THE ARMY EXCHANGES BILL.
THE defeat of the Liberals on Monday night upon the second reading of this Bill is of excellent omen for the Liberal cause. For the first time this Session, the Ministry proposed a Bill distinctly postponing the interests of the country to the interests of a class, and the Liberal party—though certain of a defeat from the first, as the soldiers in the House were nearly certain to vote with the Conservatives, who were sure, pending remarks from their constituencies, to welcome any measure which promised to restore the privileges of the " gentlemen " in the Army—held together, fought with decision, and obtained a complete intellectual victory. As Lord Hartington said, the Government tried rather to palliate than defend the Bill. Mr. Hardy asserted indeed that he should hold himself dishonest if he brought back Purchase under cover of his Bill, and nobody doubts Mr. Hardy's honesty, but that only proves how little the Secretary for War understands of the operation of his own measure. He himself admitted that it would allow, if the Queen pleased, which is practically if the Army pleases, any pecuniary transaction facilitating Exchanges, unrestrained even
:by declarations which, as he justly said, were always broken ; and General Shute, with unlucky candour, boasted that the Bill was "an instalment towards removing one of the great grievances resulting from a measure forced upon the Army and the country by very questionable means,"—namely, the Warrant for the abolition of Purchase. That is exactly what it is,—an instalment towards the removal of the effect of that reform, and a great instalment, as Mr. Trevelyan, in his
unanswerable exposure of the proposal, demonstrated to the perfect satisfaction of both sides of the House ; of the Liberals -.because that is their objection to the Bill, and of the Tories
because their secret hope is that the assertion will prove true. The moment the Bill is passed Exchanges can be effected, with the consent of the Commander-in-Chief, for pecuniary induce- ments, and they will be effected so as to enable rich officers who want promotion at home, and poor officers who desire double allowances abroad, to secure their objects by money payments. We believe that Indian careers will prove very tempting to the poorer officers, tempting enough to induce them to buy them and based part of our article last week upon that belief, Which the moment the new system is estab- lished will, we think, turn out to be well founded. Mr. Trevelyan, however, naturally took for his text the effect upon the Army at home, and no one even attempted to refute his statement of the certain results. The injury will be done, as we believe, to India as well as England, but the injury to England is the clearer and the more easy to describe. From the moment Mr. Hardy's Act is law, the rich officer in a regi- ment ordered to India will be allowed, always with the consent of the Commander-in-Chief, to pay a poor officer to exchange with him, and thus to avoid his share of the burden and toil of general service. He will be able, in fact, in time of peace to rise to the highest posts without ever doing any disagreeable duty, the real work being all performed for him by subsidised deputies, who, on the other hand, will feel that they are de- prived of their fair share of home life, and the chances which a career close to the centre of things must always involve, by the unjust preference shown in the Service to the rich,—who, again, by paying their seniors to exchange, can make their own promo- tion rapid. It is easy to say the poor man need not go to the tropics unless he chooses, but poverty has no choice, and the rich men in a regiment have only to set a tone of expenditure to make it almost compulsory on their poorer comrades to exchange. Besides, choice ought to have nothing to do with the matter. The way to make an army efficient is to fill a vacancy by the appointment of the man whom his superiors think efficient, not to appoint the man who, from emptiness of purse, is willing to elect himself to the post. If the appoint- ment is to a disagreeable post, such as any post in India was assumed in the debate to be—though we notice that when the post is dignified and well paid there is a rush of English com- petitors to secure it—the sufferer is compensated by a grant of allowances which for officers above the subalterns are more than double home pay, and for subalterns are nearly double, plus the chance of entering the Staff,—that is, the second best paid career in the world. That compensation is just, and to add to it a payment is simply to fetter the Commander-in-Chief's right of selection. Mr. Trevelyan put this in language which every experienced officer in the Army knows to be true. The Commander-in-Chief is nominally left free, but the Bill "enables an officer who has been appointed lieutenant-colonel of a regiment, stationed per- haps on the North-West frontier of India, to offer an officer who is in command of a regiment stationed at York or Canter- bury a thousand pounds to change their respective functions. Of course, I shall be told that the Horse Guards has it in its power to refuse the application, but the peculiarity of the Purchase and Exchange system (a peculiarity which, at the time, was well understood and acknowledged by the House of Commons) is, that where money interests are concerned, great and almost exclusive attention is necessarily paid to the private wishes of officers. When an officer comes to the Horse Guards with a story of his having received an offer, the rejection of which would be a serious loss to a struggling man with a large family, it is not in human nature—I am sure that it is not in official nature—to turn a deaf ear to his importunity. And the consequence will be that a man who has been deliberately selected on account of his experience, his aptitude, and Ids ability for an Indian command, will be recalled to make room for an officer, very good and honourable, no doubt, and quite able to command a battalion for five years in a cathedral town in England, but not suited by local knowledge and personal character to be responsible for the duties of a border station in the Punjab, where the fortunes of our Eastern Empire may some morning be at stake." General Shute calls this all "froth," because the Commander-in-Chief is sure to want and to select the best man ; but the Commander-in-Chief has acknowledged over and over again, in the discussions on Pur- chase, that payment once allowed cannot be prevented, that the wish of the officer must, when pecuniary questions are in- volved, be taken into full consideration. If not, if the Com- mander-in-Chief's consent is always to be refused or not to be granted as a matter of form, what is the object of this Bill? or what the meaning of this astounding letter from a K.Q.B. and General of very high distinction, which Mr. Hardy, in the most naive manner, read to an applauding House :—
" After a time I returned from Gibraltar and was quartered in Ireland, but finding my pay of 6s. 10d. a day and a continuance of home service likely to involve me in difficulties, of which I was somewhat forcibly reminded by a heavier bill from my tailor than I could at the time manage to pay, I looked about for an exchange. A few days after the post brought me a letter from a brother officer offering me £150 if I would go to the West Indies in his place. I dropped the letter in my joy, vaulted over the table in my barrack-room, knocking over the ink- stand in doing so, and for some 20 minutes or more I.was perfectly beside myself. With the remains of my ink I accepted tile offer at once. Our applications were sent in and allowed by the authorities. his was perfect happiness all round, and even my tailor went on Ins way
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rejoicing. Under existing regulations this exchange, f permitted at all, would have been inquisitorially looked into, and most probably con- siderably cut down. My richer brother officer would have been better off, and I should have been so much the worse. My tailor would pro- bably have had only a moiety of his bill. As to the public or the ser- vice, I do not see how either would have been in the least affected. If I had not been allowed to exchange as I did, it is possible the tailor or some other embarrassment might have cut short my career."
If that letter means anything at all, it means that two posts in Her Majesty's Service were filled in order that a tailor's bill might be paid, the result of the arrangement to the State being matter of no consideration whatever. Mr. Hardy says the man who went out served the State well. That is probable, as he evidently disliked cheating his tailor, or even keeping him out of his money, much more than he disliked disagree- able service in the tropics, which in a young soldier is a highly satisfactory and rather uncommon evidence of character, but Mr. Hardy left his story half told. How about the other man ? What did the State get out of him ? He hated disagreeable service so much that he broke the law to get away from it, and what became of him ? Did he guard Ireland better than the able youngster whom he paid to give up his work? Or is Mr. Hardy gravely prepared to assert that regiments selected to garrison Ireland may be officered by anybody—for both these men might have been lieutenant-colonels—provided regiments in Jamaica are officered by gentlemen free of debt to their tailors. One of the oddest things in the debate, and one which we trust will most attract the attention of the country, was the tacit assumption which ran through it that the true professional officers, the men who have no pri- vate means and intend to serve as civil servants do, may all be exported with impunity, if the rich, who re- gard the Army as a pleasant club, easy to join and easy to quit, can only be retained at home. Surely with the immense armies all round us, and the comparatively minute force we are able to retain in the kingdom itself—this treasure-house of the world, which could pay a ransom of a thousand millions sterling,—the effectiveness of the Home Army is the first matter for statesmen's consideration. Yet Mr. Hardy's whole argument, without which his speech is meaningless, is that the officer who makes a pastime of the profession is the officer who preferentially ought to be kept at home. Is that a view upon which he is prepared to go to the country? He says; and we dare say says truly, that his pro- posal is desired by both rich and poor officers ; but what kind of an argument is that? The poor man wants more money and the rich man more ease, but the State wants the efficient serviee which is to be disregarded for the sake of its servants' ease and money. Suppose it were proposed to give all _poor officers £500 a year, and all rich officers exemption from duties they disliked, the Army would be still more pleased with the proposal, but what would the Secretary for War reply? That he could not sacrifice the State to the interests of the Army. Yet the measure he is advocating is in principle identical with the absurd proposal we have put into his mouth, and as far as it goes will produce just the same kinds of mischief. The interests of the country are avowedly postponed to the interests of one class of its servants, who, whenever they choose, are to be enabled to fill important posts by private huckstering.
In spite of the great majority by which the second reading was passed, a majority nearly double the number that could be relied on by Government for a strict party vote, we are unable to believe that the proposal will be adopted. It is unfortunate that the Bill is not one of a kind which can be long delayed in Committee, or which can be whittled away till its meaning is destroyed. Its potency lies in its principle, not in its details, and although clauses may be added as guarantees, we are not quite sure that, with one exception, guarantees are of any use. A clause forbidding the Crown to issue any regulation conferring upon officers any claim, direct or indirect, to pecuniary compensa- tion might be useful, but it *would certainly be resisted as an inter- ferencewith prerogative, and thereferenet -the competence
of the House. It would be better to fight the principle of the Bill itself once more upon the third reading, and we trust Lord Hartington will redeem his pledge, and insist upon a further' and, if possible, an adjourned debate. He will be defeated, of course, but the country is slowly waking up to a perception of the game that is being played, and he will reap for himself and his party an ample reward in an increase of public confi- dence. Lord Cardwell, Lord Granville, and the Duke of Argyll can be trusted to make the debate a real one in the House of Lords, and by the time the Bill is passed the electors will be aware that the control over the Army, which has just been purchased from the Officers, has been sold for nothing back to them again.
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