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would strike a blow on land in this country without having first prepared a weapon absolutely reliable for the purpose, and that the special preparation of the force, as regards individual efficiency, can be carried on quietly and without observation, in the normal training which each officer, non-commissioned officer, and private undergoes in foreign armies. The same rule holds good with regard to the preparation of any naval and sea transport that might be required for an invasion. Under the well-thought-out and perfect systems that prevail on the Continent, the only order required for changing from complete passivity to action, immediate and at full power, is 'Go ahead'; everyone at once takes his allotted place in the huge human machine, and the whole machine at once starts working, smoothly, rapidly, and without any special effort. When I hear of time available to make preparations to meet a threatened invasion, the bit of information I once picked up from a subaltern in the German army recurs to my mind. I have received and returned,' he said, the Red-Book specifying my work on the order to mobilise; I go to Metz to bring up the Reservists, and in the book I have been informed of the railway stations at which we shall stop during the journey, and the number of cups of coffee that will be ready for us at certain places.' And that implies a good deal more—namely, that some one or other, possibly a civilian at some small station, knows now that he also must be ready, on the word 'Mobilise,' to supply the definitively prescribed number of cups of coffee.

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The Commissioners then set to work to ascertain the present condition of the Auxiliary Forces, the distance they are below this necessary standard of efficiency, and the possibility of their ever reaching it; and after a searching inquiry, eight out of the twelve found themselves compelled eventually to arrive at the conclusion embodied in the final paragraph of the Report, and which has aroused such a tempest of unreasoning condemnation: the conclusion that Your Majesty's Militia and Volunteer forces have not at present either the strength or the military efficiency required to enable them to fulfil the functions for which they exist; that their military efficiency would be much increased by the adoption of the measures set forth in the fourth section of this report, which would make them valuable auxiliaries to the regular Army; but that a home defence army capable, in the absence of the whole or the greater portion of the regular forces, of protecting this country against invasion can be raised and maintained only on the principle that it is the duty of every citizen of military age and sound physique to be trained for the national defence, and to take part in it should emergency arise.'

And although three of the Commissioners furnish other reports, all three recommend compulsory service of some kind or other. Sir Ralph Knox would fix the quota for both Militia and Volunteers, and if this were not furnished for the year, the whole quota next year

should be furnished as Militia from all men in their twenty-first year, and thenceforward for Militia only, the schemes of Volunteer Service ceasing to exist.

Colonels Satterthwaite and Dalmahoy, both Volunteer officers, recommend the principle of compulsion, but not universal service. They say:

The principle of compulsion having been accepted, we think that every effort should be made to raise the necessary troops by voluntary means, but that the man who neglects his opportunity of learning the work necessary to enable him to take his part in the defence of the country in his earlier years, should be liable to compulsion at the age of twenty.

I presume that, by an oversight, the words 'in his earlier years are misplaced, and are intended to follow the word 'learning.' Then

comes:

To attain this [what?] every male inhabitant who is not a member of one of the Forces of the Crown, should, on a certain date in the year following his twentieth birthday, be required to attend and register his name and address. If exempted from any of the causes allowed by law, he would then lodge his exemption certificate. If not, he would either:

1. Be allotted to the Militia or Volunteers, according to any deficiency there might be in the units comprised in the Command of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief; or

2. Be warned to attend for training and service on proclamation of great emergency; or

3. Be discharged as physically unfit.

Voluntary enlistment should not commence in either Force before the age of eighteen, and the medical inspection of the Volunteers should be much stricter than at present.

It seems, therefore, that the only difference between the majority and the minority of the Commission is that, whereas the former desire to make us secure at once, the latter wish to postpone the process until the efficacy of less strong measures has been tried.

I defer for the present the consideration of the views put forward to the Commission by the witnesses with great experience of high command in modern war; and the first impression I receive from the views expressed by many other of the witnesses is that there is a general belief that, like as the sun was stayed in the heavens for the benefit of the chosen people, so the world is for an indefinite period to stop rotating until the measures recommended in the minority reports for the improvement of the Auxiliary Forces for the defence of the British Isles have had time, not, be it noted, to bring about the desired result, but until we shall be able to ascertain whether they would do so at all. The idea seems prevalent that we are in a sort of millennium, with any amount of time for sluggish snail-pace improvement. The minority reports, and the recommendations for which the majority of the Commissioners, much against their will and their sound appreciation of the facts of the matter, find place in their report,

are suitable for an imaginary world, but not for the tempestuous actual world in which our lot is cast.

In this our world, great nations stand permanently armed to the teeth, and ready to 'let slip the dogs of war.' As Major Ross, in his Representative Government and War, points out, a nation that determines to hold or gain the upper hand lies in wait till the favourable moment comes, the moment when it possesses some marked superiority or advantage over its rival, and then it either converts some little insult or fancied grievance into a casus belli, or in the absence of these it creates a casus belli, and plunges forthwith into the struggle. Just now 'l'entente cordiale,' whilst of comfort and benefit to the present, has a blinding effect on us as to the future, and has an obliterating effect on the remembrance of the history of the past. And yet how rapidly change the feelings of nations to each other! The memories of that dark year 1900 seem quite blotted out. Engaged in a stupendous struggle oversea, we were absolutely defenceless at home. I went about among the camps of the Regular and Auxiliary Forces, and found an almost hopeless absence of knowledge of soldiering. A recently promoted general officer whom I congratulated on his advancement, replied, 'I am very glad, but I want to be taught general's work.' I reported to the civil and military authorities that, in my opinion, 50,000 highly trained regular troops of any hostile foreign Power could walk from one end of England to the other, as I still believe they could have done. A syndicate of journalists invited me to write a series of articles on the invasion of England in my reply I told them that for me to do so would be the act of a 'traitor'; and to emphasise this I informed them of the fact, of which they till then, like all not behind the scenes, were in complete ignorance, that we had only between thirty and forty field guns with which to enter on a defensive campaign. We were simply on the brink of a hopeless catastrophe at the end of 1900. In the course of three years the political weathercock has gone clean round. He would be a bold prophet, however, who would guarantee for the next three years its remaining in this position. Our safety now depends on there arising no misunderstanding with any great foreign Power, no increase of present requirements for holding our now vastly expanded empire, and on our being generously allowed by our possible foes time to find out whether our would-be defenders, who have other avocations in life,' can kindly spare enough time to acquire sufficient efficiency to afford us real protection in the defence of our homes by the trial of the many nostrums and alleged specifics, including quack remedies, with which the evidence teems. And how much stronger, for both possible Imperial oversea needs and for home defence, are we now than we were at the commencement of the South African war? A little, but not much. No wonder that the German officers who have read the Report

regard the matter, as the Berlin correspondent of the Times tells us, with an interest only 'languid and perfunctory.' Had universal service been the unanimous and sole recommendation of the Commission, a very different sort of interest would have been aroused. The point at issue between the majority of the Commissioners and their opponents, whether within the Commission itself or in the country generally, is simply whether by a certain amount of individual self-sacrifice as patriotic citizens, we shall render ourselves practically secure against invasion, or whether, as citizens patriotic only nominally, we shall grudge the small amount of convenience and ease we are asked to give up for the general good, and shall prefer to continue for an indefinite period in a sort of fancied happygo-lucky security, which, in plain words, is absolute insecurity.

Bearing in mind the hopelessness of accepting, under the altered conditions of sea transport, any fixed time whatever for preparation against invasion, to my mind it does not matter what strength is assumed as that of the invading force.

I remember in the course of conversation at Brussels in 1874, at the Conference on the Usages of War, Colonel von Voigts-Rhetz telling my general, the late Sir Alfred Horsford, that if he could land in England with three army corps, in those days 90,000 men, he could do a good deal. Von Voigts-Rhetz did not seem to think much of small raids, but we must remember on the one hand the disastrous effect that a landing of say 20,000 men at two or three points on the coast would produce, and the enormous damage they might effect; and, on the other hand, that numbers like these are a mere trifle in the total of Continental armies nowadays, and that so disastrous would be the effect produced on this country by a raid of any kind, that preserving the communication of the raiding forces across sea, or even their eventual destruction or loss, would not enter into the hostile calculations as a deterrent to the expedition. Colonel von Voigts-Rhetz spoke with all the experience derived from fighting against hastily organised auxiliary forces in that part of France which resembles in its physical aspects close English country—namely, the country on the Loire.

It is obviously impossible to incorporate in an article such as this even an analysis of the huge masses of oral and written evidence favouring respectively the conclusions of the majority and those of the minority of the Commissioners; the one in support of the adoption of a scheme certain and sure to obtain the object desired-namely, security against any invasion attempted, save, of course, one carried out under some combination of misfortunes on our side that would render resistance hopeless; the other teeming with a multitude of recommendations, of all kinds and sorts, but all alike tentative in character as to their ultimate success, and dependent for their practical value on the effect of sentiment, patriotism under encouragement'; and,

moreover, admitted only to produce a satisfactory result if the invader is sufficiently magnanimous, benevolent, high-minded, and idiotic, to give us a period of from one to two months' duration for hurry-skurry preparation. If, thus favoured by fortune, we should be allowed to start fair,' we should then have the satisfaction of knowing that we were protected by some 300,000 noble patriots, quite competent, when behind entrenchments and hedgerows in prepared positions,' to hold those positions against assault, if the enemy were foolish enough to attack these positions direct; but that the patriots would be competent to give a good account of him if, demonstrating against them so as to hold them in these positions, his highly-trained and well-led troops took to manoeuvring in the concealed and difficult country against our defenders, or even what would be the result of our defenders issuing out of the positions and trying to force him back to his ships or into the sea, the boldest believer in the power of patriotism under encouragement' does not dare to prophesy. Perhaps these, however, are minor details.

But it is impossible to let pass without comment the evidence given by Major-General Sir Alfred Turner, K.C.B., who until quite lately was the Inspector-General of the Auxiliary Forces. From his high official position, his knowledge of war, and his admitted personal ability, the General must be regarded as the champion of the adversaries of the Report, and as the ablest exponent of the views and opinions of the anti-compulsory-service party; and it must be owned that if the cause he championed was weak, he did all he could to make the best of it. The General was four times before the Commission, and, whereas the average number of answers of the other 133 witnesses was 173, the answers recorded to the General's account are 1,113, besides fifteen memoranda of sorts. It was on the 8th of June last year that the General first gave evidence, and it is fortunate that, when we have to commence the perusal of those 1,113 answers and fifteen memoranda just a year later, he contributed to the Daily Express, almost simultaneously with their being given to the public, an article giving a final summary of his views; so both article and evidence may be taken together, and the work of examining the latter is much eased thereby. I take from the article his estimate of the maximum amount of training that it is possible for the Auxiliary Forces to give consistently with their 'other avocations in life.' He regards six months' training of the Militia in the first year as possible:

But I do not think that more than one month's training for the battalion or other unit could be obtained, because officers who are business and professional men cannot possibly leave their work for six months. This must be obvious to anybody who knows anything about professions or business. The Volunteers cannot do more training than they now do, and though some battalions-or at least a portion of them-manage to go into camp for fourteen days, the majority

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