The Rouse of Lords on Tuesday and Wednesday were occupied
in debating the second reading of Mr. Haldane's Army Bill. The level of the debate, as is so often the ease in the Upper House, was extremely high, but we can only find space to deal with one or two of the chief speeches, Lord Roberts, who greatly impressed his hearers, declared that "those of us—members of the National Service League—who are seriously concerned about our national and Imperial security" cannot aocept the scheme of Mr. Haldane is a practical solution of our difficulties, or as anything but yet one more of the patchwork and provisional schemes of which we have heard so much and from which we have seen so little result in recent years. Mr. Haldane's Territorial Army, though a great improvement on what had gone before, would not be a nation in arms, but only a small portion of it. It would not he trained to arms, but only pledged to be trained, and that under conditions which could not but be unfair to those who have been induced to pledge themselves. Whatever appre- hensions he entertained with regard to Mr. Haldane's scheme, he confessed he did not dread it as a serious obstacle to the progress of the great national movement to the furtheranee of which he bad devoted himself.
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