so lucidly as to set at rest the tremors they may sometimes experience.

It may be that the forthcoming Navy Estimates will show a further reduction in the expenditure proposed for the financial year 1907-8, and a good deal may be heard of 'A cheap Navy,' which is supposed, presumably, to be a term of contempt. As a matter of fact what the British people desire is surely an adequate fleet to maintain British supremacy unchallenged, organised on strictly business lines and as 'cheap' as they reasonably can get it. Economical administration even of the British Navy is no disgrace, and the reductions of the past two years of five millions sterling under the Unionist Government were but the first fruits of a businesslike administration of the Navy, for economies are cumulative. The saving has been accompanied by an increase in the fleet's fighting power, which cannot be better illustrated than by the two facts, that whereas in 1903 there were only twenty armoured ships in home waters with the white ensign flying and twenty-four destroyers, in the coming year there will be sixty-three armoured ships ready to respond to any emergency, with about 190 torpedo craft. The fleet, in fact, has been reorganised, with all its departments; it has been distributed in accordance with the strategic needs of the Empire, and facilities have been provided for the sea training of officers and men, from admirals downwards, such as never existed before. Apart from the officers employed on shore at the naval establishments, twenty admirals will this year have their flags flying at sea, and two commodores will show their broad pennants, in contrast with sixteen admirals and a commodore four years ago, and eleven admirals and two commodores at the beginning of this century. Consequently the senior officers of the Navy are obtaining increased experience in handling fleets and squadrons. In consequence of the development of the torpedo flotillas in association with the Home Fleet the facilities for young officers in gaining practice 'in command,' and cultivating qualities of daring and resourcefulness, are immensely improved, and the change should react beneficially on the character of the Navy as a sea force. Owing, moreover, to the elimination from the fighting fleet of ships unfit to fight or run away, but many of which nevertheless had crews in the past, some reduction in the regular personnel may be anticipated, if not at once, at no very distant date, particularly as modern one-calibre, big-gun ships, fitted with the simple turbine, such as the Dreadnought, require fewer men than older ships with mixed armaments and reciprocating engines. In all respects the big ship is economical, and consequently the Dreadnought policy should cause some shrinkage of the personnel in accordance with the views so long expressed by Lord Brassey.

In view of these considerations the British people need not be alarmed because a Government department, even though it be the Admiralty, is practising economy with efficiency. The two principles

are good bedfellows, and so long as the Admiralty maintains the sea fleets at adequate strength as it is doing, and insists on the TwoPower shipbuilding standard, as has been the case so far, there is not only no occasion for uneasiness, but rather cause for congratulation. But the nation, which profits by a policy of economical reform, accompanied by increased efficiency, should remember that, as Earl St. Vincent discovered, the work cannot be done without treading on some corns, interfering with many sinecures, disturbing vested interests and arousing conservative influences. These are the penalties, and those who suffer are not inclined to do so in silence.

ARCHIBALD HURD.

THE INVASION SCARE-A NEW VIEW

SINCE we are to depend, it seems, on a citizen army of the futuremay I say the dim and distant future ?-for the main defence of the Empire, or, which comes to the same thing, the Empire's heart, it may not be out of place for a humble member of the community, although devoid of military experience, to make a suggestion intended in all due modesty for the settlement of a great controversial question on a sound and permanent basis. We thank God daily that we are not as others, a military nation, and with reason. No military nation would entrust the defensive organisation of what we are prone to term the greatest empire the world ever saw to a middle-aged lawyer of philosophical bent who wastes at the War Office gifts meant for the Woolsack. Having that degree of acquaintance with Mr. Haldane which a member of Parliament of the common order can contrive to scrape with the more illustrious denizens of the Legislative Chamber, I recognise to the full his capacity, coupled with that delicate appreciation thereof known, racially, as the having of a good conceit. Yet I am not so sure that, despite a frankly admitted intellectual inferiority, I may not be as well fitted as Mr. Haldane to form a judgment on Army reform. More years ago than I care to remember I fulfilled, with as much credit as the position would admit of, the duties of private in a Volunteer corps, and to this day I would back myself for proficiency in the goose step against the right honourable gentleman. Moreover, I have an advantage over our war lord in that I am one of those high local functionaries-the deputy-lieutenants— who are to play so important a part in his scheme of territorial organisation. 'Tis true, and pity it is 'tis true, that the limits of expansion of the uniform have, as in the case of the British Army, long since been reached; but my wife's maid is handy with her needle, and, like the right honourable gentleman, I too cherish hopes of securing increased personal efficiency by a reduction of redundancy.

It is said of great leaders of men that their success has largely depended not on their own labour so much as on their capacity for setting others to work. Mr. Haldane will thank me for recalling to mind an incident which indicated in a pleasing manner his possession of this qualification for leadership. We had been sitting in the depth of

winter through what was euphemistically termed an autumn session, and it was a question of adjourning over Christmas. The then leader of the House suggested a recess so short that even his staunchest supporters murmured. Thereupon, from a back bench, uprose the hon. member for Haddingtonshire, and in a stirring call to duty rebuked the sluggards and besought the Minister to stand by his original proposal. The subsequent discovery that the author of this patriotic appeal, like the discreet commander who fled full soon on the first of June, but bade the rest keep fighting,' had paired with a political opponent for a period extending beyond the limits of the proposed adjournment, and would, therefore, not be present if the House reassembled then, enabled us to realise the true force of this effective stroke of masterly inactivity.

Though I no longer enjoy the privilege of listening to Ministerial expositions from the green benches of the House of Commons, I have had sufficient experience of that branch of the Legislature to be able to appreciate the difficulties that lie in the way of a representative of the War Office who would be something more than the mere mouthpiece of his permanent officials and his military advisers. The House is sympathetic enough to the rising statesman. Cheers from friends and foes invariably greet the Minister who addresses the House for the first time from the Treasury Bench. Curiosity to mark how an untried man will acquit himself in a position of responsibility ensures a full and attentive audience. I was myself an interested witness of Mr. Wyndham's début as Under-Secretary of State for War. Mr. Wyndham had a reputation to maintain on several grounds. Bene natus, bene vestitus, well looking, and master of an easy flow of poetical English, expectation ran high, nor did he fall short of it. We spoke of his speech as a great one; of the scheme which he expounded we retained only a dim, but, I think, a favourable, impression, for I have a distinct recollection of joining with my colleagues in loudly applauding the statement that 70,000 Volunteers had been allocated' to the defence of London. How they were to be armed, how transported, how fed, no one inquired nor wanted to know. It was enough that they had been allocated '-a remarkable instance of the power of an appropriate word to set doubts at rest.

'

A speech fluently delivered, and in this regard Mr. Haldane may not inaptly be termed the quick-firer of the Cabinet, in well-chosen language, and sprinkled with phrases so turned as to pass muster for epigrams, will keep the attention of an assembly that has no relish for facts and figures, and, as to the major part, little knowledge, and that mostly inaccurate, of the subject under discussion. The indisposition or inability to deal effectively with the substance of a matter is most marked in the debates in Committee on the votes for the Services, especially the Army votes. To the Minister whose only object, after he has scored with a telling speech, is to get his votes

through with as little trouble as possible, an empty or inattentive House is a Godsend. But to the Minister who looks for guidance, information, assistance, and support from the great council of the nation, and who does not regard the making of a brilliant speech as the whole duty of a statesman, it is a sad discouragement to find how apathetic and indifferent the bulk of members are when the defence of the Empire is under discussion, and how feeble are the criticisms of the few who take part therein.

Should we lay the blame of conduct so apparently unpatriotic on the Legislature alone? I think not. Is it not rather the case that the House of Commons in this respect does but reflect the temper of the nation? Let us see. Quite recently the war in South Africa revealed the gravest defects in our military system, and, for the moment, it seemed as though the country, thoroughly roused to a sense of its insecurity, would demand that the defects should forthwith be made good; yet in the few short years that have passed since the end of the war its lessons have been forgotten, its warnings go unheeded, and the commander who brought it to a successful, if inglorious conclusion, might be crying in the wilderness for all the effect his appeals to their patriotism have on his fellow-countrymen. We set our rulers an impossible task. We expect them to make bricks without straw; to provide us with a kind of salvation army without money and without men. With the full knowledge that if ever these shores were invaded, it would be by the most powerful force of picked men that an enemy could raise, we are content to rely for their defence on levies of makeshift soldiers whom our war lord proposes to turn into trained men after hostilities have begun. Our most experienced general, unable to persuade the adult population to take their due share in the defence of their country, begs for a handful of sovereigns in order to provide means for teaching the young to shoot, and we present him with a brass farthing. In the hour of our direst need, when we were threatened with the loss of some of the fairest dominions of the Crown, our Colonial fellow-subjects flew to the rescue and averted a great disaster. Our return for this service and our encouragement to them and to our countrymen in other climes to do likewise in a similar emergency is to place the government in the hands of men who, in pursuance of a fatal policy of conciliation by concession, hasten to undo with the stroke of a pen what thousands of brave men laid down their lives to accomplish. We acquiesce with a grumble in the reduction of the Navy, our first, and as some would have it, the only line of defence we need, a defence without which we might invoke Providence in vain to give us day by day our daily bread, and this in the face of the huge increase of a neighbouring fleet which only diplomatists pretend not to be designed to dispute with us at no distant date the mastery of the sea.

If, then, the Legislature be apathetic, so are we. Let us look to

VOL. LXI-No. 361

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