But we are not very sanguine. In many places, no decent ranges can be secured for love or money. Some obstacle stands in the wayfoxes, pheasants, the privacy of the estate, and so on. How can anyone expect the Territorial Army, under similar conditions, to raise its musketry above the indifferent level at present reached by our Volunteers ? Another of the duties assigned to the County Associations is establishing and maintaining or fostering and encouraging cadet battalions and corps and rifle clubs.' If this duty involves the expenditure of public money, it may fairly be demanded that nothing shall be contributed from the national exchequer to these secondary and subordinate organisations until the needs of the regular and auxiliary forces are fully met. In no case whatever should the taxpayer be called upon to subsidise cadet corps and rifle clubs unless they are established on military lines, with clearly defined obligations imposed upon their members. No such obligations can, of course, be laid upon toy regiments of small boys which are run to a large extent on a basis of gingerbeer and buns. So far from supporting any scheme of national defence, the membership of a public school corps is frequently urged as a reason for declining any further military service. The writer, in endeavouring to secure recruits for the Oxford University Volunteers, has, times without number, been met with the excuse: 'I served two years in my school corps, and I think I have done my share. I've no time up here for Volunteering; I want to row, or play football and cricket.' And so, out of some 2,500 young men at Oxford, with plenty of leisure at their disposal, barely five hundred are found who are willing to join the University battalion. Again, many of the members of our English rifle clubs are senior men who could not conceivably be employed on active service or fairly invited to undertake such responsibilities; and unless the juniors who are not already 'territorials' definitely pledge themselves to join the county regiments in case of embodiment, they will, I feel sure, admit that no claim can be made out for any public subsidy to their funds. One cannot help suspecting that the attractiveness of such clubs, with their good-fellowship and prizes, may act as a positive deterrent from the more arduous, but infinitely more useful conditions of service in a territorial battalion. And what, after all, is the real fighting value of the Territorial Army when, and if, you get the three hundred thousand men? That is the essential point which is never fairly faced by the people of this country. In the report of the Norfolk Commission this somewhat startling pronouncement occurs: The Militia, in its existing condition, is unfit to take the field for the defence of the country.' Now, apart from the experimental six months' training undertaken by some regiments, the ordinary Militiaman receives sixty-three days' training as a recruit, including fourteen days' musketry, and is then trained for twenty-seven days annually. Contrast with this the amount of military training which will fall to the lot of the Territorial' infantry soldier, who will really be a Volunteer under a different name. In his first year he will have to put in forty drills of one hour each; for his second, third, and fourth years he will be required to drill for ten hours per annum. The annual camp-training of eight or fifteen days an experience which, from a military point of view, is far more valuable than all the squad and company drills put together-need not necessarily be undertaken at all, though it is probable that a very considerable percentage of the men will be willing to go under canvas for the shorter period of eight days. Surely, if the Militia under existing conditions are unfit to take the field for the defence of their country,' this verdict applies a fortiori to the future battalions of the Territorial Army! The originators of the scheme point by way of answer to the embodiment of our second line, which will be brought about by the prospect of a big war or its actual outbreak. The Territorial regiments will, it is alleged, be adequate, after six months' hard training, to meet any demands which may be made upon them. After six months! Is it likely that any hostile European Power which definitely includes the invasion of England in its military programme will delay the attempt for six months? The wars of the future will in all likelihood be rapid growths, and momentous action will follow speedily upon the heels of the formal declaration of hostilities. But even if in the absence of our Regulars the God of Battles vouchsafes our Territorial Forces six months' training before the invader attempts to set foot in England, and that attempt is successful, the opposing forces will be constituted as follows. The average Englishman will have had six months' training, plus fifty hours' squad and company drill, plus a fortnight in camp. The invaders will, it may be safely assumed, consist of the picked troops of a great Continental army who have undergone a severe discipline and scientific training for at least two or three years. Major Seeley, during a Parliamentary panegyric on the value of Colonial troops in particular and amateur soldiers in general, declared that in one case in South Africa a single hairdresser behind a pom-pom or a field-gun had held at bay a considerable force of British troops. But if any Continental guns are ever disembarked on our coasts, they will be worked by men of a still more formidable type than the Boer in question! What would be the result of a conflict between forces so unevenly matched? Making full allowance for the natural courage of our race and the tremendous enthusiasm aroused by the defence of our country and our homes, can any of us who have studied military problems or gained practical knowledge of the meaning of war feel reasonably certain of our army's success? Dress your Territorial Army as you will, organise them as well as you can, appoint as many brigadier-generals VOL. LXI-No. 363 3 C to command them as you like; they will, unless they are trained for longer periods, remain the merest amateurs. And the voice of history and experience tells us that sooner or later the amateur goes down before the professional in all walks of life. The quality of mere animal courage is far more evenly distributed amongst mankind than is sometimes imagined. The chief factor which differentiates between the first-rate and the second-rate soldier is nothing more or less than training and discipline. As with advancing civilisation the amenities of life increase there will be less and less of natural inclination to risk it. And the thing which leads a soldier to keep his head above the parapet of a trench when the shrapnel are bursting, or to jump up from behind his anthill or rock for another rush towards the enemy's earthworks in front-the vera causa of this phenomenon is the habit of drill, discipline, and obedience to orders. There is no royal road to military efficiency; like most things worth having in this world, it can be reached only by hard work and self-sacrifice; we shall not secure it by playing at soldiers.' Captain Tulloch, the author of an able paper in a recent number of the Journal of the United Service Institution, only repeats the almost universal verdict of military experts when he declares that if a German detachment of two hundred and fifty men met a battalion of British troops trained on the present Volunteer lines, they would go through them like a knife through butter.' How, then, can we provide ourselves with a Home Army which may be relied upon with confidence to render successful invasion a practical impossibility? There are two alternatives. The first is compulsory service on the lines adopted by every civilised nation except Great Britain and the United States. No words need be wasted over this suggestion, for the simple reason that, quite apart from the merits and demerits of the scheme, the people of this country flatly refuse to entertain it. No British Government dare introduce a measure of conscription or compulsory military training, which, while it would provide us with an absolute guarantee for England's security, seems utterly foreign to the temper and spirit of our people. I venture to think that there is only one possible alternative— not by any means a counsel of perfection, but the best we can hope for. Boldly face the difficulties involved in such differentiation, organise a portion of the new Territorial Force on the basis of a solid month's training per annum, and regard the rest as a kind of landwehr, trained on the lines proposed in the Bill. Recognise once and for all that we cannot get really adequate work, military or otherwise, out of our fellow-citizens unless we pay them fairly for such work ; recognise further that a Volunteer who gives up a month or a weekin many cases his entire 'holidays'-has clearly a right to receive a far higher rate of pay than a professional soldier who makes the Army his career for the time being. The material of our Volunteer battalions at present and our Territorial Army of the future is splendid, probably without its equal in the world, and greatly superior in many ways to that from which our Militia lads are recruited. The majority of our 'Territorial' recruits would doubtless refuse to undergo a month's training under stringent conditions, but you would in all probability find, say, sixty thousand men who would undertake these terms of service provided you paid them well during their time in camp -that is the crux of the whole question. We should in this way possess for home defence, in addition to such Regulars as were available, and the 'Special Contingent' in our depots, some sixty thousand 'Territorials' of fine physique and morale, with a good month's training every year to their credit, and, as a last line, some 240,000 reserves' who had undergone the modicum of training and musketry suggested in the Bill for the entire force. The nation is grateful to Mr. Haldane for the untiring devotion which characterises his work; military experts are grateful to him for the courage and straightforward character of a scheme which has reduced the chaos of our defensive forces to something like order; and all of us who have willingly served in the auxiliary forces, and intend to persevere in that loyal service whatever shape the Bill may take, owe the War Minister an especial debt of gratitude, because for the first time in our recent history a British Government has taken the auxiliary forces seriously. Those who have not served as officers in a Volunteer corps little realise what we have had to endure in the past from stupid ridicule-England is the only country in the world where a man could be laughed at for wearing his King's uniform— from social disparagement, and, worst of all, fulsome flattery which we well knew to be undeserved. I venture to say in conclusion that my sole motive in writing this article has been the desire to see the Bill so altered that it may help more effectually to guarantee the inviolability of our shores. People who profess to love their country, but absolutely decline to defend it, and openly allege their complete ignorance of military matters, assert that invasion is impossible. The answer to this dogmatism is that practically every military expert in this country and on the Continent, while acknowledging the difficulties of an invasion of Great Britain, regards these difficulties as not necessarily insurmountable. I am a Radical who declared the South African campaign to be unnecessary and impolitic; I have no objection to the epithet of 'Little Englander;' I have seen too much of war to glory in it, and Imperialism has few charms for me. All I want is the security of my country, and the more I have seen of practical soldiering in different parts of the world, the more deeply I have realised the immense peril we incur from our inveterate habit of playing at soldiers,' and the more thoroughly felt the significance of the late Sir George Chesney's words-' a nation which is too selfish to defend its liberty deserves to lose it.' E. N. BENNETT. 'THE ANGELIC COUNCIL' 'LET US MAKE MAN.'-Gen. i. 26. It is an old and much-disputed question among commentators how this usus loquendi is to be interpreted. On the threshold of Revelation, when the Almighty puts forth His creating power, a diversity of agents seems to be at work. A short and simple solution is that of the grammarians, that it is merely the plural of majesty' or royalty that is here employed. 'The King is as a thousand of the people' (2 Sam. xviii. 3), and fulness of power and attributes may be expressed by plurality. This explanation is now generally surrendered. 'We' as the royal style was not used by Oriental potentates, but the simple autocratic ‘I.' The interpretation very generally adopted by the patristic writers and later theologians was that we have here an adumbration of the doctrine of the Trinity,' in a consultation of the Divine Persons among themselves. But such a proleptic occurrence of a doctrine not revealed till long afterwards would be a complete anachronism. To find Trinitarian language in an early Hebrew document would be no less. preposterous than to put metaphysical terminology in the mouth of an infant. Some writers conceive the creating words as having been addressed specifically to the mediating Logos, to Michael, or to the Son.3 So Milton: The omnipotent Eternal Father (for where is not He Present) thus to His Son audibly spake : And before him Joshua Sylvester : He consults with 's only Son (His own true Pourtrait) what proportion, What gifts, what grace, what soule He should bestowe Vpon His Vice-Roy of this Realm belowe.* König and others suggest that the plural in a self-invitation to action has only a psychological origin. 1 Aug. De Trin. vii. 6, 12; Arnobius, &c. 2 So Cheyne, Bible Problems, 229. See Delitzsch, Babel and Bible, 105. Origen, Contra Cels. v. 37 sub fin. Divine Weekes and Workes, 1621, 125. |