The House of Commons on Thursday dealt with the Army
Estimates. Mr. Amery, who opened the debate, asked for explicit assurances that the War Office recognized the duty of providing forces of such strength as to make it unlikely that an attack by Germany on France could succeed and, there- fore, improbable that an attack would be made. The strength of our expeditionary force was not proportionate to the magni- tude of the possible tasks before it. Dealing with the withdrawal of battleships from the Mediterranean, he urged that our garrisons at Gibraltar, Malta, and in Egypt ought to be greatly strengthened. Colonel Seely in his reply compared the state of the Army for oversea services in 1906 with the present state of things for the purpose of showing how many and great had been the improvements. Speaking generally, there had been an enormous advance in the efficiency of the Army, which was to be ascribed largely to the zeal of Lord Haldane.
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