The Home Guard Again
There were no particularly sensible reasons why the House of Commons should stay up all night debating the Home Guard Bill. The last Government, under a flimsy and superfluous cloak of secrecy, set in motion the process of selecting battalion commanders for a Home Guard which did not yet exist. Their successors introduced last week legislation which lays the basis for the creation, or re-creation, of a volunteer force organised on a limited scale but capable of being rapidly mustered in the event of war. The Secretary of State for War was closely and somewhat naggingly questioned on various aspects of the Home Guard Bill by Opposition members ; but no sensible person can quarrel with his contention that, if war comes, it is likely to come suddenly and to create, no less suddenly, a widespread demand for the deployment of armed men in static defensive roles all over the country. On the question of whether it is better to be prepared or to be unprepared for this contingency there can hardly be two opinions. The whole thing is expected to cost the Exchequer some £2,500,000 a year. Home Guard personnel, though they will receive no pay, will be entitled to certain allowances ; they will be issued with arms, steel helmets and, eventually, battle-dress. They will be subject to military law only when mustered or when undergoing training, of which they will be expected (but cannot be compelled) to put in a specified minimum amount The brunt of the spade- work necessitated by this measure will be borne by the already hard-worked Territorial Associations, and there will be many administrative difficulties to overcome. But the result will be that, by about next spring, the country will have, at small cost and in skeleton form, something which it is absolutely certain to need in war ; and that is a sensible result.
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