[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Your able advocacy of Colonel Pollock's test scheme of six months' military training, as outlined in the Spectator of the 7th inst., bids fair to make it a success. Whatever its results, it should rouse the sleeping or despairing interest of the nation in its Army, which political considerations and the comforts of "blue water" continue to depress. Conscription is a "foul word." Semi-efficients are disparaged, and about one hundred thousand highly trained men seem to be our only aim and hope for wars beyond the sea. Where are the Reserves for this striking force ? Universal training must provide them. A floating population of half-a-million young men, with their military instincts stirred by even six months of good drill, should assuredly be ready to answer the call for volunteer recruits. The Duke of Norfolk's Commission made a very strong Report on this vital question, but it fell unheeded on the country, already exhausted and dismayed by the preceding Report on the South African War. Rifle clubs and Cadet corps are admirable institutions, but not sufficiently national and abiding to inspire the sense of duty and of obli- gation, which is, after all, the soul of an army. In 1903, on reading the Report of the War Commission I wrote some remarks, which I beg your permission to quote:—
The latest appointed [Defence] Committee, guided by the latest published Blue-book (of 2,015 pages), may at last discover the missing secret of Army Administration, but we shall still be without a sound basis for the Army we require, until the law makes the drill-sergeant the inevitable successor of the school- master in the education and training of our young men and boys, according to given conditions of age and physical promise."
"Good average shots are more than ever necessary, and every young man fit to carry a rifle in the service of his country should be certified and enrolled as such. A renewal of this certificate every year, at the headquarters of the nearest Militia or Volunteer regiment, after ten days' drill and rifle practice, free of expense, and with a small bounty at the end of it, would go far towards the creation of a Reserve of half-trained recruits, limited only by rejections, to fill up the ranks of our infantry, whenever the war- drum sounds again."
"If the gallant Generals, whose reputations, and experience of the latest rifles, give such weight to their words, are supposed to imply a preference for small armies of experts (and immortals) in our wars of the future, the growing feeling in favour of some scheme of national training may cool, which they will surely regret."
I am not personally acquainted with Colonel Pollock, but his name is to me a sufficient guarantee of his success, and I enclose a cheque for £100 in aid of his patriotic experiment.
—I am, Sir, &c., C. H. BROWNLOW.
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