THE ARMY THAT WE NEED. THE SPECTATOR. 443 But the

duty of the Committee stops at providing an efficient machine. It will be for the Government and the nation to use that machine to provide the Army that we need. This fact, and the fact that the third Report of the Committee may be expected before very long, make it necessary to revert to a subject which we treated at length a year ago. We must therefore ask our readers to pardon us if we once more return to a matter which, if tiresome to the lay reader, is yet of such supreme im- portance that it must be faced, and faced not merely by the experts, but by the nation as a whole. The only way in which it is easy for the ordinary man to realise the nature of the Army that we need is to think the matter out from the very foundations. Let him begin by supposing that we have no Army at all, and that the nation is called upon to create de novo a military force appropriate to its needs. What are the forces that must be created under such conditions ? We will set them forth in order. The nation needs :-

(1) An Army of professional soldiers to garrison and hold India and the rest of the Empire oversee. Let us call it an Imperial force for policing the Empire.

(2) A Reserve belonging to that Imperial Police, which will render it elastic and capable of expansion at a time of stress.

(3) A force of professional soldiers kept ready in this country to go beyond sea at a moment's notice to meet some sudden emergency,—an expeditionary force that is ready to per- form on a great scale the duty done on a small scale by the squad of men kept at the headquarters of every efficient police force: a body of men which the police authorities can throw into a particular district in ease of a disturbance.

(4) A force of professional soldiers to garrison permanently our great arsenals and such defensive forts and works as are to be found in the United Kingdom.

(5) A Reserve attached to tho home-stationed force, whether maintained for expeditionary or garrison work, able to expand for both purposes quickly in case of need.

(6) A Home Defence Army, consisting not of professional soldiers—i.e., men who give their whole time to soldiering— but of officers and men who pursue their ordinary civil avocations during the greater part of the year, but who are trained, and well trained, in the essentials of military service.

(7) A Reserve attached to this Home Defence Army, capable of greatly increasing its numbers at a moment of national danger.

(8) A special reservoir—consisting of all the trained men in the kingdom who have passed out of the other Reserve forces, but who are still willing and able to perform military work—out of which a large force could be raised if and when it became obvious that the resources of the nation would be strained to the full.

(9) A skeleton organisation which could be used to give an appropriate organisation to the special Reserve of trained men should it be necessary to draw upon it.

(10) Stores of extra rifles and guns and ammunition sufficient in case of a great emergency to arm the greater portion of the adult male population.

We have given in skeleton the Army that we need. How are these bones to be clothed with flesh ? The Army of professional soldiers to garrison India and the rest of the Empire, with its Reserve, is very much like the Regular Army which we possess at the present moment. The only difference is that more of it is kept at home than we require, and thus we maintain at home a body of men which is raised, or ought to be raised, on conditions appropriate to peace service in India and elsewhere, but not to service in these islands. We would therefore, in regard to that portion of the professional Army which we have termed the Imperial Police, devise the best conditions for oversea service both as to pay and terms of service, remembering always that the sole duty of this force is to be service abroad. Probably a fairly long term of service would be the most appropriate, but not so long as to prevent the formation of a large Reserve. The exact numbers required for this force we will not enter upon now, but we may note that the abolition of the linked-battalion system will make the carrying out of this part of our scheme much easier to realise. By abolishing the linked-battalion system all regiments in that portion of the professional Army which is required to police the Empire in peacetime will be available for home service, and there will be no need, as there is now, in theory at least, to keep a battalion at home to match every battalion abroad. The numbers of this portion of the Army should therefore be capable of considerable reduction. It should not contain much overa hundred and twenty thousand men under normal conditions. Next, the expeditionary force to be kept at home in peace-time must be provided for. This force, which should number, say, fifty thousand men in all, and consist of all arms, would be like what the Guards are now,—i.e., a body only sent abroad in war-time. We would, therefore, raise it as the Guards are now raised,—that is, on conditions appro- priate to such home service. Instead, however, of a three years' service as at present, we would enlist the men for only two years, a time quite sufficient in the opinion of many experts. But though we would only prescribe two years with the colours, in the case of this force we would have an additional Reserve period of seven years, which would probably keep the Reserve at over a hundred thousand men. We would, however, allow any man who entered the home professional Army, instead of remaining in the Reserve, to go at any time during his Reserve period into the Imperial professional Army,—the Army, that is, for policing the Empire. Next, we must consider the raising of the permanent home garrison professional Army the permanent professional force required for garrisoning the home forts and arsenals. This body of, say, twenty thousand men, largely composed of artillery, would be raised, like the expeditionary force, on a two years' enlistment, with seven years in the Reserve ; and here again men might quit the Reserve to join the professional oversea Army.

We must next consider how to provide the Home Defence Army of our scheme. This force is practically provided already by the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers, but not in sufficient numbers or efficiency. We would increase the pay and improve the conditions Of service in the Militia until this body numbered, with the Yeomanry, some two hundred thousand men. The training periods for the Militia and Yeomanry would be as now, while the term of service should be four years certain, and then as many years more as the man liked ; and a Reserve service of five years certain, with the right to continue in the Reserve if he chose. -Under these con- ditions the Reserve of the Militia and Yeomanry should number together nearly two hundred thousand men. Another existing force which would help to supply the Home Defence Army is the Volunteers. In constructing a Home Defence Army the Volunteers must necessarily play a great part, but it is possible that it might be better to revert to the old type of Volunteer, and to guard more than we do at present against the danger of spoiling the Volunteer by making him into an imitation Regular. We would, therefore, abolish all compulsory camps for Volun- teers, and have, indeed, as little as possible of compulsion in the system, except in the matter of practice with the rifle. In our view, a Volunteer regiment would be most useful when it approached nearest to being an organised and highly efficient uniformed rifle club, capable of making itself mobile. In a word, the Volunteers should be ri3- garded as Irregulars, not Regulars. At the same time, the Volunteers should not receive as large grants as now. In recovering their liberty to expand freely on their own lines, without being harried by the authorities into becoming imitation Line battalions, the Volunteers must expect to get less public money. We hold that the Government should provide, and provide generously, such necessaries as arms, ammunition, places to drill, manceuvre, and camp in, and also should provide skilled instruction. In other respects the Volunteer should " find " himself. The result of this might be, though we doubt it, to diminish the number of Volunteer regiments ; but if so, they would reappear as new Militia regiments. In fact, we do not see why certain country Volunteer regiments should not take Militia pay for their officers and men and become Militia, keeping, however, the name of Militia Volunteers. But though we contemplate with approval the notion of one part of the Volunteers reverting to the older and freer type, while another part would become a portion of an improved Militia, we must not be taken for a moment to favour in any way the overthrow or the weakening of the Volunteers. The abolition of the Volunteers must be resisted at all costs. The War Office wanted to abolish the Yeomanry, but fortunately they were not allowed to do so. This mistake must act as a warning if any proposal is ever placed before the country which might risk the aboli- tion of the Volunteers. For ourselves, we are strongly in favour of maintaining the Volunteers, for we believe them to have rendered great services to the nation, but we desire to see them given an organisation appropriate to corps formed as they are from men of special intelligence, and with a capacity for co-operative obedience and dis- cipline which renders the training given to the Regular by no means suitable.

Lastly, we would form a General Home Reserve, to consist of all the trained men in the kingdom not in any other force or Reserve. It could be filled by men who had left the other Reserves, by those who had acquired military training in any other way, and by the members of rifle clubs. It would, in fact, be an organised levee en masse. In order to organise and equip it in an emergency a skeleton organisation should be kept in readiness. Finally, there would be a Stores Department, which, besides providing for the needs of the ordinary organised forces and Reserves, would keep in readiness the essential equipment of a rifle, bayonet, and cartridge-pouch required if, say, five hundred thousand men had to be raised in an emergency out of the General Home Reserve. It is one of the few solid advantages of the military systems of the Continent that they do force Govern- ments to keep in reserve enough rilles to arm the whole nation in cases of emergency. We, though our people are quite as willing and as able to fight as the forced levies of the Continent, have not the arms. They have. But this is an evil in our system which can be remedied without universal military service. Let us keep as many rifles and. as much ammunition in reserve as if we had the con- scription. If we will only do that, it is certain that we shall be able to find men to use them. 'What we are afraid of is not a scarcity of willing hands in time of war, but a total absence of weapons to put into those hands.

We have dealt in outline with the Army that we need. It is unnecessary to say that we do not wish to insist upon all the details of our scheme, or on the exact numbers indi- cated. These are matters for a later date. What we do insist on is the necessity for getting the Army that we need, and not one which we do not need. We believe that the Army we have sketched in outline would be the Army that we need. It would, we hold, give us with the minimum of strain and of waste the maximum of power both in the Empire and at home.

We have only one more word to add. That refers to recruiting. We would urge on the War Office, though we fear that our urgency would be of little avail, to express to the soldier his terms of service altogether in money, and not partly in provisions, housing, and clothes. We spend over .21 is. a week on each soldier, and yet cannot get recruits because the soldier does not realise what he is getting, and will not regard money spent on him, but not by him, as his own money. If we will only offer £1 is. a week and his clothing to the soldier, which we can afford to do, and tell him, except when under canvas or abroad, to house himself and feed himself just as does a policeman, we shall, we believe, get as many recruits as ever we want. The soldier's work is not nearly as hard as that of the policeman, and it has more excitement and better chances. If, then, we make it clear, as we have never done hitherto, that we are paying policemen's wages, and not really restricting the soldier's liberty any more than the con- stable's, there is every reason to believe that we shall get soldiers as easily as we get policemen.