TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SCIENTIFIC RECRUITING.
WE make no apologies to our readers for returning once more to the question of recruiting, because that is the vital question. The imperative need of the hour is more men. Every one who has any understanding of the situation, no matter what his political views, realizes this. The military authorities realize it, none more so. They are telling the nation in the advertisement appeals which they are issuing, and in a hundred other ways, that there is an urgent and desperate need of more recruits. The statesmen realize it—witness their speeches. Indeed, if there is one practical point upon which the country is absolutely agreed, it is that we shall never end the war unless we have at least a million more men, probably two millions.
But we are not getting the men. The present recruiting figures can only be described as pitiable. The classes from which the recruits have to be drawn, the men between nineteen and. thirty-eight, have been chilled and puzzled, first by being told that men were wanted, then by being told that nobody was wanted who did not reach a physical standard such as is reached only by a very small proportion of the population, and finally by appeals so vague and inadequate that the ordinary man is assuming the attitude : "If this is the way they ask, they cannot seriously want us. We shall wait. It isn't business yet." In a word, our present recruiting system has broken down, and is not giving us the results which it aims at giving us, and which it is admitted we must have.
That this is no prepossession or delusion of the Spectator can be shown by a glance at the recruiting reports in any newspaper, and still more by the newspaper articles. They write as strongly as, nay, often a great deal more strongly than, we have done in regard to the breakdown in the recruiting. Take, for example, the recent leading articles in the Times, and again the excellent " leader "which appeared in Thursday's Daily Mail on " Stupid Methods of Recruit- ing." From this we quote the following words, and should like to adopt them as our own :— " Better methods and a quicker imagination are needed by our recruiting department. Its authorities seem satisfied with an occasional poster,' which represents a Highlander standing by an antediluvian gun; while the rare and infrequent reports of the Press Bureau are for the most part models of vagueness and formality. If these methods are maintained, then there is little prospect of securing by voluntary means the men who are wanted to fill the gaps and to form the new armies."
Radical newspapers with no leanings whatever to con- scription are equally emphatic as to the need for men and as to the need not being met, and some of them are hinting very clearly that we may be forced to adopt compulsion. That we must compel men to come forward, if they do not come forward voluntarily, rather than own ourselves beaten and throw up the sponge is, of course, absolutely clear. The country would hang all the leaders of both political parties if they were to acknowledge defeat rather than ask for sacrifice. We, however, in spite of our well- known views as to universal service, feel convinced that if recourse is had to a scientific system of recruiting the voluntary system will give us the men we require during the war. We hold that it would be most unwise to think of resorting to the compulsory basis during war until we have given the voluntary system a fair trial, which we certainly have not given it up till now.
What do we mean by scientific recruiting ? We mean, in the first place, bringing home to every single man of military age in the country the impera- tive need for his aid. This has as yet never been done systematically and personally. At a General Election, in every constituency in the country not only one, but two, and sometimes three, personal appeals are made to every voter without any sort of difficulty, either through the post or by actual canvassing. But surely what we can do in the delirium of party politics we can do in a moment of national peril. We must so organize our recruiting appeals that every man of military age shall have the straight question put to him, if necessary by a personal 'visit: "Will you do your duty ? " This means, of course, that we must first prepare—a task of no great difficulty—a muster of the men of military age (such a muster was made just before the Armada), and then ask them squarely and fairly. When this has been done we shall know exactly how we stand. If we do not get enough men to come forward, then we must, in the words which have become familiar to all who are conversant with the matter at first hand, go and fetch them. (It is a commonplace in many of our country districts for men to say : "If they really want us they will come and fetch us, and we see no reason why we should go till they do "—" they" being, of course, the Government.) When we have mustered—that is, made lists of—all the eligible men, we must not, of course, assume that we can ever get the whole of them to join. What we have got to do is to make a calculation of the percentage of men required. Let us put two million more men as our ideal, and let us suppose that of men of military age in the country there are found to be about eight million. Then we shall want to obtain a quarter, or twenty-five per cent., of the men eligible. That will be the quota. While what we have termed the scientific appeal is being made to the men on the muster roll, the Government should publish each week the numbers obtained in a particular area, and in our opinion the best area to be taken is the Parliamentary constituency, because in it there exists ready made a suit- able muster machinery in the shape of the political party organizations. Suppose a big constituency in which the eligible men were found to be four thousand. The quota for such a constituency would be one thousand. Let that quota be published week by week with the actual recruit- ing figures, and advertised throughout the country. We should then know not only what cities and counties were doing their duty and what cities and counties were hanging back, but also, what is still more important, what portions of the cities and counties were laggards. We might further discover whether the laggardness was due to some special local consideration, or to ineffective recruit- ing officers, or to some other cause, and then we could find a remedy by concentrating a special appeal if necessary upon the backward constituency. By this means, using, as we have said, only the voluntary system, we should soon know exactly how we stood. In our opinion, the men would soon be forthcoming. The country generally would realize that we had a fair and businesslike system at work, and not a haphazard one full of inequalities and injustices, under which the laggard districts escape altogether, and the willing districts bear a. double burden.
What objections would the military authorities be likely to offer to this proposal ? We can guess very well what they would be. The authorities would say that under the system we propose there would be a great danger of a tremendous rush of men, and of the War Office being overwhelmed with recruits for whom as yet they have no equipment and no means of training. "You would break us down utterly and ruin the scheme by your very success. If we are to do our duty by the men, we want to have a steady flow of recruits, and not wild rushes that flood us out." And here let us interject that no words are too strong in praise of the way in which Lord Kitchener and his Staff are training and equipping the recruits. It is a perfect marvel of good organization, good sense, humanity, and a fine mixture of the best military and democratic spirit. In a word, we fully sympathize with the objection as to swamping the War Office with men. We perfectly under- stand that for the hard-worked men who are now engaged in the task of training the distraction of having masses of raw material dumped upon them when they cannot deal with it would be as exasperating as it would be for a newspaper office to have the paper-makers coming at the busiest moment and dumping huge bales of paper in every corner of the composing-room and the editorial department. To run the thing efficiently, say the soldiers, the men must come in as they are wanted, and not before—just as the paper must come in when it is wanted for the newspaper, and not before. It would be madness to paralyse the military authorities and ruin the absolutely splendid work which they are doing for the nation by overfeeding them with recruits. In other words, we are fully aware that many businesses have been ruined by too great success at the wrong moment and by overtrading. Now what does all this point to ? It points most emphatically—and here we are certain that every experienced man of business and every successful administrator will bear us out—to this fact. The provision of the men, and their training and organization, must be separate tasks and placed in separate hands. As we have pointed out so often in these columns, the proper way to do the job is to leave the training and equipment of the men absolutely and unreservedly in the hands of the military authorities. At the same time there ought to be set up an entirely separate body or "Commission of Array,, or, if that is thought too archaeological, a body of "Commissioners for Recruiting," whose first business it should be to muster the nation, work out the quotas, and then, under the voluntary system, to get ready the raw material in great heaps, but away from, and so as to cause no embarrassment to, the military authorities. That done, what would happen would be this. The military authorities, as soon as they were ready for a hundred thousand more men, would tell the Commissioners that they were able to train and equip them, and the men would at once be called up and sent to the depots designated by the War Office. They would be sent, of course, medically examined and attested, the military authorities having prescribed the standard which the doctors were to adopt. After they had arrived at the depots there could be a further examination, exactly as now, in order to get rid of men who after trial did not appear likely to make good soldiers.
But, it will be asked, how would the Commissioners for raising men be ableto deal with the overwhelming rush which would, it is admitted, be caused by this system of scientific recruiting ? They would deal with it on the perfectly sen- sible business lines proposed two months ago by the Prime Minister. When a man had offered himself as a recruit, and when he had passed the doctor and been attested, he would be told that he was a soldier of his King and country, but that he might not be wanted for several weeks, or even a couple of months. He would therefore be told to return to his home and his work as if he were on furlough. Since, however, he was a soldier, though not yet a trained one, he would receive a soldier's pay at Army rates—i.e., Is. 3d. a day — till called up for service. All he would have to do would be to present himself at a designated place every Saturday afternoon in order to receive his pay and to report himself as remaining fit and in good health. In addition, he would be given a conspicuous badge, which would indicate to all the world that he had done his duty, and was ready to answer his country's call the moment the country was ready to give him his military training. Meanwhile there is no reason why the men who gave out the pay, who would naturally be old soldiers, should not give the recruit advice as to training himself bodily by the use of physical exercises in order that he might quickly become fit for the athletic work which is now the lot of a soldier. If he could also join a Miniature Rifle Club and train his eye as well as his body, all the better. The men on the waiting list, generously treated by the country in the matter of pay, would act as the best possible recruiting agents. The badges worn by them at their work at the forge or the factory, in the fields, in the office, or wherever men congregate, would make an appeal to the men who were working side by side with them which in most cases would be irresistible. Men who had not done their duty would stand out in unpleasant relief among the men who were wearing the King's badge of honour. The men with the badge would at once possess that sense of superiority which Dr. Johnson has made all English- speaking people realize by his words to Boswell : If Lord Mansfield were in a company of soldiers or sailors, he would shrink ; he'd wish to creep under the table.'
Previous page
