ARRAY THE NATION.
THERE have been many surprising things in this war, but perhapit the most surprising of all is Lord Kitchener's speech in the Upper House on Tuesday after- noon. In it he told the nation that he wants three hundred thousand more recruits "to form new armies." If he had asked for a million, or even two million, more men we should not have been surprised, though even then, taking the Army and Navy together, we should not be doing, per head of population; more than, or even as much as, the French; and should be doing a very great deal leas than the Germans. At such a juncture as this to ask for only three hundred thousand men literally makes one's brain reel. It would seem to shovs one of two things: either Lord Kitchener during the ten months that have elapsed since the beginning of the war has obtained far more men than the nation has any idea of, or else—which of course is a perfectly incredible,ridiculous, and impossible supposition— Lord Kitchener is not aware of the wastage of war, and is under the delusion that the cadres of his fighting force can be kept up to strength (the absolutely essential condition for an efficient army) without a huge reserve. A very little consideration will show that the notion of such a miscalculation on the part of so great a soldier as Lord Kitchener must be dismissed. We must not make any calculation as to the exact numbers of the men who are at this moment outside England fighting our enemies. Let us, assume, however, purely for the sake of argument, that, taking into consideration not only the Army in Flanders, but our forces at the Dardanelles, on the Persian Gulf, and in other parts of the world, we shall soon have a million men in the field. But when our men are fighting as they are bound to fight this summer, for the summer is the soldier's season, if we average the war wastage of the great battle months, such as May has proved, with that of the quiet months, it will at the very least be ten per cent. per month. [It may of course prove to be snuck more.] This means an immediate wastage of one hundred thousand a month to be made good. It means that unless one hundred thousand fresh men are raised every month, the armies in the field will begin to wither away. Of course up till now there has been no such wastage. We are speaking of the future—of- the period when the New Army will be at the front.
If no new men are raised, an Army of a million would in ten months cease to exist. Therefore Lord Kitchener's new army of three hundred thousand, if he got them by June 1st, would have disappeared by September 1st. No doubt Lord Kitchener has other great supplies of men for drafting purposes, and could keep a million men in the field for a year without using these extra three hundred thousand. In all probability, however, we shall ultimately want to have, not one million men, but a million and a half in the field and a million and a half at home to feed them. What, then, is the explanation of this demand for a handful instead of the great bunch which is required ? We can only suggest that Lord Kitchener has unhappily rejected the idea of adopting the principles of scientific recruiting or of seriously arraying the nation for war, and has deter- mined to content himself with continuing, or even exaggerating, that haphazard system of dipping his bucket into the human pools when and where he can, instead of first collecting all the water into one big pool and then systematically draining it off into the Army buckets. He has only asked for three hundred thousand men now, but he means directly he has got them to ask for another three hundred thousand, and so on, and so on. If that is so, the man who Las made so, few mistakes in his military career is at last making a great error, and we should be guilty of a grievous crime if, because of our respect and admiration for Lord Kitchener—which since the war, we may Bay, has become unbounded—we were to refrain from pointing it out, and imploring him and the Government to give up this foolish plan of little packets and to array the nation for the provision both of men and of shells and other munitions of war.
Unless we are so mad as to be content to run the risk of being beaten by the Germans—though at this very moment, and in spite of their apparent successes, the Germans are approaching the period which ushers in the ultimate death agony—we must ask every male in the
country over seventeen years of age the plain question : " What are you doing to save the nation?" We must not be content till we have got the appropriate answer, the answer which will enable us to reply : "You are doing your bit. Carry on." The men over military age will free themselves from the reproach of being unable to answer this question by joining the "Volunteer Training Force, or the Special Constables, or similar bodies. The men of military age who are making munitions of was will, of course, be able to give an answer wholly satisfactory to them- selves and their fellow-citizens. So will the men engaged in transport and other absolutely necessary work. There will remain over the vast number of men of military age and of sound health who have as yet made no personal sacrifice for the country. To these men the question we have put must be pressed home till an answer is given. If in the end the answer is unsatisfactory, they must be made by compulsion to do what others have done voluntarily.
Here is the principle at the back of the demand which we have made ever since the war began for scientific: recruiting and for arraying the whole nation. In order to put our scheme for arraying the nation into practice, the first step, as we explained a fortnight ago, should be for the military authorities to grant certificates of exemption to all persons who are engaged in manufacturing munitions of war or upon other necessary work. Naturally the Government would grant as few of these as possible. On the other hand, care must he taken that every man who is really wanted in the factory or on the railway, and so forth, should have no excuse for shifting his job. The object of granting these certificates of exemption would be twofold. First, it would ensure an adequate supply of men for the manufacture of munitions of war and other necessary work. Next, the resultant setting apart of the men who are not free to fight would make it easy to handle the men from whom the sacrifice of active service would be required. Again, the men who have attempted to enlist but been rejected on medical grounds would pass over into the category of non-combatants. When this preliminary work was done we should know exactly who could be relied upon to fight our battles. These men must then be mustered, or arrayed, as our ancestors would have said, and their total number ascer- tained. The next step would be for the War Office to say how many men they wanted. Then the quota required from each section of the kingdom, or, say, each recruiting area, could be accurately determined. Let us assume that the system of arraying the nation in this way had already been adopted, and that we knew that the men of military age still in the country and capable of fighting, and not required for making munitions and other necessary work, amounted to, say, six millions. To these six millions we will apply Lord Kitchener's specific demand. If three hundred thousand men bad to be got out of six millions, one man in every twenty would be the quota required, or so many men in each recruiting district. If the inhabitants of -the district came forward in sufficient numbers voluntarily and produced the quota, no sort of compulsion would of course be required or enforced. If, however, the full quota were not made up voluntarily, then there must be a ballot conducted amongst the men on the muster roll. If, say, half the men required to make up the quota came voluntarily, then it would only be necessary to apply the ballot to the remaining half. So much for the community. Meanwhile the individual would always be able to free himself from compulsion by volun- tary enlistment, which would remain open as now. Further, such voluntary enlistment would give him all the privileges of allowance belonging to the willing recruit, whereas a man taken by ballot would not be able to claim the privileges of the unballoted man.
We shall perhaps be asked why we hammer on at the need for arraying the nation and are not content to let things drift ; that is, to let the Government see whether they can manage without compulsion, and if they cannot, then adopt it when required. Our answer is that if this is what is to happen we shall get the maximum of friction and un- fairness in applying compulsion, whereas if we look ahead and get ready for compulsion there will be no harm done if we do not have to resort to it, while if we do have to adopt it there will be a great saving in time and a great preven- tion of confusion and injustice. We ask for a military census because if compulsion comes it will be much more efficient and much more fair. We ask for it as a step in the policy of preparation which we advocated as much in peace as in war.
That compulsion is coming in spite of Lord Kitchener optimistic little demand for three hundred thousand men we are absolutely convinced. Lord Haldane would never have spoken as he did if he had not desired to warn the nation. The fact that he and other Ministers have coupled their remarks with the pious hope that compulsion will never come must not deceive us as to the real situation. In telling of Falstaff's death, Mrs. Quickly described how be "cried out ' God ! God ! God !' three or four times," and bow," to comfort him," she" bid him's should not think of God."—" I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." In the same way Ministers have been telling the national Falstaff that they hope there is no need to think of conscription yet. But for all that con- scription is coming. Yet when it does come the nation will find it far less terrible than they imagine. To many men, indeed, it will bring relief—relief from the doubts and difficulties that now surround them. In any case, it will be just, and not let the slacker bear no burden while the brave and true man bears a double load. But though the pressure of compulsion when it comes may be mitigated and made just, it can only be made so if there is proper preparation. What we are afraid of, what we see coming, is a hasty and unfair application of a sound principle.
We venture to prophesy that what is going to happen is this. Some three months hence, or it may be even earlier, it will be found that there is an imperative need for supplying drafts to our armies at the front, and that the voluntary system is proving inadequate to supply them. Then the Government, in a panic of haste, will decree compulsion. The result will be that compulsion will be applied higgledy- piggledy and anyhow. To begin with, we shall not know exactly to whom to apply it. This will mean that some districts will be asked for too many men and some for too few, and men will be got anyhow and anywhere by a system which will in effect be that of the press-gang—an odious, tyrannical, and detestable form of raising men. And remember that a hasty, muddled system of conscription is certain to fall much more heavily upon the working class than upon the richer class, whereas a properly arranged system of scientifio recruiting through the means of a preliminary military census can be made to be accu- rately just and impartial to all classes. Therefore, once again we ask that the nation shall be arrayed both for the factory and for the field, and that we shall at once, and in spite of official and military optimism, count up what men we have got of military age and how we can best use them. And here we would say that we think that the definition of military age should be expanded. It is now nineteen to forty. We would make it from seventeen to forty. That, however, is a matter of detail and not an essential. Only by arraying the nation for the war can we meet the needs of the hour adequately and justly. If we were the Government, the necessary orders would issue to-morrow. We have the machinery of the census ready. Why not apply it ?
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