to war was 102,000, the number available 375,000; the surplus extended to every class of horse, and was largest in the heavier type. Aviation was very costly, but might be made safer by the provision of money. One of the leading combatants in the Balkan War had said to him: "Had we had a single aeroplane, the whole history of Europe would have been altered." That army had, indeed, aeroplanes and men, but had not the organisation to ensure that an aeroplane and a man should be where they were needed. Great Britain, he showed, was not behindhand, and he appealed to farmers to provide landing-places. He also gave encouraging information as to the field-gun and the new rifle.

There was little time for criticisms that evening, and the most important were those of Mr. A. Lee (U., Hants, Fareham). He was dissatisfied with the arrangements for promotion from the ranks, and with the means of defence in the absence of the Expeditionary Force. The Report of the Defence Committee, too, should have been debated before the Army Estimates. Next day Mr. Baird (U., Warwickshire, Rugby) moved a resolution regretting the serious shortage in the Military Forces of the Crown, and inviting the Government to state forthwith its concrete proposals to deal with the situation. He insisted on the youth of a large proportion of the troops, and Sir R. Pole-Carew (U., Cornwall, Bodmin) added that naval experts now held that the Navy was unable to defend the British Isles. [His attack on the First Sea Lord's disclaimer (p. 35) led to a scene.] The War Minister, in his reply, declared that the British Army was much better trained and was much more formidable as a fighting machine than any Continental Army, and the Expeditionary Force was absolutely ready to go on an expedition. Great Britain was more ready for war than ever before. Eventually the motion was negatived, and next day in Committee the Under-Secretary for War gave an encouraging account of the arrangements contemplated for raising the numbers of the Special Reserve. A reduction was moved by Mr. Worthington Evans (U., Colchester), to call attention to the hardships suffered by men marrying" off the strength," in which case their wives and families received no allowances. The War Secretary announced that recommendations recently made after an inquiry conducted by Mrs. Tennant would be adopted, entailing an annual addition to the Estimates of some 60,0001. The reduction was negatived by 249 to 212.

The question of the ability of the Navy to protect the British Isles from invasion had been raised by the Earl of Portsmouth in the Upper House on March 10. He called attention to the First

Sea Lord's Statement (A.R., 1913, p. 94) that the Fleet alone was not sufficient, and to the Prime Minister's explanation that the statement had been misconstrued (p. 35). What, he asked, did the First Sea Lord now mean? Lord Wimborne replied, on

behalf of the Government, that the First Sea Lord had never used the word "invasion." Before his speech he had consulted the First Lord, and both he and the Prime Minister represented the views of the Admiralty and were in harmony with those of Mr. Balfour (A. R., 1905, p. 157 seq.). Neither arm was separately responsible for protection against invasion. The Army had to provide that no invasion could be undertaken with less than a considerable body of men; the Navy had to intercept such an enemy; these functions both arms, now as always, were competent to perform. After other speeches, the Lord Chancellor closed the debate, saying that the interpretation put on the First Sea Lord's speech had represented him as deserting the basic principles of naval strategy. What he had said fully accorded with the accepted principles of home defence.

Meanwhile a well-meant attempt at strengthening home defence had been made by Lord Willoughby de Broke's Territorial Forces Amendment Bill, of which the second reading was moved in the House of Lords on March 13. It proposed to form a new Imperial Force (supported by a 3d. income tax), composed of British subjects or domiciled aliens, whose service would be compulsory between the ages of sixteen and forty-five. It was confined to public school and university men, members of the higher professions, and men whose income from all sources was 4001. a year. Boys at school were to serve in cadet corps; between the ages of twenty-one and thirty there were to be annual periods of training; and at thirty the members would be liable to serve in great national emergencies. He believed the example set would induce extensive working-class enlistment in the Territorials. The impracticability of the Bill was exposed by Lord Newton (who moved an amendment in favour of universal service), and by the Lord Chancellor, who pointed out that a measure of taxation originating in the Upper House was not worth discussing, and that German experience showed that a large home army and a large overseas army were incompatible. Still, the Bill obtained considerable support on that and the two following days, less for its own sake than as a basis of discussion. Several speakers advocated compulsory cadet training; the Earl of Cromer pleaded for a non-party settlement, instancing Germany and France; and Earl Roberts and the Marquess of Lansdowne, while objecting to the class distinctions of the Bill, were eminently dissatisfied with the existing conditions of defence. In replying for the Government, Viscount Morley of Blackburn intimated that Mr. Asquith's Defence Committee of 1913-14 had come to the same conclusions as that of 1908 and Mr. Balfour's in 1905. The Bill was rejected by 53 to 34.

The debates on the Army Estimates had been interrupted by an attack on the Chancellor of the Exchequer (March 10) in the shape of a resolution moved by Sir John Randles (U., Manchester,

N.W.), and seconded by Mr. Cassell (U., St. Pancras, W.), regretting his "repeated inaccuracies," and his "gross and unfounded personal attacks." The cases cited can only be briefly indicated. They were (1) the attack on the Duke of Montrose (p. 14); (2) the Duke of Sutherland's offer (A.R., 1913, p. 262), the executors' valuation having only been a rough estimate, less the amount of the mortgages; (3) the inaccurate attacks on ancestors of the Duke; (4) the Gorringe case (A.R., 1909, p. 181), where the "fine was paid partly for the grant of a fresh and very valuable lease of other premises; (5) the statements (A.R., 1913, p. 248) as to St. Pancras, where there were 1,550 freeholders (instead of "about ten "), many of the largest being trustees. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a spirited defence. Mr. Gorringe was paying for the value he had created, and his company were paying rates on it. In the Cathcart case, the Opposition had reduced the number of years' purchase from 920 to 750. In the Loch Arklet case, Glasgow had had to pay for 383 acres, not 19,000l. but 21,000l., more than thirty years' purchase of the whole 11,000 acres. In the Sutherland case, he read a poignant description of the clearances, written, as he told a Unionist inquirer, by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain; and claimed that the mortgages would not reduce the valuation to anywhere near 200,000l. Though his illustrations were questioned his case had never been challenged, and Mr. Long (p. 8) had accepted it. After a vigorous reply from Mr. F. E. Smith (U.), who incidentally mentioned that Mr. Lloyd George had suppressed the passage in his speech telling of the destruction of mangolds by pheasants (A.R., 1913, p. 212), the motion was rejected by 304 to 140, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was enthusiastically cheered by his supporters.

In the following week, in an interval of the new phase of the Ulster crisis, the House began to deal with the Navy Estimates, issued March 12. They were the largest on record, amounting, according to the First Lord's introductory memorandum, to 51,550,000l., an increase on the total (including Supplementary) Estimates of 1913-14 of 2,740,700l. Of this increase 450,000l. represented increased pay and victualling for the larger personnel; 30,000l. automatic increase of the non-effective votes, 40,000l. was for fuel and fuel service, owing to the increased horse-power of the Fleet, and the continued building up of the oil fuel reserves; 300,000l. for development of air service; 750,000l. for increased earnings by contractors on Vote 8; 800,000l. for guns, torpedoes, and ammunition, of which 300,000l. was due to the acceleration of the three 1913-14 battleships. The new programme was composed of four battleships, four light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and a number of submarines and subsidiary craft. On April 1, 1914, there would be under construction thirteen battleships, one battle cruiser, sixteen light cruisers, thirty torpedo-boat destroyers, twenty-four submarines,

Particulars were

and various oil-fuel and Fleet service vessels. given inter alia of the New Zealand Division-where two light cruisers would be kept, and manned from the New Zealand Naval Force-and of the progress of the naval air service. A chain of seaplane bases was being established round the coast; five were already complete. Good progress had been made with the design of the seaplane, and certain standard types for war service were rapidly being developed. The practical utility of aircraft for war was increasingly evident, and experiments in connexion with bomb dropping, wireless telegraphy, and gunnery had been continuous. Action had been taken as to aircraft armament, and guns for action against aircraft were being mounted aboard ship. The following is the abstract of the net Estimates for the different Votes, with the increases and decreases indicated in each

Prefixed to the First Lord's memorandum was the following statement of twelve years' actual and two years' estimated naval expenditure:

The First Lord's speech in introducing the Navy Estimates (March 17) came at an acute stage of the Ulster question and was in great part an elaborate defence, addressed to his own party, of the increase during his term of office, and he compared the figures elaborately with those of 1911-12, his predecessor's last year. The increased cost of maintenance-6,250,000l. was accounted for, he said, mainly by increased pay, wages, and victuals (2,140,000l.), oil reserve (1,500,000l.), and air service (900,000l.). Apart from these two last items, the whole increase was either automatic or proportioned to the increased size and strength of the Fleet, which again was proportionate to that of other Powers. Great Britain was aiming at completing eight battleship squadrons to Germany's five, with the proper proportion of cruisers and flotillas. Again, against sixteen Dreadnoughts in full commission in 1911-12, there were now thirty-three, many of them much larger and more costly, including nine battle cruisers against Germany's five. As to new construction, about 2,500,000l. of the 17,566,000l. appropriated in 1911-12 went over into the succeeding years; but for this, the vote of 1914-15 would be less; but he expected great progress to be made, and more money earned by the contractors, in the new year. In 1915-16 the Estimates would probably be substantially lower. Oil fuel, as he showed from a statement of the Chairman of the Royal Commission on fuel and engines, increased the radius of action, saved labour and stowage, rendered it possible to get fresh supplies at sea, and so to escape submarine attacks when going to oiling stations; and the oil tanks were a capital charge. Oil would be