"PAS EST ET AB HOSTE DOCERI."
LTo THE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR."1
SIR,—Your suggestion in the Spectator of November 4'h, that our Volunteers might learn something from the Boers, is excellent. There is immense possibility yet in our Volun- teers, but at present all the energy is running past the wheel without turning the mill. England has not, never had, and never will have, save under very temporary circumstances, as in the Peninsular War, an Army properly so called. What we call our Army is actually a police force. Its object is to keep peace within the bounds of the Empire. It is not designed, nor is it able, to do more. Wars in th r Transvaal, Egypt, and North-West India are really police business, not war. None of them are really against foreign nations; their object is to keep the peace within our own borders. Those borders are never extended by conquest nowadays; we are never aggressive; and for defence we depend on our Navy absolutely and entirely. If we wanted an Army—with a big "A"—we could not have one; at least, not what Continentals would call an Army. It would cost us from fifty to one hundred millions a year on our present system. And con- scription is utterly impossible in England,—at any rate, until danger is far nearer than I fear to see it in my day. Our Army is simply a police force, and never will be able to do more than keep order within the Empire. We ought never to have a soldier in England itself, except a recruiting sergeant. Our defence is in our ships alone, and ever must be so. The question of home defence amounts to this. Is it conceivable that a couple of army corps could be landed in England? Well, I think it is just within the limits of possi- bility barely so, perhaps, but just within. To keep English soldiers at home capable of dealing with so remote a possi- bility is out of tbe question. If the thing ever did happen it would necessarily happen just when every available man was in India and China and Africa and elsewhere. We have three hundred thousand Volunteers, no doubt. But they would be of no more use alone and as they now are than three hundred thousand sheep. Why ? Because we have tried to make them into soldiers proper, which was impossible. They can never be but a very bad imitation of professional soldiery, and therefore quite useless against trained troops. But what if they had been trained as Boers, Francetireurs, or what name you like ? What if we had five hundred thousand sharpshooters as good as those "Dutch farmers who are just now making all of us use expletives while we read our papers ? Would they not, even if unable to meet these two Continental army corps in the field, be quite able to hold them up till our Fleet got possession of the Channel again and cut off their communications ? It seems to me the Boers may teach us something after all. And if we get rid of the notion that we have an Army at all, or ever can have one, and can realise that our Volunteers ought to be something else than feeble imita- tions of Tommy Atkins, this Transvaal rebellion may give us a lesson worth noting and remembering.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Skendleby Hall, November 7th. W. D: GAINSFORD,
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