The Army has been much before Parliament during the past
week. In the House of Lords on Monday Lord Newton raised in a lively speech a debate on the subject of compulsory service and the Report of the Royal Commission. Lord Donoughmore and Lord Lansdowne, who spoke for the Govern- ment, evidently found the task of dealing with the military situation a delicate one, but they were both careful to repudiate the notion that the Government would propose any form of compulsory service. It was only at the very end of Lord Lansdowne's speech that any indication of the Government policy was to be found. " Our policy is to treat the Auxiliary Forces as an integral part of the Army, relying on them largely for purposes of home defence, to spare no pains to increase their efficiency, and, if it be necessary, to diminish those portions of them only which can be clearly shown to be redundant and incompetent." In the Commons on Tuesday, when Mr. Beckett moved the adjournment of the House to call attention "to the alarming deficiency in the drafts re- quired for India and South Africa, and to the confusion and uncertainty now prevailing in the War Office and the Army owing to the prolonged delay in the announcement of a definite scheme of Army reorganisation," Mr. Arnold-Forster also gave evidence of the Government's intentions. We have dealt at length with his admissions elsewhere, but will only say here that he declared that it was necessary, in order to obtain a decrease in expenditure, to reduce the strength of the Army.
Previous page
