TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE " SPECTATOR " EXPERIMENTAL COMPANY, AND WHAT IT HAS ACCOMPLISHED. THE Spectator Experimental Company, having com- pleted its six months' training, was disbanded on Tuesday. Brigadier-General Donald had received orders from the Army Council to hold a final inspection of the Company on the previous day, when a dismissal parade was held. Before we deal specifically with what has been accomplished by the Company, and the lessons which may be drawn from it, we desire to offer our thanks to the readers of the Spectator for their generous help and encouragement. Without their aid it would have been impossible to carry out what the Xing, with his customary prescience, at an early stage in the under- taking described as "an experiment of national import- ance." The public-spirited men and women who contributed to the Spectator Fund may feel that the sympathy and support they gave were in no sense thrown away, and that they have helped to do something which may in the end have the most important results, not merely in improving the Auxiliary Forces of the nation, but also in improving the moral and physique of the British people. Our thanks and congratulations must also be given to Colonel Pollock, whose letter to us last autumn was the first step in the march which ended so successfully on Tuesday, to Mr. Walsh, to the sergeant- instructors, and to the non-commissioned officers and men of the Spectator Experimental Company. If Colonel Pollock had not proved himself to be possessed of remarkable powers of organisation, and of tact and good sense as well, the work undertaken by the Spectator and its readers must have been thrown away. The best schemes on paper and the best intentions of patriotic subscribers would have been worthless had they not been carried out by thoroughly competent hands. It must be remembered that what the Spectator commissioned Colonel Pollock to do was nothing less than to improvise a miniature army, —or shall we say one of the coral cells which make up an army ? He had not only to provide for the clothing, the catering, the housing, and the medical attendance required by the men, but also for their instruction in drill, in tactical exercises, in shooting, signalling, gymnastics, trenching, bridge-building, and a dozen other matters which the modern soldier must understand if he is to be competent in his work. If a machine for producing these results had been ready and working, it would have been a comparatively easy thing to pass men through it. But remember that what had to be done in the case of the Spectator Company was first to design and build a special machine of a type not in existence before, then to discover the raw material fit to be put into it, and lastly to turn that raw material into the finished product. If Colonel Pollock and Mr. Walsh, and the sergeant-instructors acting under them, had been the kind of men who quail before obstacles and difficulties, they could never have accomplished their task. Happily, they were born for whatever was arduous, and difficulties vanished at their touch.
We must not forget also that they received the most loyal co-operation from the men who formed the rank- and-file of the Spectator Company. These lads—their average age was only nineteen—showed from the very beginning that they understood that they were engaged upon a work of real importance to the nation, and that they were determined to make it a success. Not for one moment did they approach their task in the spirit of men who were hired to perform certain duties, and who did not intend to give a pennyworth more than they had bargained to give. The notion that this or that was not in their engagement never appeared to have entered their heads. Their evident object was to get the greatest possible benefit out of their training, and to make the Company something to be proud of. Esprit de corps is a most valuable quality, and it is interesting to see how quickly and easily it grows up under proper conditions. We venture to say that a month after the Company was formed there was not a man in it who did not have the true regimental—or shall we say public-school ?—feeling about the Spectator Company. Stevenson in one of his letters from Samoa speaks of seeing some of the lads out of a British warship, and remarks that in the bluejackets of the Navy the State has produced from the less rich classes of the community a new kind of public-school boy. Those who saw the Spectator Company at close quarters will realise what we mean when we say that they had the genuine public. school tone. It is true, no doubt, that they were full of animal spirits ; but though these may have occasionally , run wild, they never went astray. It was always possible to appeal, with certainty as to the result, to the honour as well as to the good sense of the Company. The fact that , they were not under military discipline, but were only engaged on a civil contract as men are in a factory or workshop, was never taken advantage of. This absence of military authority made it necessary, no doubt, to be more strict and severe in the matters of detail and as regards the infringement of rules and regulations. We are inclined to think, however, that in reality this was a gain rather than a loss, though occasionally small offences may have seemed. to receive a somewhat disproportionate punish- ment. In any case, the thanks of the Spectator can be given most heartily and without any qualification to the men of the Company. We part with our co-operators at Hounslow with a real sense of regret. Finally, we have to thank the Press for the kindest and most generous treat- ment of the Experiment throughout its course. Without an exception, our contemporaries gave us unstinted help and encouragement.
What has the Experiment proved ? In the first place, it has proved what we may term the abstract proposition that it is possible to make a competent infantry soldier in six months by pursuing a system of rational and intensive training. The men were not only inspired with a high sense of military duty, but they learnt how to carry that duty out exactly. Next, it has proved—and from the point of view of the Spectator this is of supreme importance—that the proposition which we set out at the start is correct ; namely, that a system of six months' training will afford a basis for the Militia Force of the future. We have always held that a, Militia—that is, a body of men who are civilians on one side and soldiers on the other—is absolutely essential to our military system. We have never yet carried through a great war without the use of the Militia, and it is evident that we never shall. But if we must rely upon the Militia, it is essential that the Militia should be formed from sound material. We fear, however, that it must be admitted that the majority of the Militia at the present time do not come from the soundest classes of the com- munity. The reason for this is not that the Militia is per se unpopular, or that young Englishmen do not like soldiering, but simply that the present conditions of service in the Militia make it impossible—with a few special exceptions—for any man who is not a casual labourer to enlist in it. The necessity for a month's training every year, not at the men's time, but at the time appointed by the military authorities, renders the Militiaman unemployable in the great majority of trades and occupations. This being so, the Militia cannot flourish unless the conditions of service are changed. The Spectator Experiment has shown how these conditions may be and ought to be changed. We hold that the Militiaman of the future should receive a thorough six months' training on the lines of the Spectator Company, and that after that he should serve in the Militia on what we may term Volunteer conditions,—that is, that he should do only a week's training each year under canvas and a certain amount of drill and rifle-shooting in his evenings or other spare hours. We say, without fear of contradiction, that the Spectator Company has proved that these conditions would not only give us much more efficient soldiers, but, what is equally important, wbuld enable a far better class of man to enter the Militia.
The rank-and-file of the Spectator Experimental Com- pany were not exceptional men in any way. They were just ordinary young men of the working class with a natural ambition to do well in civil life, and also with the healthy young Englishman's liking for soldiering and. , desire to serve his country in some way or other. Given a Militia on the Spectator basis, such men could join the force without ruin to their civil prospects. In the existing ' Militia, as many of the Spectator Company stated in the series of questions that was addressed to them, they could not indulge their desire to serve their country an.d learn soldiering without condemning themselves to sink into the ranks of the casual labourer. We hold, then, that the Spectator Experiment shows that if it were once made clear to the youth of the nation that they could have six months' instruction between seventeen and eighteen which would improve them morally, physically, and intellectually, and then afterwards serve for, say, five or six years under Volunteer conditions, the country might have at a com- paratively small cost a Militia Force of three hundred thousand men,— a force which would be formed from material equal to, if not better than, that to be found in any army in the world. And here we must point out that the experiment which the War Office are at this moment beginning to try with the Militia is, we regret to think, not likely to succeed. It is in no sense based on the lines of the Spectator Experiment. If it fails, then it must not be supposed that it has been shown that the Spectator Experiment could not be carried out on a big scale. The reason why we are doubtful as to the Government experiment is this. The men, though they are to be trained for six months, are to be asked in the future, or at any rate for their first two years, to go into camp for six weeks a year. This, in our opinion, ruins the Government experiment at the beginning. It intensifies the unemploy- able character of the Militiaman. If the liability to four weeks' training makes him unemployable, the liability to six weeks' will place him in an even worse situation. No one but the class of man who entered the Militia previously will think of joining it under the new conditions.
What is wanted is to advertise to the nation that a complete change is to be made in the Militia, and that the old reasons for its disconsideration in the public mind have been done away with. For this purpose we would change the name of the Militia to the Imperial Militia, a name which it might properly bear if, as is now proposed, it is to be enlisted for Imperial oversea service on embodi- ment in case of a serious war. For this new model Imperial Militia the service should, as we have said, be six months' initial training, and afterwards service under Volunteer conditions. Such an offer to the youth of the country would, we believe, prove as attractive as that made by the Spectator. As it is, we fear the attractiveness, if any, will be merely that of an offer to house and feed men during the winter months. Such an offer may slightly increase the number of recruits, but it will not draw them, as was chiefly wanted, from a better class. If, then, the War Office intend to make any real use of the Spectator Experiment, they must entirely remodel their proposals for trying the effect of a six months' initial training on the Militia. Their present scheme is a half-measure which can give no permanent improvement.
Before we leave the subject of the Spectator Experi- mental Company we desire to place on record the immense improvement, moral, intellectual, and physical, produced by the six months' training. This improvement was felt by every man in the Company. Not one of them failed to realise that he was a better man in every way for his training.
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