THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7934, 6 January 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1906.

If Mr Haldane, the new Minister of War in the Bannerman Ministry is true to the traditional creod of the Liberal Party his assumption of power in such an important department as that named will br ing considerable tribulation to a few special reformers. Assuming that the policy of the new Ministry will be against any military developments such as were in their initiatory stages during the latter part of the Conservative tenure—and the Prime Minister's statement the other day would seem to indicate as much—-

then Lord Roberts scheme for the popularisation of the Army and the establishment of a surer system of enlistment will surely be given a setback. Of course it is quite possible, it may even be likely, that the forces in operation to-day will be against a really serious whittling down of a progressive Army reorganisation scheme, and it may even be that the old form of Liberalism, which would inevitably have aimed at it, perished on the birth of the Imperial awakening during the Salisbury-Chamberlain regime. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to identify a Bannerman Ministry with a martial programme of any character, and, if we consider fcho two arms of defenco on the old basis, extra difficult when the identification is sought in respect to the Army. When it comes to the Navy of course the administration of affairs rests very largely on expert advice, and is, >infact, to some extent bound by it, and even so while there are two decided parties in England as to the necessity of an improved Army there is practically only one when it comes to a question of maintaining a formidable and up-to-date fleet. If the Bannerman Ministry proposed to cry a dangerous hall; with the Navy it woudn't last a month, no matter what its support in other directions, but there are very many Englishmen who hold that an insular Power doesn't need a great Army except for Imperial purposes abroad, and the old Liberal ideas exemplified by the Gladstone policy was always against an Army for much more than the defence of the Three Kingdoms. If the Bannerman Ministry comes back with a majority, it certainly would appear that Army reform will occupy a less exalted place in practical politics, unless as just stated, Liberalism has beoome more aggressive in this particular, due to the Imperial development which has occurred since last the Liberals were in office. Those who are of the opinion that "soldiering" in Great Britaiu wants a great incentive will probahly suffer through quite a variety of things—the importation of Chinese as a climax to a great Army war in South Africa, the scandals associated with the sale of surplus stores there which are not cleared up even yet, and the excuse which the Liberals may make that at the present moment England has no cause to apprehend any land-war involving herself, but only a developing menace on the sua due to the naval programme of certain other g"4at Powers.