The Duke of Bedford followed Lord Roberts and asked questions
as to the total reduction of the Regular Army. since 1905. Lord Haldane, in a general reply, referred to the remarks which had been made by Lord Dunmore and others as to the position of the military correspondent of the Times. The Times corresponant bad defended the Service rile, and it was suggested that his opinion was biased because be was. in receipt of £500 a year as editor of the Army Review. We are bound to say that this criticism is somewhat petty. It is absurd to suggest that the Times correspondent could be influenced in this way, or that Lord Haldane appointed him to a post of profit in the War Office in order to stop his mouth. Grant that the War Office were going to set up an Army Review—which on the whole we think was distinctly a good step—it was one of the most natural things in the world to appoint so able and well-informed a military critic as the military correspondent of the Times. The editing of a technical magazine is in no sense a job which can be efficiently done by an amateur, and it is not easy to find a soldier with a journalist's training and experi- ence. Such a combination, however, was to be found in the military correspondent of the Times. After Lord Midleton had properly deprecated these reiterated attacks on the fighting forces of the Crown, though censuring the Secre- tary for War for having plied the country with sedatives in the course of his defence of the Territorial Force, Lord Crewe wound up the debate on behalf of the Government.
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