Army Reform The pamphlet A Policy for the Army, published
this week by the recently-established Army League Committee, is a clear and valuable statement of the need for reform in the organisation of our land forces. During 1937, 50,000 new recruits will be needed to make up deficiencies ; the Regular and Territorial Armies are both below pre-War strength, while their commitments have been immensely increased. The Report rightly insists that the War Office has to compete with industry in the labour market, and cannot compete successfully unless, by offering increases in pay, improved conditions of enlistment and foreign service, and good prospects of employment in civil life after retirement, it can offer the soldier at least as attractive a life as can be found elsewhere ; the cost of these changes is precisely the cost of maintaining the voluntary system. In pressing for these reforms the Committee, and the Army League it intends to organise as a means of educating public opinion, can only do good ; they are the same reforms which others, so often called " sentimentalists," have for different reasons demanded long ago. But it is to be hoped that the Committee will confine itself to this object and not occupy itself with the shaping of defence policy. The assertion in the pamphlet that " Great Britain will never go to war except to defend the vital interests of the British Empire " is an unwarranted and impolitic dismissal of the various international obliga- tions by which this country is bound.
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