TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD SALISBURY AT THE GUILDHALL.
CLEARLY Lord Salisbury has not lost the mordant wit which first attracted public attention to his great powers. His definition of the Concert of Europe as a force " which preserves peace and delays solutions " would have done credit to Lord Beaconsfield or M. Thiers, and has the merit besides of being exactly true. We can- not, however, honestly say that we are content either with the tone or the matter of his speech at the Guildhall. It had in it too much of that aristocratic calm or " cheery stoicism," as Carlyle described it, which, though it is often an indication of reserved strength, as often denotes lack of imagination and of conviction. If men judged from the speech alone, the year which has elapsed since Lord Salisbury last dined in the Guildhall might have been an ordinary year instead of one which tested the very sinews of the Empire. The spe.aker seemed to think that what the occurrences of the year principally proved was the courage of Englishmen, which was never in question except with literary pessimists, instead of the wonderful endurance and resourcefulness which, at a. great expendi- ture both of the public fortune and of individual life, made up for all the failures in preparation and all the blunders committed by the War Office. Indeed, Lord Salisbury appears to doubt whether there were any blunders. He entirely ignored the facts that the strength of the enemy was utterly misjudged ; that the preparations made had to be multiplied in extreme haste just eightfold ; that the invaluable aid of the Colonies had not been anticipated, and was accepted at first with some reluctance ; and that the effort that produced success, which we fully admit was a grand one, was made after, and not before, a series of disasters, and might not even then have suc- ceeded but that the arrangements made by the War Office for leadership in the campaign were decisively overridden. We did not get Lord Roberts out of that cupboard. Indeed, the Premier not only credits the War Office with the successful despatch of a great army, which was nearly rivalled by the last effort of Spain to protect Cuba, and in any case was chiefly due to the Admiralty, but he calls the attacks on the Office " mainly fictitious," the necessary deduction from which is that the Office is not in need of much reform. Indeed, Lord Salisbury goes further, for, departing from a precedent hitherto held to be valuable, he questions the responsibility of the War Minister, and hints that it properly belongs to the soldiers, who hitherto have been declared, in Parliament at least, bound to obey that Minister's orders. Here are the words :—" You are only judging one side. By the very proper provisions of our traditional Constitution, it is not the business of Ministers to say a word in deroga- tion of those who are, with them, serving under the Queen. But of course the question is somewhat altered if those who are serving with them under the Queen, or who sympathise with that service, are disposed to cast upon their fellow-servants an undue share of the responsi- bility for what has taken place. There are things said of the politicians ; there are things said of the professionals. It is quite right that whatever is said should be carefully examined ; but you must remember that the professionals are much more at liberty to speak than the politicians ; and therefore you are doing injustice if you conclude, until the matter has been thoroughly threshed out, that the blame of anything which has been done mainly or entirely lies with them." We dare say that is quite true, and that the Horse Guards was as much to blame as the War Office for everything except this, that all legal power rested with the latter ; but Lord Salisbury should see that when the public blames the War Office it includes its executive agents, and cries out, not against this or that man specially, but against the great officials and officers whose want of imagination and failure to make improvements admitted to be necessary in good time so nearly landed us in irre- parable disaster. But for the explosion of public feeling and the new energy it infused into the Departments, trembling, if not for their heads, at least for their places, we might have lost South Africa, or rather, since that was impossible, have bad to reconquer it as if it had never been ours. Lord Salisbury passes over all that with the mere remark that too much discussion upon the causes of the confusion had better be avoided.
The speech was not much more satisfactory in its allusions either to the fresh strength to be given to the Empire or to the great muddle which exists in China. We heartily agree with Lord Salisbury that there is a new necessity for "strong defences," because we may be suddenly called upon for great efforts, as we were by Mr. Kruger and the Empress-Regent of China, and because in the present chaotic state of European opinion, which is feeling its power without quite feeling its responsibilities, the mature judgment of any Government is " liable to be superseded by the violent and vehement operations of mere ignorance " ; but we cannot agree that to frame those defences is the whole of our present task. We need also to improve the striking instrument, the Regular Army, until it is always mobile, always well filled, and always guided by professionals who really understand their duties. Lord Salisbury seems to us to avoid that part of the work of reform too carefully ; and, indeed, why should he not if he thinks success in shipping an army proof of its excellence, and is so entirely content with its supreme administrators? If we want troops abroad on a second occasion we shall, we dare say, find shipping enough ; and if the War Office is so good now, why should it not without reform be even better then ? It is almost the same in China. We have always heartily supported Lord Salisbury's policy in China, for we believe it to be our real bulwark against those maddest of enterprises, the effort to rule China or to accept a large share in her partition ; but even we can- not be content to hear the policy of the " open door " defined as a policy of " Free-trade with the Treaty ports," or to be told that the integrity of China being conceded, and Free-trade with the Treaty ports, the issue of the problem does not much matter. We may surely, now that the regular Government of China has bombarded our Ambassador, seek for definite securities in the future, and for a right of trading such as we enjoy with France or Spain, unlimited by distinctions on a map. And we may surely, also, watch with some anxiety the issue of a con- vulsion which may change the Government of a fourth of the human race from an antiquated but strictly civil system into an efficient military despotism. Neither as regards the Army, nor as regards China, do things seem sufficiently important to the Premier ; yet if they do not seem important to him, nothing will go right.
For the real danger in China and at home is that as time passes interest will die away, and things will be allowed to dzift back into their accustomed position. In China no one has any experience of a movement like the present, and it may have endings of which we do not dream, and which, therefore, as yet cannot be discussed ; but at home many among us have marked for fifty years projects of Army reform, and they have always ended in the same way. Reformers have agitated, the people have agreed, the authorities have seemed to yield, some utterly inadequate improvement has been made, and then everything has gone on much as before. The expense has always been great, the Army has always been insufficient, especially in artillery, the officers have always formed too much of a caste and too little of a profession, the guarantees for an adequate supply of munitions within these islands have always been imperfect, the War Office and the Horse Guards have always been divided by jealousies, and the political chiefs have always shrunk from the terrible labour and odium of radical reform. The latter is perhaps the worst fact of all, for unless history is a fable, it is the speciality of armies that they never can be organised or reorganised from within, but only from above, by Emperor, or General with a free band, or irresistible Minister, or—in a single instance— Committee, with powers of life and death. At present there is a real chance of reform, for not only are the people anxious for it, and willing to make sacrifices, but the political class admit the necessity of change, and the administrative class is willing to set about the irksome task. Yet unless the Premier, who stands in the place of King, urgently presses on the work, adequate reform will never be. Mr. Brodrick may improve the training of the soldiers according to the admirable plan he is said to have accepted or sketched out, but the moment he touches the higher ranks he will be subjected to a storm of criticism, professional and amateur, the silent deadly resistance of "the interests" will begin, and the House of Commons will boil over with angry debates as to the claims of classes which ought in the presence of a national need to be no more regarded than the claims of classes ruined by the imposition of a new tax or the abolition of an old monopoly. They should be pitied, passed over, and for- gotten. The reform will need more than a reforming Minister. It will require the whole energy of a strong Premier, and though we believe, from many recent incidents in the conduct of foreign affairs, that Lord Salisbury, if he will only attend, possesses the needed energy, we cannot honestly say that we find sufficient proof of it in his speech at the Guildhall.
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