THE STATE OF THE ARMY.
IN Tuesday's Times Mr. Arnold-Forster brought to an end his very able and suggestive series of letters on the condition of the Army. We do not suppose that he has said the final word on the subject, nor do we suppose that he believes himself to have done so. What he has done, and what the country should be grateful to him for having done, is to bring out clearly the need for radical changes in the organisation of the Army, and for the sug- gestion of prineiples which are likely to meet the admitted defects of the present system, rather than for a mere addition in numbers. The great public interest excited by the letters, and the general discussion to which they have given rise, have brought out clearly one or two points of very great importance, and have shown that the Govern- ment will have the support of the country if they propose a really large and far-reaching scheme of reorganisation. The disputants have often nominally differed very widely from Mr. Arnold-Forster, but in practice there has been a very general agreement on several of the most essential matters. No one, for example, seems to doubt that there must be a change in the conditions of service, with the object of making that service more attractive to the recruits. Again, it is admitted that though there is no need to offer any very great increase in the pay, the soldier must be given his full shilling a day, free of stoppages. That is, the soldier must be " all found," and he must be able to be told truly, what he is now told untruly, that his pay is a shilling per day, and that the Government feeds him and clothes him. This may only mean a small actual increase of pay, but these are just the little things which make military service popular or unpopular. Again, the soldier who after two or three years of ser- vice has mastered his duties and become a good shot— shooting and letting off a rifle are very different things— ought clearly to be paid more than the man who is only beginning to understand his business. Next, there seems a general agreement that the common soldier ought to be offered a real career in the Army. That is, he should be made to feel what the officer feels, that if he chooses he can devote his life to military work, and that if he does so he need not fear being left stranded when he is still a young man. No doubt there are difficulties in so arranging things that the soldier will be able to make a career of the Army ; but consider the advantages that would result from offering the recruit a career. The effect on discipline would be most excellent, for the authorities would then possess a real punishment in dismissal. There is never any difficulty about discipline in the police, because the policeman knows that if he is discharged he loses the career he has chosen, and loses, that is, not only a good post at the moment, but provision for the rest of his life. A man ought to be able to feel that if he enlists in the Army and behaves himself, he will have secured to him the cer- tainty of a decent livelihood during his life. While with the colours he will be well fed and clothed, when in the Reserve he will have opportunities given him to earn good wages in suitable work, and if he lives beyond sixty he will have an old-age pension purchased for him in the Post Office out of a fund accumulated for him during his service after the manner of the present deferred pay. As we have said, there are many difficulties in the way of arriving at a system of this kind. It would doubtless prove very attractive could it be carried out, but it pre- supposes many things. To work it effectively it would no doubt be necessary to extend the service with the colours. But the objection always raised to such exten- sion is that it will destroy the Reserve. The civilian is at once inclined to ask why should it do anything of the kind. The answer is that a soldier is no good for the Reserve after he is thirty-five. You cannot, it is said, enlist a man at twenty-three or so for twelve years, because if you do he will be unable to put in any Reserve service. But surely there must be some mistake here. No one ever dreams of suggesting that an officer is useless after thirty-five. Every one knows that he is quite efficienti and very probably will continue so for another fifteen years or more. Why, then, should the man in the ranks be in so different a position? It cannot be because the men of the richer classes age so much less rapidly. Police- men and sailors lead quite as hard lives as soldiers, but they are not invalids at thirty-five, but are, instead, at their fittest. If it is a fact that our soldiers are useless at thirty-five, then there must be something radically wrong in the way in which they are handled, or what is more probable, they must be drawn from a clam who age prematurely. But if that is so, yet another argument has emerged against our present system of recruiting. If by recruiting boys at seventeen we are producing men who will be useless at thirty-five, we are doing the nation a very grievous wrong. If we could get men between twenty and twenty-five, engage them for twelve years' service with the colours, and eight years' service in the first Reserve, and after that give the soldier a good pension, carrying with it the liability to serve up to the age of sixty in a second Reserve, a body liable to be called out, not for service abroad, but to constitute a force for home defence in case of the threat of invasion, we should have not only given the soldier a career, but ensured our obtaining the services of all the drilled men in the country in case of imminent need. The experts may tell us that this plan would be both too costly, and also not likely to attract the men. Possibly that is so, but certainly the plan, were it practical, would in the end give us a very efficient and seasoned Army with the colours, and a large body of drilled men available in a national emergency. Mr. Amold-Forster's actual proposals for reorganising the conditions of service are not revolutionary, but, unless we are mistaken, they would if adopted give us a real Army. His plan may not be perfect, but at least it carries out the main principles which, as we have said, seem generally admitted to be essential. Mr. Arnold-Forster, besides abolishing deferred pay and stoppages, giving. Is. a day and ".all found," and securing employment for Reserve and discharged soldiers, would provide for a system both of short and of long service. Short service, as he says, is wanted to form a Reserve and long service to provide for foreign service. " Men should he enlisted (a) for three years and a period in the Reserve for service at home only ; (b) for twelve years, with a shorter Reserve service, a higher rate of pay, and service both abroad and at home. The tour for a long-service battalion might then be six years in India, three years in the Colonies, and three years at home." Men from the short-service battalions who have borne good characters should, he continues, "be allowed to re-engage for nine years at the expiration of their first term, subject to the exigencies of the service permitting." It cannot be denied that such a plan as this has a very great deal to commend it. But before we point out its advantages let us beg our readers not to run away with the notion that there is anything revolutionary in the scheme. It does not propose to set up a special Indian or Colonial Army—an utterly impossible plan—and it also does not propose to convert the home battalions—to call them the home Army would be a misrepresentation —into a kind of glorified Militia. At first sight people might suppose that Mr. Arnold-Forster is pro- posing something of this kind. In reality he is doing nothing of the sort. Under his plan the foreign service battalions would be in the position that the greater part of the Army—i.e., the whole Army, minus the Guards and certain cavalry regiments—has always been in. The home battalions, on the other hand, would occupy the position held by the Guards and the cavalry regiments just alluded to up till six months ago. That is, they would remain in the United Kingdom, just as the whole German Army re- mains in Germany, till war was declared and they were needed to go on active service. It may be urged that they would rust, but the Guards have never rusted, and no doubt they would be given the first claim to take part in all foreign expeditions organised directly from England. The home battalions would therefore be like the Guards regiments, permanently stationed at home. They would not, however, be the only soldiers at home. Each long-service battalion would spend three in every twelve years in these islands. One of the advantages of the plan would be that in the home battalions we should always have regiments up to their full strength and ready for all emergencies. Another great advantage would be that the recruit would be offered so large a field of choice. , He would be able, if he wanted at once to have the excitement and interest of service abroad, to join a long-service battalion. If, on the other hand, he was not sure whether he liked. soldiering, he could join a home battalion for three years. The choice, however, would not be irrevocable. If, when he had done his service at home, he wanted to see more soldiering, he might join a long-service regiment,—and join it, be it remembered, as a fully trained soldier, and so able to get better pay than a raw recruit. It will be said, perhaps, that under such conditions as these we shall get no recruits. But surely it is worth trying. If we got what we wanted now, or very nearly, it would no doubt be madness to make a change. But considering what we do get at present, could there be any great harm in trying another system ? One more point is worth mentioning, and this is a point where a civilian's opinion is as good as that of a soldier. We sincerely trust that whatever changes are made will be made on bold and broad lines and clearly advertised throughout the country. If the stoppages are done away with, let the country ring with this fact, and with the other new advantages of service. Do not let the changes be grudgingly announced in unintelligible "instructions." Further, let the authorities adopt Mr. Arnold-Forster's sug- gestion, and insist on certificates of good character before they accept a recruit for the Army, as is done in the Navy. The abolition of the stoppages and the other new advantages will give them an opportunity to do that, and when they have once convinced the public that the Army is going to be in future a fit place for respectable lads—it is, of course, not really otherwise now, but, unfortunately, thousands of people entertain strong prejudices on the matter—they will have added an invaluable inducement to recruiting. The announcement, "We are going to give better terms, and we shall, therefore, insist on a better article," would not injure but help recruiting. And in the end the securing a better article will prove an economy rather than the reverse. No doubt the Army is already free from crime, and so from the cost of prisons, but it is not free from the terrible cost imposed by sickness. Full-grown, -healthy men would not want half the doctoring required by weak and sickly boys. One other suggestion and we have done. It is that attention should be paid to Mr. Arnold-Forster's proposal for recruiting boys and train- ing, paying, and feeding them as boys till they grow to be men. "They might be kept from 14 to 16 at training deptits, and from 16 to 18 attached to the short-service battalions, receiving 6d. a day, doing much of the work now done by those who should be duty men, and learn- ing a trade as the Marines do. No convicted boy should ever be taken." That is, we have always held, a most excellent suggestion. We should like to see one such training-school in every county and every great town,— .a place not for paupers or outcasts, but in which boys anxious to join the Army could be placed. Our million- aires might do worse things with their money than found such schools of arms, nor could a better use be die covered for those derelict endowments for which no special object can be found; If there were twenty such schools in England which only took boys of good origin and character we venture to predict that the difficulty would be in selecting the boys, not in keeping the schools full. Hundreds of boys who when they first leave school can- not find an opening would be thankful to enter a military ,school and be trained for the Army.
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