THE MILITIA

ALTHOUGH British shoulders are tolerably well inured to the burden of empire, a whole generation has grown up without experience of anything bearing the semblance of strain. Now, however, the nation has been summoned to brace itself and put forth its strength for the first time since 1857. On the 3rd of June in that year high festival was being held in London to celebrate the centenary of Plassey-the victory which gave us the Empire of India. Over here, rockets were fizzing and champagne corks popping in fine style; merrymakers were all unconscious that out yonder Delhi had already been in possession of the mutineers for ten days, and that 1,000 English, of whom more than half were women and children, were penned for slaughter under a burning sun behind the crumbling mud defences of Cawnpur. Swifter sped hither President Kruger's defiance in last October, but not less sudden was the call to arms. The shock was less violent than in 1857, because few people foresaw much difficulty in vindicating British authority. Had we not already 25,000 men of all arms in Cape Colony and Natal ? a force far larger in proportion to any that might be arrayed against it than that borne in 1857 by the 38,000 European troops to the potentially hostile masses of India. 'Je vous dis,' said Napoleon to the boding Soult on the morning of Waterloo, je vous dis que ce sera l'affaire d'un déjeuner.' 'Je le souhaite,' quoth Soult. By the time these lines are in print we shall have 80,000 or 90,000 troops at the front, and the end is not yet.

However, here is no purpose to dwell on the prospects of the campaign, every incident of which, auspicious or sinister, is magnified and distorted through the myriad facets of the daily-hourly-press in a fashion which puts the public composure sorely to the test. Every affair of outposts is blazoned in immense capitals as a brilliant victory; every check to our arms, such as has occurredmust occur in every campaign against a civilised power-is darkened into a serious disaster. Surely our nerves may yet be steeled to the fibre which enabled our people to wait two months before they received tidings of the battle of the Nile. It would betoken a better

1 The following sentence from Sir Evelyn Wood's Crimea in 1854 and 1894 is not ill calculated to have a sedative effect under present circumstances: On the 16th of

sense of military understanding were we to dwell with legitimate complacency upon the feat, without parallel in history, of having conveyed 80,000 troops across 6,000 miles of ocean within three months without the loss of a single man.

Meanwhile it is not premature to examine one at least of the aspects of a problem which will be uppermost in Parliament as soon as the responsible members of the Opposition shall feel relieved from that patriotic forbearance which they have manifested during the

recess.

The problem we shall have to consider is how the national resources shall be disposed so as to provide a mobile force adequate and always ready for any emergency that may arise within the limits of the Empire, without dangerously denuding the home defences. The adequacy of those resources there need be no doubt about, any more than about the national-the imperial-enthusiasm pervading our population at this day. The story is told, how towards the close of last century the City of London Volunteers offered themselves for permanent service, with the proviso that they were not to be sent out of the country, to which Mr. Pitt maliciously pencilled in the margin, 'except in case of invasion.' The difficulty which the War Office has to deal with now is, not how to obtain volunteers for warfare six thousand miles from home, but how to mitigate the chagrin of those whose services have to be declined. Nobody doubts that in the Volunteer Force Britain possesses an arm of incalculable value for national defence, even in its present degree of organisation. Happily Lord Wemyss and Lord Wantage have survived to see it live down the ridicule and prejudice which it had to encounter at its outset forty years ago, and to receive the acknowledgment that it has more than accomplished all that they undertook as its sponsors. Still the very nature of a force composed of men in every sort of civil employment, many of them in positions of trust, renders out of the question its permanent or prolonged employment, either at home or abroad. A considerable percentage will always be free and willing to go anywhere and do anything:' but the bulk must remain sedentary-pro aris et focis—and active service abroad must inevitably mean the dislocation of companies and battalions.

But there is another auxiliary force over which the Executive have complete control within the limits of the United Kingdom, subject only to the assent of Parliament. The Militia of the United Kingdom, according to the district quotas at present fixed, consists of

October (1854) bets were freely offered in our camp that the city (Sevastopol) would fall in twenty-four hours. Some of the older and more prudent officers gave the Russians forty-eight hours, but no one thought they could withstand our fire longer.' Sevastopol was not in possession of the Allies till the 8th of September, 1855.

containing 129,752 of all ranks. Add to these the Channel Islands

Militia, 3,996, and the Malta Militia, 1,695, and you have a force of 135,443 officers and men. This establishment is capable of indefinite expansion-first, by raising the statutory quota in each county or district, and second, to insure the completion of the quotas by allowing the ballot to be resumed. It must be borne in mind, however, that this great army of infantry and artillery is absolutely immobile. It possesses neither means of transport nor the machinery for improvising it.

There has been a good deal of talk since the war began about the expediency of having resort to the ballot, although it does not appear that the Militia is so much short of the establishment to render such a step necessary in the smallest degree. Here are the returns for 1898:

Nevertheless, it may be neither irrelevant nor unseasonable (1) to put on record the grounds upon which the Militia is so often vaguely referred to as the old constitutional force,' (2) to point out in what respects these grounds have been impaired by recent changes in the constitution of the land forces, and (3) to suggest certain measures which in the opinion of an old Militia officer would obviate all necessity for the ballot, even supposing existing conditions to have shown the expediency of restoring it.

I

The fundamental principle of a Militia force is to be found in the obligation imposed by every settled government upon all men of military age and capable of bearing arms to serve in the defence of their country, and the maintenance of civil order. Under the Saxon kings of England the force thus raised for periodical training was known as the fyrd—a landwehr to which landowners contributed an armed man for every five hides of land, and in which every owner of 'five hides served himself. This fyrd was maintained by William the Conqueror, but William Rufus started the innovation of allowing vassals and freemen to commute their service by cash payment, and

applied the proceeds to the hire of mercenaries. The national fyrd became merged in feudal service, but it was re-established by Henry the Second in his Assize of Arms, under which every holder of a knight's fee was bound to keep a coat of mail, helmet, shield and lance for every such fee owned by him; every freeman owning goods valued at 16 marks was to have a similar outfit, and he who owned property of 10 marks a less elaborate suit of armour. A further modification of the national forces followed upon Magna Charta, when military service was exacted from tenants-in-chief, minor tenants and freemen under the Assize of Arms.

Until the middle of the thirteenth century the military force of the nation was under immediate command of the monarch; but Edward the First, the first real English king of England, was a courageous reformer. He first recognised the imperfection of such a system, and issued Commissions of Array to the chief barons in counties, who were made responsible for the levies in their respective jurisdictions, armed in four grades of service according to their means. Further change took place during the unhappy reign of Edward the Second. The King accepted indents from his tenantsin-chief, which bound them to bring their proportionate levies to serve at a fixed wage during such time as might be necessary.

During all these changes no distinction had arisen between home and general service. Thus, to take the first conspicuous instance that occurs to mind, on the 29th of June, 1294, Edward the First as acknowledged overlord of John Balliol, King of Scots, summoned him to come to London on the 1st of September with eighteen of the magnates of Scotland, to take part in the operations impending against Philip the Fourth of France. It is not till the sixteenth century under Henry the Eighth that the germ of a standing army takes shape, arising out of the necessity for keeping permanent garrisons to look after the guns. Besides these, there remained the old feudal levies under the lieutenants of counties, mercenaries, and, lastly, the trained bands to be called out in case of invasion. The officers of the trained bands were under statutory obligation to become members of the Honourable Artillery Company, or, as it was called in the sixteenth century, the Fraternity or Guylde of Saint George; maistars and rulars of the science of artillary for long-bowes, cros-bowes and hand-gonnes,' to which Henry the Eighth granted a charter of incorporation.

It was in Edward the Sixth's reign that the lieutenants or chief men of counties were first formally constituted Lords Lieutenant, with control over the county levies. But these troops were not yet known as Militia. That term first appears in English in Bacon's Essay of Greatness of Kingdoms, except his militia of natives be of good and valiant soldiers.' Here it is evident that the sense is more restricted than that of the Latin militia, which signifies (a) 'war

fare,' (b) troops' in general, and doubtless the word was adopted into English through the Italian milizia, inasmuch as in 1506 Machiavelli persuaded the gonfaloniere Soderini, and through him the Florentine signory, to establish for the first time levies of native soldiers to protect the State and to dispense with mercenaries.

In this country it was not until after the Restoration that the county levies were regularly constituted by statute (1661) as a force restricted to home service, retained under and administered by the Lords Lieutenant and distinct from the king's army and mercenaries. The officers were appointed and their commissions signed by the Lords Lieutenant, the expenses of the annual training were defrayed by the rate levied upon the various localities by the Lords Lieutenant and offences against discipline were tried before the magistrates. Herein was a clear and wide difference in constitution between this force and the standing army, and although the supreme command was vested in the monarch as head of the State, he had no power to increase or diminish the numbers of the force, nor to use it against the liberties of his subjects. It reflected the ancient feudal usage in so far as the relations between officers and men were those of landlord and tenant, superior and dependent; a commission in the Militia was esteemed as an honourable incident of local position, and by no means as an avenue to a military career, as it has become to many young men in these days. Furthermore, the ranks were filled, not by vagrants and adventurers as was the case in the king's army, but by men of fixed abode, definite employment and ascertained character. It was recruited entirely from the resident population.

So matters continued for nearly a hundred years, when certain changes were introduced into the constitution of the Militia by Pitt's Act of 1757, which, although not very sweeping, modified its character in some very important respects. The Lord Lieutenant remained the official head of the county Militia, and continued to grant and sign commissions, but the king obtained the right of veto upon the appointment of officers, while the appointment of the permanent staff passed entirely into the hands of the commanderin-chief of the regular army. The strength of the force maintained was no longer left to the discretion of local authorities, but was fixed by Parliament at a specified quota for each county; the prescribed numbers were to be raised by ballot cast for every male between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. The term of service was fixed at three years, at the expiry of which the militiaman was free till his turn for ballot came round again. It was thereby intended that the bulk of the male population should be trained to arms. Those upon whom the ballot fell might obtain exemption by paying 10l. to procure a substitute, and every parish might evade the ballot by supplying its quota in volunteers. It must be evident how greatly these provisions altered the character of the Militia from that of a