THE NATIONAL RESERVE.
ON the 15th of January the Secretary of State for War gave an interesting and important answer to a question in regard to the National Reserve. A scheme, he stated, had been approved for dividing the National Reserve into three classes : (1) The Veteran Section, as at present constituted, that is, men who are over fifty-five years of age. (2) Those who undertake in the event of imminent national danger to serve for home defence. (3) Those who undertake in the event of imminent national danger to give general service in war, in other words, to serve beyond the seas. Colonel Seely proposes to give the Associations 10s. a year for every man in the County Reserve who undertakes to give general service in war, and 5s. a year per man for those who give the undertaking for home defence. Colonel Seely further stated that out of the fund so provided the County Associa- tions will have to meet all requirements in connexion with the National Reserve, including the supply of ammunition for musketry practice, travelling expenses, and allowances for attendances at ranges, parades, drills, and other purposes. He adds that the necessary clothing, arms, and equipment for classes 2 and 3 will be supplied on mobilization. Though we are, of course, grateful to Colonel Seely for having obtained this amount of pecuniary encouragement for the National Reserve from the Treasury, and though we recognize that the grants in question are a, great deal better than nothing, we fear that the response which is likely to be made, at any rate by the men of Class 3 who are to give general service in war, will not be very large. We fully agree that if such a small suns as 10s. was all that could be afforded to the men in this category, it was far better to give it to the Associations than to offer it to the men, for there is nothing so calculated to produce no results or actually to put men off as to offer them inadequate pay. You may do a great deal by appealing purely to men's patriotism and by telling them, as we have always told the men of the National Reserve in these columns, that they will get no personal or pecuniary benefits whatever by joining the National Reserve, and that they must do so out of a sense of public duty and love of country alone. Such an appeal will never fail with Englishmen. But if once you begin to offer pecuniary and personal inducements, those inducements must be adequate. In other words, if you shift from the purely patriotic to the cash and business appeal, that appeal must not be derisory in its character. If you tell a man it is his duty to plunge into the river to save a drowning man, he may and probably will do it, but if you begin to offer him pay for plunging in, he will very naturally begin to bargain. The National Reservist would say, if a personal appeal were made to him : " If I am worth anything in cash to my country, I am worth more than 10s." Clearly, then, it would have been absurd to have offered 10s. a year to individuals. To promise the Associations a sum of money based on the calculation of 10s. per man who takes on the overssa obligation, such sum to be spent for the general benefit of the force, is, as we have said, not open to this objection, though for other reasons we are not very optimistic as to the numbers which will be obtained. We trust we may prove wrong, but we fear that in cold blood men will not care to take on the overseas obligation, even though at the moment many of the younger men may in reality be quite ready to volunteer on that basis. They will in all probability argue: " If once our names are put down on such a list, it will be difficult to withdraw from it, though circumstances may have made such withdrawal prudent." A man may say : " If war broke out to-morrow I should be quite willing to go to the front, for the job I have got is not one which tempts me very much to stick to it. It may well be, however, that two years hence I may be married or may have got into a very good berth which I should not feel justified in throwing up. Therefore it will not be wise for me to commit myself to the oversea obligation." To put it in another way. We believe that if war were declared to-morrow an immediate appeal to the members of the National Reserve to volunteer for oversea service could be relied upon to produce at once twenty thousand men—or, say, ten per cent. of the force, though in cold blood an appeal will not produce anything like that number. Men will act when the necessity arises. They do not care to mortgage the future.
In regard to the obligation of Class 2—the under- taking to serve for home defence in the event of imminent national danger—this objection does not arise. As a matter of fact, the men who have joined the National Reserve already consider themselves to have undertaken such an obligation. They do not look into technical or legal points, but consider that joining the Reserve coa- stttutes an honourable undertaking to defend their country in arms. One would naturally, then, suppose that practically the whole of the men of the Reserve under fifty-five will give the undertaking for home defence. The only danger is that confusion may arise in the minds of the men in regard to the two obligations. If it does they may refuse to take the minor lest in some way which they do not understand they may thereby get committed to the major obligation. We trust that this will not be so, but one must not forget that ex-Service men are not very fond of signing Government papers. In view of these con- siderations we are bound to confess that we should have felt much happier about the National Reserve if tl:e Secretary of State for War had assumed, as we are sure he has a right to assume, that joining the National Reserve already constitutes an honourable obligation of the most
binding kind in the matter of home defence, and had offered the Associations, without further parley, 5s. per man per year for every man on the books of the National Reserve who was under fifty-five years of age. If he had done that we believe he might then with perfect confidence
have relied upon the power at any given moment to obtain twenty thousand volunteers for oversea service on an appeal in the case of the outbreak of hostilities. We know of course that the Army Council would say that this was too vague. To this we can only reply that such vagueness is the necessary accompaniment of a voluntary system. Such a remark, however, does not exhaust the subject. If the War Office were not content, as we personally should be content, to rely upon the patriotism of the Reserve in the ease of the outbreak of hostilities, then in our opinion the only sensible thing to do is to offer the men of the Reserve an adequate personal payment for registration.
We believe that if the Government were to make a firm offer of a payment of £6 a year to every approved man under forty-five who would have his name put down for general service in the case of the outbreak of war, they could skim some twenty thousand excellent men from the National Reserve. This suggestion, we may say, is one which may claim to have behind it in principle the authority of an ex-Secretary of State for War, for we understand that at the last meeting of the Surrey Territorial Association Lord Midleton proposed a resolution, which was passed by the Association, urging the Government to adopt some such course, though no specific sum was suggested. We alone are responsible for the proposal of 30s. a quarter. The resolution was to the following effect : "This Association, bearing in mind that the Special Reserve requires over 30,000 men and the Territorial Force requires over 50,000 men to complete the establishment, regrets that the War Office has not seen its way to offer terms to National Reservists undertaking service abroad or at home which bear some proportion to the liability which they are asked to undertake." We may point out that the Government could hardly say that a sum of this kind would be impossible, since they are at this very moment committed to spending a great deal more to get an inferior article for the purposes of oversea service. The Special Reserve is some 30,000 men short of its establishment. A man in the Special Reserve costs the Government about £23 a year. This means that the War Office are trying their best, but without effect, to spend some £700,000 more a year in getting men to join the Special Reserve. Parliament has, indeed, sanctioned the expenditure for that purpose. If £120,000 a year were taken from the £700,000 which is going a-begging because it cannot get itself spent on the Special Reserve, and spent in retaining fees of £6 a year per man for approved men in the National Reserve, the War Office would, we believe, get twenty thousand men earmarked for oversea service.
Putting aside, however, this method of skimming the National Reserve for oversea work, we have another comment to make upon Colonel Seely's statement. He tells us that the necessary clothing, arms, and equipment for the men who undertake either the first or second obligation will be supplied on mobilization. This means, of course, that the Government will have manufactured and put in store a uniform, equipment, and rifle for every man in the National Reserve who accepts either of the obligations, but that such uniform, equipment, and arms will not be issued to the men. Now we venture to suggest to the Secretary of State for War that it would be far better that these uniforms, equipment, and arms, instead of being stored by the Government, should be handed over to the Territorial Associations and that they should be empowered under proper conditions to issue the uniforms to the men. Nothing would, in our opinion, more surely bring men into the National Reserve, nothing would more surely keep them there when they were in, and lastly nothing would act as a more effectual obligation for home defence, than the issue of the uniform. We are certain that the man who accepted a uniform would consider himself more bound to come up for home defence than if he had signed a wilderness of legal undertakings. The uniform would bold him as nothing else would. Of men disgracing the uniform we have not the slightest fear. If any man did so he could and would be at once ejected from the Reserve, with a corresponding advantage to that body. Mean- time the Government would not have the expense of storing the uniforms. As to the arms, if a small grant of, say, 6d. per rifle per annum, were made to the Associa- tions, they could, we believe, make all the necessary arrangements for local storage for them and the equipment, and thus again save storage charges. The advantage of such, localization in the case of war can hardly be exaggerated. The subject, however, is one too large to be dealt with in detail at the end of a leading article. We only desire to impress, if we can, upon the military authorities what a. tremendous lever for increasing and maintaining the National Reserve they have in the uniform.
Before we leave the subject of the National Reserve we should like to call attention to an excellent little pamphlet (price ls.) published this week by Messrs. Gale and Polden (2 Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, E.C.), entitled " The National Reserve : Hints on Organizing a Battalion." The little book in question is by Mr. A. D. Chapman, Lieutenant of the 1st Battalion Surrey (Croydon) National Reserve. In it Mr. Chapman tells how the Croydon Battalion has been organized, and special reference is made to his own company, " B " Company, in which he is Acting Captain. We feel sure that all friends and sup- porters of the National Reserve will be interested in this little book.
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