TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE NEED FOR LORD KITCHENER'S SECOND ARMY.
WE most sincerely trust that because some seventy thousand men have already been secured for Lord Kitchener's Second Army, and the newspapers publish exhilarating paragraphs about ten thousand men enlisting in a week-end, people will not jump to the conclusion that all that is necessary has been done or practically done, and that we need not bother ourselves much more in the matter. That would be a fatal error. We must bother ourselves, and bother ourselves very severely, till we have got not merely the first hundred thousand men asked for by Lord Kitchener, but the whole half-million.
Nothing short of that will do. What is more, we must get the number quickly, because recruits, however good, do not make an Army, but take six months, or at the very least four mouths, to turn into anything which can be called trained men. Further, to make efficient regiments and brigades out of the new raw material will take at least another couple of months. We may reckon, then, that the half-million young men of the new Army will not really be ready for work till February or March, even if we recruit at lightning speed. No doubt we shall be asked why it is necessary to raise such a lot more men. We have got the Territorials and a large number of Regulars still in the country. Surely these and the hundred thousand men whom we shall soon get from the oversee. Dominions and from India will be quite sufficient for all pur- poses of land warfare. If they are amateur strategists, our critics will go on to say that we " have done our bit " with the Fleet and the Expeditionary Force, and that our gallant allies will recognize the incomparable services achieved by our command of the sea, and by the two hundred thousand men at work in the Fleet, and will not expect us to do much on the military side. " That part of the business is their job—what they specialize in. Ours is the sea." We propose to show how foolish is this view, and how absolutely necessary it is that we should at once make ourselves strong on land as well as on sea.
In the first place, the Expeditionary Force will require constant feeding, and unless we are able to supply fresh drafts will either dwindle away to nothing or else deplete the existing force in these islands far below the safety point. No one quite knows of what the Expeditionary Force consists, but if it comprises one hundred and fifty thousand men, as we presume it does, or soon will do, it may have before long a wastage of fifteen per cent. from wounds, disease, and other causes. We may be quite certain that our troops will, as they have always done in the past, demand to be put in the hottest corners, and will somehow contrive to accom- plish this, and that the hot corners will mean great losses. Therefore, merely to keep up our Expeditionary Force to its present strength we must be prepared to send another twenty-five thousand men in the course of the next two months, or, say, fifteen thousand men a month after the end of the first month. Beyond this automatic wastage there will be sure to be special demands for extra help which it will be very difficult for our military authorities to refuse.
That is one reason why we must keep hard at the recruit- ing. There is another reason. Till the German Fleet has been destroyed we have always to reckon with the possibility of a raid. We need have little fear of a raid being successful. We see from what has been happening in the case of the Expeditionary Force what a long and toilsome job it is to put a hundred thousand men or so on board ship, take them across even the narrowest piece of sea, and land them and concentrate them for action. We may be certain, therefore, that even if the Germans try a desperate gamble we shall be able to defeat them. Still, once landed, raiders cannot be defeated without troops, and there- fore we must keep troops here for the purpose. To deplete the country of soldiers just now would, indeed, be to tempt the Germans to try a raid. A purely scientific soldier or sailor might, perhaps, say that it would be a good thing to send away troops from here in order to tempt out the German Fleet and German transports, but most people would, we fancy, hardly regard this as sound business. - But though these are good and important reasons, the dominant, the essential reason is that, unless we have a half-million men under arms ready to leave this country and fight on the Continent, we may be unable to end the war, and so be involved in the terrible consequences to our civil population which must come from the drain of prolonged hostilities. No one realizes more fully than we do the tremendous reach of sea-power, nor, again, how absolutely essential the command of the sea is to the preservation of our national independence. But though the Navy can secure this, and can alone guard us perfectly from invasion, it cannot by itself end a war. To end a. war, as we found in the Napoleonic period, you must be able to send troops to fight the enemy ashore. Think how the Napoleonic War lingered on, till we hardened our hearts and sent our troops to the Peninsula. Again, think what would have happened if we had been unable to send our Expeditionary Force to Waterloo just ninety-nine years ago. Perhaps it will be said that we need not trouble about that now, because our allies will provide all the troops that are necessary. The answer to this is, in the first place, that it is quite possible our allies will not be able to accomplish this. The military power of Germany and Austria com- bined is so great and so well organized that it is quite possible that a condition of balance may be reached, and that it will be imperative for us to end the war by weighting the balance on the right side. We are thankful for the mercies that have met us in the beginning of the struggle, but no one but a fool will count too much upon them or imagine that they are more than lucky preliminaries. The real fight is yet to come, and may quite conceivably be postponed for many weeks. We do not doubt the gallantry of the Freneh and the Russians, but fate may prove to be against them, and the luck may turn for a time. In that case, we shall need every soldier we have got to go to their assistance.
Even if we assume that the allies will do as well on land as we believe they will, we shall want to have our full say in deciding on the terms of peace when the time for peace has come, and in the remodelling of the world. But if we have played little or no part in the military zone, how can we expect our allies to respect our claim to a commanding voice ? We are sure of their loyalty and good sense, but, after all, those who have borne the burden and heat of the day, as they will think—as land Powers they will never quite realize what we have done by sea—will consider that they have the predominant right to say when and how peace shall come. Let us put an imaginary case by way of illustration. Suppose France and Russia were to some extent exhausted and wanted to make a peace which we thought could not be lasting, and therefore ought not to be made, or that they suggested terms which might sacrifice the interests of some smaller States which we felt specially obliged to protect. In that case our allies might very naturally say : " Well, if you want to risk the further continuance of the war by insisting on your special terms, you must be prepared to send another large contingent to the Continent, for, honestly, we are not in a position to do the work. If it is to be done, it must fall on you." In that event, if we had not got the men to send, it is quite obvious that we should not be able to insist on our view as to the general terms. Not only to make sure of success, but also to make sure that our view of the settle- ment shall be properly represented, we must organize a. large extra military force. To make all the sacrifices we have made and are making, and then to have them heavily discounted or even rendered void because we have not the pluck or energy to make ourselves an Army, offers an appalling prospect. That being so, it will be the duty of the wiser part of the nation not merely to do whatever the soldiers may ask or the Government may ask, but to insist on their own responsibility and initiative that we shall have enough men to leave us in a position to make a permanent peace. War is too terrible a thing, as we are now finding out, to be engaged in lightly. Peace when it comes must be a per- manent peace, and not one which will leave seeds for future wars which will spring up very quickly. Let it not be supposed from this that we desire for a moment to counsel, if we are successful, the imposition of harsh or unreason- able terms, or that we want to take plunder for ourselves. That .is not in the least our idea. What we want is to be in a position to refuse to acquiesce in a patched-up peace, or, again, not to put ourselves in a position to be tempted by pressure from our allies to end the war before it ought to be ended merely because we have absolutely run out of soldiers. Our national safety in. the highest sense makes it, then, imperative that we should have at least half a million men in training. Remember that to obtain the five hundred thousand men, though it can be done, is by no means an easy task. To get the first seventy thousand has been easy. To get one hundred thousand will be comparatively easy, though not quite so easy. As, however, each succeeding wave of men is asked for we shall find the task harder and harder. Therefore we would beg and pray of our readers, who, though for the most part above the military. age (nineteen to thirty), are almost all of them in a position to influence men of military age, to turn themselves into recruiting sergeants for the time and to do everything to induce young men to join the colours. Above all, we would urge the wealthy and professional and educated classes not to imagine that the ranks are too good for them and their sons, and for the young men they can influence. They must sternly discourage the notion that, if a young man of position applies for a com- mission and cannot get it, he has done all his country requires of him. On the contrary, he will have done nothing of the kind. If he has special qualifications, by all means let him ask for a commission, for no doubt he will be doing his best there. If, however, he has no special qualifications, let him go straight off and enlist for the period of the war like the humblest of recruits.
Here we should like to say a word to the friends and relatives—fond parents and young wives. Let none of them suppose that those dear to them are placed in a position of greater safety either from wounds or from disease by becoming officers. On the contrary, they are in greater danger. By the nature of things, young officers and company leaders must expose themselves to greater hazards than their men. They must set an example, they must be first in every arduous enterprise. What is more, they are distinctly more hard worked and not in the least better fed in essentials than the privates. The strain on the marching officer is very great. When men reach a bivouac most of them can soon lie down and rest, while the officer has his reports to make and a great deal of work to do in looking after his command and making his dispositions for their comfort and their safety at night. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the men wear out more quickly than their leaders. Possibly in our old campaigns the health of the officers suffered somewhat less ; but that was not due to less exposure to hardships, but to the fact that the officers belonged to a class which was habitually more careful and intelligent about the management of health and better instructed therein. The "Tommy" who understands the rules of health has just as good a chance of keeping fit as the officer.
We are fully aware that these considerations, though they may affect their relatives, will not appeal very much to the young men themselves. We would much rather appeal to them, because we know it would be much more success- ful, solely on the grounds of patriotism. By joining the ranks instead of hanging about for the chance of a commis- sion they are doing the best thing for their country. In a quickly raised force it is most important to have in the ranks as large a number as possible of men of birth, education, and position, for they will automatically help to maintain discipline, and to make the young soldier realize how necessary are the rules and regulations which be may at first sight be inclined to resent. The public-school boy knows what discipline is, and be will be able to set an example in such matters to his comrades which may be of incalculable advantage. Again, if great hardships come, hardships which the young soldier may fancy are some- how or other unfair to him, the gentleman ranker will be able to set a good example, and prove an influence against " grousing," and the spreading of those unjustifiable rumours as to the treatment of the men by their officers which often, quite fallaciously, take hold of the young soldier. Further, the educated men will be able to act as instructors to their fellows.
In this context the present writer may recall how, at the beginning of the week, he saw at a depot in Surrey the day's batch of seventy recruits being sworn in, and noticed what a very large percentage there appeared to be of men of education. As one of the officers remarked to him: " This lot will be very quick to train. There is a very large proportion of intelligent young fellows. They will learn twice as quickly as the ordinary recruit of former days." We are convinced that the officer was right. The quickness of training, which we must all desire, will be greatly increased if the young men of light and leading remember that no man is too good to serve his country in the ranks.
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