THE LESSON OF THE SURREY VETERAN RESERVE.
WILL Britain profit by the lesson which was given by the Surrey Veteran Reserve on Saturday last ? Lord Roberts, as he passed down the lines drawn up for his inspection, saw some 2,300 Veterans ranked in local companies, to the number of twenty. They included all the chief towns and districts of Surrey. Each company had its own commandant and a body of officers under him, often numbering as many as five. The organization is strictly local—that is, the commandant and his officers live among the Veterans who form the company. Thus each unit is in the strictest sense a body of neighbours. That in itself is an important military asset, but when we con- sider the material out of which these bands of neighbours are formed their military worth is still more evident. In the first place most of the men are in the prime of life, their average age being forty-five, while many of them are not much over thirty. No one could walk down the ranks without noticing their good physique and prosperous con- dition. If one may say so without offence, almost every man stood what those who are accustomed to diagnose the posi- tion of working men are wont to term" the boot test." They were all well shod. The alertness and orderliness shown by the companies in getting on to a very difficult piece of ground showed that neither they nor their officers were the least rusty in the essentials of drill. They marched, not only with swing and elan, but with precision, and the words of command were obeyed with smartness and with what one may call physical satisfaction. Roughly, half of the men were old Regulars, and of these old Regulars almost every man had seen war in some part of the world. Their coats were covered with active service medals which told of campaigns on the Indian Frontier, inEgypt,in the Soudan, and in South Africa. The rest of the men were ex-Volunteers. Most of these, though by no means all, were of course unmedalled—a fair proportion had seen service in South Africa, either as Imperial Yeomanry or in the Volunteer active service companies—but what the ex- Volunteers lost in war service they made up in physique. intelligence, youth, and energy. It was right and proper— nay, essential to the force—that the ex-Regulars and the ex-Volunteers should stand shoulder to shoulder ; but had the ex-Volunteers stood alone all critics would have been forced to declare that they were a remarkable set of men, and showed a true soldierly bearing.
So much for the high quality of the men. The actual numbers of the Reserve are equally impressive. The Surrey Veteran Reserve, on the day of the parade, numbered in all some three thousand two hundred officers and men, or nearly double what it did eleven months ago at its first parade, and in the few days that have elapsed since the inspection further recruits have been coming in in such satisfactory numbers that it is by no means impossible that before the end of the year the Surrey Veteran Reserve will amount to four thousand. In any case the Surrey Veteran Reserve is a great fact. The County Association has now under it the equivalent of four battalions, in addition to its normal four Territorial battalions Thus its forces are in effect doubled. The Association has, in other words, a Register of Trained Men of the numbers we have named, and, moreover, has endowed those men with a skeleton but serviceable organization. If these Islands were invaded to-morrow, and we desired to make use of every remaining military asset at our disposal, Surrey could produce her share of these assets at twenty-four hours' notice. In every other county there would be hopeless confusion, wild efforts, and a tumultuary running hither and thither of persons trying to find out what men in our counties and cities, not already attached to any military unit, were war- worthy. In Surrey the Veterans would be standing to arms and ready. This is the lesson which the County of Surrey is placing before the country at large.
The Surrey Veteran Reserve stood in their ranks to be inspected by the chief of all veterans, Lord Roberts, not for their own glorification, or in order to pass a pleasant day, or to receive congratulations, but in order to say to the rest of the counties of England : " Go and do thou likewise." Will their example be followed ? We most sincerely hope it will. There is certainly not the slightest reason why it should not be, for it cannot possibly be said that Surrey has any advantages for forming a Reserve not possessed by other counties. Of necessity Surrey is not a county which possesses in any special degree the gift of local patriotism. A very large part of the community are really Londoners. They sleep in Surrey, but they spend their lives working in the metropolis. Again, a very large portion of the inhabitants are not native-born, but, like the present writer, are immigrants from other counties. Lastly, Surrey has not got any centre or true capital town, nor has it any natural leaders, as, for example, the Cavendishes in Derbyshire. We can say, then, with certainty that what Surrey has done today the rest of England can do, if it chooses, as well, or better, to-morrow.
Surrey contains, roughly speaking, about one-eightieth of the population of Britain. Therefore, if Surrey can have a Veteran Reserve of nearly 4,000 men, it should be possible to organize a Veteran Reserve over the whole of the United Kingdom of some 300,000. But if an estimate such as this is called too optimistic, at any rate there should be no difficulty whatever in getting a national reserve of 200,000. Such a figure is unquestionably well within our reach. All that is wanted is a certain amount of local energy, and a determination to overcome the initial difficulty of getting hold of the names and addresses of the men who are eligible, and who, we are certain, are willing to register themselves with the Territorial Associations if only they can be reached by an appeal to that effect. Already a beginning has been made, and we understand that the aggregate of the Veteran Reserve now reaches very nearly 25,000, of which some 6,000 belong to London, where the movement is in strong and energetic hands. For practical purposes all that is wanted is that in every County Associa- tion a strong committee should have delegated to it the work of raising a Veteran Reserve on the Surrey and London models. In order to help such local efforts, we venture to suggest that an advisory committee should be formed at the War Office, able to give instruction and encouragement from the centre to the circumference, and, where needed, to stimulate local effort.
The able military correspondent of the Times, who has already done memorable service for the Veteran Reserve, in a striking article in Monday's issue discusses the question of the best way of using the Veteran Reserve in case of imminent national peril—namely, the invasion of these Islands. Hitherto military opinion has inclined to the notion that the best way of employing the Reserve would be to use it to stiffen existing Territorial units. It has been argued that the creation of new cadres would be impossible, and that the only plan would be to throw the Veteran Reserve, or, at any rate, the greater part of it, into the Territorial units, which are already endowed with the essentials of a field army—a brigade and divisional organization, and proper transport and supply columns. The correspondent of the Times, however, evidently inclines to the belief that these are not the lines on which we should proceed. He suggests that incorporation in existing Territorial units would not be an unmixed advantage. " A young army, and particularly one which is uniformly young, is greatly superior to any other. So wrote von der Goltz, and it is at least worth considering whether the presence of these veterans in Territorial units would not deprive the latter of their elasticity and their dash." He points out also that on mobilization a much too large number of men of the Territorial Force or- ganized as mobile units are now allocated for garrison work. " Veteran companies and battalions are eminently suited to undertake this work and to set the Territorials free for full service." If these suggestions were to prevail it would clearly be necessary not to stop at organizing the Veteran Reserve into local companies, but to group these companies into provisional battalions. Obviously there would be no essential obstacle to this. The Surrey Com- panies could very easily be grouped into four provisional battalions ready in case of invasion to do whatever work was assigned to them. To make such battalions effective, however, it would be necessary to arrange for some skeleton system of regimental transport and so forth,- and this would of necessity raise many difficult subsidiary problems.
We confess that to choose between these two suggestions of reinforcing theTerritorial cadres and creating provisional battalions is a task of great difficulty, Certainly the problem is one upon which a civilian critic ought not to venture to express any dogmatic opinion. We suggest, however, that of available plans the wisest is to adopt the principle of one thing at a time. Let us get the men before we decide how to use them. Let us first form the register of trained men throughout the country, and then let the Army Council, which is the proper authority to decide a matter of such vast importance, give its best attention to the point at issue, and also to the point which will then arise, viz., whether it would not be advisable to make a small annual grant per head to the Associa- tions in order to provide the men with a simple and inexpensive uniform. Such a uniform would, we feel sure, be a 'great recruiting agent, and would also have a great binding force. An annual grant of 5s. a head per man would be quite sufficient to enable the County Associations to find uniforms. The Veteran's uniform would not be worn more than three or four times a year at the very most, and would therefore easily last six years. But such a uniform need not cost more than £1 per man, and therefore the Associations would be able to finance the proposal. Public-spirited men in each county could undoubtedly be found who would lend the money in the first place, and a sinking fund would be formed to pay them back in five or six years. The formation of such schemes presents, indeed, no difficulty whatever. But a grant of 5s. per man for 200,000 men only amounts to £50,000 a year—surely not too large a sum to spend on such a force. The fact that the men had their uniforms would make mobilization on invasion a far easier matter than if the men had to be clothed out of some problematic store. We assume, of course, that there would always be a sufficiently large number of rifles stored and ready in the country to put one into the hands of every Veteran.
We entreat the War Office and the Territorial Associa- tions to remember that if they want to make a success of the Veteran Reserve they must follow the line which has been followed in Surrey. The men must not be asked to under- take any peace obligation. It must be explained to them, as has been done in the case of Surrey, that, though the obligation will be grave enough and terrible enough if invasion comes, the men will never be worried and encum- bered with peace obligations. They merely register their names and addresses so that they can be found when wanted. Any duties which they perform above this are purely voluntary and from personal choice. Each man feels in the Surrey Reserve that he alone is to be the judge whether he can or cannot appear at any of the inspections or parades of the company to which he belongs. No man must ever be permitted to feel: " I should like to belong to the Veteran Reserve if I could count upon being perfectly free, but I cannot risk my livelihood or my employment by undertaking peace obliga- tions of a hampering or restrictive kind." If that sense of freedom in peace is once established men will join the Reserve as freely as they have done in Surrey, and it will also be found throughout the country, as it has been found in Surrey, that the men who are thus unhampered will be not only willing but eager, whenever they can, to meet together and make themselves and their companies efficient units.
Last of all, let those who raise the Reserve beware of being misled into the capital error of trying to hold out sham or worthless inducements to the men to join. It should be made clear from the first that no inducements are offered, and that nothing whatever of personal advantage is to be got out of joining the Veteran Reserve. The men are being asked to perform a duty, not to obtain a benefit of any sort or kind. After all, this is but commonsense. If so-called benefits are offered, the men will begin to consider whether those benefits are adequate and will inevitably come to the conclusion that they are not. If, on the other hand, they are asked to place their military training at the disposal of the country in case of invasion, purely on patriotic grounds, and an appeal is made to that proud sense of duty which now, as ever, is the essential mark of the English-speaking race, that appeal will prevail. The sense of duty and the sense of honour are very strong in the old soldier, for the Army is a school of patriotism. Pitt, in a moment of national crisis, told the world that England had saved herself by her own exertions, and would save Europe by her example. God grant we may be able to say that Surrey has, by her own exertions, saved herself from the reproach of neglecting a national duty, and will save England by her example !
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