OLD-AGE PENSIONS AND A HOME DEFENCE RESERVE.
IN continuation of our suggestions in regard to the military problems with which the nation is con- fronted, we desire to deal this week with the formation of a general reserve force for home defence,—or to give it a shorter name, a Home Defence Reserve. One of the most unpractical and unbusinesslike things about our present military system is the immense amount of soldierly material that is perpetually running to waste. In one way and another we train a vast number of men to arms, but we have no machinery for keeping any hold on the men who have been trained after their specific period of service is concluded. A man finishes his period of service in the Army Reserve, or in the so-called Militia Reserve, and he at once merges in the population and no attempt of any kind is made to keep in touch with him. And yet he is certainly a well-trained soldier, and very likely has seen active service. It is the same with the ordinary Militiaman and Yeoman. After they have finished the period for which they enlisted, they dis- appear into space and become invisible to the eye of the War Office. Yet all these men are soldiers who can shoot, and who have had a training which, at any rate, at the end of their period was fairly complete. The case of the Volunteers is equally flagrant. The average Volun- teer remains in his corps for about four or five years. After that, for various reasons, the majority of men leave their corps, and again are merged in the non-military and untrained population.
Surely there is something very extravagant and foolish in this and something that ought to be stopped, for we cannot believe that it passes the wit of man to devise a workable scheme for keeping in touch with the trained men who are every year passing outside the field of vision of our military authorities. Our scheme for dealing with the problem has several times during the past year been set forth in the Spectator, but we shall not hesitate to set it forth again at somewhat greater length than before. Our method of procedure would be as follows. To every man (1) who had finished his time in the Army Reserve, (2) who had finished his time in the Yeomanry of Militia or in any Yeomanry or Militia Reserve, (3) who had been returned as efficient for five consecutive years in the Volunteers, or (4) who had served in any force specially enlisted for service abroad, such as the Imperial Yeomanry or the C.LV., we would make this offer :—` If you will register your name and address as a member of the Home Defence Reserve you will obtain the following benefits. In consideration for such registration you shall receive on registration an immediate bounty of £1, and a pay- ment of 10s. each year on your presenting yourself at the military centre or depot selected by you (provision being made for change of depot or centre in case of change of residence) and reporting to an officer ap- pointed for the purpose. Further, you shall receive on registration, free of charge, a policy conferring a Post Office old-age pension of 7s. a week, beginning from the age of sixty. To make such old-age pension valid and to obtain its benefits, all you need do is to report yourself at the agreed place every year from the time of entering the Home Defence Reserve till the age of sixty, and get the fact of your haviug duly appeared endorsed yearly on the back of the policy. The only obliga- tion imposed on members of the Home Defence Reserve will be that of being called out by Royal proclamation for the defence of the country in case of invasion, or the im- minent danger thereof.' In other words, the State would make a contract with each member of the Home Defence Reserve to give him an old-age pension of 7s. a week after sixty in consideration of his keeping iu touch with the military authorities by reporting himself and his address every year, and making himself liable for military service in case of invasion or imminent danger of invasion, but only then. The bounty of £1 on joining is not, of course, a necessary part of the scheme, but it would probably be a wise condition, as would also be the 10s. fee paid to the men on reporting themselves to get their pension policies endorsed. The obtaining of the 10s. fee would be a useful reminder to men to turn up and keep their policy alive, and would prevent any ques- tion of expenses arising in regard to the men's reporting themselves.
We need not go into details as to the best place and day to select for the annual reporting. Probably the best way would be to have a very large number of centres, with different days, at which men could report them- selves, and then an officer might be appointed to go round a particular circuit to see that the men reported them- selves, and to stamp their policies. Again, we cannot enter here upon the best skeleton organisation for dividing the great body of men in the Home Defence Reserve into regi- ments and brigades, but clearly that isnot atask which should prove impossible. Each man in the Home Defence Reserve might be provided with a card indicating the place at which he must assemble. As to officers and non-commissioned officers, the arrangements might be difficult but would not be impossible. Ex-non-commissioned officers with pensions might be indicated, some for non-commissioned posts and some for subaltern commands, while retired officers might hold the higher appointments. Of course, the scheme would have to be more or less a paper scheme, but if well thought out and planned on a simple system it would, we believe, work perfectly well. For example, Colonel Jones, retired, would know that on the issue of the Royal proclamation he must at once go to the Town Hall of Great Peddlington, and that he would there find a certain number of Home Defence Reserve men and officers assembled—ie., all the Home Defence Reserve men within a radius of, say, five miles— and that it would then be his business to organise them and await orders and the issue of rifles and ammunition. He might not be able to mobilise his force with scientific precision, but he would find ready to his hand a heap of very useful raw material which, if the military authorities had anything of the qualities of the Boer .leaders, could soon be made into a fighting weapon. These matters, however, are all for future consideration. What we want to insist on at present is that a Home Defence Reserve could be formed out of the military material which is now running to waste, and that the best inducement for enrolment would be to offer an old-age pension. One reason for offering an old-age pension is the fact that by that means we should kill two birds with one stone and save a great deal of expense. The country is pretty well agreed that a system of old-age pensions would be good if it could be in some way arranged that the pensions should be given, not to all and sundry, but only to persons who had in some way or other earned the right to receive them. But-could there be a better way of earning that right than by public service of the kind accomplished by a soldier ? A man who first serves his country in the Army, Militia, or Volunteers, and then for a period of twenty or thirty years holds himself at the disposal of the State for home defence, has clearly earned the right not to go to the work- house in his old age, but to receive a modest pension from the State, —a. pension which will not stop thrift, but will instead make men think it worth while to save enough to get an extra 3s. or 4s. for old age. Under our scheme, that is, we should give the demand for old-age pensions its most useful and legitimate expression, and also create a very valuable military asset in the shape of the Home Defence Reserve. We should, in fact, be able to say to every young man in the country You will have no one but yourself to thank if you end your days in the workhouse. You have only got to do a certain amount of public service to earn a, right to an old-age pension. Remain five years in a Volunteer regiment, say from twenty to twenty-five, then register yourself annually in the Home Defence Reserve each year till you are sixty, and then, without being a penny out of pocket, you will receive an old-age pension.' No man, after the establish- men of our plan, would be able to say that his wages did not admit of his saving enough money to buy even the half of an old-age pension. He would be able to insure himself against the effects of old age by a, simple act of public service—one which would not interfere with his own special vocation or take him out of the country. Remember, too, that there would be no sort of bondage attached to the Home Defence Reserve. Any man would, of course, be allowed to leave at any time by simply giving, say, six months' notice. Obviously, he would forfeit his old- age pension by doing so, but that would be no hardship in ease of a voluntary resignation. Ill-health subsequent to entry upon the register would not prevent a man qualifying for his pension, providing he could report him- self each year. There might, in .addition, be a system of reinstatement on the payment of a fine, supposing a, man by some accident omitted to report himself at the annual stamping of the policies. We shall only add to our attempt to set forth our scheme in detail a word as to its urgency. When the war is over there will be sent back to the civil population a number of soldiers greater than have ever before been merged again with the civilian population. This, then, is the moment for getting a register of the kind we have proposed. Unless something is done, and at once, the War Office (granted that the war is over this year) will lose touch completely with something like a hundred thousand men, and men who have almost all been under fire and proved themselves capable soldiers. Surely it would be worth while to keep a hold on these' men, and not to let them pass out of recognition. The present writer happened only a few days ago to be struck by a case in point. A young farmer of his acquaintance joined the Imperial Yeomanry. After seeing some service and getting an experience more important than that obtained by any of the ordinary soldiers of the Continental armies, he was invalided home. He recovered, but it was not thought worth while to send him out again, and so he obtained his discharge. Had he been asked -to put his name down for a "Home Defence Reserve," he declared that he would most willingly have done so, With- out expecting any reward, he would have pledged himself to come out if called on for home defence. No such request was, however, made to him, and he passed out of the ken of the-War Office as if he had never existed. Yet he was a trained man of whose services we may some day be in urgent need. Thus a valuable military asset is squandered and wasted because it has apparently never occurred to any of our military authorities to have oven a voluntary register of- trained men, far less a regular Home Defence Reserve. To take another example of the same carelessness ; of the thousands of men who volunteered last year for the front, and of whom only a small percentage were accepted, almost no one, we believe, had his name and address taken in case there should be a need for more men later on.—Truly we are a. wasteful nation. But is not this running to waste of our trained men really too thriftless a proceeding even for England ? We trust most sincerely that all thinking men will turn the matter over and decide that it is.
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