the other divisions and subdivisions, in which we find, in one and all of them, that the genius of Evasion has taken to itself other devils such as Delay, Circumlocution, and Meanness, and that these malignant spirits are evoked at every turn so as to constantly obstruct the business of the Army, hamper general officers, and vex, irritate, and not unfrequently defraud, officers, non-commissioned officers, and men. Why, may not we ask, when Army Reform has become the question of the hour, have the apologists of the existing order of things nothing to say upon this most important phase of the subject?

There are only two reasonable explanations for their silence: either they are so steeped in reverence for the comparative antiquity of the present War Office system, for its excessive clumsiness, costliness, and general 'quaintness,' that they look on any proposals for reform as too impious for even preliminary contemplation (still less for discussion); or else they know the system to be indefensible, but at the same time shrink from the trouble and responsibility that real reconstruction would entail.1

Meanwhile a bold face has to be assumed, though naturally this cannot always be done with success, or indeed without occasional failure of the most egregious kind. In assuming everything to be satisfactory it would surely have been well, for instance, if attention had not been invited to the subject of Centralisation;' and yet the work from which I have already quoted, the officially inspired Army Book for the British Empire, devotes four paragraphs of hardy assertion to the task of proving that the War Office system is not one of extreme centralisation. Such a system,' the authors gravely observe, 'would certainly break down under the first strain of actual war.' It certainly would; though merely to say that a certain system is bad, can hardly be accepted as a reason for believing that it does not exist. We are favoured in other passages with a few further proofs' as to whether centralisation is, or is not, one of the characteristics of the War Office system: A general commanding in a military district,' we are told, can move his troops, feed his troops, and do very much as he thinks right with them. . . subject to his proceedings being called in question afterwards on a review at the War Office.' In another paragraph we read: The War Office necessarily exercises a general supervision, to prevent serious divergence of action taking place in different districts.' And the whole position is boldly summed up thus: Troops are fully commanded by their own

1 Since this article was written, the newspapers have announced that a committee is sitting at the War Office to arrange for delegating to officers commanding the various Military Districts a larger amount of responsibility in matters of Military Administration.' The news is satisfactory, as far as it goes, especially the substitution of the words 'to arrange for,' in place of the old War Office formula, 'to inquire into.' But the extent and sincerity of the proposed arrangement' still remain to be seen.

one-sixth of the reserve twice over (men in the rese the colours, will be two single gentlemen rolle shuffling the cards with four instead of two battali shall attain apotheosis, although to the unprejud plan resembles the Irishman's blanket, cut off at the the bottom.

Still, it is as well that the free kit and shilli should be ended, and that some definite attempt at men after leaving the colours should be promised platonic aspirations in that direction, to which we from successive representatives of the War Office; a his speech is an advance on the penultimate departm ment, the stable jacket and chin strap regulation modified' short service, the more fully carried out lions, and the circular asking employers to take on of after all, as Carlyle said of another matter, it is on outside of the rubbish-heap, and going no further.

Sir Arthur Haliburton, who represented the Civil the War Office, is the champion of the existing order, to the Times-a sealed pattern of the official answer mouths of Ministers, to stop inconvenient curiosity in Commons-is a declaration that all is for the best in possible armies. And yet while he wrote, it was true t 'best, best' management up to October last not a man cruited for the two new battalions of guards, while of voted for the garrison artillery last session, the Depart got hold of 245; that of our recruits, thirty per cent. a under five foot three and a half inches and less than th the chest, under age and under size); that in the home, has only 290 effectives and forty per cent. of specials amo -I am, of course, speaking of war strength-and requ to complete; another wants 600, another 650; and afte up where is the reserve of which Sir Arthur Haliburt Wantage are so proud-that reserve which has been lamb of successive representatives of the War Office in and which, according to the answer given before the late by Lord Wolseley, is 'somewhat of a sham!' As to the public are aware of the fiasco in the spring, when twe were torn to pieces in order to send three out to the Ca they are ignorant of is that the condition of the artillery that of the line at home. To start with, the proportion infantry is lower in the British army than in foreign for cannot be improvised. The army of the South East und in '71 failed because Gambetta and De Freycinet ignored fact; and in our army we have some 200,000 auxiliaries w effective battery amongst them. Besides this a considerab

the home batteries have been reduced to four guns, as they paraded at the Jubilee review with forty-two men and forty-eight horses-by the way, what has become of the sixty-eight horse artillery and 282 field battery guns promised by Lord Lansdowne at Salisbury, two years ago?

As for the cavalry, we have 13,000 dragoons at home and only 3,000 horses, while the regiments are cut up and separated in a way fatal to efficiency.

What then should be done? Add more power, as Lord Wolseley says (i.e. money), and all will go well? Vote for inefficiency, as a principle deserving of support, when applied to the British army, like Sir Wilfrid Lawson? Accept the extremely clever speeches packed with platitudes and overflowing with optimism delivered yearly by the representative of the War Office, to a House composed of Mr. Speaker, the Serjeant at Arms, half a dozen Colonels,' and an empty press gallery? Assimilate the ex-cathedra teaching and facts of old War Office officials? Cultivate faith, hope, and charity, and, voting fresh millions, believe that our military system will shape itself somehow, rough-hew it as we will? Or will the War Office, taking the public into their confidence, make a clean breast of it, and go to the root of the matter, admitting that the days of patching and tinkering are past?

Of course the business is not easy, as Mr. Brodrick said at Guildford; a volunteer army can't be run as cheap as a conscript. We are the only nation in the world relying on voluntary enlistment, said Lord Lansdowne at Edinburgh; still conscription or the absence of it cannot carry all the weight put on its back by apologists of the present system. Do we really get a fair return for the 18,000,000l. spent on the home army alone? Is there no circumlocution at the War Office? Are there not an excessive number of commands entailing an expensive staff for a few hundreds of men (Mauritius for instance)? Could not officers retiring from the active army take their pension coupled with service in the militia? And above all, as we obviously cannot improve the War Office out of existence, can we not change and alter root and branch the plan under which the Army is formed and recruited?

We have three systems of recruiting-long, medium, and short service. Medium (seven years and five), on which practically fortynine men out of fifty serve, has proved a disastrous failure; short service (three years and nine) has been a success; long service, with the Navy and Royal Marines, is unquestionably efficient. Why not abandon the system which has failed, and adopt those which have produced what we want-having long-service battalions for India, the coaling stations and the colonies; short service and reserve for home; officers and men interchangeable, and both available for service in any part of the world; and at the same time feed, clothe, and pay your recruit better, giving him also a chance of employment on

leaving the colours. The problem is difficult, but not War Office has lost the confidence of the country, a of the Army is deplorable, as the Times remarks; but sense and a not inordinate expenditure would solution.

FRED.

III

AT last-at last the country has awoke from its slum to realise the real condition of the British Army. It ha that the attitude of the House of Commons on any g merely a reflection of public opinion out of doors. more fully illustrate the truth of this saying than t Members of Parliament at the discussion of the A during the last two or three sessions. No sooner Secretary of State for War risen to ask the Hous eighteen millions of the public money for the defence than the House is almost cleared. On the Opposition s are practically empty; there are one or two members, Dilke and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who take an interest in but from different points of view; a few Irishmen, who which appear to savour rather of obstruction than in cism-these are often the only occupants. Perhap

close of the debate, after the dinner hour, the late Secret War or the late Financial Secretary may look in and s comforting or otherwise. On the Government side of aspect is scarcely more enlivening. As a rule, the U of State for War in solitary state adorns the front ben from time to time relieved by the Financial Secretary. benches may be seen a few service members, who in ideas to empty benches and sleepy reporters; thus mill away, apparently the one object of the Government, n party may be in power, being to get the votes through discussion, and to evade all embarrassing inquiry. It m pected, and it is most fervently to be hoped, that in the Parliament Army matters will be treated in a different opinion now seems thoroughly roused, and a convictio coming more and more rooted that all is not as it sl that those pertinacious and troublesome spirits who f been protesting and preaching are after all not so f ignorant, as officialism has declared them to be.

Let us face the matter boldly and see how we stand to the general annual return of the British Army for the average effective strength is 220,742 of all ra officers 7,765, warrant officers 910, sergeants 14,125

drummers, and buglers 3,418, rank and file 194,524. Of this force 76,937 of all ranks are quartered in England, Wales, and the Channel Islands, 3,630 in Scotland, and 25,841 in Ireland, being a total of 106,408 at home. While in Egypt and the colonies 38,884 are quartered, and in India 75,450, or a total of 114,334 abroad. The Army abroad is declared to be in the highest state of efficiency, and, with the exception of some battalions in the Mediterranean, whose linked battalions are in India, to be also of an age such as is best suited for the hardships and trials of a campaign. It is with the Home Army that we have reason to be dissatisfied, not on account of their training, or of the zeal and military qualifications of the officers, but solely because of the youth of the rank and file. Our home battalions have been aptly compared by the present Commander-in-Chief to 'squeezed lemons,' and they are acknowledged to be, one and all, wholly unfitted to engage in a campaign. All but perhaps two or three hundred men in each battalion would have to be left behind, and the battalion would have to be filled up to its war establishment of about 1,000 strong by the addition of seven or eight hundred reserve men. This is a prospect regarded with equanimity by civilian officials, whose sole personal acquaintance with the Army is gathered from watching the sentry over the War Office from their windows in Pall Mall. They maintain that this is all as it should be-foreign armies do the same; these reserve men are, they say, the finest possible soldiers, and could be got into shape long before ships could be provided to convey them to any point of attack. Regimental officers, however, take an entirely different view; they declare that it is one thing to fill up the ranks with a small number of reserves, say about a third of the whole, as is done abroad, but when you have two-thirds or three-fourths of your entire strength composed of men who have retired to civilian life, who during their reserve service practically have had no training, who have lost the habits of obedience and discipline, and who, moreover, are now placed under non-commissioned officers junior to them in age and experience, we cannot look for efficiency or discipline-nay, more, we court disaster if opposed to a trained and disciplined foe.

It is well that the public should know as regards these reservistsalthough as Lord Lansdowne stated in Edinburgh, they draw their pay every quarter with great regularity-that the majority practically receive no training whatever from the time when they leave the colours until the date of their final discharge from the Army. From a War Office pamphlet recently issued purporting to give Instructions for the Drill and Training of the First-class Army Reserve,' it appears that this training is restricted to sections B and C of the first class, who, in case of infantry, are entering on the tenth year of their Army engagement, or in the case of the Guards on the sixth or tenth year of