HOW TO SAVE THE MILITIA—AN ALTERNA- TIVE TO MR. HALDANE'S
SCHEME. CYAN the Militia be saved without abandoning the whole of Mr. Halda,ne's scheme ? We believe it can, and that there is a perfectly practicable alternative, i
In discussing this alternative it s as well to look at the' origin of Mr. Haldane's proposals for dealing' with' the Militia. Their genesis. is .to be 'found, if we mistake not in 'the scheme for the improved Mobilisation of the Regular Army,—an object which has always 'held the foreinoS place in Mr. Haldane's mind. Mr. Haldane, in order, to create, and then to keep in being for at least six months, a force of a. hundred and sixty thousand men,' found' that he would need, first for 'the scientific and un- wasteful mobilisation which he desired, and secondly for the supply of drafts to battalions in the field, some seventy- four thousand infantry. How was he to 'get them ? His original answer was,—by using the existing Militia. He discovered, however, that the Militia could not be used for draftieg,—a Militiaman's engagement rendering him unavailable for such purposes. But Mr. Haldane's military advisers assured him that a' body capable of supplying drafts was essential, and that no such body existed among the Auxiliaries. Accordingly Mr. Haldane turned his mind to the invention of some force which should be capable of supplying drafts, yet should not be merely an enlargement of the existing Regular Army. The result of his thinking was the plan for a special contingent of men raised on a Militia basis and organised in nucleus battalions. Nominally these men are Regulars, but in fact they are the old Militia under a new name. But since they are to be about as numerous as the Militia, and since no one has ventured to suggest that we can add seventy-four thousand 'men to the national forces, the raising of the nucleus battalions necessarily involves the abolition of the existing Militia. The destruction of that force is the price which we are asked to pay for a better and completer system of mobilisation.
Is the price in this special case too high? We believe it is. Can we obtain the results aimed at in another and cheaper way ? We believe we can. If Mr. Haldane will only hold his hand for a little, and will only reconsider the details, Of proposals in many other ways so excellent, we fuel sure that it will be possible to save the Militia, and yet to maintain the mobilisation scheme, while at the same time laying no larger burden on the taxpayer. The• question that will ho immediately asked in view of this statement is,—How do you propose to find the men required by Mr. Haldane ? We propose that they shall be found primarily by relying on the principle of "the Volunteers to supply drafts, the Militia to supply units "; and in the next place by organising a Reserve from men who have served in the Militia. To put the matter more explicitly, what we suggest is that the War Office should rely upon getting half -the infantrymen they need from service companies supplied by the Volunteers, and the other half from a newly formed Militia Reserve. During the South African War the Volunteers actually sent out close on twenty thousand men in service companies, and supplied to various forces another ten thousand men. But as was shown in these columns some two years ago, after Mr. Arnold-Forster's notorious "meagre response" speech, though only about thirty thousand men trained to arms by the Volunteers, actually served in the war, no less than seventy-five thousand men expressed them- selves willing to go to the front in the black week of Colenso. This offer, remember, was no vague and clamorous expression of patriotic enthusiasm, but was made specifically in the names of commanding officers, sometimes in respect of large sections of their corps, and sometimes even in respect of the entire battalion. In these circumstances, we believe that Mr. Haldane might with perfect safety have calculated on obtaining from the Volunteers drafts of men to the number of thirty-five thousand to complete his mobilisation. The Volunteer corps are exactly suited to supply drafts. In the first place, they are generally very large units. Hence drafting from them does not knock the battalion to pieces, and can be indulged in without destruction. Next, the Volunteer corps always contain a number of adventurous youths who are eager to go the front, and who, realising that practically no Volunteer corps will see active service as a unit, know that their chance of work in the field depends upon their unit being subjected to drafting. therefore, while other' corps detest drafting, the Volunteers regard it with special favour. This being so, it is, we are' convinced, safe to rely on the Volunteers to provide thirty-five thousand men for war drafts without. enduring any, impossible strain.
No doubt the bureaucratic soldier will be greatly shocked at being asked to rely on a moral certainty. He will declare that it is impossible for him to base a scientific scheme of mobilisation on anything less than a legal certainty, and that since he cannot call on the Volunteers by a positive order to produce thirty-five thousand men in, say, the first six months of a war, the proposal is one which he must decline to con- sider. Our answer is that, as a matter of fact, reliance upon an unobligatory understanding is perfectly safe. If a war is really unpopular in a thoroughly democratic State like the United Kingdom, it will be impossible to wage it. If, on the other band, it is popular, there is not the slightest doubt of the Volunteers doing at least as much as they did during the South African War. You must run some risks in every plan based upon a voluntary system, but the expectation of Volunteer help in wartime coming up to a reasonable standard like that of thirty-five thousand for drafts is, we hold, certain to be fulfilled.
We must deal next with the means of obtaining the remaining forty thousand men. We believe that they could be obtained by recourse to a properly organised Militia Reserve. After a man had served in the Militia for six years and was leaving the force, we would give him a bounty to enter a special Reserve which could be used to supply drafts. We believe that such a Reserve might in a comparatively short time reach thirty thousand men, and that the remaining ten thousand could be got either by using certain Militia reglinents as units in the mobilisation scheme, or else by paying a bounty to individual Militia- men to leave the Militia aud be drafted into the Line. No doubt such drafting would be injurious to the corps, but at any rate it would be very much better than abolishing the Militia altogether.
With a system based on the principle that the Volunteers and Militia Reserve should supply drafts, and the Militia units, for the front, it would be necessary to improve the Militia ; but this could be done without any very great difficulty and without any large increase of cost. We would begin by giving the Militiaman a thorough six months' recruit training, followed by a certain amount of drills and rifle-shooting in his spare time, and by an annual training of a week. We believe that in this way the popularity of the force would be greatly increased, and so a better class of man obtained, and that at the same time there would be little or no increase of cost.
We have repeatedly enlarged upon the difficulties in which a Secretary of State, not only for War but at War, would find himself if he had no Militia units to send to the front, to use on lines of communication, or to garrison fortresses at home or in the Mediterranean, and so set free Regular battalions. On' this occasion we will only say that our plan has one enormous advantage over Mr. Haldane's scheme. Though enabling his scientific mobili- sation to take place, it also maintains our old Militia Force on an improved basis, and with all the immense advantages derived from the possession of some eighty to a hundred units capable of being sent abroad as units and as they stand. Further, we believe that it will not prove so expen- sive as Mr. Haldane's new proposals. Mr. Haldane's scheme for a special contingent and nucleus battalions would, we feel sure, require more money than the existing Militia plus a special Militia Reserve of forty thousand men.
We have only one more word .to say. It is that we sincerely trust that before he finally decides to abolish the Militia Mr. Haldane will once more reconsider the whole question. If he does, we are convinced that only one result can be reached,—the determination to save the Militia. Let no one think that we are fanatical about the Militia, or base our policy on sentiment. We desire to save the Militia solely because it is a national asset well worth preserving, and one also which can be preserved under a scheme which will give greater, not less, efficiency than that under which it is abolished, and at a less cost. There are many things in Mr. Haldane's scheme which are excellent, but the Militia part has not even the merit of economy.
Previous page
