THE ARMY ESTIMATES AND THE LIBERAL PARTY.
RE are a couple of tables in the March number of the Fortnightly Review which it would be well if every Liberal in the country would learn by heart. They are to be found in an article by Sir Henry Havelock, but they are altogether independent of the particular project in support of which he employs them. The first shows the composition of the Infantry which England would be prepared to send abroad on short notice—forty-two days is the time fixed by Sir Henry Havelock—in the event of being involved in war. This force is estimated at 50,000 Infantry, 4,600 Cavalry, and 252 field-guns,—the last mentioned item admitting of being raised to 342 guns with thirty days more of notice. These 50,000 Infantry would be thus made up :—Three battalions of the Guards would give 3,000, the four battalions left at home being, of course, greatly weakened to make up the number ordered on foreign service. Forty-seven regiments of the Line would give 21,216, after due allowance made for casualties of all kinds. The twenty-three regiments of the Line which would be left for home service would contribute 4,600, thus reducing their strength by more than a third. The long-service Army Reserve would give .5,000, the Depots 3,000, and the balance of 13,184 would have to be taken from the Militia Reserve. Now of this 50,000, the two last contingents, amounting to nearly a third of the whole, would not be soldiers in any sense of the word that implies military training, while the four last contingents, or nearly three-fifths of the whole, would be new to their regiments, new to their officers, and new to their comrades. Of trained soldiers, fighting in the company and under the command to which they have been accustomed, there would be little more than 20,000. Both these are serious considera- tions, and some of our readers will be disposed to inquire what has become of the short-service reserve of which so much has been said in Army discussions. The answer is supplied by the second table in Sir Henry Havelock's article. The short-ser- vice reserve was created on paper in 1870, but it will only begin to exist in fact in the present year, and as very few soldiers enlisted on the new terms in 1870, only 1,411 men will pass into the Reserve in 1876. In The three following years the Reserve will be increased by something more than 5,000 men in each year. The additions between 1879 and 1882 will average about 7,000 men a year, and in 1883, when the Reserve has reached its maximum strength, it will number about 41,363 men. The ex- planation of the defenceless state in which England finds herself at this moment, and of the exceedingly small propor- tions which the Reserve will ultimately assume, is that to pro- duce a sufficient Reserve, and to maintain the Army at an adequate level of strength while the Reserve was in course of formation, the number of men with the colours should have been temporarily increased. To produce a .Reserve of 75,000 Or 80,000 men by 1883, Sir Henry Havelock calculates that 32,000 recruits should have been enlisted annually in the interval. Instead of this, the establishment was decreased in 1872 by 8,000 men, and instead •of 32,000 recruits being enlisted in each year, only from 18,000 to 20,000 have been added. Consequently we are weaker while the Reserve is forming, and we shall be weaker when the Reserve is formed. When to this is added Sir Henry Havelock's testimony, formed upon an intimate knowledge of nearly every battalion in the Service, that the quality of the recruits is very much worse than it was thirty years ago, and when it is further remembered that there is now very much less time in which to train them, we shall have all the material circumstances of the military situation full in view.
It is the dirty of an Opposition to criticise the estimates pre- pared by the two great spending departments of the Govern- ment. But it is not part of the political canon that this criticism shall always assume that the estimates are in excess of the public need. Often, no doubt, the statements of the Minister of War or of the First Lord of the Admiralty are based on information which is not in the possession of the • Opposition, and if the expenditure proposed by the Minister is in accordance with these statements, it must, perforce, be accepted as sufficient. But as regards the Army, all the facts are public property. It is known how many men we could put into the field ; it is known what proportion of these would be trained soldiers; it is known what are the resources from which we should have to make good the losses incurred in the first campaign. Consequently the Opposition are as competent to determine whether the Minister's proposals are adequate to the public need as the Minister himself, and if they hold them to be inadequate, it is as much their duty to find fault with them in that sense, as it would be to find fault with them in the opposite sense if they thought them ex- travagant. It would not have been unreasonable, therefore, if some members of the Opposition had demurred to Mr.
Hardy's proposals on the ground that though they carry us in the right direction, they do not carry us far enough. We do not say that they would have been well advised in taking up this ground, because it is difficult for outsiders to say how sudden an increase of strain a particular machine will bear. Mr. Hardy, for example, appears to be of opinion that the 3,000 men or so for whom provision is made in the Estimates, are as many as can be absorbed into the Army this year, without doing positive harm to it. This is a point on which the Secretary of State may be expected to have the best attainable informa- tion, and though we wish that it had been possible to make a larger addition to the force, there is nothing for it but to be content. Again, as regards the addition of deferred pay, there may be good reason to suppose that the prospect of having £18 in hand with which to begin the world on leaving the colours, will be sufficient both to bring into the service as many good recruits as are wanted, and to keep them from forfeiting their deferred pay by desertion. It may very well be, there- fore, that Mr. Hardy would have been able to defend the seemingly excessive moderation of his proposals, and to prove that it is impossible, at a moment's notice, to give the country the strength of which six wasted years have for the time deprived her, and that any more sweeping changes would only have involved us in useless and perhaps injurious expenditure. What we complain of is that the Opposition, so far as they have spoken at all on the Army Estimates, have only repeated the old cry of "extravagance." We grant that it has been re- peated very much in the sucking-dove fashion, that Sir Wilfrid Lawson spoke as though he wished to get rid of last season's jokes at an alarming sacrifice to make room for his spring stock, rather than as though he had ever thought enough about what he said to be quite sure whether he meant it, and that the other speakers rather hinted at disapproval than positively expressed it. But if the Opposition were not going to challenge the sufficiency of Mr. Hardy's proposals, why had they not the wisdom to say plainly that at least he ought to have proposed nothing less We are at a loss to know whether the attitude of the Liberal leaders on the question of national defence is due to an entire misapprehension of the public senti- . ment, or to a conscientious incapacity to put themselves in harmony with it. Either way, the prospect is sufficiently dis- couraging for the Liberal party. If the Parliamentary Liberals deliberately think it their duty to dissociate themselves from the present revival of national feeling, they may prepare for as great a reverse at the next general election as that which overtook them two years ago. Of course if they do take this view of their duty, there is no more to be said. We can but respect their honesty, and lament their blindness. But if their present action is due to a belief that this is what is expected of them by their constituents, their blindness is not even respectable. No doubt it is what is expected of them by local party agents, chairmen of local committees, and such like. These people have got into a rut out of which they have not the strength to pull themselves, and it would be as reasonable to expect original observations from a parrot as to look for a timely recognition of a change in public feeling from habitual wire-pullers. But on a question of this kind the present electorate will not be in the least influenced by the common-places which had so much weight with the electorate of 1832. The last Reform Act will yet work great changes in more ways than one, but in none is its operation likely to be more revolutionary than upon questions of economy. The Liberal leaders may hereafter have to resist many extravagant proposals, but if they wish to resist them to any purpose, they will not be guilty of the suicidal blunder of resisting proposals of which all that can4be said is that, whether avoidably, or not, they fall . short of the real need. They cannot get up in the House of Commons and say that the Army as it is, is satisfactory, unless they are prepared to go further, and say that we want no Army at all, except perhaps a regiment of cavalry stationed at Knightsbridge, to disperse a riotous meeting in Hyde Park. If England is to hold any place in Europe, or to have any policy except a policy of nervous isolation, she must have a more efficient Army than she has at this moment. Mr. Hardy may not have lighted upon the best means of giving her this more efficient Army, but unless his critics are prepared to suggest a better, they will find their best profit hereafter in being silent now..
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