HOW TO USE OUR HOME GUARD VOLUNTEERS.
THE progress made by the Volunteer Training Corps,
or, as we have described them, the Homo Guards, is most satisfactory. Not only have the actual numbers of men joining the corps affiliated to the Central Association increased very greatly in the last few months, but, what is still better, the training and equipment are everywhere being placed on a satisfactory basis. Best of all, the various scattered companies are being rapidly organized into battalions and regiments in what are in effect county brigades, presided over by efficient Commandants. These County Commandants are always old soldiers, and often General Officers who have seen a great deal of service, and, except on the ground of age, are what our Elizabethan ancestors would have called " soldiers of the beste sorts." While the Volunteers, both mon and officers, have improved themselves out of all recognition, the military authorities, never hostile to the movement, but • not unnaturally inclined at the beginning to be a little anxious, if not sceptical, are altering their standpoint altogether in regard to the Volunteers. They see now that the Volunteer Training Corps are not, as they feared might be the case, mobs of over-zealous men, too full of patriotic enthusiasm to engage in the humbler works of war, and wanting to charge rather than to dig. Instead they find men not only thoroughly well disciplined in intention and desire, but if anything too humble as to their military uses—men who are perfectly aware that you cannot make a first-class soldier by two or three months' train- ing in odds and ends of spare time, and that a great deal of water must flow under the bridges before the Volunteer will be fit, we will not say for the firing line, but for the third line of trenches, or even for the com- munication trench.
The result of this mutual understanding is that in many cases a desire has sprung up on the part of the military authorities to make immediate use of the Volun- teer, and an equally strong desire on the part of the Volunteer to be used. But here has arisen a difficulty which has not yet been surmounted, though it is one which we do not doubt will be got over before long. The actual military officers who would have to make use of members of the Volunteer Training Corps for what we may term Home Guard purposes—for guarding vulnerable points, helping to keep watch over prisoners in internment camps, and assisting to put out fires and otherwise give help in case of Zeppelin raids—know that such work is of a very anxious and responsible kind, and calls for the greatest possible amount of vigilance on the part of those who undertake it. For this reason the military officers are exceedingly shy of employing any persons who are not under strict discipline ; that is, people on whom they can if necessary enforce discipline and implicit obedience. This attitude of mind is per se neither unnatural nor unreasonable. You cannot expect officers engaged on arduous duties, which if improperly performed will bring upon them the most terrible penalties of disgrace and professional ruin, to seek the co-operation of a body of men who are not obliged to obey the lawful orders communicated to them. The officers do not in the least want smooth lip-service, or neat and exact soldierly etiquette in, say, such matters as salutes, but what they feel they must have is the power to enforce obedience. But this, they hold, they have only got in the case of men who are either attested as soldiers, or who have taken some form of oath or strict obligation which renders them liable to severe penalties if, either by commission or omission, they fail in their military duties. Officers must be able to feel certain that if a section of Volunteers are detailed for a particular piece of work these men will appear without fail at the hour named and take up that work, and that they will not hear later that "five men of the section were very sorry, but after all they could not manage to attend, and wrote postcards to say they could not, which ought to have been delivered at least three hours before they had to go on duty." Again, military officers must have no doubts when they give an order as to whether the man who receives it will begin to dispute, if not openly, at any rate in his mind, the right of the officer to give it, and whether it fits exactly into the list of duties which the Volunteer undertook to perform:
No doubt it will be said, and truly said, that the men of the Volunteer Training Corps are perfectly well aware that if they undertake military duties they must undertake them in the true military spirit and not in the spirit of a sea-lawyer. We will go further and say that we are per- fectly sure that, instead of Volunteers wishing to escape the strictness of military duty, they would glory and delight in the discharge of such duties being rigidly exacted from them. They would give absolute obedience to orders with pleasure as esign that they were engaged in the real thing and not make-believe. But though we may be sure that this is the spirit which animates the Volunteers so strongly that it might be relied upon, just as the word of a business man without a contract often holds better than a legal bond, we are not in the least surprised that military officers cannot be persuaded to take this view. Rightly or wrongly, the fear that the man to whom they give an order may say that he will not play, that he did not come out for this sort of thing, and that there is no force behind him to make him play, haunts them like a nightmare, and literally paralyses them. They imagine themselves not giving orders of importance per se for fear that the men, even if they did not disobey, would give a grudging or criticizing instead of a willing and co-operative assent. But say the men of the Training Corps : " We quite understand the position, and we are perfectly willing at the times when we volunteer for military duties to place ourselves as much under strict military obedience as any Regular soldier. Let the man who undertakes a week or forty-eight hours' guard, or whatever it may be, have administered to him the strongest and most binding of oaths, and let him be court-martialled and shot if he disobeys, just as would a Regular soldier. The undertairmg of such obligation would be no hindrance to us, but a source of intense satisfaction. It would enable us not only to feel ourselves, but to show the rest of the world, that we are not playing at soldiers but mean business."
When one has reached this point, and we have reached it—i.e., the point where the soldiers ask for a certain thing and the Volunteers are eager and ready to give it—one would think that there would be no more difficulties. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case. There is a technical objection which for the moment seems to raise an insuperable barrier against the military authorities getting what, in many cases, they so eagerly desire, and against the Volunteers rendering the aid which they are equally anxious to render. Clause 6 of the War Office letter of November 19th, 1914, to Lord Desborough, the letter which regularized the position of the Volunteer Training Corps and contains the War Office recognition of all those affiliated to the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps, and is also the charter of the Volunteers, makes the following stipulation : " No form of attes- tation involving an oath is permitted." In other words, the Volunteers, however willing, are not allowed to give, either temporarily or permanently, the kind of obliga- tion without which the military officers under whose command they would pass declare, and, as we have shown, very reasonably declare, that they cannot employ them. In other words, the War Office have raised an obstacle against themselves.
But though this is the case, it would be very unfair to begin at once to abuse the War Office, and jump to the conclusion that they acted stupidly or were inspired by any sense of hostility towards the Volunteers. Clause 6 is not in itself an unreasonable one, and it is quite easy to see why it was put in. In November, though the War Office were willing, nay, anxious, to try the experiment of allowing the formation of Volunteer Training Corps, they were not unnaturally afraid of becoming involved in a move- ment which might lead to a great deal of expenditure, and which might demand an amount of time, labour, and atten- tion which they could not give. They therefore felt that the only thing to do was to devolve everything connected with the Volunteer experiment into the hands of certain soldiers and civilians whom they could trust—Lord Desborough, Sir O'Moore Creagh, and the Executive of the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps—and leave them to work out the details. But they naturally could not entrust to a body of that kind the power of administering oaths to its members, and thus forming a sort of military imperial,' in imperio. Further, if a form of military attestation were used and an oath taken, the War Office might find them- selves involved in all sorts of claims in regard to accidents occurring when men were under military duty, and also claims for separation allowances and claims in the case of injury and death. They therefore sought to free them- selves from all these liabilities by refusing to allow any form of attestation which involved an oath. Finally, and this perhaps was the supreme reason. the sanctioning of attestation involving an oath would in all probability have required an Act of Parliament, and the War Office very naturally found themselves too busy to contemplate legis- lation which might be the cause of much controversy.
The practical question which remains over is : How is the obstacle presented by Clause 6 to be got over ? Can it be abrogated ? There are various ways, it seems to us, in which the thing could be done without seeking Parlia- mentary powers. In the first place, we do not see why man who has undertaken to do, say, patrol work at night for a certain number of evenings, or to go away for a week at a time, should not be sworn as a temporary special constable, or, rather, as a special constable for the term of the service upon which he enters. He could then be detailed by his superior officer in the special constables to obey during his term of service whatever orders were given to him by the military officers to whose command he would be attached. The obligations imposed by the oath of a special constable are well understood and can be enforced. Already the rules adopted by practically all Volunteer Training Corps make provision for the inclusion of special constables in the ranks. For example, in the suggested scheme for county Volunteer regiments issued by the Central Association it is laid down that in the case of Volunteers who are special constables their duty as special constables takes precedence over their duty as Volunteers. That being the case, the Volunteer sworn as a special constable for a week, or whatever his period of service might be, would never be able to plead that he was only a Volunteer, and therefore could not be compelled to do this or that. When any point of discipline arose, his oath as a special constable would bind him. If, however, there should arise technical objections which we have not realized, then it seems to us that it might be quite possible to revive the oath which was taken by Volunteers a century ago, an oath quite sufficient to secure all the military discipline required. This is a proposal which we may note is foreshadowed in the " Volunteer Notes" in Wednesday's Daily Graphic. The writer in the Daily Graphic, indeed, goes so far as to say that the revival of the old Volunteer Act for this purpose is anticipated.
For ourselves, we cannot help believing that the King— that is, the Executive Government—has at this moment the power to invoke the Royal prerogative and to compel any man, under the penalties of felony, to assist in repelling the King's enemies. Owing to the Zeppelin raids and the people killed thereby, the country has technically been invaded, and is being invaded, by the King's enemies. Technically, also, men guarding vulnerable points, standing by to put out fires, and guarding prisoners are all doing part of the work of repelling the King's enemies and driving out the invader—work which every one of us can be compelled to do 'under the common law, and a refusal to do which renders us liable to the pains and penalties enforced on felons. But though those who exercise the ancient Royal prerogative in this respect might exercise their authority over every one of us, they can also if they like pick and choose certain persons over whom to exercise it. If that is so, why should they not pick and choose persons who, as members of the Volunteer Training Corps, have come forward and voluntarily undertaken to place themselves at the disposal of the military authorities for the purpose of resisting the invaders of the realm ? The men might take the ordinary oath of allegiance, coupled with a proviso that they understand that they would be guilty of felony if they did not obey tho orders of the King's officers set over them.
We need not, however, go more into detail—a course which would probably expose us to the charge of pedantry. Though a short Act of Parliament would, in our opinion, be the easiest way of settling the difficulty, we believe that the present Home Secretary and the law officers of tho Crown would find no difficulty in devising a new form of oath which could be administered to Volunteers, and which would give us all that is required, by placing the men who have volunteered for a week's or so many days' service under strict military discipline. No doubt without legislation the persons so attested would not have any claim for pay or for separation allowances or so forth, but we do not understand that the Volunteers ask for any such indulgences. They know very well that if any of them lost their lives or received dangerous injuries in the case of a Zeppelin raid or an outbreak of prisoners, they would, if their circumstances demanded it, receive liberal treatment from the public or the Government. It would still remain for the Government to abrogate or modify Clause 6, but there would be no difficulty about this. The Secretary of the War Office would only have to write a second letter to Lord Desborough, saying that the Army Council desired Clause 6 in the letter of November 19th, 1914, to bo considered as abrogated, and the following clause placed in its stead " The attestation oath drawn up by the Home Office on the advice of the law officers of the Crown may be taken by members of the Volunteer Training Corps for either temporary or permanent service."
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