RECRUITS AND VETERANS.
WE publish to-day the Report which Colonel Pollock has drawn up for us in regard to the work of the Spectator Experimental Company at Hounslow. The Report speaks for itself. Though written before Colonel Pollock's speech at Sheffield, it affords the best possible answer to the series of misconstructions which were placed upon that speech by many who read the imperfect and misleading versions published in the newspapers. Those who were inclined. to imagine from such versions that Colonel Pollock had somehow suddenly changed from a. position of optimism and enthusiasm in regard to the Spectator Company to one of depreciation will, by a perusal of the Report, see how very far this view is from the truth. They will realise from this authentic; and detailed exposition of the work done for the Spectator at Hounslow that Colonel Pollock desired to give an almost exactly opposite impression to that which was attributed to him by such headlines as ' Colonel Pollock Condemns the Spectator Company as Worthless,' and so forth. If a little trouble is taken to see what Colonel Pollock did mean, the matter becomes , quite clear. He merely intended to convey by his speech the very obvious and very well-worn truth that recruits are not equal to veterans, and that, though he could claim that the youthful Spectator recruits at the end of their six months' training were perhaps the best company of recruits ever got together in these islands, they nevertheless could not be expected. to have the staying-power in battle of grown men who had been soldiering for several years. In other words, though the Spectator lads were gallant enough individually and were exceptionally well trained in their duties, and although the foundation had been laid for creating the best possible form of Militiaman or civilian soldier, they could not at the moment claim to be as steady as they would become had they for four or five years belonged to a. well-commanded battalion raised under the conditions we have advocated for the Militia. Colonel Pollock's unwillingness to claim for the Spectator Company the steadiness of veterans was clearly due in a great measure to the youthfulness of a. large part of the Company. Boys of seventeen and eighteen, though they may be gallant, cannot be expected to have that hardness of temper which belongs to men of maturer age.
The enunciation of these simple truths cannot, in the minds of sane men, detract in the slightest degree from the value of the Spectator Experiment ; and though we may wish that Colonel Pollock had contrived to express them in language which should have proved less liable to misconstruction, we do not, after all (subject to the explanations which Colonel Pollock has given and which we are giving now), so greatly regret that the incident has arisen. We hold that we have proved up to the hilt what we set out to prove,—viz., that soldiers can be fully taught their business in six months, and that lads who have received such training would, if retained in properly organised Militia battalions on Volunteer conditions, make the most valuable semi-military, semi-civilian force ever raised in England,—a force capable of immensely increasing the military strength of the Empire. Further, we desire to induce the nation to accept the logical conclusions that flow from these promisees. But though we believe that we have shown experimentally what is the best basis for an improved Militia, we have always been most anxious that the public should not run away with the notion that when you have taken lads of eighteen, and taught them, how- ever thoroughly, the art of soldiering, you have then and there made an army. To make a really formidable military force there must be added to the knowledge of his work possessed by the soldier that strength of character and of purpose which for the majority of men comes only with maturity. Just as a lad who has acquired a thorough knowledge of shorthand and typewriting at a school for shorthand clerks is not a perfect private secretary till be has grown up and obtained a larger experience and a greater sense of responsibility, so a stripling recruit does not become a. perfect soldier till he has become a man. It would be as foolish to entrust the defence of the Empire to lads, however accomplished in military work, as it would be to run the commerce of the nation by clever boy clerks. Seedlings are not flowers, though, if they are well and carefully raised, we may depend upon them growing into healthy flowers. Thus, as we have said above, though the misconstruction placed on Colonel Pollock's words, and the consequent erroneous belief that their • trainer was telling the public that the Spectator Company had proved a failure, have been in some ways a source of great annoyance to all connected with the Experiment, we may yet feel that this most unpleasant incident will, at any rate, prevent the public from exaggerating the results obtained at Hounslow, and from imagining that we think the battles of the Empire could be, or ought to be, fought by recruits of eighteen and nineteen years of age. But while we agree with the abstract proposition that recruits are not as good as veterans, we must be careful not to exaggerate even this proposition, or to talk as if men of very short service had not sometimes done exceedingly well in the firing-line. The story of the battle of Waterloo gives an absolute denial to any such proposition as that " recruits are never any good." The army which fought at Waterloo was full of Militiamen who were nothing more than recruits. Yet we all know how steadily they withstood the veterans of France, and covered themselves with undying glory. And, strangely enough, only six months before, the Duke of Wellington's Peninsular soldiers, hardy veterans long hammered on the anvil of war, behaved at New Orleans as badly as any recruits could possibly have behaved, and succumbed, not to highly trained European soldiers, but to Jackson's undisciplined riflemen. Again, in the Boer War the first batch of Imperial Yeomanry, though recruits as far as training went, behaved with splendid steadiness, and corporate steadiness, as well as with individual courage. The same must be said of the C.I.V.'s and of the twenty thousand Volunteers who went out in the service companies. But these men, though recruits as far as militaiy training went, were in most cases grown men and endowed with a full sense of manhood's responsibilities. They were also, of course, members of definite military organisations.
For ourselves, and speaking from a very careful personal study of the Spectator Experimental Company at their work at Hounslow, and also from a close attention to the opinions expressed by the large number of experi- enced officers, General and regimental, who visited them, we are sure that the Spectator Company, if led by the officers who trained them or by officers equally capable of inspiring their men with confidence, would, in spite of their youth, have done exceedingly well had they been called upon to face veteran troops. The holding of this opinion does not, however, alter our view that it would be most unwise to adopt the notion that an army of lads should be asked to face an army of grown men. Lads, even of the splendid mettle displayed by the Spectator Company, are still lads, and not as dependable as men. Let us say once again, and in order to leave no possible loophole for misconstruction, that to admit this does not in the least derogate from the value of the Spectator Experiment. In the hundred lads at Hounslow, through the untiring work of Colonel Pollock, Mr. Walsh, and the sergeant-instructors under them, were laid the foundations of a hundred first-rate soldiers. All that was required to give them what Nature seldom gives the young, that precious quality which knows not disappointment, dis- illusionment, or depression, was attachment to a well- organised unit under good and inspiring officers, in which the lad might grow gradually to the soldier's estate. To attain that growth we believe that drill and shooting in a man's spare time and a week under canvas every year would prove amply sufficient when laid on a foundation of six months' intensive training. We hold, that is—and this is our final word on the subject—that the Spectator Experimental Company has shown that six months' thorough training on the lines pursued at Hounslow, followed by six years' service in a Militia battalion under Volunteer conditions, is capable of giving us a force of citizen soldiers of the very highest quality, a force which, after being embodied for three months, would prove them-• selves capable of taking their place in the firing-line with credit to their country.
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