THE MILITIA AND THE " SPECTATOR " EXPERIMENT.
ASour readers know, we have always held the Militia to be an absolutely essential part of our military system. Therefore we have considered the improve- ment and development of the Militia one of the most important objects to which the Secretary of State for -War could direct his attention. Until we have a Militia Force numerous and efficient we shall never have the Army that we need. Such a developed and improved Militia as we desire will occupy the middle or cardinal point in our system. • On one side will be the professional Army or Imperial Police Force, and on the other the Volunteers, who, though trained and organised as units in view of the possibilities, though unlikely possibilities, of invasion, and capable of acting as a home guard, will find their most important, or, rather, most practical, function in constituting a national school of arms, and providing a reservoir from which men may be drawn in times of. emergency, as they were drawn during the , South African War. In view of the vital importance which we attach to the subject, and of the debate which took place in the House of Lords on Monday, we shall, then, make no apology for returning to the question of the Militia. The debate in the Lords showed that the essential difficulty in regard to the force is 'the difficulty of recruiting. All the troubles from which the Militia now suffers would disappear if only the battalions could be maintained in full numbers, and a better stamp of man be induced 'to enter its ranks. The problem is to find conditions of service which, while, to adopt Mr. Haldane's phrase, making the Militiaman more of a Regular than a Volunteer, will at the same time not handicap him in civil employment. If such conditions can be devised, we have little doubt as to the possibility of making the Militia Force as popular as it is .now apparently unpopular. That unpopularity we do not hold in any sense to be due to dislike of military training among young Englishmen. On the contrary, we believe military training and the work of the soldier to be per se distinctly popular. What makes the Militia unpopular is the fact that under present conditions a man who joins the Militia condemns himself to fill nothing but unpermanent, badly paid, and disconsidered posts in civil life. The young men of the working classes, take them as a, whole, think quite as much of their careers in after life as do the young men of the middle and upper classes. Before they join a force such as the Militia as now constituted, they consider what will be the effect on their future lives. At present such consideration can only produce one answer : " If I indulge my taste for a bit of soldiering by joining the Militia, I can never hope after leaving the force to get a decent job, but must drift about as a casual labourer." Is it to be wondered at that in these circumstances the more enter- prising, thrifty, and respectable lads of the working classes avoid Militia service ?
What, then, we have got to consider is in what way can the conditions of Militia service be altered so as 'to make that service possible for the young man who looks ahead, and who, granted that he will not be handicapped in civil life, would like to do his share of soldiering. In our belief, the conditions which form the basis of the Spectator Experiment in Militia Training promise to prove conditions which will make it possible for young men of good quality to join tht Militia in numbers sufficient to make that force a thoroughly efficient and useful part of our military system. The Spectator Experiment has only just begun, and it would therefore be most unwise to speak of it as if it were already a success, or as if what it sets out to prove had been proved. Let us assume, however, fo'r a moment that Colonel Pollock will be able to convince the experi- enced inspectors of the War Office that he has produced a company of thoroughly competent soldiers after six months' training, and, further, will be able to convince them that these men are so well grounded in soldiership that during the rest of their term of service they can maintain their efficiency under Volunteer conditions,—that is, with a. certain small amount of drill and rifle practice in their spare hours, and a week each year in camp. In that case we shall be able to offer conditions of service which will; we hold, solve the problem of Militia recruiting. The lad' of eighteen before he settles down to civilian work will realise that his six months' training, since it will improve his physique and sharpen his intelligence, will be a help, and not a hindrance, to procuring civil employ-- milt. He will know also, we believe, that the obligation of a week in camp each year will not be considered by employers as a fatal objection. Granted, indeed, that good characters are insisted upon by the, recruiting- authorities, we do not see why the fact that a lad of eighteen and a half or nineteen belongs -to the should not come to be regarded by the employer as a proof of physical and moral efficiency, and make him say, in effect :—" I like to take a Militiaman because I know that he is not a lout, but alert and active, and capable of understanding and executing an order when it is given.
to him." • • The experiment • in Militia training which, as Lord Portsmouth announced in his speech in the House of Lords, is to be tried in the case of twenty battalions is in intention and in the principle behind it absolutely• different from, nay, contradictory to, that of the Spectator Experiment. The object - of -the War Office scheme is to accept, or rather . to develop, the present system of recruiting, and merely to endeavour by a longer training to improve the efficiency of existing battalions. Twenty battalions are to have six months' preliminary training, and in future six weeks' training a year. instead of twenty-eight days. We do not doubt that under the War Office experiment -very much better Militia battalions will be produced .than are produced . at _ present. We will go further, indeed, and say that in all probability the twenty experimental battalions will be turned into extremely good infantry regiments.. If, however, the system of six months' preliminary and six weeks' annual training is applied. generally to the Militia, not only will no solution have been found of the recruiting problem, but a further obstacle will have been placed, in the way of getting men for the Militia. The men who find a month's annual training a serious i hidrance to civil employment will discover, as is pointed out in a letter in our present issue, that an increase of the annual obligation by fifty per cent. has seriously augmented the difficulty. In a word, the War Office scheme, instead of making the recruiting problem easier, will make it far more difficult, and, save in certain cases of exceptional employment, will go far to achieve that total abolition of the Militia which Mr., Arnold.-Forster. advocated. The Spectator scheme aims at training men so thoroughly at the beginning of their Militia service that they may after- wards keep °their places in civil life. The War Office scheme may train them thoroughly to begin with, but it then imposes an obligation which no civilian but the casual labourer will be able to endure.
Readers of the Spectator and subscribers to the Spectator Fund will be interested to hear that Colonel Pollock began his training last week under the happiest of auspices. It is possible, no doubt, that difficulties which are now unforeseen may arise in the future, but at any rate the start has been most prosperous. An inspection of the work goina on at Hounslow made by a member of our staff on °Monday showed that the training of the men was already in full swing, and that an amount of progress had been achieved in little more than two days which was positively astonishing. The Spectator Experimental Company is now complete as regards numbers, and the men show the greatest possible keenness and interest in their work. Though great care was taken by Colonel Pollock, as he explains in the very interesting report by him which we publish in another column, not to pick men of exceptional physique or exceptional intelligence, and though he rigidly excluded any man who had been a Volunteer or who had served in. any ,of the forces of the Crown, and so had had a previous , military training, either short or long, the physique of the men must be pronounced to be , exceedingly good, and would give little satisfaction, to the pessimist bent on proving the physical degeneracy of the race. The recruits are, in fact, just the kind of young men and lads from whom the Militia ought to be formed, and we believe could be formed. if the conditions of service were more favourable. It may be remarked incidentally that though Colonel Pollock was most careful, as we have said, not to pick his men unfairly, and so to prejudice the Experiment by getting men who already knew something of military duties, he was also careful, and most rightly careful, only to take men of good charac;;er and in good health.
It remains to be pointed out that the sergeant instructors who work under Colonel Pollock and his very efficient subaltern, Mr. Walsh—an officer, like his chief, of the Somersetshire Regiment—though good. and capable men, are in no sense picked men. They belong to the type of sound and intelligent non-commissioned officer which our Army, we are glad to say, produces in such large numbers ; but they are not men who have attained an exceptional position as trainers of recruits. In all his arrangements Colonel Pollock has been careful not to prejudice the Experiment by conducting it under specially favourable conditions.. He claims the possession of no patent system of training, nor does he make use of any exceptional instruments. There is nothing, indeed, on which he insists more strongly than that what he, his. subaltern, and his instructors are doing could be done by any competent company officer provided that he were given a free hand and the free' use of his' material. A point worth noticing in the training of the Spectator Experimental Company is that .the cooking and what we may call' the housemaid's work are done by specially engaged fatigue men. Therefore the recruits are, able to devote their whole time and energies to learning the business of soldiers. They do not spend time in emptying slops or peeling potatoes which might- be employed in true military work. It must also be noted that though the men are well fed. and live under sanitary Conditions, they are not in any sense painpered, nor have they been bribed by high pay to special exertions. They draw no more in money than does the ordinary Militia recruit.
As we have suggested above, a good start does not necessarily mean a good finish, and we must wait for several months before we can even venture to say that it looks likely that Colonel Pollock will be able to prove what he has set out to prove. With thi; proviso, however, we believe that the subscribers to the Spectator Fund may feel that they are bearing their part in an attempt to solve a most important problem. If through their instrumentality it is solved, they will have a right to consider that they have done no small service in regard to the military forces of the nation.
We cannot, unfortunately, publish photographs illus- trating the work of the men in training at Hounslow, but our contemporary the County Gentleman and. Land and Water publishes this week several such photographs. From these a very fair idea may be gained of the stamp of man, or rather lad, engaged in the. Experiment, and of some of the conditions under which they are trained.
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