TOPICS OF THE DAY.
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING.
NV-Econgratulate the House of Lords not only upon the admirable debate which took place on the question of universal military training, but on the fact that, in spite of the two Front Benches combining to oppose it—in spite, that is, of the whole of the party machinery on both sides being employed—Lord Roberts's Bill was only defeated by a majority of 20 (123-103). When we remember what party allegiance is in a Parliamentary body, this is a very remarkable achieve- ment for a non-partisan policy like that of the National Service League. But if the division was in a very real sense a triumph for the supporters of the Bill, still greater was their triumph as measured by the poverty of the arguments of their opponents. It fell to Lord Crewe, as Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, to state the grounds upon which those who are against enforcing the principle of universal training rely. We commend them to the most careful consideration of the country. In doing this we feel that we are in no way acting unfairly or putting up a " man of straw." Lord Crewe is a statesman for whose political character and ability we have the greatest possible respect. He is, moreover, a very able speaker, and no cause ever suffers because its advocacy is entrusted to him.
What was his main argument against the Bill ? Lord Crewe declared that the nation would not accept universal training because, rightly or wrongly, "the ordinary Britiah parents of the middle classes," and also of what might be called the respectable working class, would not like the idea of their sons being put into camp for some months with those whom they would consider the " riff-raff " of the country :— " The fusion of classes carried out in this sort of way is not a popular thing with any class in this country. Every one knows that there are a great many working men who dislike sending their children to particular Council schools because there they may have to sit on the same benches with those they describe as gutter children, and when it comes to fusion with this class somewhat later in life I think the difficulty will be found to be still more pronounced."
Lord Crewe takes exactly the point of view of the young Swiss who, describing his training the other day in The Nation in Arms, the organ of the National Service League, declared that the British people would never accept the Swiss system because they were too aristocratic in sentiment and the principle was too democratic. We ventured, in referring to his remarks, to say that he would be proved 'wrong, and we say the same to Lord Crewe. Lord Crewe, we believe, is very much at fault in his diagnosis of the British people, though no doubt his view does reflect a certain amount of snobbish prejudice of a very disagreeable and harmful kind. But even if the prejudice were as "deep-seated as he thinks, then all we can say is that it should be his duty, and the duty of every other patriotic Englishman, to try to break down a feeling so inimical to the best interests of the country. Here, indeed, we cannot do better than quote Lord. Curzon's protest :— " I can imagine nothing better for all classes than the discipline of the camp. There is nothing more demo- cratic than that all of them, the aristocrats, the middle class, the lower class, and even the riff-ra,ff,' should be drawn' together, doing their duty and taking their training 'aide by side."
After all, what does this terrible mingling of classes which Lord Crewe is so much afraid of amount to ? The greater part of the four months' recruit training pro- posed. would be a day-boy training,—the men would Jive at home and go to a depot for their drills. Therefore the risk of contamination which Lord Crewe believes the upper, middle, and superior working-class parents dread. so greatly would be very small. Their sons would no doubt touch shoulders with what Lord Crewe calls the " riff-raff " on the parade-ground, but surely their "blood is not so pure" as to be sullied by that. But perhaps Lord Crewe will tell us that the last month of the recruit training would, at auy rate, be under canvas, and also that there would be a fortnight's camp every year for three years, and that during this time the aristocracy of the various superior sections of the community might have to sleep in the same tent with the " riff-raff." Frankly, we are not greatly moved by this ,proapect; but if Lord Crewe and his friends regard it with such horror, they could easily get over the difficulty without forbidding the ordinary Englishman to be taught to defend his country. Let Lord Crewe propose an arrangement under which men may choose their tent-mates, and thus the mingling of classes which be thinks so great an obstacle be avoided. Personally, we should be sorry, as we should. like the so-called superior lads to learn that the so-called " riff-raff " are, after all, human beings and country- men ; but if we cannot have universal training without maintaining the glacier ridge of class, we must sigh and. obey. Surely he would not argue that if the men were allowed to choose their tent-mates their class prejudices would suffer by the mere sight of the " riff-raff " in the same camp or the same battalion. There are thousands of delicately nurtured Frenchmen, Swiss, and Norwegians who have to suffer this terrible calamity every year, and yet they have not, as far as we can see, been greatly injured. Indeed, we cannot take Lord Crewe's point very seriously. Yet if it really is serious, he is disclosing such a lack of homogeneity in the nation, and so terrible a social fissure, that it becomes the first duty of all good patriots to deal with it. But if Lord Crewe's point here was a thoroughly bad one, what are we to say of the following passage from his speech :—" This scheme of compulsory service obviously infringes the liberty- of the individual " ? The same point, as we have on seVeral ' occasions reminded our readers, was admirably dealt with by a Whig naval pamphleteer of the period of the Revolu- tionof 1688, Captain George St. Lee. Though Captain St. Lee was chiefly known as an advocate of the necessity • of this country obtaining and keeping the command of the sea, he also believed in universal military training, and. when the "liberty of the subject" argument was thrown in his face, he answered it as follows :— "AU Englishmen then have, as you say, Gentlemen, a Liberty not to Fight for their Country, and no Body can make 'em do it, unless they, Kind Hearts, should happen to be in a good humour, and offer their Service themselves; tho' the English Fleet should be sunk, and the Army destroy'd, yet Englishmen may stand still with their Hands in their Pockets and look on, and no Body can make 'em strike a Stroke. This is their Liberty, and bo Body has a Word to say to it ; nay, tho' the Kingdom itself were suie to be lost, our Laws, Liberties, Religion, Government and all with it, yet neither the King nor the Parliament, nor both of them together with all their Laws and all their Authority, can make a Man of 'em Fight to prevent it."
Captain St. Lee goes on in an admirable strain of irony to remind his riaders how in the first action off Beachy Head the Admiral suddenly remembered the Englishman!s "Liberty not to Fight for his Country," and. how he bore away from the enemy as fast as wind and tide would carry him, "bravely maintaining the Liberties of England quite from Spithead to the River's mouth." His successor, however, iu the second action off Beachy Head, when he met the enemy fell on them without any "Regard to our Liberties, and there was he at it for above an Hour, Fist to Fist with Admiral Tourville, and all the while the poor Seamen's Brains and their Liberties flew about together in the saddest manner." "Between you and me, Gentle- men," ends Captain St. Lee, in a passage in which we seem to hear Lord Crewe speaking to Lord Roberts, "lie may be an honest Man, but really he does not understand the Business of Liberty. I believe he means well, but he has not seen so far into that Matter as you have done: Pray, Gentlemen, take a little Pains with him, and set him right, and give him a Copy of the English Liberties to put in his Pocket."
As far as we are concerned, we are perfectly willing to join issue with Lord Crewe on this subject. We do not believe that the ordinary Englishman claims the "Liberty not to Fight for his Country" ; but of course if Lord Crewe is right and we are wrong, there is nothing more to be said. The will of the people must and will prevail. -In that case, how- ever, it seems to us that what Lord Crewe and his friends ought to do is not to talk generalities, but to propose that the Bill should be referred. to a vote of the whole people. The measure is one upon which a poll of the people might very properly be taken. One great advantage of taking a Referendum is that if the vote were favourable, which we believe it would be, thi3 measure would have got a sanction obtainable in no other way. It would be far easier to deal with those who would otherwise declare that the Bill had not the assent of the nation. It is, perhaps, not for the National Service League, who believe that their measure is in accordance with the popular will, to make this suggestion, but rather for those who oppose it. If, however, the proposal is made, we do not doubt for a moment that the advocates of universal training will gladly accept the challenge.
We must deal with one more of Lord Crewe's arguments. It is as follows :— " This particular demand for compulsory service on land has never been made by the responsible naval advisers of the Crown, so fir as I know, under any Government, and has not been made for the obvious and good reason that they know that if we are to be told that the Navy is not the prime defence against invasion and that a large sum must be spent on land defence, there is a prospect that the country will insist on taking some part of the funds out of the amount now spent on our naval services. Supposing that the theory of this very large hostile force arriving unexpectedly in this country is accepted, are the proposals of the Bill as they stand the best means of spendinr that amount of money for meeting that particular contingency ? The proposal of the gallant Earl seems to create a very large force of very partially trained men. That might be the right kind of force to create if you were looking forward to a long and rather irregular resistance of the type which our troops encountered in South Africa. But, according to the noble Earl, what we have to meet is a coup de main, and the mere fact that you have got in the country a number of men who some years before had four months' training would not, it seems to me, affect the success or failure of that coup de main, and that is why I call the Bill a paradox looking at it in connexion with the well-known views of the gallant Earl."
But if the propositions here set forth are true, why in the name of wonder do we find Lord Crewe and the Govern- ment he represents taking so much trouble and spending so much money on creating a Territorial Army ? Every one of Lord Crewe's arguments tells just as much against the Territorial Army as against Lord Roberts's proposal. Unless Lord Crewe is prepared to say that there is no objection to the present Territorial Army because it is such a little one, he has really cut the ground from under Mr. Haldane's feet. If a large army which had had four months' recruit training could not meet the unexpected landing of a large hostile force, how could a small Territorial Army which has not had four months' recruit training, but only hopes to have it between the time of the threat of invasion and the carrying out of the threat ? Even after four months' embodiment the Territorial Army under Lord Roberts's Bill would be better than the Territorial Army of Mr. Haldane, because in Lord• Roberts's army every nian•would have had his four months' preliminary training in addition to whatever training he received afterwards. At the beginning of the war the comparison of training between the two armies would be enormously in favour of Lord Roberts's. In truth, Lord Crewe pressed the naval argument to such an extent that if we accept his view the Government of which he is a member have been guilty of the most profligate waste of the nation's money in creating a Territorial Army,—an army, remember, which is under no more obligation to serve outside these islands than the army proposed in Lord Roberts's Bill. In fact, the status of the two armies is exactly the same. Lord Roberts's Bill merely proposes to make all men who are physically fit serve in the Territorial Force, and to give them adequate recruit training before they enter that force instead of no training at all.
Before we leave this subject we must say once again that we consider that the debate in the House of Lords has been most useful. It has brought the matter to an issue, and, as Lord Crewe shows, the issue between those who propose and those who reject universal training rests, in Captain St. Los's words, on the alleged liberty of an Englishman not to fight for his country. As Lord Crewe notes, "it has been said over and over again that it is the duty of every man to defend his country." Lord Crewe went on to describe this as "an honourable platitude," and to insinuate that universal training might be all very well for Frenchmen who love equality but 'do not love liberty, but not for Englishmen who love liberty but do not care for 'equality. In this context we should like to draw the attention of' our readers' to the quotation which is placed at the head of an excellent article entitled "The Legion of -Frontiersmen," which is to be found in the July number of National Defence (Hugh Rees, 119 Pall Mall, S.W., is.), the organ of the National Defence Association :—
"As it is the essential property of a free Government to depend on no other soldiery but its own citizens for its defence, so in all such free Governments every freeman and eiery freeholder should be a soldier. A freeman that is no soldier does as much as in him lies that he should be no longer free. 'Tis base net to be allowed to bear arms in his own and his country's defence. 'Tis perfidy and treachery in a free citizen not to be willing to bear arms."
The words were addressed a century and a half ago by Thomas Pownall, one of the last Royal Governors of the Colony and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to the Assembly in Boston. The connexion thus expressed between liberty and the use of arms is, we venture to think, an essential one, and for this view we can at any rate plead the opinion of our ancestors. When the Declaration of Rights was drawn up and became the law of the land, one of the first propositions therein laid down was the right of Englishmen to bear arms in defence of their liberties. But it is useless for a man to bear arms unless he has been trained to use them.
Previous page
