RED-HOT REFORM. REFORMERS wish to give us a professional army, and every credit credit is due to the sincerity of purpose which prompts the desire. But in their wish to do what they are convinced is right, they have been somewhat over-zealous. Red-hot reform is bad. To be practical and lasting it should pick its steps cautiously, as a child does when learning to walk, feeling that the ground in front is safe to tread on, and that there is no spot on either hand better suited for its next footstep. And that reform in the matter of our army has been red - hot, is admitted now by all except a few extreme partisans, whose rapid rise to greatness is owing to the ever-increasing size of the bubble they have blown, and whose minds cannot yet grasp the truth that the more they continue blowing, the thinner will become the film, and the more complete its dissolution when it inevitably bursts. As Lord Cranbrook recently remarked in the House of Lords during the debate on the auxiliary forces "With the army in a state of disintegration, it is lamentable to find that the militia is not up to its proper strength, and that the militia reserve is not in a satisfactory condition. The system that has existed since 1870 has had a most fair and ample trial. The Conservative Government, instead of throwing any impediment in the way, did everything possible to have it fully and fairly tried; and if it is now breaking down, let there not be any shame or feeling of repugnance towards taking a step, it may be called backwards, if it is necessary in order to bring about efficiency: let it be done boldly and determinedly-and give the army rest when it is done." It may be useful to take a glance backwards at the catalogue of reforms which can be called red-hot. Army reform began with the abolition of purchase, a measure which has necessitated the introduction of many roundabout methods for securing the flow of promotion which purchase kept up, while transferring the cost of providing pensions to officers on retirement from their own pockets to that of the nation; and to the measure itself the officers did not object. We know it has been stated over and over again that the strongest opposition came from the officers; and doubtless such statements were, and are still, believed in. It is a way with our reformers to make statements which, taken by themselves, are true enough, but which, read alongside the context, have a somewhat opposite meaning. They are like a painter who has produced a picture, admirable in many points, but which has obtained grave censure on account of a certain portion which is entirely out of drawing, and who, when his work is inspected, holds up a cloth before the obnoxious figure, and tells the critics that the part hidden is just as good as the rest. And so it was with the abolition of purchase. What sane man would have said that other sane men objected to a scheme which saved them putting their hands into their own pockets to pay their own retiring pensions, while it laid the burden of doing so on the shoulders of the British taxpayer? The ugly figure in this pleasant landscape was that of Mr Gladstone retaining the money which almost every officer then serving had paid for his several commissions, while those who joined after that date were allowed to keep their money in their purses. And who can deny that reform was red-hot in this matter of purchase when, if we remember aright, the measure which the officers pointed out as unfair to them, was only carried in the Lower House by a majority of two; was rejected altogether by the Peers; and was only enforced by the exercise of the royal prerogative-an invention which did much credit to the inconsistency of Mr Gladstone's character? Undoubtedly purchase was an evil, not to the nation, as its abolitionists dinned in our ears, but to the officers who had, through it, to pay for the pleasure of being soldiers. It is astonishing how little the nation knew about the army then, and it knows very little more now. We know that the popular idea of purchase was that of a Government department at which any one could buy any rank in the army that he wanted. There are people who believe that officers are dressed in their fine red coats at the expense of the taxpayer; that the mess is paid for by the same liberal-minded person; and that every mutton - chop and glass of beer consumed on the premises goes towards adding another penny to the income-tax. The masses look upon officers as an idle, lazy set; they have been told so in the 'Nineteenth Century' by Lord Wolseley and as officers are not in the habit of "falling in the maid-servants, or performing "battalion drill" in the front parlour when on leave, the belief is not unnatural. "But," say the reformers, "you cannot complain about our abolishing purchase when we give you on retirement a liberal pension, instead of turning you adrift without a penny." And it is not to this por tion of the picture that the officers objected. What they did object to was that the new rules put them and their brother officers on a different footing. For example: Captain A, who has been twenty years in the army, gets about £200 per annum for his services, minus the interest on £2500 which he paid for his steps, and which is pocketed by the Government; while Captain B, who has been five years in the same regiment, gets the annual £200, and can keep his £2500 in his pocket, to invest in Peruvian Bonds or other high-class. securities. "Oh," said Mr Gladstone, on the point being pressed, "the grievance is purely sentimental!" The "grand old man was always fond of his joke. The reason assigned for its retention was, that England could not afford to pay back so large a sum which was nonsense, as those behind the scenes could have told. The real reason was, that the flow of promotion would be checked by the change-a check that would be largely increased if every officer could walk off with a lump of ready cash in his pocket. These facts are glanced at, not with any view to raise a deadand-gone question. Officers have learned that it is waste of breath to complain of any of the sweeping measures to which they have had to submit, plead they never so earnestly. Like the proverbial eel, they have become used to skinning, and look forward to the removal of their cuticle with the same regularity as they do to their monthly mess-bills. After purchase had fallen came Mr Cardwell's "short service," whereby that peculiarly unpractical lawyer rushed us into the delusion that an article which had a hitherto taken twenty-one years to manufacture could be turned out in three,-a burst of red-hot reform indeed, as Sir Frederick Roberts showed us in his article in the 'Nineteenth Century;' no less than three out of four of its salient conditions having been radically changed in the interval that occurred between his speech condemning them and the publication of the article; while it was left to the War Minister himself to tell the House of Commons not month ago that "it is proposed to take certain measures for the purpose of checking temporarily the flow of men from the ranks into the reserve; to offer men bounties to extend their service; and to allow all men who will be entitled to take their discharge in six or seven years to extend their service so as to complete twelve years, and at the expiration of twelve years to be eligible for re-engagement;" as Colonel Stanley remarked, "nothing else than going back to a permissive system of 'long service.' vice" system of Mr Cardwell has been changed back into what it was before his time-"permissive long service." For what was entirely fit for Germans was absolutely unfit for Englishmen, as any unprejudiced man of either nation will admit. But in the days immediately following the Franco-Prussian war we were at the good old game, so dear to Englishmen, of "follow my leader." Everything German was the best; to speak German was a passport into the inner sanctuaries of the War Office; to play Kriegspiel, to be able to map out the statistics of the Etappen, to know how many steps a German company took in its "rushes," was to be one of the high prophets of Mr Cardwell; and so an army, which, if nothing else, was at least English, found itself transformed into a sham German one. Mr Cardwell carefully kept the duster against his picture, so that the public saw nothing but the well-drawn details of landscape, and pleasantfaced figures climbing thereonregiments of young fellows dashing on to victory; the reservean ever-multiplying mass-in the background; and England vying with Continental armies at a mere nominal figure. The parts of his panel which he kept out of sight-conscription, the German character, and the absence of foreign service among them were wisely hid; their bright colours would have killed the rest. And the Duke of Cambridge recently in the House of Lords let the cat out of the bag when he said that "the system of short service is a peculiar one and a simple one, but can only be carried out by conscription. If we have weak battalions, that means that the labour market offers other attractions; and then it resolves itself into a matter of money to compete with the labour market. But under conscription recruiting costs nothing, for the law obliges every man to serve for a time. We have all the disadvantages of 'short service' without the advantages that result from the law forcing men to serve." But conscription is an ugly word, and would never do to mention, even in a whisper, with its twin-sister "short service"; and so human nature, the same all the world over, was to change at the magic word of our reformers in these "isles of the blest," and men were to rush as eagerly after "short service" and no pensions, as they did after "long service" and their lifetime provided for. There is a side of the "short service system" which has escaped all notice outside official circles,one that tells terribly against the class from which we enlist our soldiers, and so is kept discreetly out of sight. The men, or rather boys, we have to take nowadays for soldiers, after serving the few years allowed, find themselves cast adrift on the world with not enough to keep body and soul together, and without any trade or occupation to make matters better; so they turn to the old mill and re-enlist. With the familiar red coat old habits return the lad salutes with precision; in marching he invariably uses his left leg according to regulation; he abstains from chewing his food at meal-times on the appearance of the "orderly officer"; he betrays himself by a hundred backward glances at the old life, and so is detected, and arraigned before a court-martial. The trembling wretch tells his tale as it has been told, without variation, ever since "short service" made "fraudulent enlistment" a neces sity: "Gentlemen, I was stary- It is with cases like this that our military jails are crowded now; the convicts, without any comprehension of the reason why this awful blank has fallen on their lives, just brooding over what is to their minds its injustice. Let our reformers put the question to their own hearts, and ask, What sort of men will these be when they are let loose on the world? "But," they say, 66 we have seen the error of our ways, and 'short service' as it exists now is little more than a reflection of 'long service.' And the question arises Why the original mistake? Why did you jump at once from 21 years to 3 years, when every practical soldier told you that you were wrong? Why did you prefer to listen to these German-speaking, unpractical men at the War Office, soldiers only in name and in the gold-lace on their trousers,-while you had hundreds of men whose lives had been passed in facing the practical side of a soldier's profession, and whose duty and pleasure it would have been to have told you the truth? system that introduced them has exploded. Then came the clause limiting the age of officers in the several ranks, its natural outcome being to fill our large towns with many starving gentlemen; a reform so red-hot that it had to be remedied by another, worse, if possible, than the disease. A new rank, popularly called that of "running major," had to be invented a novelty which destroyed a well-recognised and honourable rank, while replacing it by a set of men who find themselves in that hopeless category amongst human beings,—neither flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring. The only answer to our query is, that reform amongst our states- Before the rank was reformed men nowadays must be red-hot. the duties of a major were perfectly The mention of "short service" of well understood, as were those of late, except to eulogise its merits, a captain. The first was a "mounthas raised such a clamour, that ed officer" who had charge of half officers, whose sole aim is to in- his regiment, under the colonel; crease the efficiency of the army, he wore high boots and spurs, have learned to hold their tongues and more lace on his coat than altogether. To hint that the new did the captain, who had to be system was unfitted to our Eng- content with marching in rear of lish soldiers was to be "old-fash- the company he commanded, and ioned," "a good old fossil," "a voice doing "orderly duty." Now the from the Clubs." Thus Colonel But- two ranks are so mixed up that the ler, in a recent paan of victory over product of major-cum-captain has Egypt, speaking of the opposition to do the duties of both the previous of the "professional mind" to to officials. He must march in rear "short service," says: "The 'short of his company in blucher boots, service' soldier became by far the he must do orderly duty; or on a best weight-carrying scapegoat that horse, booted and spurred, must had yet appeared in the world. If appear on parade, or do "fielda general bungled on the Helmund officer of the day." In either case, or failed on the Tugela, if a chicken he must pay for the major's extra was missed from a South African lace, whether he adopts bluchers hencoop or a man tumbled down or boots. under the mid-day sun of the Jellalabad valley, the short service fully accounted for the entire chronicle of defeat, disaster, defalcation, or disease." It is quite true, the 'short service' soldiers of Mr Cardwell did commit these alliterative crimes, and in consequence have ceased to exist, now that the He may be doing captain behind his company when an order comes from the brigade-office that a major is required to inspect, let us say, the general's pig-sties, and to report that each pig's tail has the regulation curl: he must leave the company to take care of itself, and get to his quarters, |