of large employers of labour, and especially in the North of England, many of whom have a great number of Volunteers in their employ, cannot possibly give their men more than a week's leave at a time to go into camp.

And later on he says:

My firm conviction is that shooting is by far the most important factor in the defence of the country, and, as I stated in my evidence to the Commission, 'Teach the men to shoot, and let the Government support not only the Volunteers, but also the rifle clubs throughout the country." If this is done, and the youth of the country are trained at school as recommended, having regard to our geographical position we have all that is necessary for home defence. This is the opinion of experts in Germany and France, whose people, owing to the presence of their powerful neighbours close to their frontiers, are obliged to bear the burden of conscription, which is being felt more every year.

I have had the pleasure of the personal friendship of Sir Alfred for many years, and often have we worked together in Volunteer instructional exercises at the war game, but it has been reserved for this article and the evidence to reveal to me the astounding views held by him not only as to the qualifications and training necessary for our Home Defence Army, but also on war. At the outset I would remark that the quoting of the opinions expressed to him by foreign officers, especially when those were German staff officers, reveals to me an absence of guile in the General's character for which I had not given him credit. Is it likely that the German or the French staff officers would endeavour to impress on the mind of the Inspector-General of the Auxiliary Forces of Great Britain their belief in the inefficiency of those forces ?

The perusal of the General's evidence leads me to the conclusion that he is so firm a believer in the Navy as our one and only line of defence that the possession of a land second line of defence is not, in his opinion, of importance, and that this second line is of little more use than for show. Should the Navy fail us, almost an impossibility in his opinion, we must at once throw up the sponge, for he thinks there is only starvation before us. A few words seem desirable here with regard to the 'starvation bogie' trotted out by the General. The weak point in accepting the starvation bogie as an ally either in theory or practice is that it is so unreliable and so apt to mislead. After Sedan it was the starvation theory applied to practice that was the foundation of the strategy adopted by Von Moltke for the next series of operations. Paris, it was believed, could hold out only for eight days; the Parisians would surrender as soon as, according to Von Moltke's own recorded words, they had no 'fresh milk.' But when the eight days' deprivation of fresh milk did not lead to surrender, the calculation of resistance was extended to six weeks; yet these calculations were proved to be false, for it was not until more than four months of very short commons had elapsed that starvation, combined with the knowledge that there was no hope of relief from the provinces, compelled the Parisians to surrender; and with better

leading on the French side, it is indubitable that during that period the investment would have been raised for a time at all events. Dividing an estimated existing food supply by the number of mouths to eat it, and accepting the dividend as the limit of human endurance, is an arithmetical process that all history shows to be useless for the practical purposes of war.

But the General desires also, for some reason not very clear, to keep the Auxiliary Forces in existence; it is better, he says, to have them than nobody at all. So the General appears to

be on the horns of a dilemma, and it was in his endeavour to reconcile the two incompatible ideas, an invincible fleet and the maintenance of an auxiliary force for land home defence (a useless, great, and wanton waste of money if the fleet is invincible, or if the moment it is defeated we are starved), that the General had such a bad time under the searching cross-examination by the Royal Commissioners, and, being driven from pillar to post, gave occasionally answers of the most remarkable character, to my mind totally irreconcilable with his mental and professional ability. For instance, he fully admitted the imperious necessity for making good the great deficiency in our supply of officers and good non-commissioned officers, a deficiency which might altogether disappear under the conditions of universal liability to service, and the formation of a corps of welleducated men analogous to the 'unteroffizier' of Germany. But later on (Question 21871-3) his provision of officers to make up the deficiency in the Auxiliary Forces is to bring back to them all the officers who have retired from the Regular and Auxiliary Forces. Lists of retired officers are kept everywhere; I should think that patriotism would bring them all back into the ranks, and I do not think it would be necessary to have any organisation in time of peace to ask whether they were or were not coming back'! This is a reversal of the axiom, ' if you desire peace, prepare for war,' with a vengeance. Q. 21884: 'We must be contented with the best non-commissioned officers and officers we can get'; and then comes the height of credulity. Q. 21885 : 'I doubt very much if the foreigners know these details-that we are short of officers; I do not think they know much about it. Of course their Intelligence Departments are remarkably good, but I doubt if they go into details of that kind.' The thought inevitably arises : does the General, notwithstanding his many occasions of intercourse with the German staff, know much about the contents of the pigeonholes in their offices? And we come across a strange answer to Q. 21892: 'Is not the advance in enclosed country easier than an advance over open ground?-A. Not for trained troops, I should think.' Q. 2005 ran: 'I should tell you that we have it in evidence before us that the difficult nature of the country would tell in favour of the highertrained troops, but you do not agree with that?-A. Not in the least.' Again Q. 2001. Leading and manoeuvring of troops in an en

closed country and a wooded country, and a country where you cannot see very far, is almost 'impossible for the attack.' And yet surely all history shows that in country like this it is individual intelligence combined with high discipline and with efficiency among the very lowest as well as the highest leaders that tells in the struggle.

The General, in support of his views, several times refers to the second period of the Franco-German War, the period when Gambetta was in control of the provinces; and I can only say that, from my own very close study of that period, the conclusions at which I arrive as to the value of hastily raised auxiliary troops differ very much from his. The remnant of the regular army in France at that time he gives as 30,000; whilst Hoenig estimates that there were 180,000 either fully or partially trained. On the Loire, the proportion of auxiliaries to regulars was four to five, and the 20th Corps, in which the Garde Mobile outnumbered the regulars in the proportion of twenty-two to nine, was so utterly demoralised by its failure on the only occasion when it took the offensive that its general reported it to be useless for several days; and in this corps, as in the whole of the French forces, the acknowledged weak point was the deficiency of good officers and good non-commissioned officers. Yet the general (Q. 21871) 'looks with confidence' to our filling our cadres of officers in 'exactly the same way as these were filled in Gambetta's levies.' In close country, the Garde Mobile and Garde Nationale did, it is true, find some counterbalancing to their inherent weakness, but where these absolutely untrained men, put out in six weeks, made a very stout fight against the victorious and perfectly trained German army in comparatively open country,' except to be utterly defeated, I must leave the General to tell me; I do not know.

Mere extracts from evidence are never satisfactory, but one more must yet be given. Q. 21894 (Lord Grenfell): 'We are assuming that there is an invasion-that an invasion has taken place, as the Duke said, and that we have, say, 150,000 of the invader: Do you think this force [i.e., our auxiliary forces] officered with the old officers and with the present non-commissioned officers, would be sufficient?— A. Yes.' Q. 21895: 'Do you mean the present forces, the Militia and the Volunteers which are largely under-officered ?-A. Yes.' And these answers in absolute opposition to those given by Earl Roberts, Sir T. Kelly-Kenny, Sir John French, and Lord Methuen, who have had personal experience of the most modern war, and whose views are shared by Viscount Wolseley, Sir Evelyn Wood, and Sir W. Butler.

I again say that it is only by a careful examination of the evidence and memoranda that anyone can form a sound opinion on the verdict given by the Royal Commission, and I recommend to those who are willing to undertake the task the perusal of Sir Alfred Turner's evidence, especially that portion given on the 20th of January

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this year, for it is the most damnatory evidence against the acceptance of his counsel that from our Auxiliary Forces we should be content to accept as much as we can 'expect from them' consistently with their other avocations in life.' In his answer to Q. 21812, the General said that he had been accused of being a sort of advocatus diaboli of the Auxiliary Forces, and that he was perfectly willing to be an advocatus diaboli or anybody else if he could do good. It would seem that he has laid himself open to the charge of assuming that character during the late inquiry. Here I must leave my friend.

It is much to be regretted that in the margins of the Majority Report there are no references indicating those passages in the evidence on which the Commissioners based the conclusions at which they arrived; for, buried deep down in the fourth volume, are two passages, each all-important and of the weightiest character. The first is to be found at p. 216, where, in the summary of remarks sent in by 124 Commanding Officers of Militia Infantry units, we read as follows:

It is considered that the threat of enforcing the Ballot Act would render any vital change unnecessary:-'No doubt if the Ballot were hanging over the employers' heads (with no exemption) they would encourage men to join for fear of themselves or their sons having to serve. This would also keep the officers' ranks filled; and with full Militia ranks, well treated, there would be no lack of troops for the Regular Army.'

'If the Militia in this country is to be maintained on its present establishment, it will be necessary to introduce either further money inducements to serve or some form of compulsory service.'

These paragraphs seem to clear the way towards the solution of the Militia question; but the solution of the problem how to render the Volunteer Force efficient seems almost hopeless when we turn to the summary of answers received from 218 commanding officers of Infantry battalions of the Volunteer Force, and on p. 263 read as follows:

Throughout the reports there is much to show that matters have come to a deadlock. The necessity for stringent regulations is fully acknowledged, but the ' remarks' are, in the majority of cases, directed to showing how badly the shoe pinches. There is a limit beyond which civilians cannot be expected to give their services and time to the State. This limit has been reached, if not exceeded, by the present regulations.'

Here, again, are the 'gates of wood,' the 'bricks without straw' of 1895, and again I protest against the contribution paid by myself or others to the public treasury being any longer misappropriated to keep them going in their present condition.

But what, to my mind, is worse still, must also be brought to notice. Not only are the Volunteers, as are the Regulars and Militia, short of officers, but as a body these officers are lamentably inefficient. In paragraph 48 of the Report is written :

'We have to look to the officers of the Volunteer Force as the

framework of our army. They are of very unequal quality. Many of them have given themselves an excellent military education, and would be a valuable element in any army; the majority, however, have neither the theoretical knowledge nor the practical skill in the handling of troops which would make them competent instructors in peace or leaders in war.'

No, the Volunteer Force as it now stands is but a reed of the most fragile and weak character on which to depend as the main factor in home defence, and the officer is the weakest element in it; and the weakness seems irremediable even with the strongest encouragement to remedy it. As Colonel F. W. Tannett-Walker, a representative of the Institute of Commanding Officers of Volunteers, said in his answer to Q. 7695: With regard to the difficulty of getting officers, it really seems to all of us to be almost an unsolvable question.'

6

By all means let us enrol in our Land Line of Defence that small minority, the very pick of the Volunteer Force, but to trust to the Force as a main body in that Line would be absolutely suicidal.

The signatories of the minority reports decidedly deserve our thanks for suggesting the feeble and doubtful remedies they put forward, and which are almost counsels of despair. But those Commissioners who signed the majority report are deserving of all honour and praise; for in this historic' document they have boldly, courageously, and patriotically told to their countrymen the real and full truth as to our present pitiable military situation. It is for the educated classes of this country-those who have a material stake in the existence of Great Britain as a great nation, the possessors of property, the bankers, the merchants, the manufacturers-to study the evidence most carefully, and then to influence the other classes to accept with themselves the obligation common to them one and all, to render our island impregnable to assault, no matter how disabled or distant from us for a time may be the deservedly trusted first line of defence, our Royal Navy.

LONSDALE HALE.