MR. CARDWELL'S PLAN.
IT would be a strange thing if Mr. Cardwell saved this Government, but it is not at all impossible. The more his plan of Army Reform is studied the better will it be liked, more especially by those who believe, as we do, that bad as war may be, military discipline is the most effective education through which the majority of mankind can pass. No other can so develop the virtues of obedience, trustfulness, and sympathy, while no other can invigorate so rapidly the per- manent physique of the people. One year of steady drill. good food, and regular exercise would add one-third to the strength of the nation, as much to its industry, and probably more to its average size measured around the chest. Mr. Cardwell's speech was as free from rose-colour as from eloquence, and, unlike most speeches, left on the mind an impression less favourable than that produced by the detailed plan. This plan is explained in a memorandum or report just presented to Parliament, which deserves the attention of every man interested from any cause in the military efficiency of Great Britain. The Report is very short, very clear, and free of all but unavoidable technicalities; but the reader rises from it with a conviction that for once all the Military authorities are in accord, that they have thought instead of merely remem- bering, and that they have among them devised one of those far-reaching plans which last for centuries instead of sessions, and exercise a direct and permanent influence on the character of a people. For example, to note only two direct effects of localization, it is quite possible that in twenty years the details of military life may be an object of distinct interest to all Englishmen, while it is certain that five-sixths of all the objections to universal service must have disappeared. A county like East Kent, for example, cannot help getting in- terested in the daily life of its Brigade, with its two battalions of the 3rd permanently located in the district, raised from among its own people, officered by and by by its own gentry —for the tendency will be to secure that by exchanges closely linked with its own Militia, and acting as the per- manent centre for its own Volunteers. Soldiering must, under such conditions, become an understood occupation, like thatch- ing or gardening, instead of a mysterious, half-concealed, and more or less wicked trade. The history of that regiment, half of which, being always on service, is always adding at intervals to its renown, its officers, its traditions, its ways, must gradually penetrate through the county, till local pride and patriotism become engaged in supporting its efficiency. The regiment will seem like a home to all of military inclinations, like an accustomed centre to all Volunteers, till an order that all youngsters in the county shall for one year be either Militia- men or Volunteers will appear, instead of a desperate and startling change, a mere extension of customs which have become part of the daily county life. It is one thing for an East Kent man to "go soldiering," and quite another to go to Canterbury to be a soldier. The machinery and the locale of the machinery will all be so familiar that half the deterrent effect of strangeness will disappear, and drill in Canterbury will be as little obnoxious as drill at home, to which the villagers even now would willingly submit. The tradition which spoils our military service, that only black-sheep enlist, cannot long survive the sight of well-known men, relatives, acquaintances, and fellow-villagers, who are soldiers and are not black-sheep, who have not disappeared in red coats into space, but are there still in the county, alive, visible, and contented, who are only absent on service, which is an intelligible and even creditable sort of absence, and who are sure if they live to come back to the same locality. The sense of a soldier's isolation will be gone, particularly as service is to be so short, and it will be speedily discovered that for a man who mast earn his living by his hands, three years of the Queen's pay, diet, and uniform is about as pleasant and profitable an apprenticeship to life as could well be devised. The counties will learn, we believe, to feel about the Army as the seaports feel about the Navy—a genuine personal and yet imaginative interest, to the distinct reinvigoration of that form of the military spirit which we take to be always beneficial to a people, as beneficial as any other development of energy and of intellectual interest in something a little higher than one's dinner.
This is, of course, a view of the future only, and so far specu- lative, but the immediate operation of the plan will in many ways be directly beneficial. In the first place, it fixes the strength of our Army in time of peace. It will, no doubt, be possible, by refusing to recruit, to reduce the strength of battalions, but the normal figure is to be 750 men. The battalion is not isolated, but is the nucleus of a brigade, and Parliament will be slow by excessive reductions to reduce the proportion of fully trained to half-trained men, and slower still to do anything which would impair the cadres. Every member of either House will perceive how badly such a reduction will affect the Brigade he knows when he is at home, and the tendency will be to let the Brigades alone, and allow the Army in peace time to remain at one unvarying figure, to the indefinite improvement of the Army in consistence, readi- ness for duty, and, as we believe, in economy. Nothing except war is so costly as those spasmodic efforts to be ready for war which we make whenever we get either a resolve or a panic into our heads, and suddenly sweep the country for recruits not half as good as those which any sound system would have prepared for us, and which this system will cer- tainly prepare. In the second place, the plan yields us besides the Army of Defence as powerful a force for foreign service as under our circumstances we are at all likely to require. There will be the seventy battalions always ready, and always supplied from full reservoirs behind them, the idea of the Department being carefully explained in the Report in the following sentences :— "Supposing it were desired immediately on the outbreak of war to send to the scene of action 50 Battalions of Infantry without diminishing the Indian and Colonial garrisons, the despatch of that expeditionary force would leave 50 out of the 70 pairs of Line Battalions without any Line Battalions at home. The active measures consequent on snob a con- tingency may be assumed somewhat as follows:—!. All Line Battalions at home to be raised to war strength, the 50 Expeditionary Battalions being first considered, by calling up Army Reserve men to the colours, supplementing the deficiency, if any, by Militia Reserve and volunteers from Militia Battalions. 2. In each of the 50 districts required to furnish Expeditionary Battalions, embody both Militia Battalions. 3. In each of the remaining districts embody one Militia Battalion. 4. Complete each DepOt Centre to a full battalion to serve as a training battalion for recruits. 5. Complete all embodied Militia Battalions to war strength. 6. Make all enlistments during the war for general ser- vice in the Line and Militia Battalions of any Brigade district. Thus 50 districts would each have one of its battalions in India or the Colonies, and the other at the theatre of war. These would depend for the supply of their casualties on the two embodied Militia Battalions of their Brigade district, and below them on the Deprit, recruits being passed from the depot as soon as drilled into the Militia Battalions of the district ; and reinforcements for the Army in the field, consisting of the best drilled soldiers of the Militia Battalions, being obtained from those battalions by volunteering, or transfers, as the case might be. For the purposes of this supply the district represents the grand reser- voir; the Depot the expense reservoir ; the two Militia Battalions re- present the grand cistern, from which two channels uniting would pour a stream of reinforcements into the cistern of the Field Battalion.'
As recruiting never fails us in war time, the result of this arrangement would be that we could send an Army of 50,000 men to the aid of any ally, and keep it well supplied with good fresh soldiers, not mere recruits, but men fairly drilled ; at the rate of at least 1,000 men per week-20 men per bat- talion sent—thus maintaining precisely that kind of small, but persistent and enduring, Army with which we have always accomplished such great things. This Army, always existing, could always be kept ready, to the immense improve- ment of the supply services, which are impeded and harassed by the absence of any permanent idea as to the extent of the work they may be called on to perform. That idea is now made definite, namely, the supply of an Army of 50,000 men, say in Belgium or Canada, which till the war ends will never be suffered to sink below that figure. Objection may be taken to the number, which seems small when compared to the vast hosts of which we have lately been accustomed to read ; but the business of the British Army is to be steel head to a local spear, and had this arrangement existed when the Crimean war broke out we should have had just double our fighting power. Of course, in the event of war, the Militia will gradually deteriorate, because the best men will be sent away, and the efforts of the Depot to replace them will be hurried ; but as the Committee argue in their Report, "The objection has been urged that Militia regiments would be deteriorated by the transfer of their best men to the Regular Army in the field. But the question for consideration is, not what is best for the efficiency of this or that service taken alone, but what is best for the Military interests of the nation ; and whether it is preferable to send raw recruits from the plough to fill up gaps in the ranks of an Army in the field, or to pass those raw recruits through the Militia mill first, and to take for the supply of war casualties Militiamen who would have acquired some notions of drill and discipline."
Previous page
