On Wednesday Mr. Haldane introduced the Army Estimates. The Government,
he declared, adhered firmly to the Cardwell system. He defended his proposal for an expeditionary force of a hundred and sixty thousand men by pointing out that a large proportion of the men would be Reservists, and that the force was economical. By a process of lopping off he brought the numbers of the Army down to within five or six thousand of the numbers existing before the South African War. He had organised a hundred and one battalions of the Infantry Special Reserve. Recruiting had begun for this Special Reserve, and the men were coming in very satisfactorily. The initial training of six months would, he hoped, take place when ordinary employment was slack. The new Special Reserve would only cost £1,955,000, as com- pared with £1,986,000, the amount spent on the old Militia. Turning to the Regular Army, Mr. Haldane declared that the recruits now obtained were of a better class, and the additional comforts and prospects of the soldier were having a marked effect in diminishing wastage. Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Wyndham, and others criticised Mr. Haldane's Army scheme. The good prospects of the Special Reserve cannot but be interesting to the Spectator and those of its readers who so generously supported the Spectator Experimental Company. The experience gained by the training of that Company was no doubt very useful to the War Office in coming to their determination that six months' initial training could be relied upon as sufficient to make a useful infantry soldier.
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