i,6 on Army Control in Switzerland earlier this month, the view—admittedly not unanimous, pyi this apparently was the general opinion--of tilt assembled experts was that to promote w'll.l. peace the West needs, first, more rapid prof0 with the development of relatively invulnera. weapons systems, such as Polaris (because viously the Russians will be less likely to 0 nuclear war if they know they cannot hope destroy the West's retaliatory capacity); a second, a strengthening of conventional fo4c 'to increase the of of the Western resP to the threat of war, and to reduce the dar9g, and fear of recourse to nuclear weapons. 11 is the policy which the Spectator has long 1 i advocating; and as there is little Britain car to speed up the development of `relatively , vulnerable weapons systems,' she needs to co centrate on strengthening the West's conventia ',over forces. If she cannot do so, then the si mcnt's policies must be changed. ;I
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