shown the kind of strength it will give and the probable maximum cost
which it will involve when adopted.
The chief difficulty attendant upon its adoption lies in the period of
transition from the old order to the new. If Great Britain is to keep
her place and do her duty in the world the change must be made; but the
question arises, how is the gulf between one and the other to be
bridged? War comes like a thief in the night, and it must not catch this
country unready.
The complete readiness which the new system, when in full swing, will
produce, cannot be obtained immediately. All that can be done in the
transition period is to see that the number and quality of men available
for mobilisation shall be at least as high as it is under the existing
system. It may be worth while to explain how this result can be secured.
Let us assume that the Act authorising the new system is passed during a
year, which may be called '00, and that it is to come into force on the
1st January of the year '01. The Act would probably exempt from its
operations the men at the date of its passing already serving in any of
the existing forces, including the territorial army, and the discussion
on the Bill would, no doubt, have the effect of filling the territorial
army up to the limit of its establishment, 315,000 men.
On the 31st December '00 the available troops would therefore be:--
Regulars in the United Kingdom (present
figure) 138,000
Special reserve 67,000
Army reserve (probably diminished from present
strength) 120,000
Territorial force 315,000
--------
Total 640,000
========
From the 1st January '01 recruiting on present conditions for all these
forces would cease.
The regular army of 138,000
would lose drafts to India and the
Colonies 23,000
and would have lost during '00
by waste at 5 per cent 6,900
-------
29,000
This would leave: -------
regular army under old conditions 108,100
and leave room for recruits under new conditions 91,900
=======
The total available for mobilisation during the year '01 would
therefore be:--
Regulars 200,000
Paid reserves (the present first-class reserve.
I assume an arbitrary figure below the
actual one) 120,000
Special reserve (I assume a large waste and
a loss from men whose time has expired) 50,000
Territorial force 315,000
Less 5 per cent 15,700
-------
299,250
-------
669,250
On the 1st January '02 the regular army would be:--
Old engagement 108,000
Less waste 5,400
Indian and Colonial reliefs 23,000
------- 79,600
Recruits under new system 120,400
Mounted troops serving second year 20,000
--------
Total of regulars 220,000
New reserve 91,900
Less 5 per cent. 4,580
-------
87,320 87,000
Paid reserve 120,000
Special reserve, reduced by lapse of engagements 40,000
--------
Total liable for national war 467,000
Add--Territorial force, reduced by 5 per cent
waste (14,962), and lapse of (78,750)
engagements 205,538
--------
672,538
========
In the year '03 there would be:--
Old regulars, 79,600; less 5 per cent. waste,
3,950; less drafts for abroad, 23,000--
leaves 52,050, say 50,000
Regulars, recruits under new conditions 150,000
Mounted troops serving second year 20,000
New reserve 197,331
Paid reserve 120,000
Special reserve 30,000
---------
Total liable for national war 567,334
Territorial force 116,512
---------
683,846
=========
In the year '04 there would be:--
Old regulars 50,000
Less 5 per cent. 2,500
-------
47,500
Less drafts 23,000
------- 24,500
New regulars 175,500
Mounted troops, second year 20,000
---------
220,000
New reserve 329,000
Paid reserve 120,000
Special reserve may now be dropped ---------
Total liable for national war 669,000
Territorial force 116,512
Less 5 per cent. 5,825
--------
110,687
Less 78,750
-------- 31,937
--------
700,937
========
At the end of '04 the territorial force would come to an end and in '05
there would be:--
(Old regulars, 24,000, after waste just enough
for drafts.)
New regulars 200,000
Mounted troops, second year 20,000
New reserve 478,000
Less to paid reserve 20,000
-------- 458,000
Paid reserve 120,000
--------
Total, all liable for national war 798,000
========
In these tables I have taken the drafts for India and the Colonies from
the old regulars. But they can just as well be taken from the new
regulars. If need be the old regulars could, before the fourth year, be
passed into the paid reserve, and the full contingent of 200,000 one
year's men taken.
The men of the special reserve and territorial force would on the
termination of their engagements pass into the second line reserve or
Landwehr until the age of thirty-one or thirty-two.
It will be seen that during the years of transition additional expense
must be incurred, as, until the change has been completed, some portion
of the existing forces must be maintained side by side with the new
national army. It is partly in order to facilitate the operations of the
transition period that I have assumed a large addition to the number of
officers. There will also be additional expense caused by the increase
of barrack accommodation needed when the establishment is raised from
138,000 privates to 200,000, but this additional accommodation will not
be so great as it might at first sight appear, because it is reasonable
to suppose that those young men who wish it, and whose parents wish it,
will be allowed to live at home instead of in barracks, provided they
regularly attend all drills, parades, and classes.
It has been necessary, in discussing the British military system, to
consider the arrangements for providing the garrisons of India, Egypt,
and certain oversea stations during peace, and to make provision for
small wars or imperial police; but I may point out that the system by
which provision is made out of the resources of the United Kingdom alone
for these two military requirements of the Empire, is, in the present
conditions of the Empire, an anomaly. The new nations which have grown
up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are anxious, above all things,
to give reality to the bond between them and the mother country. Their
desire is to render imperial service, and the proper way of giving them
the opportunity to do so is to call upon them to take their part in
maintaining the garrisons in India and Egypt and in the work of imperial
police. How they should do it, it is for them to decide and arrange, but
for Englishmen at home to doubt for a moment either their will or their
capacity to take their proper share of the burden is to show an unworthy
doubt of the sincerity of the daughter nations and of their attachment
to the mother country and the Empire.
If Great Britain should be compelled to enter upon a struggle for
existence with one of the great European powers, the part which Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa could play in that struggle is
limited and specific. For the conflict would, in the first instance,
take the form of a naval war. To this the King's dominions beyond the
seas can do little more than assist during peace by their contributions,
either of ships, men, or money, in strengthening the British navy. But
during the actual course of such a war, while it is doubtful whether
either Canada, Australia, or New Zealand could render much material help
in a European struggle, they could undoubtedly greatly contribute to the
security of India and Egypt by the despatch of contingents of their own
troops to reinforce the British garrisons maintained in those countries.
This appears to me to be the direction to which their attention should
turn, not only because it is the most effective way in which they can
promote the stability of the Empire, but also because it is the way
along which they will most speedily reach a full appreciation of the
nature of the Empire and its purpose in the world.
XXI.
THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED
I have now sketched the outlines of a national military system
applicable to the case of Great Britain. It remains to show why such a
system is necessary.
There are three main points in respect of each of which a choice has to
be made. They are the motive which induces men to become soldiers, the
time devoted to military education, and the nature of the liability to
serve in war. The distinction which strikes the popular imagination is
that between voluntary and compulsory service. But it covers another
distinction hardly less important--that between paid and unpaid
soldiers. The volunteers between 1860 and 1878, or 1880, when pay began
to be introduced for attendance in camps, gave their time and their
attention with no external inducement whatever. They had no pay of any
kind, and there was no constraint to induce them to join, or, having,
joined, to continue in their corps. The regular soldier, on the other
hand, makes a contract with the State. He agrees in return for his pay,
clothes, board and lodging to give his whole time for a specific number
of years to the soldier's life.
The principle of a contract for pay is necessary in the case of a
professional force maintained abroad for purposes of imperial police;
but it is not possible on that principle to raise or maintain a national
army.
The principle of voluntary unpaid service appears to have a deeper moral
foundation than that of service by a contract of hiring. But if the time
required is greater than is consistent with the men's giving a full
day's work to their industrial occupations the unpaid nature of the
service cannot be maintained, and the men must be paid for their time.
The merit of the man's free gift of himself is thereby obscured.
Wherein does that merit consist? If there is no merit in a man's making
himself a soldier without other reward than that which consists in the
education he receives, then the voluntary system has no special value.
But if there is a merit, it must consist in the man's conferring a
benefit upon, or rendering a service to, his country. In other words,
the excellence of the unpaid voluntary system consists in its being an
acceptance by those who serve under it of a duty towards the State. The
performance of that duty raises their citizenship to a higher plane. If
that is the case it must be desirable, in the interest both of the State
and of its citizens, that every citizen capable of the duty should
perform it. But that is the principle upon which the national system is
based. The national system is therefore an extension of the spirit of
the volunteer or unpaid voluntary system.
The terms compulsory service and universal service are neither of them
strictly accurate. There is no means of making every adult male, without
exception, a soldier, because not every boy that grows up has the
necessary physical qualification. Nor does the word compulsion give a
true picture. It suggests that, as a rule, men would not accept the duty
if they could evade it, which is not the case. The number of men who
have been volunteers since 1860 shows that the duty is widely accepted.
Indeed, in a country of which the government is democratic, a duty
cannot be imposed by law upon all citizens except with the concurrence
of the majority. But a duty recognised by the majority and prescribed by
law will commend itself as necessary and right to all but a very few. If
a popular vote were to be taken on the question whether or not it is
every citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of
a national war, it is hardly conceivable that the principle would fail
to be affirmed by an overwhelming majority.
The points as to which opinions are divided are the time and method of
training and the nature of the liability to serve in war.
There are, roughly speaking, three schemes of training to be
considered--first, the old volunteer plan of weekly evening drills, with
an annual camp training; secondly, the militia plan of three months'
recruit training followed by a month's camp training in several
subsequent years; and, lastly, the continental plan of a continuous
training for one or more years followed by one or more periods of annual
manoeuvres. The choice between these three methods is the crucial point
of the whole discussion. It must be determined by the standard of
excellence rendered necessary by the needs of the State. The evidence
given to the Norfolk Commission convinced that body that neither the
first nor the second plan will produce troops fit to meet on equal terms
those of a good modern army. Professional officers are practically
unanimous in preferring the third method.
The liability of the trained citizen to serve in war during his year in
the ranks and his years as a first-class reservist must be determined by
the military needs of the country. I have given the reasons why I
believe the need to be for an army that can strike a blow in a
continental war.
I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a
citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I
have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system,
because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an
army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the
efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the
educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have
convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for,
cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor
even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which
animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to
be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers,
continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with
insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the
country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the
conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of
volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and
it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient
for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that
another nation can produce.
Yet the officers and men of the volunteer force have not carried on
their fifty years' work in vain. They have, little by little, educated
the whole nation to think of war as a reality of life, they have
diminished the prejudice which used to attach to the name of soldier,
and they have enabled their countrymen to realise that to fight for his
country's cause is a part of every citizen's duty, for which he must be
prepared by training.
The adoption of this principle will have further results. So soon as
every able-bodied citizen is by law a soldier, the administration of
both army and navy will be watched, criticised, and supported with an
intelligence which will no longer tolerate dilettantism in authority.
The citizen's interest in the State will begin to take a new aspect. He
will discover the nature of the bond which unites him to his
fellow-citizens, and from this perception will spring that regeneration
of the national life from which alone is to be expected the uplifting of
England.
XXII.
THE CHAIN OF DUTY
The reader who has accompanied me to this point will perhaps be willing
to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different
threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which
will be of some use to us.
We began by agreeing that the people of this country have not made
entirely satisfactory arrangements for a competitive struggle, at any
rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such
conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political
arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy
between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign
state.
We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of
any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to
obtain victory. We discussed the theories which lead some of our
countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war,
and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by
trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements
for disarmament. We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these
theories.
Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great
struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance
of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in
the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in
conflict all the resources of its land and its people. In the last war
Great Britain's national weapon was her navy, which she has for
centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe.
The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly
of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century. The great
event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that
makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power,
resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which
England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to
think eternal.
Great Britain, in the security due to her victories at sea, was able to
develop her colonies into nations, and her East India Company into an
Empire. But that same security caused her to forget her nationalism,
with the result that now her security itself is imperilled. During this
period, when the conception of the nation was in abeyance, some of the
conditions of sea power have been modified, with the result that the
British monopoly is at an end, while the possibility of a similar
monopoly has probably disappeared, so that the British navy, even if
successful, could not now be used, as it was a hundred years ago, as a
means of entirely destroying the trade of an adversary. Accordingly, if
in a future war Britain is to find a continental ally, she must be able
to offer him the assistance, not merely of naval victory, but also of a
strong army. Moreover, during the epoch in which Great Britain has
turned her back upon Europe the balance of power has been upset, and
there is no power and no combination able to stand up against Germany as
the head of the Triple Alliance. This is a position of great danger for
England, because it is an open question whether in the absence of a
strong British army any group of Powers, even in alliance with England,
could afford to take up a quarrel against the combination of the central
States. It thus appears that Great Britain, by neglecting the conditions
of her existence as a nation, has lost the strength in virtue of which,
at previous crises in European history, she was the successful champion
of that independence of States which, in the present stage of human
development, is the substance of freedom.
Our consideration of the question of might showed that if Great Britain
is to be strong enough to meet her responsibilities her people must
nationalise themselves, while our reflections on the question of right
showed that only from such nationalisation is a sound policy to be
expected. In short, only in so far as her people have the unity of
spirit and of will that mark a nation can Great Britain be either strong
or just. The idea of the nation implies a work to be done by the British
State, which has to be on the watch against challenge from a continental
rival to Great Britain's right to the headship of her empire, and which
at the same time has to give to that empire the direction without which
it cannot remain united. Great Britain cannot do the work thus imposed
upon her by her position and her history unless she has the co-operation
of all her people. Thus the conception of the nation reveals itself in
the twofold shape of duties laid upon England and of duties consequently
laid upon every Englishman. It means that England must either decline
and fall or do a certain work in the world which is impossible for her
unless she constrains all her people to devote themselves to her
service. It thus appears that England and her people can expect no
future worth having except on the principle of duty made the mainspring
both of public and of private life.
We attempted to apply the principles involved in the word nation to the
obvious and urgent needs of the British State at the present time.
Victory at sea being indispensable for Great Britain in case of
conflict, we inquired into the conditions of victory, and found in the
parallel instances of Nelson and Napoleon that both by sea and land the
result of the nationalisation of war is to produce a leader who is the
personification of a theory or system of operations. The history of the
rise of the German nation shows how the effort to make a nation produced
the necessary statesman, Bismarck. Nationalisation creates the right
leadership--that of the man who is master of his work.
Reviewing the needs of the naval administration, we saw that what is
wanted at the present time is rather proper organisation at the
Admiralty than an increase in mere material strength; while turning to
the army, we discovered that the only system on which can be produced
the army that Great Britain requires is that which makes every
able-bodied citizen a soldier.
To make the citizen a soldier is to give him that sense of duty to the
country and that consciousness of doing it, which, if spread through the
whole population, will convert it into what is required--a nation.
Therefore to reform the army according to some such plan as has been
here proposed is the first step in that national revival which is the
one thing needful for England, and if that step be taken the rest will
follow of itself. Nationalisation will bring leadership, which in the
political sphere becomes statesmanship, and the right kind of
education, to give which is the highest ultimate function of national
existence.
I have tried in these pages to develop an idea which has haunted me for
many years. I think if the reader would extend to it even for a short
time the hospitality of his mind he might be willing to make it his
constant companion. For it seems to me to show the way towards the
solution of other problems than those which have here been directly
discussed. I cannot but believe that if we could all accustom ourselves
to make some sacrifices for the sake of England, if only by giving a few
minutes every day to thinking about her and by trying to convince
ourselves that those who are not of our party are yet perhaps animated
by the same love of their country as we ourselves, we might realise that
the question of duty is answered more easily by performance than by
speculation. I suspect that the relations between the political parties,
between capital and labour, between master and servant, between rich and
poor, between class and class would become simpler and better if
Englishmen were to come to see how natural it is that they should spend
their lives for England.
THE END