vement to them, fortii - the - Conimittee, - and supervise the financial side of
the experiment. It would be well, too, that the Committee should have power to add to their number persons who, though unable to give so large a subscription as £100, may be able and willing to devote time and expert knowledge to the object in view. For ourselves, we will, as we have said before, do all we can to further the experiment. We will endeavour to collect the money, will form the Committee, and will publish from time to time accounts of the work as it proceeds. That is all that 'a newspaper can do in the matter, for we -make' no pretensions to being able to superintend a course of military training in detail. Our function will be to bring together those who are willing to give Colonel Pollock the 'chance to try his experiment and to bear a portion of the expense.
We must offer a word or two in explanation of our reasons for attaching so much importance to Colonel Pollock's proposal, and of our desire that his experiment should be tried. 'We believe that, if successful, it will do a great deal towards solving the problem of "the Army that we need," and especially in the direction of the maintenance and. development of the Militia. We hold that the Militia is an essential part of the military forces of the nation, and that unless it can be maintained and developed we shall be in danger of falling into a condi- tion the outcome of which will be either some form of conscription or else military decrepitude. The Militia, throughout our past history has always come to the aid of the nation when it has been in peril. It did so at Waterloo, during the Crimea, and five years ago at the crisis of the Boer War, and we believe that it is capable of rendering equally good service in the future. Unfortunately, how- ever, owing to the continual neglect of the War Office, the Militia is a diminishing force ; and the attack made upon it by the present Secretary of State for War has, we fear, tended to accelerate its depletion. In our opinion, instead of getting. rid of the Militia altogether, as the present Government, through the mouth of Mr. Arnold-Forster, tell us they desire to do, we ought very largely to increase its numbers, provide it with a strong Reserve, and generally develop and reorganise the force. But if the Militia is to be developed and reorganised, it is necessary never to forget that it is a semi-civilian force, and that nothing which aims at con- verting the Militiaman into a short-service Regular will be of any avail. The Militiaman must continue in the future what he has been in the past, a civilian who has been trained to arms, and on whose services the Government can count in time of need, but who, nevertheless, remains in essentials and during peace-time a civilian as much as does the Yeoman or the Volunteer. The problem, therefore, is to get a man who is trained to arms and is an efficient infantry soldier, and who yet does not give up so much of his time to soldiering as will prevent him from pursuing ordinary civil employment. Clearly the easiest way to provide for these conditions is to give the Militiaman a, thorough training in military duties, and then to make so small a claim upon his time that his work in civil life will not be appreciably hindered. For example, it would obviously greatly facilitate the raising of a Militia Force if we could feel sure that a man who received six months' recruit training might be so thoroughly trained in that time that he would be able to remain efficient, even though afterwards be only received ten days' training in camp each year. We do not hesitate to assert that six months' recruit training, and ten days' camp a year, say, for a period of five years, and afterwards five years in the Reserve with, say, two hours at the ranges on ten Saturday afternoons in the year, during the whole ten years, would be conditions under which a force of a, hundred and fifty thousand men could easily be raised. During the recruit training we would pay the men at the ordinary Regular rate, during "the ten days in camp at Yeomanry pay—that is, 5s. a day— and 5s. a day for each of his ten Saturdays at the ranges. It is evident, however, that the possibility of offering such terms as these depends upon whether a Militia recruit can be turned into an efficient infantry soldier, as Colonel Pollock alleges, by six months' special training. If he can, then it seems to us that the problem of the Militia.will be solved. It is, then, as we have said, because we attach so much importance to the maintenance of the Militia that we are so anxious to have the experiment tried. It may be, of course, that Colonel Pollock, though with the best intentions, will not be able to achieve his aim. But even if he fails we shall not consider the matter decided. It is one of too great importance to depend upon the skill of one man, no matter how enterprising and patriotic. If, however, Colonel Pollock does succeed, then we may feel that we are on safe ground in advocating the development of the Militia on lines similar to those roughly sketched above.
It should be noted how very greatly the plan of a longer initial training than at present, coupled with a much shorter yearly training, would facilitate recruiting. A boy at eighteen years has not in most cases settled to work, and. he can, therefore, go through a six months' recruit training without injury to his prospects of good civil employment. Where membership of the Militia interferes with civil employ- ment is in the annual month's training. The employer is frightened at the prospect of having to part with the employe's services for a month in every year, and a month chosen not by him, but by the military authorities. But though parting with a man's services for a month may be an impossibility, losing them for a week or ten days may only be an inconvenience. The prudent parent, therefore, who now advises his son against joining the Militia would have very much less reason to do so under the system of long recruit training and short annual training. The boy would indeed have his prospects improved, not injured. The six months' good feeding and careful physical training is likely at the age of eighteen to improve his physique and general activity very greatly, and, as we have said, there is no reason why a boy who desires to go into the Militia should not postpone getting regular employment till his training is over. It is very seldom that a boy gets a permanent iob when he is under nineteen. But though we ourselves are inclined to believe that the success of Colonel Pollock's experiment would greatly help the Militia in this. way, we must point out that no one by supporting that experiment will be in the least committed to any particular scheme of military reform. We are well aware that many friends of the Militia would condemn the suggestions we have made. Such persons, however, need not for that reason refuse to help Colonel Pollock's experi- inent if they approve of it on other grounds. For all we know, Colonel Pollock himself may disapprove of the Militia scheme we have sketched. All that he himself is committed to, and all that subscribers would be com- mitted to, is an experiment intended to show that if a proper system of individual training is adopted, a thoroughly efficient infantry soldier can be produced in sin months. Since no one is likely to advocate only six months' training for the Regular soldier, the matter is necessarily one that primarily concerns those who are interested in the Auxiliaries. We would there- fore specially direct our appeal to those who are interested in the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers, and. those of the general public who are determined that the nation shall at last get "the Army that we need," and get it without resort to compulsory 'military training er to the fantastic schemes of Army reform for which Mr. Arnold-Forster is responsible. We only need some thirty-two men to give .2100 each, and the experiment can be tried. If it fails, as of course it may, no great harm will have been done. If it succeeds, we shall have established a fact of immense practical importance, and one which will prove a sure foundation for the Militia portion of "the Army that we need."
It only remains to add that we shall be delighted to receive subscriptions, however small, and that they should be addressed to the editor of the Spectator, 1 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C. Cheques should be crossed "Barclay and Co., Goslings' Branch."
Tab CHRISTIAN CONSCEENCE AND THE CONDUCT OF TRADE.
IN his interesting and useful article in the current number of the National Review on "The Clergy and Commercial Morality" Mr. James .A.ciclerley, as it seems to us, deals almost too patiently with those who have censured the Bishops for the line which they took in Convocation last summer on the morals of trade. It may be remembered that, on the motion of the Bishop of Birmingham, the Upper House of the Southern Province on July 4th unanimously resolved to request the Primate to direct the appointment of a Joint Committee of Con- vocation and of the House of Laymen to consider whether any, and if any, what, special measures were needed "in order to strengthen and give consistency to the moral witness of the Church on certain current abuses of com- merce, on gambling, and on certaie other prevalent offences against the moral law," and that such Committee should co-operate, if possible, with a similar Committee from the Northern Province, and take counsel with, or co-opt, other men of experience. In moving this resolution Bishop Gore said. that he supposed that there was no clergyman who was in touch with the workaday life of young men and young women who was not confronted with the problem of the responsibility of the individual who was required in the service of his employer to do something which was not honest or to say something which was not true. Other prelates, like Dr. Talbot and Dr. Jacob, whose parochial and episcopal experience has brought them into close relationship with all classes in vast industrial and com- mercial communities, gave their strongest corroboration to these statements of the Bishop of Birmingham. They welcomed, as did. the Bishop of Hereford, who was Chair- man of a Committee of the last Pan-Anglican Conference which drew up a valuable Report on the subject of com- mercial and social morality, the idea suggested by Bishop Gore of a kind of standina, representative Church Com- mittee of Bishops, presbyters, and laymen for the con- sideration and treatment of moral matters. The only shade of difference of opinion exhibited by the debate was on the question whether some of the speeches might be regarded outside as amounting to an acknowledgment that the Church had been asleep on this subject. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury agreed with the Bishop of London in being somewhat anxious on this point, and took occasion to dwell upon some of the activities which had been exerted by the Church in connection with commercial morality, but at the same time earnestly advocated the unanimous acceptance, which was cordially given, of Bishop Gore's resolution.
It does not seem to have occurred to any prelate present that there could be among the laity of the country any disposition to cavil at the clergy, whether Bishops or presbyters, as having attempted, or contemplated doing, too much in the way of effort towards the aesainissement of English life on its commercial side. Yet it is against a chorus of such cavillers that Mr. Adderley feels it neces- sary to say a few words in defence of the members of the Upper House of Convocation, who have been condemned, it seems, on the score of interference with what does not concern them. To us it appears that persons who would say that kind of thing would say anything. Either they are absolute cynics, a class deserving of no consideration whatever ; or they are so obtuse and puzzle-headed as to require to be sharply made to understand their own total absence of title to adopt a superior tone in regard to any class of their fellow-citizens. There are no cobblers more loyally sticking to their respective lasts than those ministers of religion who seek to qualify themselves, individually and collectively, to advise and help those laity on whom they have influence as to the morality of the lines of action in which they find themselves required, or tempted, to indulge in the conduct of trade. Whether it will pay, immediately or in the long run, to make misrepresenta- tions to customers, or to practise the giving or receiving of secret commissions,—on these and like questions the Christian minister, as such, can have no expert opinion to offer, and should probably refrain from dogmatising. But as to whether such practices are morally justifiable, and therefore compatible with the profession of a Christian, the Christian minister is bound to have, and on all suit- able Occasions, both publicly and privately, to express, clear and. definite opinions. To what degree it is necessary or desirable for him to dwell publicly on such topics will, of course, depend upon the extent to which, from information reaching him within his own sphere, and from that which is available to him from other sources, he is reasonably led to believe that practices at variance with morality prevail.' In this connection, as Mr. Adderley abundantly shows, it is very much too lath in the day for anyone to venture to suggest that the widespread existence of dishonest practices is a fancy of the clergy. The Report of a Com- mittee of the London Chamber of Commerce in 1898; affirming the prevalence of secret commissions, in various forms, "to a great extent, in almost all trades and profes- sions " ; the strenuous efforts made by Lord Russell of Sillowen to secure more effective legislation against them ; and the later repeated, though abortive, attempts of Parliament to deal with the subject,—these things are much more than enough to establish, on expert authority, the extensive existence of thoroughly morbid conditions within our commercial life. No one suggests that these unwholesome conditions, these degraded standards, have been abolished ; or that it is in the least likely that they would manifest themselves only in one type of dishonest practice. On the contrary, they are sure to take many shapes, and it is this consideration which gives a large measure of inherent probability to the great variety of cases of dishonest practice—in the way of falsehoods required by employers to be told, or acted, by their employes—which are related by Mr. Adderley, from a recent newspaper correspondence, and from communications which he has personally received. Happily, as he gladly acknowledges, there is a very con- siderable body of testimony in the opposite direction. There is no reason to assume that English trade is universally, or even generally, infected by the poison of dishonest competition. But it would be idle to suppose, especially in the light of the broad considerations to which we have referred, that the confidences of which the Bishops speak as so frequently received by themselves and their clergy do not afford genuine evidence of the wide- spread prevalence of such dishonesty, and of terrible difficulties in avoiding it on the part of large numbers both of employers and of employed who desire to keep themselves free from taint.
These things being so, it is plainly of the utmost im- portance that the influences making for commercial purity should as far as possible be effectively organised. This is aimed at in the case of the Church of England by Bishop Gore's suggestion of a standing representative Council on moral matters. No doubt, as Mr. Adderley points out, and as Bishop Gore would cordially agree, organised action on the part of those who desire to promote the defence of high ethical standards in trade must embrace inembers of all religious persuasions and, of none ; but that would be no reason against the usefulness of a standing Council for the consideration of such questions in each Christian communion. Such central bodies would indeed be of valuable service in determining the nature and in supervising the progress of any definite collective action, such as Mr. Adderley suggests, for the encourage- ment of honest trading. "Preferential dealing," of the 'kind which he has in view, by Christians with "places of business where they were sure all was straight and fair," might be a very powerful and beneficent weapon if wisely and justly directed, but might also lend itself to• grave, and even cruel, abuse in the contrary event. But the difficulties of the subject constitute no reason whatever against the establishment of some recognised machinery for the furtherance of commercial morality. It is an essential feature of the scheme suggested by Bishop Gore that it involves the participation of the laity with the clergy. This, of course, should be the case locally, as well as in any general organisation. By consultation with experienced laity the clergy will be enabled to give a practical form to their counsels, public as well as private, on questions con- nected with the morals of trade, and to distinguish between things important and unimportant. Whether commercial immorality is growing is a question on which we offer no opinion ; but the Committee of the London Chamber of Commerce already referred to held that the -rot of secret commissions was spreading in some trades in 1898; and when the Prevention of ' Corruption Bill—to be dropped, unfortunately, in the last days of the Session 'in the Commons—was read a second time in the Lords last March, the Lord Chancellor mentioned that he had received a letter, signed by all the great bankers of London, "urging the high importance of this measure to "the commercial community." There are no water-tight .or infection-proof compartments in a nation's life and character, and if corruption spreads in English trade, it will infallibly be found at work increasingly in all depart- ments of our public life. To fight for the expulsion of this fatal evil is therefore emphatically the task of all Christians and all good citizens. It is a cause which may well draw together those who differ most widely on points of faith or of politics, and in co-operation for its further- ance they may not seldom find that they have come to understand one another better than ever before.
THE OLD UNIVERSITY AND THE NEW.
TORD ROSEBERY'S speech on Friday week on I the occasion of the opening of the Goldsmiths' College as a department of the University of London contained an eloquent description of the new attitude towards the University question which has appeared during the past twenty years. The Goldsmiths' College does not in itself involve a fresh departure, being merely an exten- sion of the activity of the University of London made possible by the munificence of the Goldsmiths' Company. The institution at New Cross will provide education for the pass degree of the University, and will also act as a training-school on the largest scale for elementary teachers. The interesting point is that it makes a specialty of its scientific and engineering courses, and this feature gave Lord Rosebery the cue for his sketch of the newly created type of University, the "University of the future." The movement began in the incorporation of the Victoria University at Manchester in 1880. Within the past few years that University has received a new and extended charter, and Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and Liverpool have followed suit. These Universities, with those of London and Wales, represent a new type in organisation and purpose. Being bound by no traditions, their aim id directly practical. They seek to provide higher education of the kind most useful to the classes from which they draw their alumni. Science must therefore bulk more largely in their curricula than what we know as "the humanities," for, whereas the latter are already provided for, they are the sole trustees and pioneers of practical mien., tific education. They recognise that the University of the future can never be, as Carlyle thought, a mere library of books. The spoken word, the personal influence, the laboratory and. the engineering shop, cannot be overlooked. "The new Universities," in Lord Rosebery's words, "must be content, and wisely content, with something which is not antiquity, and which is not tradition, but which may be more immediately useful and practical than either antiquity or tradition." Being new and elastic, they can be made to serve the changing needs of our national life.
Previous page
