THE CHIEF LESSON OF THE WAR.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.1 Sin,—Your article under this title in the Spectator of December 30th rightly states that the chief lesson to be learnt is the necessity of military affairs not being left solely to the experts, and of the intelligent public at large taking a larger share in the supervision of military organisation,- i.e., training and equipment. I shall be glad to know how this can be done without resorting to general military service. The latter is a measure which I have always advocated, since returning from a three years' sojourn in France, twenty years tgo, and is, it appears to me, the only means by which the public at large can be made to feel the necessity of interesting itself actively, and contewuovsly, in Army matters. Every word of your article is true, but you have, I think, omitted the conclusion to be drawn from their truth,— viz., that if we cannot leave things solely to the experts we (the public) must be continuously, and not spasmodically, watchful, and insist on being continuously informed by our representatives in Parliament as to the state of our Army. As one of the originators of the Navy League, and, as such, more indebted to Mr. Spenser Wilkinson's efforts than lean well express, I have long felt the folly of attempting to carry on our Empire without a largely increased Army, quite apart from the Navy. In those days when the Navy League was first mooted, Mr. Spenser Wilkinson in- sisted that the Navy mast have the first place, and that all efforts at reform must be directed towards the Navy for the time being. The moment has, however, now arrived when the necessity of reforming the Army is equally urgent, and as such reform must be quantitative, as well as qualitative, I trust that you will take up the question of general military service with your usual energy and im- partiality. We have, as I have always maintained, a model ready to hand, which is well worthy of being adopted in its entirety,—viz., that of the German Army, as at present constituted, —i.e., a service lasting only ten months for the educated classes (who have to pass an examination proving the efficacy of that education), and one year and ten months for the rest of the male population; after such service comes every year, or every two years, a short month, or six weeks, spent at manoeuvres in the summertime, and con- tinued over a series of years. Surely the disadvantages of such a system, from our own standpoint, are very slight compared with the easy mode of obtaining the necessary number of troops for our military purposes, such necessary number being, in my opinion, five hundred thousand men on a peace footing for home service, and a further hundred thousand men for service abroad, the latter to receive double pay, and to have the chance of enlisting for a farther five or nine years, or similar periods, if they so desire. It has also frequently struck me as a strange anomaly that we have no arrangement under
State management for keeping up the supply of our horses. Here, again, the German system, as it exists in Trakehnen in East Prussia, can surely serve as a model without any alteration ; and the breed of horses which is produced there is a finer and stronger one than people in this country, in general, can have any idea of. If we could only have men like Mr. Spenser Wilkinson at the War Office, and with full powers to act, we should feel less uneasy than we have long
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