NATIONAL DEFENCES.

West Coast Times, Issue 334, 18 October 1866, Page 2

NATIONAL DEFENCES.

(FROM THE TIMEB.)

The commencement of war has almost always been ta England the signal for disaster. Nothing has been ready. Everything has had to be done in a hurry. Every species of organisation, notwithstanding a profuse expenditure in time of peace, has been allowed to fill into decay. Our army has at best been but a collection of regiments, without cohesion and without system. Our generals have not known their business. Disaster abroad has been the signal for bitter discontent at home. But in those good times — good at least for a thoroughly nonmilitary system — such faults', grave as they are, were not irremediable. The sterling qualities of the nation came out brightly under adversity and disappointment. That .which ought to have been dove iri peace was effected under the pressure of war. The service was re-organised. A competent commander was at least found. At a vast expense, and with infinite loss and difficulty, things were put to rights, and a struggle which began t discreditably and adversely, ended often in victory and all the self-gratulation that follows it. Will this be so now? The experience of the last two months warns as emphatically that time, always a most vital element in war, us now become absolutely paramount and despotic over the destinies of belligerents. If Austria could have got time, she, might have furnished her treops with' suitable arms ; she might have concerted measures with her allies, and" placed her army on a. footing which might have enabled it to reap the reward of its undoubted valour and endurance. But she was conquered before she was ready, and it seems beyond dispute that victory must henceforth wait on those nations which have their resources best in hand, and not on those whose resources are the largest or most able to endure the strain of a long exhausting contest. If we look by the light of recent events at the cap:i cities of England "for waging successful war by land and by sea, we are forcibly ' struck by iwo things — first, her immense and almost boundless resources, if time were given her for their development ; and, secondly, the utter impossibility of making these resources available under existing conditions, before the war itself has been term.riated by some signal and irreparable calamity, which would leave us no alternative

but to accept a disgraceful peace on such terms as a victorious enemy might see fit to grant. In the navy our want is, strange to say, principally of ships ; in the army, principally of men ; in % both the public money is expended on lafge and inefficient establishments and speculative improvers of the material of war, rather than the men on whom we must rely as the energy and - life of our most refined contrivances and subtle means of destruction. In the ciise of the navy it really seems as if the adoption of an iron- clad fleet had tendtid to weaken instead of strengthen our means of defence ; and that, after, so man)' costly experiments and so vast (an expenditure, we are absolutely, as ' well as relatively to other countries, weaker than we were ten years ago. We are " off w>th the old love before we are on with the new»" In *the tinny we are, in case of a suddeii war with a first-rate foreign power, and in case of a naval Koniggratz, unable to defend our own country, aRd still more unable to send out expeditions which might indirectly protect our shores by jnaking the enemy anxious for his own safety at some vital point. This state of things must not continue. We have much to lose, and can well afford to pay any insurance that may reasonably be required for its preservation. We have before us, in the case of Prussia, an excellent model, and we are' inexcusable if we do not make that model useful to us in the complete reorganisation of our forces. What, then, is the leading thought which presides over the formation of that Prussian army which, by its bravery, celerity, endurance, discipline, and intelligence, has won for itself so high a place among the armies of Europe ? Its peculiarity - Undoubtedly is that it is an army only in war, while in peace it is a part of the nation, discharging the- duties and enjoying the freedom of civil life, and increasing the resources of the country, instead of wasting and destroying them in compulsory idleness. With a militia of this kind, well armed* and well led, Prussia has succeeded in a decisive war against a power armed on the old j principle of standing armies ; and it is J quite clear that such a force is at a dis- 1 advantage when used for attack, and j must be much more efficient when con- 1 fined, as it would be with us, to the na- j tural function of defence. We are apt to forget that our crowning victory of Waterloo was not due to the excellent army which had become in the hands of the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsula, so perfect an instrument that it " could go anywhere and do anything," but to raw troops mostly drawn recently from the militia, and a large number of whom looked on the face of actual war for the first time on that dreadful 18th of June. A thorough professional training may be given in a much shorter time, than is supposed : greater intelligence makes up for many defects, and every advance in the construction of arms dispenses with some portion of a wearisome and laborious drill. It seems, then, that the first requisite for placing our, army on the same footing as that of our neighbors is some change which shall make the regular army more like the militia, and at the same time raise the militia more to a level with the regular army. We must try to make the soldier's life easier. A

system of furlough, regulated not by s tne wishes of the man, but rather by the interests of the public, giving the greatest possible expansion to our army, and leaving the soldier as much as pos- > sible to himself, is ,an obvious expedient. We want more men, and we must attract them by making the service less burdensome and the isola-

tion from civil life much less complete. By improving the position of the soldier, and perhaps by increasing his pay, we might attract 1 into the army a class of men superior to the only recruits we are at present able to obtain; and this would be still more probable if the non-commis-sioned officers, by which so much of the work which in other armies falls on the officers themselves is well and efficiently done, were more highly remunerated. The army, if it is to be increased to the point which our safety demands, must become more national/ and less exclusively professional. There is another element of success in this attempt at re-or-ganisation »which has been too much left out of sight of late years, and that in the influence of local feeling and sentiment as a recruiting power. If particular regiments were assigned, so to , speak, to particular counties, if they were brought into concontact with the militia, volunand yeomanry, a martial feeling would infallibly be engendered and augmented by the associations of local feeling and by contact and example. Whatever expense such a system might cause* would be met by reductions which must certainly be made whenever a really efficient hand shall grasp the reins of our military affairs. There is, for instance, the fearful waste in experiments. Common sense points out to everyone, except an official, or a contractor, or speculative inventor, that the object in the coarse and bloody trade of war is not so mach extreme accuracy as a certain rough efficiency and facility of use which may make a weapon tell when it is In the hands of thousands varying in every conceivable degree in courage, skill, coolness, and dexterity. Germany has just been conquered by a weapon admitted to be a bad one of its sort, but of an excellent sort ; and the rest of Europe feel themselves at this moment practically disarmed because their Governments have withheld from their soldiers this invaluable arm, in the hope of finding something better. When an arm has once been adopted, it ought not to be 1 lightly changed, nor ought the public money to be recklessly squandered in seeing whether something better may not posssibly be devised, especially when it is remembered that those improvements, for which we' pay so dearly, cannot in the nature of things become our own property, but must be available to every other nation as well as ourselves. In commerce we desire no monopoly; in

war we may, indeed, desire it, but it is unattainable.

What we should wish to see is the vast sums we annually contribute spent less on establishments, officers, and experiments, and more on men, the i*eal essence and strength of an army. We are quite'eonvinced that in the different trades and occupations of this country we spare far too few for that safety which is the one condition on which everything else rests, and the funds required for placing us completely on a level with all other European nations are to be found, if sought for in the proper place, without aggravating the burdens of the taxpayers. But even if we are mistaken in this opinion, we are quite sure that England deems no price too heavy to 'pay for security and dignity. We have given up an ambitious foreign policy, but we have not by that means secured ourselves against the possibility of war ; and when we see what efforts a country like Prussia, so inferior to ourselves in wealth and population, is cheerfully making for purposes of aggression, we may well blush to think how little care is taken to guard that accumulation of wealth and happiness of which centuries of 'labor and order have made us the possessors. To what hauds the great change we contemplate should be intrusted, is the last, and perhaps not the least difficult part of the question.