ENGLAND THE UNREADY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6690, 26 September 1882, Page 3

ENGLAND THE UNREADY.

{The World). The complacency with which Mr Childen took credit for his promptitude in preparing for war must have _ hugely amused our foreign military critics. To patriotic Englishmen the fact that a month is barely sufficient to send a small expeditionary force into the field (cannot be other than a most humiliating confession. It demolishes at one blow the comfortable notion that our army organisation has been thoroughly reformed. Matters are as bad as they ever were. We have quite recovered from the rude shock that we were unfit to fight Russia a few years back. The six millions then voted have been squandered, and the old beggarly shew of empty boxes remains. A new credit is needed before we can move a man. War material, stores, supplies, horses, camp equipment, all must be bought afresh at exorbitant rates. The sea transport service has to be constituted almost de novo. The great floating “ troopers,” which do the ordinary garrison reliefs, are quite unequal to the de mind, even if properly utilised, and not sent, like the Orontes, to range the seas without a single soldier on board. So great is the strain upon our resources to equip and despatch a paltry 20,000 men to the other end of the Mediterranean that the public offices are open day and night ; in arsenals, dockyards, and Government manufactories they are working double tides ; while contractors must perforce be called in to reap rich harvests by supplementing deficiencies at,the eleventh, hour.

The plausible excuse that the political situation produced procrastination will not serve the occasion. It is well known to all behind the scenes that we could not have moved faster had the demand for intervention in Egypt been twice as urgent. Tardiness was inevitable. Nearly everything had to be improvised—men, matelial, staff, equipment. Important questions, which should have been settled calmly in the piping time of peaqe, have been hastily disposed of on the eve of embarkation. It -was only decided at the : eleventh hour what uniform,,should be worn by troops at' the seat of war. In the garments selected we may plainly discern the practical sense of the leader of the’ expedition ; and it is probable that Sir Garnet fought hard against old-fashioned prejudice before he carried the day. But it is surely a blot upon our military administration that the choice of suitable clothing should be left to the last moment, and this in an army which may be called upon to campaign in all climates—tropical, sub-tropi-cal, or arctic—at any season of the year. Again, the subdivision! of the component parts of the force and the 'allotment of commands bear all the marks of hurry and confusion. It is an axiom in war organisation that generals apd staffofficers should be intimately acquainted with their troops, and troops with their leaders. In the general scramble for the loaves'and fishes of active employment, this general principle has: been ignored. Neither of the divisional generals —Willis or Uamley—-has ever been associated with the regiments undenhis command. Sir Edward Hamley, indeed, is a distinguished litterateur ■ and Artillery, officer, who has not had personal command of men for years, and of infantry never. That coveted distinction, the command of a brigade of .Guards in the field, has been conferred-upon a Royal Prince, as gallant a soldier as there is in the service, but not a Guardsman, and having only a social, certainly not a professional, acquaintance with the officers of his brigade. It may be; urged . ;that ■ a Scotchman, Sir Archibald; Alison, is to command the Scotch brigade, but it is composed of regiments nearly unknown to him. There are regiments sent: out from Chatham, Sir Evelyn Wood’s command ; that distinguished soldier’s brigade is entirely drawn from the Mediterranean garrisons. General Graham, an Engineer long on the War Office staff, commands an Aldershot brigade. Worse, than all these administrative bungles are the shifts and contrivances adopted to make ..up the personnel of the force. The small'cavalry brigade has only been brought up to its effective strength by depleting the regiments remaining at Home,' which have sent large drafts of horses, men, and officers to the regiments about to embark. The same - has occurred in the artillery, and to such an extent that the field batteries at Aldershot consist of officers without men to command,. and guns without horses to drag them. In the subsidiary departments, the same process of depletion : the Commissariat and Army Service Corps are deprived of their best men, the district staff offices of their most efficient clerks, and everywhere chaos has come again. Yet the present experience; however exasperating, would not be without its uses if it persuaded the authorities to be better prepared next time. But there is little hope that the hackneyed‘maxim si vis paeempara bellum. will ever be fully realised in this country until the neglect of it has plunged the nation into some terrible, perhaps irremediable, disaster. So long ,as we measure our strength against distant and, comparatively, insignificant foes, we may afford to trifle with war. The same niggardly, cheeseparing policy may keep our armaments so low as to be nearly ineffective, or to be expanded slowly and at immense cost, if at all. But some day the struggle maybe nearer home. The initiative will be in other hands. Tho blow may precede, not follow, the word. While we are laboring, as usual, sheepishly to make adequate resistance, an enemy, who lias swiftly mobilised an enormous army, perfect at every point, may be actually at our gate, within striking distance, and in possession of means carefully matured of neutralising the value of our boasted “silver, streak.” Such an adverse chance, with, the terrible catastrophe which would follow, may be remote, but it is by no means impossible, while statesmen and administrators remain obstinately blind to the unchanging principles of war.