The Daily News. THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1911. THE OLD COUNTRY'S POSITION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 304, 18 May 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1911. THE OLD COUNTRY'S POSITION.

■\Ve are told that the Old Country is watching with keen interest the working of the universal military training schemes that have been adopted by Xew Zealand . and Australia. England has always halted at training all her able-bodied men to arms. She tried the volunteer scheme, but discarded it as ineffective, and embraced, Mr. (now Lord) Haldane's territorial scheme, which retained the voluntary principle but improved the training and organization of the several branches of the service. This was regarded as the half-way house to compulsory military training. There is a wide difference between compulsory scrl vice and compulsory military training. i' The former smacks of the Continental ] system, and the ,T free and independent"

Britisher will have none of it. Military training, however, is in an entirely different category, and is beneficial alike to the citizen and the nation. It is coming. The territorial system is successful, as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough. It embraces but a small percentage of the population, and as a defensive or offensive instrument is totally inadequate. Recent cablegrams have shown that the different territorial associations fall short of their establishments, and that extreme difficulty is found in keeping them up to their present standard. This cannot go on much longer. Lord Roberts recently had something to say on this matter. He wrote a reply, entitled, "The Nation's Peril," to Oncral Sir lan Hamilton's famous brochure on "Compulsory Service," written and published in support of Lord Haldane's policy at the War Office. In it, Lord Roberts challenges Cleneral Hamilton's competence to speak on the recruiting problem. The latter had urged that the present small professional army and the territorials are sufficient for Britain's military necessities. Lord Roberts at once puts his hand on the essential weakness of the territorials, while praising their enthusiasm and highly valuing the raw material. "The training of the rank and file for war.' he says, "consists in leaching them three things—drill, musketry (or gunnery), and discipline. But of these essentials, discipline is by far the most essential, for discipline, even more than drill or musketry, leads to victory, and discipline cannot be imparted in small doses. Sir Tan Hamilton himself emphasised the necessity for a long period of training. Tn his evidence before Lord Elgin's Commission in 1003. he ?aid, '■T.iven men like the City Imperial Volunteers, you could reckon on making them good infantry in six months, working hard; but given the ordinary corner boy or clod-hopper then you certainly will not do it in much under two years." Lord Roberts comments: "This same soldier now a (tempts to persuade his countrymen 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 man, and which he knows full well—as doe- Mr. Haldnne—can never be obtained in peace from a national army raised on anythins but a compulsory basis." A great body of really trained men, Lord

Roberts urges, is necessary not only for actual defence, but to feed the professional army in time of war. "If the regular army had to be supplemented by other forces —and in every great struggle of the past it has had to be 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." Lord Roberts criticises Sir A. K. Wilson's memorandum, printed in the second edition of "Compulsory Service." He argues that there are no trustworthy grounds for assuming that a raiding force would consist of only 70,000 men. "Moreover, a first-class European army, 70,000 strong, will never be deterred by untrained troops, however superior to themselves in numbers. Towards the end of the Franco-German war, 35,000 German soldiers in the southcast of France were opposed by French levies numbering 140,000 men. These latter bad been under a certain military training for the past four months. Within a month nearly 60,000 of them were killed, wounded, prisoners, or missing, while the remaining 80,000 were driven across the Swiss frontier, and there interned." As for the assertion that volunteers fight more enthusiastically than conscripts, Lord Roberts quotes a letter from Mr. Fortescue, who, referring to the Peninsular war, says that Napoleon's conscript army had a hard time and no glory. The pay was always in arrears, and from the marshal to the private the whole army loathed the war, yet "there was lcs9 desertion of born French (as apart from foreign contingents in the French service) than of born British to the enemy." Summarising Sir lan Hamilton's recommendation, Lord Roberts writes: "Tt comes, then, to this, that Sir Tan Hamilton deliberately recommends that this country's small fighting forces should be maintained in the field, abroad as well as at home, by men compelled to fight, but not permitted any training prior to the outbreak of hostilities. And this third line is to be utilised when the nation and trie Empire are 'fighting for bare life.'"