COMPULSORY SERVICE.
IN this book Sir Ian Hamilton, lately Adjutant-General, and Mr. Haldane state the Case against compulsory service. By "compulsory service" they mean the National Service League's proposals for the universal training of our youths in the rudiments of a • soldier's duty, such training to include four months' recruit training for the infantry, and six months' for the cavalry and artillery, and to be followed by four years' service in the Territorial Army,—proposals modelled on the system which prevails in two of the most democratic countries in the world, Switzerland and Norway. The book also contains a good deal of criticism of another scheme, whieh is hardly worth dealing with, since, so far as we know, it is advocated by no responsible body of men. This is a scheme for introducing here, not the Swiss system, but the German system,—a system of raising troops, not exclusively for the defence of these islands, such as exists in a truncated form in the Territorial system, but for service
• Compulsory Service. By General Bir,jun Hamilton. With an Introduction
by the ht Min. B. B. Haldane. London': lohn Mainly. [2s. 6d. net.] or two or three yeare with the colours ; in foot, a system of recruiting the Regular Army by compulsory service. Though it is clearly not worth while to deal with arguments directed against proposals which would be condemned quite as strongly by the National Service League as by the author's of tbie book, it is as well to point out to readers that they should be careful to distinguish between arguments used against this bogy man of straw and those which affect the League's scheme for adoptiag the Swiss system, for a hasty reader might very well confuse one set of arguments with the other.
In that portion of the book before us that deals with the proposals of the National Service League, the argument which .requires to be answered is in effect as follows. Sir Ian Hamilton holds that if we adopted compulsory training and service on the Swiss model, we should destroy our Regular Army. To use his own words, "here is the crux of the whole matter." At present some thirty-five thousand recruits are wanted every year to maintain the Regular Army. In his view, we should not obtain those recruits, or at any rate not a sufficient number of them, if every youth in the country had to undergo a four months' training at eighteen,—i.e., just before the time when lads are taken for the Regular Army. Before we deal with the grounds on which he rests this belief let us say that if his contention is true, we fully admit that it would be impossible for us to adopt universal training. It is absolutely essential to the maintenance of the Empire that our Regular Army should be kept at its present strength,—that is, that we should get as many recruits as we now get. Unless we can obtain the troops required for service in India and for garrisoning the Empire as a whole, the Imperial fabric will collapse. Further, it is necessary to maintain the present strength of our Regular Army in order that we may have an efficient expeditionary force for use, should occasion arise, on the Continent.
How does Sir Ian Hamilton prove his point? We feel sure that we are not doing his plea an injustice when we say that it can be expressed shortly as follows. The lade who were obliged to undergo four months' training at the age of eighteen would, he holds, be so "fed up," to use the Army phrase, with soldiering, that they would not as now volunteer for the Regular Army. We may say at once that we believe this to be an entire delusion, based upon the most illusory premisses. Let us take first Sir Ian Hamilton's facts, and then give the facts which induce us to hold exactly the opposite of his conclusions. As far as we can make out, though this part of the argument is somewhat mixed up with the very different proposal for adopting the German system of compulsory training, Sir Ian Hamilton argues that the Germans find it extanordinarily difficult to recruit the very small number of men they require for oversee service. That is very possible, but, in our opinion, proves nothing. We can quite well believe that men who have been in the -German Army, with its excessively hard conditions and practical absence of pay for three years, would find the military system so disagreeable that they would be "put off" from enlisting for a further period. But surely it is a tremendous you sequitur to argue from this that therefore men who bad had four months' service in England under Swiss conditions and with soldier's pay—" all found" and about a shilling a day pocket-money—would be so disgusted with military service that they would abandon all idea of entering the Regular Army.
We now come to Sir Ian Hamilton's best point. It is this. During the short time when we took men in the Regular Army for three years, these men, when the period of service was finished, did appear for the most part to be "fed up" with soldiering, and would not re-engage in sufficient numbers for service in India and abroad. In reality, however, this proves nothing. To put the matter quite shortly. If by three years' service a man does become "fed up" with soldier- ing, it by no means follows that he will be "fed up" by four months' service. We will next give what appear to us conclusive reasons for holding that not only would the Regular Army not be injured by the adoption of the Swiss system, but would actually be strengthened and supported thereby.
Our first proof is to be found in the policy at present adopted by the Government. One of the reasons why our military authorities, when they - altered our Army orggmisatien at the introduction of the Territorial eystem, refused in fact, though not in name, to abolish the Militia was because the Militia was a great recruiting-ground of the Armor. The Militia in the past supplied, and the Special Reserve (which is the new name for the Militia) now supplies, the Army with thousands of recruits. Men used to enter the Militia, and now enter the Special Reserve, to see what the Army is like, and a very large percentage of them have always passed, and are at this moment passing, after six months' trial, into the Regular Army. With this undoubted fact before us, how is it possible to believe that after four months' training conducted as proposed by the National Service League—for the most part at home, and not under barrack conditions— the men would be "fed up " ? Lot us take another fact to show that young Englishmen are not while they are lads "fed up" by short periods of military service. This fact is the very large percentage of bays who enter the Army from schools in which there is a distinct military organisation and military training. Take, for example, the Duke of York's School, in which the boys receive what is in effect military training, but are not in any way compelled to enter the Army. Yet we are informed that the Annual Report of the Duke of York's School for 1907 states that out of one hundred and forty-five boys who left, one hundred and twelve desired to enter the Army. Of these one hundred and five went into the Army, the other seven failing to pass the medical test. The boys, indeed, are so little." fed up" by their military training that some eighty-five per cent. of those who pass out each year as a general rule join the Army. The figures of the Royal Hibernian Military School are very much the same. Eighty -per cent. join the Army. As it may be said, how- ever, that these boys are of a superior kind, and that, as their fathers are mostly soldiers, they have an hereditary tendency towards military life, we may take another case of a school which has a military organisation, and in whieh the boys are drilled and kept under military discipline, but are not soldiers' sons,—that of the Gordon Boys' Home. These boys are so little "fed up" by their military training that some sixty per cent. of them enter the Army or the Navy.
We have reserved to the last a very striking fact,—one which will come home specially to the readers of the Spectator. As pointed out in the letter from Colonel Pollock which we publish in our issue of to-day, when the Spectator Experi- mental Company was formed only one of the hundred lads who entered it expressed any intention of becoming a soldier, and he stated that he should go into the Army only if he found he liked it. Yet after not four but six months of very hard military work no less than thirty-five of the Spectator lads actually entered the Regular Army, while several more were most anxious to do so, but were prevented either by their friends or by inability to pass the medical examination. Further, of the sixty per cent. who did not enter or desire to enter the Army, a very considerable number became Territorials or have entered Colonial corps. So much for the theory of being "fed up" in this concrete instance.
Very possibly it will be said that there was something exceptional about the Spectator Company. We cannot agree. They were very much like the companies that would be got together under universal training. Instead of four months' universal training acting as a deterrent to recruiting in the Regular Army, we believe it would prove a most extraordinary incentive, and that after it bad been in operation ayear the military authorities would be astonished, not only at the ease with which they got recruits, but at their greatly improved character. There are thousands of boys at this moment who from many points of view would very much like to go into the Army; but they are very shy, after the manner of Englishmen, and doubtful whether, after all, they would like the Army, and whether it would be wise for them to take so tremendous a step. In other words, they are in the mood so aptly described first by Rabelais and then by Daudet. They hear two voices, one which says "Cover your- self with glory," and the other which says "Cover yourself with flannel." Such - " balancing" boys, after they had had four. months' training, and had experienced the personal well-being produced by physical training with good food and good hygienic conditions, would in a very great number of cases discover -that the Army just• suited them. At present we only, get either the boys of a very high spirit, or those whose home circumstances are suck that they are actually compelled, instead of standing shivering on the brink, to take the• plunge into the cold bath of the Army. The difficulty of finding work pushes them in. Again, after their three months a great many boys would say We have got through all the disagreeable part of a recruit's training, and are beginning upon the stage which all old soldiers say is- pleasant,—the stage after you have learnt your drill. That being so, we may just as well engage for seven years and have the fun of seeing India and the Colonies,"—for„ remember, this " fun " of seeing the world is a great incentive to a lad of eighteen, though it will no doubt wear off in three or four years.
Again, if Sir Ian Hamilton's arguments are sound, the- United States ought to find it extremely easy to fill their Army. Except for their very small body of Militia, there is no means in the United States by which men can be "fed up" with soldiering. Yet it is notorious that, in spite of the tremendously high pay and the easy conditions of service, it is very difficult to get the comparatively small number of men who are required each year to fill its ranks.
Sir Ian Hamilton seems to think that those who advocate national training advocate it merely on the grounds of home defence. Has it never occurred to him what an enormous: advantage it would be to have the whole male population. given a rudimentary training in arms ? The spirit of the nation is such that in a moment of national danger, as in the week after Colenso, an appeal for volunteers for °verse& service would meet with an instant response: No compulsion is needed. Unfortunately, however, half the men who would then come forward by tens of thousands would under present condi- tions be almost useless. As we saw in the case of the Boer War, they have never had any drill in their lives and have never fired a shot,—do not, know one end of a rifle from the other. Accordingly their patriotic enthusiasm is of little or no avail. • If, however, the men who thus offered themselves willingly for their country had had a training in arms, like the Swiss, they would be able to bring the Mother- land something worth having in a moment of national peril. Universal training, if it gave us nothing else, would provide us with an enormous reservoir of men grounded in the use of arms, from whom volunteers could be drawn for oversea fighting.
Suppose we were engaged in a great war on the Continent, and the Government had to call, as Lincoln called, for half-a- million volunteers to save the nation. We feel sure that the Government would get them ; but will Sir Ian tell us that he would just as b0011 that these men were in the con- dition of the majority of the male population of these islands now ? Would he-not greatly prefer that they should one and all have at the age of eighteen undergone four months'.recruit training and afterwards been in the Territorial Army for four years? There surely can be no doubt as to his answer. We admit, of course, that this does not settle the matter finally, and that it is only an incidental advantage of universal training ; but it is clearly a point worthy of close consithration.
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