Mr. Prothero told the House of Commons on Monday that
the calling up of thirty thousand skilled young farm-workers to the Army, contrary to the pledge given by the Government a year ago, meant "to a great extent the wrecking, or at all events the im- perilling, of the work he had tried to do for the last eighteen months." He admitted, too, that these men—" the key men of the industry " —would have only ten weeks' training before they went to France in September. But the Army, he said, needed the men so badly that the farmers must do without them and get the harvest in as best they could. Mr. Bonar Law, supporting Mr. Prothero, declared that the War Cabinet alone could judge whether the men were needed more on the Western Front than in the fields at home. It is a sad confession from a Government whose primary business during the past eighteen months should have been to deal with the question of Man-Power, but who now on the eve of the harvest have to take the best of the skilled men and fling them half-trained into the battle. But the needs of the Army are of course paramount. At all costs we must find reinforcements for the thin khaki line which is holding the enemy so gallantly before Ypres and Amiens.
Previous page
