COMPULSORY TRAINING.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1122, 9 May 1911, Page 4

COMPULSORY TRAINING.

fc- . On March 30 last there was published, what most people expected would not be long in coming, a reply by Lord Roberts to Sn: lan Hamilton's Compulsory Service. Fortunately there is no need for the friends of compulsory military training in New Zealand to feel disturbed by the fallacies and bad history of Sin lan Hamilton's book, since they are the vast majority of the nation, but Lord Roberts's volume. Fallacies and Facts, is worth attention, not only for its matter, but also, incidentally, for its revelation of the means to which the British Government is prepared to resort in its hostility to the aims of the National Service League. Mr. Haldanb, it will jne remembered, caused the issue-of General Hamilton's book as "an unofficial document, originally prepared for my private information," and people .over since have been wondering why this one, alone of the five ex-Adju-tants-General still alive, should have been so honoured by the War Minister. Lord Roberts pushes the question much more closely against Mr. Haldane. General Hamilton is the Second Military Member of the Army Council, and Lord Roberts asks: "Why is it the Second Military Member, and not the First, who has been thus invited to set forth his private and 'unofficial' opinion ? In short, why should not the public have the advantage of 'an unofficial document originally prepared for my private information' over the signature 'W. G. Nicholson,' Chief of the General Staff?"

Some years ago General Hamilton expressed approval of the principle of compulsory service, and it naturally astonishes Lord Roberts that he should now hold that "the mere fact of men joining the Territorial Force of their own free will counts for more on the battlefield than the continuous period of six months' training which he acknowledges to be .necessary for even the best class of men." It is an ironical corhmentary upon General Hamilton's argument that compulsory training would spoil the supply of recruits, that in a recent official

statement. Mr. Haldase dwells upon the tremendous difficulty he is already experiencing in respect of recruits. Lord Roberts lays great stress upon the importance of the "power of expansion": The Army Reserve and the Special Reserve would at best suffice to keep our exiguous Expeditionary Force up to its original strength during short campaign. In order to enlaiv >'> and even in order to prevent it lroui dwindling awav after tho first few months of war, wo should still, as in 1900-2, have to fall back upon improvised troops raised at enormous cost, yet of doubtful efficiency. How different would bo the position if, behind our Regular Army, there stood a nation of which every able-bodied man had received a substantial degree of military training! Put at its lowest, such a Home Army as the scheme of the National Service League would give us would at least ensure two things. In tho first place it would enable us, without exposing ourselves to the danger of successful invasion, to send the last available man of the Regular Army and its Reserves out of this country. In the second place, if the Regular Army had to bo supplemented by other forces—and in every great national struggle of the past it has had to lie so supplemented— if that "power of expansion" which all expert opinion has so emphatically demanded had to be called into play, we should have an enormous reservoir of men, all of whom had undergone a really serious, if not a perfect, military training. Wc noted, when discussing Compulsory Service last February, that tho opposition to compulsory training finds support amongst some of the big-Navy people, who fear that a "nation in arms" would mean a shrunken Navy. "Our Navy is invincible, the argument runs; "keep it invincible, and an army is unnecessary excepting for minor expeditions. That is all very well, but what jjuarantco can they offer that the Navy will always maintain its present relation to the navies of other Powers ? None, of course. Lord Roberts recalled, on this point, some weighty words uttered by Sir ■Edward Grey on February 7, 1908: "As far as we are concerned in this country, our means cf bringing a war to a conclusion rest entirely on our sea power. ... . As long as our Navy could contain tho. Navy of tho other Power no doubt we should not suffer ourselves. . . . But supposing other complications arose while tho war was going on, supposing some great stroke of hard luck, some piece of ineptitude, any of .those things to which human nature is liable occurred, and supposing onr Navy did lose command of (ho sea, what would be before us? Not only defeat, but conquest." The kernel of Lord Roderts's case, however, is the fact, which he supports by extracts from the reports of Royal Commissions, that the British Army to-day has "no effective power of expansion." This is a fact to which no satisfactory reply has i been made.