The fifth of the articles in the Times on "The
Problems of the Army," which appeared on Tuesday, is occupied with the • problem of home defence, and is perhaps the most interesting of the series. The writer of the article proposes that the Home Defence Army, as distinguished from the professional Imperial Army, should have a separate War Office and a sepa- rate General Staff of its own. The Home Army would also be divided into army corps, which wo-ald be autonomous in all matters of internal organisation. The composition of the Home Army would, he suggests, be as follows. At the head of it would be the Guards, with a two-year service. Then would come an improved and enlarged Militia, a Militia of, say, two hundred thousand, with a Militia Reserve of a hundred thousand—the Yeomanry are no doubt included in this estimate—and an improved Volunteer Force. The Home Army, however, as we understand the writer in the Times, would be officered by an adequately paid corps of professional officers, at any rate in the higher ranks. There should also, he considers, be a permanent force of non-commissioned officers. Again, there ahould be a free interchange of officers between the Home and the Imperial Armies. The writer, we may add, points out, as we have often done, the value of skilled and mobile riflemen in home defence. As our readers will gather even from this scanty summary, the ideas of the writer in the Times are in many respects akin to those we have repeatedly expressed in these columns. They differ rather in details than in essentials. We must, however, take strong exception to the plan for placing the Guards in the Home Defence Army rather than in the expeditionary force belong- ing to the professional or Imperial Army kept always at the centre ready for an emergency call, nor can we think the plan of having two War Offices a practicable one. We may mention that a sixth article which appeared in Wednesday's Times also advo- cates a scheme that we have often put forward,—namely, that physical training of a military nature should be compulsory in all our schools just as a literary training is now compulsory.
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