UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING.
WE have dealt elsewhere with Mr. Balfour's speech in the House of Commons during the debate on Mr. Haldane's Bill. The greater part of that speech was quite admirable, and, without a suspicion of party feeling or
party tactics, showed the very grave national dangers to which we shall be exposed if the Militia is abolished, the Yeomanry placed on a basis which must in the end mean its destruction, and the Volunteers subjected to conditions which may very likely deplete the force. But though the speech was in most respects excellent, we feel obliged to express our regret in regard to a passage which has been i
interpreted, though, as we think, unfairly interpreted, as a declaration against universal and compulsory training. "I believe that the voluntary system is a system which the country will never consent to abandon," were Mr. Balfour's words. If this means that 'for oversee service we must rely entirely upon voluntary service, Mr. Balfour is, of course, perfectly right. No other proposition is dreamt of by any sane man. If, however, he means, as certain Radical newspapers assume, that we are not to use the element of compulsion in order to give the benefits of universal military training, as they are given in Switzer- land, to the whole of our population, leaving them after- wards to volunteer or not for service abroad, then we must say with all respect that Mr. Balfour has done very great disservice to the highest national interests. We cannot, however, believe that this was his meaning, and we trust that he will take an early opportunity of declaring that he is not opposed to universal military training in its true sense, but merely to the travesty of it which its enemies sometimes put forth in its name.
There is nothing about which more nonsense is talked, more prejudice created, and more ignorance displayed than universal training. Even so essentially just and reason- able an organ of public opinion as the Westminster Gazette used language the other day in regard to our article on "Unionist Reunion and National Training" which showed that it had not grasped in the least what we and those who agree with us in the matter desire. In the article in question the Westminster Gazette repeatedly used the word " conscription," and conveyed the impression that conscription was what we were advocating, and what we hope to induce the leaders of the Unionist Party to advo- cate as part of their official programme. The Westminster Gazette did not define in detail what it meant by conscrip- tion; but there is no doubt that when such a word is used the ordinary man assumes, and rightly assumes, that the persons alleged to advocate conscription desire to fill the ranks of the Regular Army by a system of compulsion such as exists on the Continent,—i.e., that men are to be compelled by law to become soldiers and to fight the nation's battles, whether at home or abroad. Nothing could possibly bo a greater travesty of what we desire and recommend, and also of what the National Service League desires and recommends. We are bound to say that we think it most unfortunate that a newspaper usually so fair and so scrupulously accurate in representing the views of its opponents should not in the present case have taken the trouble to avoid the use of language which in effect, though, of course, not in intention, is most misleading, and is calculated to create popular prejudice. By all means let the Westminster Gazette oppose the scheme of universal compulsory training such as we advocate if it disapproves of such schemes ; but at any rate it should deal with realities, and not with a conscript man of straw of its own invention.
In view of Mr. Balfour's apparent confusion of mind, or, at any rate, of expression, and of the Westminster Gazette's obvious blunder, and also of the innumerable misstatements and perversions made elsewhere, it may be worth while to restate the reasons why we advocate universal training, and to outline in general terms what is the nature of such training. We do not, of course, profess to speak for the National Service League, or to commit them in any way ; but we believe that the views they hold and the plans they advocate do not differ very greatly from our own, except in points of detail. In order to make the matter clear once and for all, let us begin by stating what we do not advocate. We do not advocate conscription,—that is, we do not advocate Filing the ranks of the Army by compulsion after the Con- tinental method, nor do we desire, or even think it would be in the national interests, that our Army should be raised under such conditions. Indeed, we would go further, and would say that a British Regular Army organised on a compulsory basis must mean the destruction of the
Empire. It would be quite impossible to garrison India, Egypt, or any part of the .oversea Empire by means of a conscript Army, and, further, it would be quite impossible for the British nation to wage an oversea war on any but a voluntary basis. For military purposes such as those for which British troops have been used during the last two hundred years, nothing but a voluntary Army would be of any service. Con- scription, then, is what we do not advocate, but what we condemn.
What we desire to see established is a system of universal, and therefore compulsory, military training for the whole of our male population before they reach the age of twenty-one. We advocate such training on three grounds. The first and most important ground, in our opinion, is that such training will produce beneficial results of a very marked kind, moral, intellectual, and physical, in the youth of the nation. We hold that the man who has had, not military training of the Continental kind, which means confinement for a couple of years in barracks, but compulsory military training of the kind we desire, will be in every way a better citizen, and that, even if he is never called upon to make any direct use of his military training, the State as a whole will have gained, and not lost, by having given him such training. Secondly, we advocate universal training on the ground that, should a great national emergency arise, and should thousands, or we will say hundreds of thousands, of citizens desire to help the Motherland in arms, such volunteers will be able to offer aid that is worth having owing to their training, and not to tender simply the pathetically worthless aid of a mere patriotic sentiment. The State should say to the citizen : " You may some day desire to give us your aid in a moment of peril. We will take care that you shall not, in that case, suffer the humilia- tion of offering what is not immediately worth having,— the services of a man who cannot shoot and who does not know the elements of soldiering, and is therefore quite unfit to take his stand in the national ranks." Thirdly, we advo- cate universal training because such a system of universal training as we desire would, in case of actual invasion, give us, in the first place, a coherent and organised military force in the shape of the men undergoing training, and, further, would make a levee en masse, should a levee en masse be called for, not a worthless mob, but the raw material out of which efficient armies could be created with comparative ease.
We cannot now go into the details of the training we advocate, but roughly we may say that our plan would be to give each individual between the ages of eighteen and twenty.one six months' military training, or what could be reasonably considered the equivalent of such training. Though we would in every case insist on three months' continuous training, we would allow lads under certain conditions to dispense with the longer period. For example, if at the age of eighteen a boy could produce a certificate showing that he had for three years previously been an efficient member of a Cadet corps, and could also produce a certificate showing him to have reached a fairly high standard of marksmanship, we should only require him to undergo three months' continuous training. Again, we would allow a lad, even though he could not show Cadet-corps certificates for drill and shoot- ing efficiency, to do only three months' training, if at the end of his three months he had won drill and shooting certificates, and if he would undertake to remain a member of a Volunteer corps, chosen by himself, until he reached the age of twenty-one. Further, the lads who took their whole six months' training, or bad been in a Cadet corps for three years, and therefore took only a three months' national training, should be enrolled in the regiments in which they were trained, and should be liable to be called up if during invasion or the threat of invasion their regiment were embodied for home defence. That would be the extent of a man's regularised training and service, though of course in the event of the enemy being on our soil and a levee en masse ordered, he would be liable, as he now is, under the principle of State necessity. It must never be forgotten that in addition to the Militia ballot, the State here, as in America, claims the right to repel invasion by requisitioning the services of every man in the land for what those services may be worth. As it is, they would not be worth very much. If all men bad been trained to the use of the rifle and in elementary drill, they might, however, be worth a good deal. In addition, if in a moment of peril men who had been trained to arms desired to volunteer for oversea service, as no ' doubt they would, they would be welcome to do so, as now, though able to do so far more effectively. That, however, would be purely their own affair, and no one would have the slightest power to insist on their volunteering. The State would no more compel them to volunteer because it bad taught them the elements of the military art than it now compels people to read books because it has taught them how to read. Under such a scheme as this the Militia and Yeomanry would be maintained as they now are. In the case of the Volunteers also we see no reason why any change should take place, for we feel sure that there area very large number of patriotic men who would, even after compulsory training, continue their patriotic services.
We do not desire to represent this rough sketch of the practical carrying out of universal training as complete in every particular. It no doubt might be modified and improved in many ways. We are also aware that it is not in its details the scheme foreshadowed by the National Service League. We put forward our solieme chiefly as an illustration, and in order to make people realise by a concrete example what it is we want and do not want, and to prove how absolutely unjust and absurd it is to represent the system of universal military training which we advocate as conscription on the Continental model. It is possible, for example, that after it had got into working' rder it would be wise to organise a large number of trained men over twenty-one into skeleton battalions for use in case of invasion. These, however, are matters for subsequent discussion, and concern the working up of the raw material of the trained citizen to the best advantage. The essential thing is that the whole of the youth of the nation should obtain the great personal advan- tages of military training for a period long enough to improie them physically, morally, and intellectually, but not so long as to introduce the physical, moral, and intellectual evils of militarism,—that they are very great evils we fully admit. Further, we desire to confer upon the State the immense benefit and security of having a population trained to the use of arms and to military movements upon which it can rely in case of the supreme need of invasion, and also to which it can appeal for voluntary aid in case of peril to the oversea Empire.
We may say, in conclusion, that we have dealt else- where with the admirable address on universal military training of Mr. Hughes, the Australian Labour leader,— an address which shows how untrue and ridiculous it is to represent universal training as something undemocratic, oppressive, and unjust.
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