THE SURREY VETERANS' PARADE "S EEING is believing." There is no
truer proverb than this when the British people are in question. For ten years we have bombarded our readers with constant, we had almost said weekly, articles on the folly of a system under which the State spends millions upon training men to arms, and then long before they have reached the period when their physical force is exhausted loses touch with them altogether and acts exactly as if they were not in existence. The appeal of this ten- year-long torrent of articles fell almost entirely upon deaf ears. Some people never heard it at all; others opined that the Spectator must somehow have got its facts wrong, as it was impossible to believe that such a waste of material could take place; while others again declared that the men who had passed out of the Reserve or had served a con- siderable term of years in the Volunteers were so " fed up" with soldiering that the notion that they would ever voluntarily offer to take part in a scheme of national defence was ridiculous, and simply showed how totally ignorant of facts was the ordinary civilian journalist. Such critics as these last were, we admit, in a minority. The attitude of the general public was rather one of complete unrecoptivity. The Spectator view sounded to them like empty theory. They had not seen with their own eyes or through the eyes of newspaper reporters the hundreds and thousands of trained men still in full bodily vigour whom the Spectator assumed to exist in the country, and therefore for them they did not exist. " Seeing is believing." and as there was no seeing there was no believing. The Spectator articles, in fact, seemed to them nothing but Erasmus's chimaerabonthinansin vacuo,—to translate freely, a chimerical editor booming balderdash in the illimitable inane.
As soon, however, as a living example in the shape of over thirteen hundred " hungering, thirsting men " was put on the Horse Guards' Parade, and made visible to the public by the admirable descriptions which appeared in the Times. the Daily Telegraph, the Morning Post, the Standard, and indeed practically the whole Press, London and provincial, a complete revolution took place in public opinion. " Seeing was believing." We venture to say that before long prac- tically everybody will have come to believe that it is a great mistake not to make military use of the hundred and fifty thousand, or possibly quarter of a million, trained men throughout the country who are perfectly willing to hold themselves ready for the defence of their country at a period of imminent national peril. What is more, they will very soon sincerely believe that they were always of this opinion, and will be unable to understand why the military authorities did not recognise so plain a fact long ago. In truth, this very simple idea of making use of the men in the country who have received a military training and are still in the prime of life, though not now connected with any military body, has gone through the three stages of a new idea. set forth by an Early Victorian wit. The stages, as we may remind our readers, are these. In the first place, people say that the thing is impossible ; secondly, that it is " contrary to Scripture,"—i.e., in this case, to the policy and experience of all military experts, from Alexander the Great to the chief messenger at the War Office ; and lastly, that they knew it all along, and have always been in its favour.
Now that there seems so general a conversion to an ideal long cherished in these columns, and brought into the region of practical politics by the action of the Surrey Territorial Association, we need hardly say that the Spectator has a deep sense of satisfaction and delight. We feel, however, that we ought to say something in regard to the criticism which is being directed against the military authorities. It is, we hold, unfair to blame them for not being ahead of public opinion in this matter. All experi- ence shows that one must never expect a public Depart- ment to take the initiative in such affairs. That must come, and can only come, from a vigilant public opinion. A Department has its own job, and in the case of the War Office a most difficult job, to perform,—one far more arduous, indeed, than the nation is in the least aware of. Immersed. in detail as the military authorities, from the Secretary of State for War down to the youngest clerk, must be, it is not fair to expect from them much beyond the carrying out of their own gigantic task. A Department of State is like a great machine. We do not expect a machine to feed itself. All we have a right to expect it to do is to grind accurately and well, and without undue friction or disturbance, the corn or other material that is put into it. It is the business of those who control the machine, not of the machine itself or any part of the machine, or even of the capable engineers and chief engineers who have cast upon them the duty of keeping the machine running, to see that it is supplied. with the proper raw material. The British public must never be allowed to shuffle off their responsibility of attending to the vital problem of home defence by abusing the War Office and the military authorities. The country in general is now very properly saying : " Why can't all the counties of England do what Surrey has done ? " Happily that question can very easily be answered by pointing out that such action was officially fore- shadowed six months ago, and that a month ago orders were actually issued by the War Office to the County Associa- tions for the formation of such Veteran Reserves. On paper Veteran Reserves have already come into existence. All that remains to be done is to clothe the skeletons with flesh. The task is not altogether an easy one, but that it can and will be accomplished in other counties as well as in Surrey—Surrey had no special advantage in this respect— is unquestionable. And here we may be allowed to point out an incidental advantage of the system of military administration with which Mr. Haldane has endowed the nation. By creating the County Territorial Associations he performed what we believe will prove to be one of the greatest pieces of public service ever performed by a Minister of the Crown. He created a machine which can be turned to a hundred uses for thepurposes of national defence. We venture to say that the War Office, capably manned though we fully admit that it is at this moment, would have been quite incapable of establishing by itself a Veteran Reserve over the whole country. It is just the sort of work for which a central organisation, however efficient, is unsuited. In the Territorial Associations of England, Scotland, and Wales we have, however, exactly the machinery required for discovering the trained men with whom the military authorities have hitherto persisted in losing touch, and giving them the kind of elastic yet unburdensome organisation which is appropriate to the movement in question. In other words, Mr. Haldane has done the work of the true administrator. He has provided the country with seventy or eighty hand machines which can be turned on to do work which the great steam machine at the centre could not Have under- taken at all, or could not have undertaken without throwing it out of gear for its own legitimate work.
The country having decided to organise the trained men or veterans, all that it is necessary to do is what Mr. Haldane has already done,—namely, to set the County Associations at work to prepare the Registers. The work before the County Associations looks at first sight somewhat hopeless, but it is not nearly so impossible a task as it seems, as they will soon discover, and for this reason. They will find that the trained men throughout the country to whom they will have to appeal will meet them in the best possible spirit and will at once become their active co-operators. Possibly to begin with the Associations will say that they are being asked to look for needles in a bundle of hay, or, to vary the metaphor, that they are asked to open a window and to shout into the darkness to men whom they cannot see and of whose exist- ence they have, as it were, no actual knowledge. This, no doubt, is in a sense an accurate statement of the case. When a County Association begins to form its Veteran Reserve and to enrol the trained men within its area, it will at once be confronted with the astonishing fact that the names and addresses of these men are not procurable from any official source. As long as a, man is in the Army Reserve his name and address are of course registered by those who send him periodically his Reserve pay, and who will summon him to the colours in case of war and a. general mobilisation. The moment, however, that a man passes out of the Reserve his name and address are scattered to the winds. Incredible as it may sound, the man instantly becomes invisible to the military authorities. It is the same with the men of the old Volunteer regiments, the regiments which are now the Territorial regiments. The moment the man quits them the practice has hitherto been to let him sink into the ocean of the population without leaving even a ripple to show where he disappeared. The same story is true of the Yeomanry and the old Militia, now the Special Reserve.* We believe that, if not absolutely correct, we are practically correct in saying that the Surrey Territorial Association did not obtain the names and addresses of the two thousand men on the county Register from any official source. When the idea was started the Association of course " drew " as many " covers " as it could, including the depots of the county regiments and the headquarters of the Territorial battalions and of its Yeomanry regiment. It drew them, however, all blank The way in which it obtained the names will seem almost incredible to foreigners accustomed to an accurate bureaucratic system. The Association, owing to the kindness and public spirit of the Surrey newspapers, helped also by the London Press, was enabled to publish letters asking the trained men living in Surrey, who at the • We ought to say that there are one or two honourable exceptions to this general statement. The Brigade of Guards, which so often leads the way in matters of reform, does keep in touch with the men who pass out of the Reserve and does reserve their names and addresses. The same thing is true also of some cav regiments and regiments of the Line. Such Rfti: store are, however, non-o cial, and are due to the action of the regiments and not of the military authorities. moment did not belong to any unit of the King's forces, to send in their names and addresses to the secretary of the Surrey Territorial Association. Out of the darkness into which this cry was sent came an instant hum of voices. The appeal which was made this time last year was issued in the Saturday papers of Surrey, an 1 by the following Monday the names began to pour in. Very soon five hundred were collected, and by the end of the year, and as the circle spread in the pond—men told each other of the Register—seven hundred names were collected. It was then thought that an impetus might be given to the movement, and an example set to the rest of the country, if the men were asked to parade in London. In sending out the invitations to the men on the Register an appeal 'was made to them to bring in as many of their comrades who were eligible as possible. This afterthought, as we may call it, had the happiest results. The men on the Register proved the best possible recruiting agents, and the seven hundred grew to two thousand. It is confidently believed that even now there are hundreds of men in Surrey who are eligible who have not yet heard of the movement, and there is a possi- bility of the two thousand on the Register becoming three thousand, or possibly even four thousand.
It will be seen from these simple facts that no Association need despair of finding the men. If it only has faith that the needles are in the bundle of hay, and if it applies the magnet of an appeal through the local Press, the needles will start out of themselves. When in this way a nucleus has been formed, the first corners must be appealed to to tell their comrades. Later on, of course, the forma- tion and maintenance of the Reserve will become auto- matic. And here we may venture to make a suggestion to the War Office. They ought, if they have not already done so, to issue an order that the name and address of every soldier who quits the Reserve shall be automatically com- municated to the secretary of the Territorial Association of the county in which he resides ; that the same thing shall be done in the case tie every man who leaves the Special Reserve ; and that tie Adjutant or other proper authority of the Territorial battalions and of the Yeomanry shall similarly communicate the name and address of every man who leaves the Territorials or the Yeomanry. The secretary of the County Association will thereupon invite the men in question to register their names on the Veteran Register. For many years, however, that will not be sufficient, and the old mistake of having lost touch with the men will have to be met by an appeal such as we have described.
We must deal on some future occasion with the problem of the best organisation for the Veteran Reserve, and of the best uses which can be made of them in case of a general mobilisation supposing these islands to be invaded, and also with the question of providing them with some form of cheap and yet efficient equipment. Before we leave the subject, however, we must mention one point of importance which we trust will not be lost sight of. There are no Territorial Associations in Ireland, but neverthe- less Ireland contains a very large number of ex-Regulars and ex-Militiamen. It would be a thousand pities to waste this splendid material. We suggest, therefore, to Mr. Haldane that a special Committee should be formed for Ireland, whose duty it will be to prepare a Register of Trained Men or a Veteran Reserve for Ireland. We have little doubt that a Register of ten to twelve thousand men could very easily be obtained, especially if ex-members of the Irish Constabulary were allowed to join.
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