THE RECRUITING PROBLEM. T HOUGH we do not share the pessimistic
views held by the Duke of Bedford in regard to Mr. Brothick's scheme as a whole, we are heartily glad that he made his speech. With a very great deal of his remarks we are in the strongest possible sympathy, and the whole of them were marked not merely by oratorical ability, but by some- thing much better, by knowledge and clear thinking. Even that part of the speech which most strongly attacked the new scheme will do nothing but good. It is said that the generals of the eighteenth century used to recommend that a round or two of grape-shot should U3 fired into the rear of an advancing column in order to increase the spirit and elan of the attack. Whether the system is still to be recommended in the field we shall not attempt to say, but we do not doubt that it may be use- fully applied to a Government Department, and that the War Office and the milit ary- authorities under it will move more rapidly and briskly for the Duke of Bedford's dis- charge of grape-shot. The principal point made by the Duke of Bedford was the need for improving the terms offered to the recruits. Here we are entirely at one with him, and especially because he does not ask for any immense augmentation of pay, but only for a small increase, yet so arranged as to make the con- ditions far more attractive to recruits. The Duke of Bedford adopts the formula we have adopted for the last five years and more,—" a shilling a day and all found and well found." We do not believe that the honest and sincere adoption of that formula would, in practice, increase to any very great extent the burden of the Many, while it would make the conditions of service seem far more favourable to the recruit. At present they are really very favourable, but owing to the pedantries that reign at the War Office we make them seem unattractive. That this is not merely our view or that of the Duke of Bedford will be seen by the Report of Mr. Dawkins's Committee. That Committee also evidently did not believe that the "shilling a day and all found and well found" would make a great new charge on the Exchequer, for they point out how much office work and waste would be saved by abolishing the petty stoppages. What the State wants to be able to tell the soldier, and tell him truly and honestly, is that when he is in the Army he will be "all found and well found," and will every month in the year have a shilling a day as pocket-money. We practically announce that now, but yet the first thing that the recruit finds when he joins is that there are petty stoppages which break into his shilling. These petty stoppages are at once exaggerated by him into a serious grievance, and the soldier being human, nay, very human, the effect of the high pay —for such "a shilling a day and all found and well found" really is—is done away with. No doubt it may be silly of the soldier to be "put off" by little stoppages, as all the officials tell us it is, but then men are silly, and we venture to think that if the War Office and Treasury officials had to submit to a quantity of petty compulsory stoppages they would be fretted far beyond the economic necessities of the case. The natural man finds more than a half- penny difference between a clear shilling and 110. Another sound point made by the Duke of Bedford is that we ought to adopt in the Army the excellent plan pursued in the Navy of paying so much a day more to skilled marksmen. We would have the soldiers carefully graded in the matter of shooting power. Every third- class marksman should have, say, id. a day extra for marksmanship apart from other service, every second-class marksman 2d. a day extra, and every first-class marksman 3a. a day extra. The standard of first-class marksmanship should, of course, be very high, and those who attained it should receive special badges and special military con- sideration. The change to the "shilling a day and all found and well found an inviolate shilling from which nothing but fines for gross carelessness and mis- conduct would ever be deducted—would, we believe, give us a very large number of recruits owing to the extra attraction of "no stoppages." But there is another way in which we might improve recruiting. At present we only take recruits within a very narrow area. In the first place, we limit the area from which we draw men by limiting the age at which we take them. That is well enough in the matter of not taking boys, but we do not take a man if he is over twenty-, five or so. Why should we not allow a man to enlist whatever his age, provided that the terra of service for which he enlisted would not keep him in the Reserve after fifty-two, and provided also, of course, that he could pass a reasonable medical examination ? A very considerable number of men past thirty and up to forty, who are per- fectly fit to fight, would enlist if they could. We would, also, not limit the recruiting area by any prejudice about height. If a man were strong and fit we would take him, though he were only 5 ft. 2 in. Again, we would not make the medical tests pedantically severe. A medical examination there must be, of course, but we would only reject men on the grounds on which they are liable to exemption, say, in Germany. If a man could be 'taken under a compulsory system he should be taken under a voluntary. In a word, the object should be to increase the recruiting area, not to narrow it. Now we narrow the area except in one instance. We take boys when we ought to take men. Even here we would not narrow too much. We would allow every depot to take a certain number of boys of fifteen or sixteen, and to train them till they were eighteen, not giving them, however, any pay, or counting them as combatants, but merely feeding, clothing, and housing them. The c'Duke of Bedford is fully entitled, as a Militia Colonel of experience, to raise his voice in regard to the Militia, and we are very glad to see that he drew atten- tion to that gallant and useful force, though we cannot agree that the present Administration is inclined to slight the Militia. What we like best, however, in regard to his proposals as to the Militia was a suggestion which we have also made in these columns,—namely, that the Militia should be organised into a Field Army, with the Yeomanry as its mounted force. We have always favoured this plan, and we believe that the Militia so organised would be a most valuable force. The adop- tion of the plan in question would necessitate some moth. fications in regard to the army corps organi sat-ion, but it need not in any way destroy it.
Though we agree with what the Duke of Bedford says as to the Militia, we cannot accept his view of the Volun- teers. That view seems to us to be the weakest part of his speech. We do not say it is unfair to the Volunteers, because we are sure that the Duke of Bedford had no wish to be unfair, and because we welcome all honest speaking- out, whether agreeable or disagreeable to our own views. The Duke of Bedford evidently thinks the Volunteers a practically useless body because they are not sufficiently trained, and because they are not sufficiently under the control of the War Office. Therefore, he would spend no public money on them, and he points to the fact that during the crisis of the war we have been able to make practically no use of them. We entirely disagree. We do not think that the Volunteers would be useless because they do not get much camp training, for we fear that a great deal of that camp training when they do get it consists in the futilities of ceremonial drill. If the Volunteers were intelligently trained and did not ape the worse vices of the Regulars in the matter of drill, they could be perfectly well trained without going into camp " for more than a week. Next, we hold that the Volunteers are of immense use in providing a reservoir of riflemen imbibed with a sufficiency of discipline out of which soldiers can be rapidly formed. We got from them some ten thousand men at a moment's notice, and used those men to strengthen the Regular regiments with the best results. Those who saw the Volunteer service companies in the field all agree. as to their excellence. We hold also that if the Volunteers are properly trained and used they might be of immense use in their present units, and not merely as a reservoir in case of invasion. The Volunteers, in our opinion, should be treated like the old town guards of the Middle Ages. For instance, each London Volunteer regiment should know, as it were, the spot on the walls where it would take up its position. The line of defences round London—the North Downs, the Hog's Back, and so on till the circle is complete—should be treated as if they were a great line of walls, and a section of these walls should be not merely assigned in theory to a par- ticular corps, but the corps in question should be exercised there every year. Thus, if the call ever came these theoretic walls of London could be manned by soldiers who knew them. The same thing should be done in all our other maritime towns in Great Britain, and also in all our maritime counties. The really inland towns would not be able, of course, to have a place assigned them at their own doors, but to them might be assigned posts on the walls of London. However, that is too large a matter for to-day. Here we only desire to protest against the notion that the Volunteers are of little value. We believe them to be not only of immense value as a .reservoir from which most excellent soldiers can be drawn, but also of great value for home defence. The town Boers had, after all, not so much training as our Volun- teers, and yet they fought well enough on their own ground. We see, then, no sort of reason why our,Volunteers should not be of the greatest practical use. Our only doubt is as regards officers. Though we hold most strongly that, granted a man is a good shot and is not a coward, it takes very little training and drill to make him into a soldier, we hold equally strongly that the training of an officer is a most long and laborious business. You can, we believe, improvise excellent soldiers out of men who can use a rifle, but you cannot improvise officers. The reason is simple. It is infinitely easier to obey orders than to give them. The difficulty of getting enough officers is, we admit, immense. But this difficulty is not that raised by the Duke of Bedford. He evidently regards the Volunteers, as a whole, as not worth what we spend on them. To this view we cannot agree ; but in spite of this, we think that the country owes the Duke of Bedford a debt of gratitude for his able and manly speech. His remarks as to the pay question go to the root of the matter, and are wise and statesmanlike in a high degree.
Previous page
