SPEECH BY LORD ROBERTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 62, 18 March 1913, Page 3

SPEECH BY LORD ROBERTS.

ON THE TERRITORIALS

By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright (United Press Association.)

London, March 15

Si:: thousand working men attended a meeting at the Drill Hall in Wolverhampton, and 5000 attended an over flow meeting at the Agricultural Hall. Lord Roberts had a sterling reception. Ho moved that the Government should complete the Territorial scheme by the adoption of personal service. He said that the unpreparedness to adjust the European balance of power in Napoleonic times had cost £600,000,000. Today the navy could protect trade routes but apart from the army’s garrison duties only the Territorials were left to guard England’s shores. No general, except in the direst extremity, would lead the Territorials against European forces, merely to become food for shrapnel. When 140,000 French ill-trained levies net 5000 disciplined Germans, 60,000 were killed, wounded or prisoners in three days, and the remainder were panic-stricken. The Balkan war was another lesson of insufficient training. Lord Haldane had suggested' that the Territorials would grow more effective every day when facing the enemy, but many days did Lord Haldane imagine the force would exist? It would be decimated by long-range fire from practised marksmen. It daunted the heart of any experienced soldier to contemplate the fate of such an army. In a citizen army, merit and character should decide who were to be officers. Working men must not fear discipline. “To true manhood,’’ he said, “ ‘I must’ were higher words than ‘I will’ to the King.”