THE MILITARY NEEDS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
WE shall never have a satisfactory military system in this country till the nation as a whole, and not merely its expert advisers, occupies itself with the discussion of an Army scheme suitable to its needs, and rejects the notion that we shall be safe and well provided if only we copy with sufficient closeness the military organisa- tions of the Continent. A very welcome attempt in the direction of thinking out our military problem is to be found in this month's National Review from the pen of Major Seely, the Member for the Isle of Wight, a civilian soldier who did excellent service in South Africa with the Imperial Yeomanry. Major Seely adopts a line of thought which we have on several occasions put forward in these columns during the past three years in regard to our military needs. He insists upon the necessity for drawing a clear distinction between the two kinds of Armies which are wanted by this country. He tells us that we ought to "completely differentiate between the pro- fessional expeditionary Army and the home defence Army, and realise that the defence of the country from invasion is the concern of its citizens, and them alone." Granted that this does not mean that we are, even in the smallest degree, to relax our attention in regard to the Fleet, or to fail to maintain its absolute superiority over all other Fleets, and to regard the command of the sea as the essential basis of our Empire, we are entirely at one with Major Seely. Properly understood, we believe that in his proposed differentiation of our military forces is to be found the only true method of affording us military security and of endowing us with a really powerful and efficient Army with- out imposing on the nation an intolerable financial burden or exposing us to the dangers of militarism,—dangers which, though they do not take a political form in England, are none the less real. The chief danger of militarism in this country is to be found in a certain mental petrifaction which tends to destroy the ability of the nation to meet a national crisis in the true spirit, the spirit which inspired the Northern States of America—the least military com- munity on earth—in their great struggle with the South.
Let us consider what the nation wants in the way of military organisation by asking what kind of organisation a wise ruler would suggest supposing that the whole of the existing military system had been blotted out by the waving of a magician's wand, and that it were possible and necessary to make an absolutely fresh start. Such an ideal system could, of course, never be applied in fact because we shall never be able to clear the ground ; but by establishing it in theory we may be able to realise how our existing system can be modified to bring it into sub- stantial harmony with the best plan possible. It is clear that the first thing which our hypothetical wise ruler would have to provide would be what we have been in the habit of calling the Imperial police of the Empire. That is, he must provide a force which can garrison India and its depen- dencies with some seventy-five thousand or eighty thousand white troops, and which can supply the requisite troops for South Africa, Egypt, Malta, Gibraltar, and the rest of the strong places outside the British Islands. In other words, he must provide some hundred and twenty thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, to police the Empire and main- tain the Pax Britannica therein. But this is not the only Imperial need. He must also provide a military force at the centre—i.e., in these islands—capable at any moment of supplying an expeditionary force for service outside the Empire. That is, there must always be at hand in these islands a force of troops ready to respond to such sudden calls as were made on the Army for our Egyptian or West African or South African Expeditions. It is clear that this central force must be in its nature and organisa- tion a part of the Imperial police force. It must be a body kept, as it were, at the central police office ready to be despatched anywhere in an emergency. But to fulfil these duties of Imperial police work it is clear that professional soldiers are required. The men and officers must be specially trained for the work, and must give up their whole time to it. The next thing which our ideal states- man must provide for is a force to guard and protect these islands from all risk of foreign invasion. As we have pos- tulated him a wise man, he would no doubt begin by saying that the main preventive of invasion will always be found in the Navy, and that to it must be confided the protection of these islands, such protection being, in fact, involved in the greater task of keeping the command of the sea,—that "abridgment [or epitome] and abstract of empire," as Bacon called it. But being wise, our ideal statesman would also say that we require a military as well as a naval force to keep us absolutely secure from invasion and raid. " I must," he would argue, " have some good special constables at home ready to arrest any body of intruders, supposing by some extraordinary chance they slipped the Fleet, and got into Sussex, Kent, or Essex. Such marauders must not be able to go through the land as a knife through cheese because there is no one capable of stopping them." In other words, there must be a home defence Army. " But," he would go on, " it need not be formed of such expensive material as is necessary for a pro- fessional army. Fighters of the type of Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers will be quite sufficient if only there are enough of them, and if they are properly equipped. Men who do nothing else but prepare to fight will not be needed, but merely men of good physique and good heart, who besides following their ordinary avocations have received a training in arms under competent officers. These men of the home Army, who should comprise the bulk of the able-bodied population, will, however, do more than merely provide a means of stopping raids and invasions. They will also form a great reservoir of trained men on which the nation will be able to draw in case of an oversea war on so serious a, scale as to demand a vast increase of our fighting forces abroad. The home defence Army will provide a school of arms and a reservoir of trained men, as well as actual defenders of our shores. And it will provide them at an infinitely cheaper rate than they could be provided by increasing the professional Army."
We must next consider what kind of alterations we should have to carry out in our present system to make it fit in with these ideal requirements. It is clear that our existing Army already supplies us with an Imperial police. But it does more than this. Besides the men who are in the depots being trained, or in home battalions too weak to be regarded as anything but ambulatory depots, we keep in these islands a large number of Regular troops, whose function is supposed to be to guard us from in- vasion. The greater number of these might, we believe, be dispensed with, and their places supplied by the far cheaper organisation which we shall describe later on. We would, that is, frankly accept the home battalion as nothing but a depOt battalion, in which the men were trained and got ready for Indian or other Imperial service, and which at intervals could be prepared to change places with the battalion abroad. Unless and until the Reserves were called out for war, there would be no attempt to con- sider the home battalions of ordinary regiments as an effective part of the Army. They would merely be depOts. Next, we would provide the Imperial expeditionary force always ready at the centre by letting the Guards revert to exactly their old position, and by increasing them in numbers. The Irish Guards should have three battalions like the rest, and we would make each battalion consist at least of twelve hundred men. This would mean a Guards force of fourteen thousand four hundred men. Next, we would reduce the Guards' term of service with the colours to two years, and so build up a large Guards Reserve of, say, sixteen to twenty thousand men. But it would be necessary to have cavalry, artillery, sappers, army service corps, and so forth, for this central expeditionary force. Therefore, in addition to the Guards and the Household Cavalry, we would have, say, six regiments of cavalry and a proportionate force of horse and field artillery, and of other necessary corps, always kept in the country during peace to act as an expeditionary force, and to reinforce the civil power, if necessary, in case of domestic tumult. These cavalry regiments and gunners and sappers would also be raised on a short- service system with a very large Reserve. We next come to the home defence Army. We have, of course, got the nucleus of it already, but it would require to be greatly enlarged and improved in personnel and equipment. In the first place, the Militia should be taken very much more seriously. The force should not number less than one hundred and fifty thousand men. It should have an efficient Reserve, and by means of improved pay and im- proved conditions a higher class of man should be enlisted. 'Again, Militia Artillery and Militia Engineers should be -organised in sufficient numbers. The Yeomanry, which would form the cavalry of the home defence Army, should be raised to, say, forty thousand men, and should also have a Reserve. Horse artillery might be a part of their organisation. The Volunteers, who should be left as they are, or rather as they were, would complete the Army of home defence. But they should be given better facilities for shooting, should receive full regimental transport, and should be encouraged to form a Volunteer Reserve. Below them some simple organisation of rifle clubs or Guides should be used to teach the population as a whole to shoot and to learn to give assistance in defending the strategic points in their own localities. The local levee 'en mane, that is, should be regarded as a possibility, and the proper plans made for calling out the population in each district.
' We do not profess that this rough skeleton of a scheme is in any sense perfect. It is no doubt extremely defective in many respects, and the numbers given are, of course, purely tentative. But these defects can, we con- tend, be easily remedied. In details it may be shown to be a bad plan, but fundamentally we believe that it, or a plan on similar lines recognising the need of two Armies, a professional Imperial police Army and a non-professional home defence Army, will prove the soundest organisation for this country. It would supply us with an adequate number of troops without increasing the present huge cost of our Army. Money spent on professional soldiers whose sole work is to garrison this country is wasted, because many more men of the non-professional kind can be got for the same money, and would prove just as efficient for the work to be done. For home defence an improved and strengthened Militia, Yeomanry, and Volun- teers, well officered and " well found " in all respects, will do just as well as Regulars, and will cost less. Needless to say, the question of the due provision of officers for the Militia and Yeomanry and Volunteers must not be neglected. They must in a sense be professionals. They should, that is, receive the highest training, and be paid in proportion to the important duties they will be called on to perform.
We can only end as we began, by declaring that it is the duty of the people of this country to think out the whole military problem for themselves, and to remember in doing so that there is no need for vast extra expendi- ture of public money, or for thinking that the only safe plan is blindly to add men to the professional Army. A judicious organisation of the Auxiliary Forces will, for many of the purposes for which we require armed men, do just as well. But, needless to say, the organisation must be really wise and judicious, and not merely a stamped and perfunctory patching of the present Auxiliary Forces. The citizens' home defence Army must not be a sham. And above all, let every citizen realise that he has a personal duty to perform. At the very least it is his business to learn to shoot with a rifle and to help others to do the same. If once we become a nation of riflemen we shall have advanced a long distance in the direction of military salvation. We shall, in our opinion, have actually reached it if we make physical training of a military character, and including the use of the rifle, as strictly compulsory on all boys as we now make a literary education.
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