THE STATUS OF THE VOLUNTEER. L ORD LINCOLNSHIRE, as the introducer
of the Volunteer Bill, and Lord Desborough and his Com- mittee, as those whom we may term " the beneficiaries," are to be heartily congratulated upon what took place in the House of Lords on Tuesday evening. Instead of being cold- shouldered, the Bill was sincerely,if cautiously, welcomed by the representatives of the Government. Though the friends of the Volunteers were warned that the Bill might have to be modified in Committee, and that the War Office were hardly likely to exercise at once the powers which it would confer upon them for embodying the Volunteers, there was plenty of evidence that the Government recognize what a valuable potential asset they have in the Volunteers, and, further, that they are anxious to consider the best ways of realizing that asset. This is a very great advance—a milestone on the long road upon which the Volunteers are marching.
In view of the spirit in which the second reading of Lord Lincolnshire's Bill was received, we feel sure that at the Com- mittee stage a still further advance will be made in what we may term the clearing up of views between the Volun- teers and the War Office. Each will learn to understand the other's difficulties. At present, though we are certain that there is no hostility on the part of the War Office—not even a desire mildly to pooh-pooh the Volunteers—there is a distinct fear on the part of the military authorities that if they are not very careful they may find themselves, on the top of all their other work and financial commitments, suddenly responsible for a new army of four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand men—an army with a, good deal of civil power and influence behind it, clamouring for arms and organization. If the War Office can secure, as it were, guarantees that nothing of this kind is going to happen, and that they will not have this new burden put upon them before they are ready to receive it, or, rather, while their bands are already full, or more than full, with the organization and equipment of the now Regular Army, a great deal will have been accomplished. Just as we trust that the discussions in Committee will educate the War Office in respect of Volunteer aims and objects, so also we trust that the Committee stage will make the Volunteers realize that the War Office are far from saying, " Go away ; don't you see we don't want you ? " On the contrary, they desire, not to put the Volunteers in their place, but to find. the right place for them. The War Office will learn exactly what the Volunteers are asking for as regards status, and, further, what the Volunteers can give (1) in peace time and (2) in war. The Volunteers will, no doubt, want to know in what way they are likely to be employed should invasion take place—a piece of knowledge about which they are naturally eager to get some information. They feel that if they have that information they will be better able to train themselves for the day of trial. Upon this point, though we sympathize with the desire of the Volunteers, we would ask them not to push their inquiry too much in detail, for the very good reason that it is quite impossible to lay down in the abstract exactly how the Volunteers would be used. Only a very general idea of their functions can be sketched out. Perhaps the best way to understand what is the potential value of the Volunteers is to approach the matter in the Socratic method. We would begin by asking the General Staff whether, in case of invasion, they would not feel relieved if they knew that in every county in England and every great town—that is, everywhere where operations could occur—they would have ready to hand a. large body of organized helpers and servers who knew the locality, and who were not only willing to help and serve, but who had been drilled and organized so to do, and who therefore could be called into existence and kept in existence under the ties of military discipline. Any one who has seen, as has the present writer, three thousand or four thousand Volunteers collected for a field day, marched on to the ground and marched off again without con- fusion or hitch, will know that the Volunteers have got far beyond the " willing mob " stage, and can be perfectly well relied upon to do the work of military maids-of-all- work with regularity and despatch. It is, of course, obvious that the Staff officers of our imaginary conver- sation would say that they would rather have such a body to their hand than rely upon scraping together at a moment's notice anybody they could force or cajole to dig trenches, mend roads, guard lines, bridges, prisoners, and munition stores. The next question we would ask is : " Would not you also feel greatly helped and relieved if you knew that the Volunteers in question had received a reasonable amount of training in the actual laying out and digging of trenches, and that they had been practised, many of them for over a year, in route-marching, and were capable of doing their twelve to twenty miles a day without breaking down ? " Further- " Would you not be relieved to learn that the whole body of these helpers and servers knew how to load and keep clean their rifles, and even if armed with an inferior weapon, were armed, and, unlike the recruit in the Crimea, had been shown how to load it and let it off ?" In a word, would not the men in the front line be glad to know that there were men behind them who could be relied upon to entrench a position and man it, if not in the very best military style, yet in such a way as to delay and worry the enemy ? Here again, of course, there can only be one answer. But this is what the Volunteers have trained themselves to do, and are willing to do. To say that they are not an asset worth having is impossible. We can quite understand that it is not one for which tho military authorities would feel inclined to sacrifice a large amount of time, energy, and money, but if they can got it for nothing, or virtually for nothing, as they can, it would clearly be absurd to neglect it. On that there must be universal agreement. We have purposely put the uses of the Volunteers at their lowest point. There are, however, potentialities in the Volunteers far beyond anything we have said. We will not dwell upon them at the moment beyond saying that from the Volunteers as a whole we could skim a force of their best men which would give us an extra hundred thousand troops as good as the Territorials at the beginning of the war. Whether it would be advisable to have recourse to such a policy of skimming is quite another matter. We merely use the fact as an illustration, and to show how good is the quality of a portion of the Volunteer Force. Briefly, the message of the Volunteers to the War Office is : " Here am I ; send me." The reply of the War Office to the Volunteers ought in effect to be : " We will, when the moment comes. Meanwhile learn everything you can of a soldier's duties, learn to shoot, learn to march, learn to dig, learn to mount guard, but don't worry us or anybody else as to the exact way in which you will be used in case of invasion. Only time can show that. Your duty is to stand by ready for any and for every emergency and to keep fit and alert." To that the Volunteer's answer is : We will, only don't mate it harder for us by giving us no recognition. Instead make it easier for us by giving us a definite status at once, and letting us know that when we are embodied we shall have the privileges as well as the duties of soldiers. We do not ask for money, but we do ask to be regarded as something better than a, mob of hare-brained enthusiasts. We aro, and ought to be acknowledged to be, ' Volunteers in the service of the King.' "
Previous page
