THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL TRAINING.
NOTHING is more observable in this dreary debate on the Army than the readiness with which the House turns from the points of national interest to those which at bottom only concern "society." For one sentence uttered on organi- zation, in the true sense, or on the scheme for linking together our three reservoirs of men, or even on the efficiency of the Militia, we have three upon Purchase, promotion, and the interests of the officers. Upon the greatest subject of all, the possibility of making military training compulsory upon all, scarcely anyone, except the Member for Nottingham, has opened his mouth, though the point is directly raised by the clauses enabling Mr. Cardwell in time of emergency to demand military service from all men under thirty-five. It may be that the point is reserved for Committee, or for separate dis- cussion, but it is much more probable that the majority of members are consciously avoiding it, some because they are hopeless of success, more because they dislike the notion, most because theyare doubtful of the sentiments of their constituents. That last is the very reason why the question should have been placed in the forefront of the main debate, should have been brought sufficiently home to the people to induce them to express their feelings about it. Nobody yet knows what those feelings are. People assume, and we dare say with good reason, that En- glishmen "would not bear a conscription," but what has that to do with the matter ? Nobody is asking them to bear one. The question is not that, but this,—are the people of the United Kingdom averse to a law ordaining that every healthy lad shall at eighteen undergo six or twelve months' training to arms in a county camp ? If they are averse, and remain so after the proposal has been carefully explained, there is no more to be said until the next great danger comes ; but if they are not, and we firmly believe they are not, the members are losing the greatest opportunity of civilizing the people of this country ever offered to their hands.
We firmly believe that military training for a single year, or even for half-a-year, would elevate the British people more than any other change which could by possibility be intro- duced by legislation, would be equivalent in all good effects to five years of ordinary education. It would, to begin with, immensely increase their physical power. Twelve months of regular and full diet, perfect sobriety, and moderate work in the open air would increase the weight of ordinary town lads by one-third and of country lads by one-fifth, would widen their chests, strengthen their muscles, and induce that habit of health which town men find it so difficult to gain and villagers to lose. During that period they would learn to walk, to carry themselves, to obey orders and give orders promptly and quietly, to act in concert, and above all, to rely upon the action of their fellows. Cleanliness, self-respect, and self-restraint would become habits with the very lowest, and the first principles of civilization, order, mutual respect, and the possibility of self-sacrifice would be carried to the bottom of our society, to those classes whom all our efforts have hitherto failed to reach. All classes serving alike, the respect of all for each other must deepen, and as we find in the Volunteers, good feeling take the place of the suspicious dislike which arises only from ignorance. Every camp would be a school for the practical virtues, and there is no reason what- ever why it should not also be a school for education in the ordinary sense. We should have got hold of the people at last, and might as reasonably insist on attendance at the evening classes as at the morning drill. If the system were wisely worked, as it would be, for the father of every lad instructed would be an elector, the lads, so far from losing any thing, either in time or money, would go away far stronger, healthier, and abler, as much better fitted for the battle of life as an educated man is better fitted than a boor, yet without the effeminacy of habit which some men fear as a result of uni- versal education. A man does not cart muck the worse because he has been drilled to walk instead of slouching, because he is a man instead of a lout, nor will he work less effectively at a trench because he understands how easily men can under cer- tain rules be made to work together. The moral gain would be something indescribable. The is no reason whatever why such a camp should not be a well-ordered home, in which drunk- enness, or unchastity, or insubordination would be as infamous as theft or cruelty now are. Tone can be spread in a camp as in a great school, and the wiser part of English philanthropy would concentrate itself on the county camps as its natural field.
The gain to the individual would be inestimable, nor would
the gain to the State be less. The manhood of the kingdom would not, as in Prussia or France, be wasted in military ser- vice, but every man would be competent to defend the country, would understand what soldiership meant, would be in a position to decide whether the professional life would suit him. He would have lived the life himself under its best conditions, and the result would be, we feel certain, such a supply of "recruits" that the whole of our barbarous system might be swept away ; the men enlisted as officers are enlisted for as long as they are willing to serve, and dismissal made, as in every other trade, a sufficient penalty for any offence not requiring the intervention of a magistrate. Even as matters stand, the difficulty of getting men is one chiefly of our own creating. Eight shillings a week and "all found," would give us the control of the whole un- skilled labour of the kingdom, and cost us less even then than we waste in the departments, would be, in fact, only £2,500,000 a year in wages for every 100,000 men and non- commissioned officers, a sum quite within our means. Imagine terms like those offered among a people who already know ali the disagreeable part of a soldier's training, who would need nothing but practice to be solid soldiers! England would be as safe as Prussia and as powerful without a vast standing army, and without any new temptation to go to war. The military chiefs talk very wisely of the necessity for an elastic system ; but what elasticity could be equal to that of an army, say of 100,000 men, which could be doubled in a week by the introduction of men individually as well trained as they need to be, twice as well trained, for example, as two- thirds of the men who followed Wellington at Waterloo, and which, in the event of invasion, could rely on successive draughts from the whole population ? We must not forget that if temporary and therefore cheap service in the Army were possible, service for the work in hand, the expenditure on Militia and Volunteers would be superfluous, would be a waste of force in keeping up unnecessary cadres. A single force, if we could have it, with the necessary condition of elasticity, would be infinitely simpler and more efficient.
But the cost of all this ? Ought not, if the six months' term is selected, to be greater than the Estimates voted this. year. We cannot enter into the details, but even in England,. with our extravagant ways, the cost of an army fully equipped and ready for service ought not to exceed £120 a year per man, or six times the amount of wages given to the men them- selves. Nothing but mismanagement can bring it above that figure, and that allows £12,000,000 for the Regular Army. The county training schools, on the other hand, needing neither separate departments nor separate scientific services, ought not, on the very highest calculation, one even extravagantly high, to cost more than £20 a head for six months' drill. That is to say, able administrators intent on thrift, if backed by the people and supported by an etiquette or a law post- poning marriage to the mature age of nineteen, would give us a system of defence that would place England beyond menace from the world, that would make us once more a great power, and that would civilize instead of demoralizing the people, for the very money we are now expending in order to accomplish so little.
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