SOUTH AGRICAN LESSONS FORGOTTEN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 65

SOUTH AGRICAN LESSONS FORGOTTEN.

LORD ROBERTS’S CRITICISM. Invariably towards the close of the Parliamentary Session the Peers become active. The reason for this is 00~ vious. Ministerial bills that have survived the rocks and shallows of debate inthe Commons go up to the Gilded Chamber, and are there subjected to an abbreviated but illuminating analysis. This Session, as matters have fallen out, the legislative harvest is below the normal, and the Peers have to make their own work. Thus it happened that on' Tuesday night their Lordships discussed the problem of home defence on the initiative of Lord Wemyss. As an old-fashioned, long identified with the auxiliary forces, Lord Wemyss has had much to put up with in recent years. All sorts of newfangled notions have been in the air, and he has lost no opportunity of expressing a robust contempt, and making the echoes ring with ins sounding ■denunciations. Tie had proclaimed his intention to go on the war-path again on Tuesday evening, and the subject was sufficiently attractive to bring together a goodly attendance of Peers. He moved a resolution affirming the danger of trusting to the navy alone for

HOME DEFENCE, and declaring" that as the possibility of “raids” is admitted, it is the more needful that “our land defence should at all times be such that no notion will ever attempt in any form a hostile landing on our shores.” Lord Wemyss criticised the recent speech of the Prime Minister mi Imperial Derfence. “No country,” he said, “has been so often and so successfully invaded as Britain”—a statement made with a thorough-going vigour worthy of _ a a patriotic Scot with hereditary interest in “raids.” He quoted Plainer- j ston’s dictum that the man must he j mad who would entrust the safety of ; Great Britain to the Navy alone. j Lord Roberts was stirred into mak- ! ing a rather remarkable speech. Rising from the cross benches, where he w.as fortified by the company of the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Rosebery, the ex-Commander-in-Ghief startled the Peers by assuring'them that the lessons of the South African War have beeri forgotten, and that our armed forces as a body are as absolutely unfitted and unprepared for a strain as they weie then. The defence of. the Empire depends, he said, on the most haphazard methods. In numbers the army is reduced to a minimum. Its training is inadequate. There is no proper reserve j of Auxiliary Forces. Yet an' army so organised is exepected to be ready for any Imperial emergency! The danger is one that ought not to be tolerated longer. Wo ought to be prepared to put in the field an army as large as any that might be brought against us. The people of this country must be got ! to identify themselves with the Army, j as is the case in Continental countries. | And Lord Roberts appears to deplore j that “the law is often invoked to* protect the rights of individuals against J the requirements of military training.” j He concludes with an earnest appeal j to the people of. the country to put an end to such a state of things. lie did not advocate a large standing army. But we ought to have such, a reserve

force as would permit of its expansion to meet contingencies.

Among those who took part in thfl debate was Viscount Goschen, who asserted that the conclusions of the Imperial Defence Committee were not new, and questioned the prudence df expounding them to the worldl. Tills criticism was taken up by Lord Lansdowne. The Foreign Secretary, pointed out that inthese days the nation wants to know what it is paying for, and that the Government are being constantly pressed to explain what the Army and Navy respectively are intended to do. Then Lord Lansdowne went on to declare that there is a fundamental misapprehension of the Prime Minister’s statement. The Gov- . eminent have never laid it down that the Navy alone is to be home defence. Mr Balfour never said that; in fact he said the contrary. We must always have a land force, even when the Regular Army is called cut to foreign service, and the Government are determined that the auxiliary Forces shall be maintained in numbers and efficiency. Our problem of defence is a composite problem; the military and the naval questions are one and indissoluble. They are so considered by the Prime Minister in his speech, and any Power contemplating an invasion of England would have to take aocount of both naval and military armament. There is no idea of "tying up the Navy in home waters for Home Defence. The duty of the British Navy will be to find an enemy’s ships wherever they may he. As a practical illustration of the extent to which the Prime Minister hadi been misunderstood the Government accepted Lord Wemyss’s motion. —• “Glasgow Weekly Herald.”