AN EXPERT PUTS FORWARD NEW THEORY OF THE WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 63, 16 March 1931, Page 6

AN EXPERT PUTS FORWARD NEW THEORY OF THE WAR.

A London Letter

Recruits. For The Army Do Not Come From Those Receiving The “ Dole.”

(Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, February 10. Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, the military expert, told the Royal United Service Institution the other day that it would have been better policy in the war if more Englishmen had worked in munition factories and stayed in industry instead of being sent to France. Captain Hart, who saw four years’ active service, pointed out in his lecture that the Great War was the first in three centuries in which Britain did not rely chiefly on subsidised allies to fight on the Continent, scattering her own military forces to capture outlying points

and using economic pressure as the main weapon against her enemy.

QAPTAIN HART, who is one of the most able of the younger military thinkers, told the veterans of the Institution that though the cost of keeping a huge British army in France for four years was well known, the benefit was doubtful. Captain Hart gave his theory of how the war would have gone had Britain’s main forces not been pinned down in France. We should have sent the 1614 Expeditionary Force over, he said, and it would have played the part it did till the Battle of the Marne. Alternativelj% it might have gone, as Lord Roberts Advocated, to the Belgian coast, where it might have checked the German advance even more effectively. Within a few weeks of the declaration of war, a British army should have gone to the Balkans. Captain Hart thinks that if one had appeared, Turkey would not have joined the Central Powers, and more of the Balkan States, encouraged by subsidies, would have come in on our side. The lecturer thought that an early Balkan success would have hastened Italy’s entry into the war and turned Serbia into a spearhead for an attack on Austria up the Danube, and he considered that if Turkey had joined the Central Powers the Straits might have been forced by the early dispatch of 150,000 British troops. To those who thought that France, unaided by more than a few divisions of British troops, could not have held the German armies. Captain Hart replied he was confident the French could have managed it. . r More Recruits for the Army. The concession granted by the War Office under which recruiting in the present month reverts to the traditional system of permitting county regiments to enlist men in and from their territorial areas, has met with gratifying success. From every quarter come reports that the candidates offering to join the colours are of a good type, both physically and intellectually. Last year the main body of recruits came from those who were at work, not from those receiving the “ dole,” and the experience this month has been much the same. The second week of the year was the best for recruiting for several years. The number signing the army form of enlistment was approximately 1620, nearly 500 more than in the corresponding week last year. From the beginning of the year until now the total number of enlistments is in the region of 1000. Nearly 30,000 men leave the colours each year, so that recruiting will have to be exceptionally good to provide for the normal wastage and lessen the deficiency as between the establishment and strength, which has been accumulating to a serious extent. The shortage in the army, including the British army in India, is about 380 officers and 9700 other ranks. It was in 1924 that

the War Office introduced the system of drafting to the county regiments recruits from districts far removed from the counties to which the regiments belonged. This was done in order to facilitate training and to confine the preliminary work to a certain period of the year. Britain’s Naval Plans. Under the London Naval Treaty five capital ships of the British Navy will pass into the hands of the scrappers by the end of the year. These will include four battleships of the Iron Duke class and the battlecruiser Tiger, all of them efficient still as first line fighting units. The Tiger is to be stripped and converted into a target for heavy shell practice afloat before being handed over to the ship-breakers. Of cruisers, we start tjie year with 54, four more than tentatively allowed by the London agreement. Six of these will reach their effective age limit of sixteen years during 1931, and it may be taken for granted that thGy will pass out of the Service early this year. The policy of scrapping is to be speeded up, for not only will there be sayings on the ships themselves, but there will be a further economy of 5000 personnel. Ton for ton the cost of warships built in the Royal yards has invariably been higher than those launched from private establishments. One of the causes thereof is transport charge for material, virtually all the private yards being so much nearer the coal and iron areas. But the cost of naval construction at Home compares favourably with that of other Powers. A 7500-ton American cruiser of our Leander type, for instance, accounts for over three million sterling, against one and a half million in this country. Probably the most expensive warship ever laid down is the new German “ pocket ” battleship, which is expected _to cost £340 per ton by the time she is completed. Against that, our latest type cruisers and the great battleships H.M.S. Nelson and H.M.S. Rodney, constructed by post-war cost of labour and material, work out at about £2OO and £lB2 per ton respectively. The cost of the original Dreadnought was £lO7 per ton, a price then regarded as excessive. Steam trawlers proved of such invaluable assistance to the Admiralty during the war that the Navy closely watches changes in their design. Now that the North Sea grounds are so depleted, it is necessary for trawlers to go further afield, and long voyages are calling for a new type of which quite a large number will probably be built during the next few years. Already an order has been placed on the East Coast for a new trawrler, which, though 150 feet long, has steam engines of 900 indicated horse pow r er, which is something like double the power that had become standardised by the end of the war.