COUNTY GUARDS. T HE County Associations for organising the Territorial Army
are now fully constituted, and will in the course of the next few days in almost all cases begin their active work. Nothing but time can prove the merits of the scheme; but at any rate we may say that Mr. Haldane has been wonderfully successful as far as the formation of the County Associations is concerned. He has been able to enlist the best and most influential men both in town and country. Representatives of all parties, and of the most varied professions and vocations, have come forward with the greatest possible public spirit to carry out a work which is bound to prove arduous and exacting. Not only have the Lords-Lieutenant shown a commendable willing- ness to undertake new duties, but the list of the Chairmen of the Associations, on whom the bulk of the burden will fall, is one of which Mr. Haldane may indeed be proud. He has created a very remarkable new, unpaid adminis- trative instrument, which proves, among other things, that the willingness of Englishmen and Scotchmen to do voluntary work for the State has been by no means exhausted. All now depends upon whether sufficient recruits can be obtained under the new conditions,— that is, whether the cavalry, infantry, and artillery units of the Territorial Army will prove as attractive as the old Yeomanry and Volunteers.
Assuming, as we all ought to assume until the contrary is proved, that the Territorial Army will turn out a success, and that it will not be found necessary to adopt any fundamental alteration of the system, we should like to draw attention to a piece of work which, in our opinion, should be undertaken by the County Associations as soon as they have carried out their more immediate and pressing functions under the Act. We trust that the Associations throughout England and Scotland may be able to organise within their administrative areas a Terri- torial Reserve in the shape of a Home or County Guard. Though the organisation of such a body is not provided for in the Act, it is most certainly not outside the functions of the County Associations, granted that they are willing to undertake the task and. can make arrangements for the necessary expenditure. Every county and every town in England and Scotland contains men trained to arms who at the present moment have no official connexion with any military force whatever, men who are in the eyes of the State exactly like the untrained mass of the popula- tion. These men consist, in the first place, of those who have been in the Army and in the Army Reserve, but whose time in the Reserve has expired. When they leave the Regular Reserve, they disappear as completely from the ken of the War Office as if they had never served the State. Yet they are very often in the prime of life, and perfectly capable, were they properly organised, of doing excellent service in defence of their country. It was from this class that the garrison regiments were formed during the Boer War. Next, there are the men who have been trained in the Militia and Yeomanry and Volunteers, but who are not now connected with those forces. Some of them no doubt only remained long enough in the Auxiliary Forces to obtain a small amount of training. Others, however, were con- nected with those forces for a very considerable number of years, and may be said, without exaggeration, to know their military duties thoroughly well. Even the least trained are, both as regards shooting and drill and the power of co-operating with others and acting under orders, of very much greater value than raw and entirely untrained civilians. It is difficult to say exactly what is the total of these trained men, but in all probability they must number some three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand men still perfectly capable of bearing arms, and physically fit to do duty in these islands in case they were required to repel a foreign raid. That these trained men would in almost all cases be willing, if their country were in danger, to give her the benefit of their training we do not doubt for a moment. But though they would not be "backward in coming forward" in case of danger, as one of them once ex- pressed it to the present writer, their willingness would be of little use in a sudden emergency. In other words, a general appeal to an unnamed, unsorted, and incoherent mass of men would only reach a small proportion of them, and so much time would be spent in improvising an organisation that they would not be ready till the danger was over or the appeal useless through irreparable disaster.
If the trained men with whom, as we have said, England and Scotland swarm are to be of any use as a national asset, they must receive some sort of organisation in peacetime and before the danger is imminent. Our suggestion is that the new County Associations, as soon as they can find time for the work, should undertake the task of organising this fortuitous concourse of trained men into a Territorial Reserve or County Guard. As a first step in this direction, why should not each County Association establish a register of the trained men living within its area ? To begin with, the keepers of such a register would obtain from the War Office the names and addresses, wherever possible, of all men within the county who had been receiving, but had now ceased to receive, Army Reserve pay. Next, they would obtain similar information from the old Militia units—that is, from the units of the new Reserve Force—and also from the Yeomanry regiments. Lastly, they would get from the Volunteer battalions the names and addresses of the men who have left within recent years, for in a certain number of cases such records have, we believe, been kept. So much for the past. In the future the keepers of the register would see that no man passed out of the Army, Regular or Territorial, without his name and address being placed on the register of trained men. That the men would object to such a register we do not for a moment suppose, since it would impose no sort of obligation upon them. If nothing further were done than the formation of the register, we hold that a great deal would be accomplished. We should not only know the exact number of trained men in the country, but should be able, in the course of a single post, to make a direct appeal to them in case of a great national crisis,—an appeal likely to be infinitely more businesslike and effective than a general proclamation set forth on church-doors or published in the newspapers. In our opinion, however, when once the counties had formed their registers, and knew the number of trained men within their borders, they should proceed to establish a skeleton organisation under the name of County Guards.
The first thing would be to appoint, even if only on paper, a certain number of men to act as officers and non- commissioned officers of the skeleton force. The fact that the rank held by each man when he ceased to be in con- nexion with any established military body would be noted would make this comparatively easy. No doubt it might not be possible to find a full complement of officers, but at any rate a certain number of men of weight and influence in the various districts might be asked to undertake the duty of keeping in touch with the members of the County Guard. For example, in each small town or group of villages an honorary Captain of County Guards might be appointed who would know that in case of invasion it would be his business at once to get together the trained men in his district, and to form them into a company, with non-commissioned officers drawn from those who possessed experience of such work. An honorary Captain who took his duties seriously would ascertain in peacetime on whom he could put his hands to act as Subalterns and also as sergeants. The companies had probably better be double companies. Another matter which would have to be arranged beforehand would be the place of rendezvous to which the companies of County Guards would gravitate automatically on receiving their summons, and where they would obtain their rifles. In order to avoid con- fusion, some sort of simple badge might be issued to the members of the County Guard to wear as an identification-mark. Again, it might be arranged beforehand that each member should provide himself with a hat of the same pattern as a symbol of uniform, to be used until a more regular equipment could be issued. Also it would be the business of each honorary Captain to know, in case of necessity, where he could obtain transport for his men. Finally, these double companies should be grouped in battalions under an honorary Colonel, who would summon them if necessary to a central muster-place. To the men mustered under this skeleton organisation an appeal would be made, either at once to fill up and enlarge the ranks of the Territorial units, or else to form special Reserve battalions. No doubt it would not be advisable to impose any obligations in peacetime upon the County Guards, or to ask anything beyond help during actual invasion. At the same time, the honorary officers who would figure in the skeleton establishment would, of course, do their best to keep in touch with the men of their companies. For instance, they might hold an inspection once a year, at which, if it were held on a Saturday afternoon in the summer, a very large number of the men on the register might be expected to put in an appearance.
Possibly in suggesting this skeleton organisation we shall be thought by many people to have gone too far. We may point out, however, that such a scheme is not vital to our proposal, and if it were thought advisable it could, at any rate in the first place, be omitted. The essential thing is the formation of the register, and the obtaining of information as to names and addresses. The fact that we now spend a great deal of money on training men, and then in the most profligate way completely lose touch with them, is a, serious blot on our system, and involves an enormous waste of energy. At present we first lose our trained men, and then in a moment of danger and difficulty institute a wild search for them under the most unfavourable condi- tions, though a little forethought would have avoided this inconvenience. Our readers may remember that at the close of the Boer War we urged very strongly upon the Government then in office the wisdom of creating a register of the men who had fought in South Africa in various forces. We have every reason to believe that the men would have been perfectly willing to have their names entered on such a register. Nothing, however, was done, and the War Office let a very large body of men who had received a, war training, and were in every sense competent soldiers, disappear from its range of vision. If, as soon as they have got into the saddle, the County Associations can give us a register of all the trained men in Britain, they win, in our opinion, have accomplished a very great work, and. will have added to the military assets of the nation an item of no small importance.
Previous page
