'St r'C;C:i^ ♦ li^ -?>•. ♦.'.C^^ ^^■^ ^HHH|^^;iL^^:l A ' '"'im^Wi • ■' '->, ftn^'- ^"-^ ^^""'^^■1 M^l IFfiT^ ^ Ha t. ^ . a I B RARY OF THE U N IVERSITY or ILLI NOIS SPEECHES ON ARMY REFORM, BY U. 0. TREVELYAN, ESQ., M.P., EXAMINED AND CONSIDERED BY LORD EUSTACE CECIL, M.P. LONDON: EDWARD STANFORD, 6 & 7, CHARING CROSS, S.W. 1871. SPEECHES ON ARMY REFORM. Mr. Gr. 0. Trevelyan^ has recently delivered four speeches on " Army Reform," at Selkirk, Edinburgh, Brighton, and Manchester. A tour in the provinces with the avowed object of stirring up public opinion has become a very natural and a very intelligible proceeding to all those who feel warmly and speak impulsively upon any par- ticular subject. Had Mr. Trevelyan accordingly been content with delivering his opinions at public meet- ings, I, for one, should have left his speeches to be answered at the proper time, and in the proper place ; but as he has since published them in a collective form, there seems ground for presuming that he in- vites criticism, and that he is prepared to stand by the accuracy of the views and statements therein expressed. This must be my apology for endeavour- ing to point out, as shortly as possible, some of the errors into which, it seems to me, he has been in- advertently led, as well as to examine the soundness of the opinions that he has set forth. I trust, however, that for doing so he will not place me in the category of those " whose eyes are blinded by personal interest, official predilections, and habits of thought ; " nor suppose that if I cannot go the B 2 ( 4 ) entire length of his views, " my opposition to reform is hollow, obstinate, and selfish." Sitting on the opposite side of the House to him, I have always endeavoured in an humble way to advocate those reforms which seemed to me to promote the real good of the army ; and I have certainly this advan- tage over him, that I have neither official predilections nor recollections to fall back upon. I may also echo the hope with him, "that there will be nothing in these pages that can produce misconception," how- ever difficult I may have found it to return the com- pliment on re-perusing his pamphlet. Of one thing there can be no doubt : Mr. Trevelyan never leaves his readers under any misconception as to his own ultimate intentions with regard to Army Reform. Delenda est Horse Guards, is the beginning, middle, and end of his remarks, and if occasionally he wanders from his point, and breaks a lance now with the army agents, now with some item of army esti- mates, it is always to return with renewed vigour to the attack of the department over which the Duke of Cam- bridge presides. The vulnerable point in the Horse Guards' armour, as Mr. Trevelyan spares no pains to point out, is the purchase system, and the existence of that system he accordingly labours to prove is the origin and cause of all the abuses and extravagance complained of in our military administration, and he never tires of repeating that no amendment for the better can take place until "affairs are taken out of the hands of a privileged class, and the administration of our army entrusted to men who have earned, and .: u.uc; A\^ ( 5 ) not bought their way to the top of the tree." How Mr. Trevelyan has arrived at the astonishing conclu- sion that all the abuses of our military administration — all the negligences and ignorances of the War Office and Horse Guards — are attributable to a system of regimental promotion in force amongst a portion of our arm}^, it would be vain to inquire, ^but the effect upon the respectable audiences he has lately been addressing may be easily imagined. Having never studied the (to them) mysterious working of a system which we have the authority of Mr. Cardwell for saying " no fellow can understand," they probably retired to rest with the conviction that all offices and commissions throughout the War Office, Horse Gruards, and Army, not excepting the responsible ap^Doint- ments of Secretary of State for War and Com- mander-in-Chief, were sold by auction somewhere in the neighbourhood of Whitehall to an eager crowd of dukes, lords, and honourables, and no doubt very naturally applauded the vigorous denunciation of aristocratic monopoly and privileged corruption. It is difficult, indeed, to believe that, with his official knowledge, it was Mr. Trevelyan's deliberate inten- tion to produce any such impression upon the minds of those who heard him ; and yet what are we to think when he tells his audience at Selkirk that " it is incredible that the people of this country should endure a system which renders the army a monopoly, and which in time of war places their own children under the command of men who have purchased their way to high responsibility " ( inferential ly of course ( 6 ) without any other qualification) ; when he gravely assures the people of Brighton " that the command of our army is practically a class monopoly ; that it is a close preserve for the wealthy and influential; that the commands of our battalions are allotted according to the criterion of the longest purse ; that the pur- chase system is a system in which efficiency is sacrificed to idle show, and worth and capacity are nothing without a large balance at their bankers ; " when he warns the Reform Union at Manchester *' that Englishmen will not allow their sons to be taken for compulsory military service as long as the brokers and jobbers are to arrange between them who are to lead our battalions ; that as long as officers purchase their commissions you cannot insist on their possessing the qualities demanded by their special branch of the service ; that you cannot supplement the money by an effectual test of military capacity, and that pur- chase is the excuse for paying 40,000/. a year of national money to army agents," &c., &c. ? But these awful denunciations of a vicious system do not stop here. To strengthen his argument^ and show indis- putably that the army is a class monopoly, Mr. Trevelyan, referring to an assertion made by Sir J. Pakington in the House of Commons, that the oddest, and therefore the most plebeian names, were to be found in the Army List, winds up by asking triumph- antly in what part of the Army List these names are most found — amongst the sinecure generals, the Foot Guards, or the Line ? and answers his own ques- tion by a fervid expose of the privileges of the Guards, ( 7 ) and the number of titled men, 59 in all, to be found amongst the 227 officers of the three regiments. Un- fortunately for his case Mr. Trevelyan tries to prove too much, for it is plain that if aristocratic names are mostly to be found in " the favoured " regiments of the Guards, "quartered in agreeable places," Sir J. Pakington's assertion " that the oddest names were to be found in the Army List " is perfectly correct^ for according to Mr. Trevelyan they are to be found in the greatest number in the hardworking regiments of the Line, which undoubtedly form the larger part of the army. In other words, because one-fourth of the officers of the body-guard of the Sovereign are titled men, therefore the army is a class monopoly: a very fair example of the reasoning which Mr. Tre- velyan thought sufficiently good for the Manchester Reform Union. Let us examine for a moment if Mr. Trevelyan has been more happy in his denunciation of what he terms " the list of generals and sinecurists." In his speech at Edinburgh he speaks of the " horrid " scandal of paying 73,000^. a year to generals un- employed, and 162,000/. a year to the holders of honorary sinecure colonelcies, and then goes on to argue that the colonelcies in no wise answer to civil service pensions, because they are not paid according to service, are received by "favour" and not "by right," and are enjoyed in conjunction with other official salaries. But accepting the figures given as correct, such an argument is grounded upon an entire fallacy. These honorary colonelcies are not ( 8 ) pensions at all. They are really rewards for long and distinguislied service, and are neither more nor less open to exception than the 100 L a year granted to Colonel A. or the gratuity of lOZ. given to Pri- vate B. for good service. The unemployed generals to whom Mr. Trevelyan seems to grudge the very moderate sum of 73,000^. a year out of the estimates, and who are each in the receipt of the magnificent salary of 400/. a year, are the real pensioners upon the bounty of the State. How far a better system of superannuation in their own interest, as well as in that of the younger officers of the service^ might be introduced, similar to that which Mr. Childers has devised for the navy, is of course a very legitimate subject for discussion. It is true that it may be argued that there should be no " plums," no special rewards for work done, in any profession civil or military; but until that principle be laid down by competent authority, it is scarcely fair to single out the few hardly-earned and scantily-paid rewards in the military profession as " facilitating jobbery " and adding to expenditure. In the same spirit Mr. Trevelyan would strike out of the estimates the 27,000/. a year for distinguished services, and the 155,000/. a year for widows' pen- sions, on the plea, if I understand his argument rightly, that these sums are voted to compensate officers who have not been lucky enough to get honorary colonelcies, and the families of deceased officers for the sums which have been sunk in buying commissions, and that such grants would be no ( 9 ) longer necessary if purchase were abolished. But even if the entire abolition of purchase were possible in the army, which is at least open to doubt, seeing what occurs in non-purchase regiments, it is hardly worthy of a great nation to haggle over a sum of 200,000^. a year now spent in the relief of poor widows and distinguished veterans (many of them, by the way, field-officers and therefore not eligible for honorary colonelcies), because, forsooth, they should have been provided for out of private means. Indeed it never seems to occur to Mr, Trevelyan that such niggardly conduct on the part of the State would, by helping to drive poor men out of the service who could not afford to make provision for their families, do the very thing which he wishes to prevent, and increase instead of diminishing the proportion of officers belonging to wealth v families. His excessive love of this sort of economy is not confined to general officers and poor widows, for in his address to the Chamber of Commerce at Edin- burgh he lays it down as an axiom that none but " non-commissioned officers who are kept for the instruction of others, and men who have been dis- abled bv wounds and disease should receive a pension." Now whatever reductions in the number of officers may be possible, looking at the excess of candidates for commissions over the demand, any diminution in the soldier's prospects of pay or pension would, in the present dearth of recruits, be most impolitic; and it requires no north-country shrewdness to divine that with the bounty on enlist- B 3 ( 10 ) ment abolished, and the pension of the private soldier, like the honorary colonelcies, made dependent " on favour " and " not on right," the pay of the rank and file must be largely increased if young recruits are to be attracted to the service at all. Short service, in which I agree with Mr. Trevelyan in thinking there is much good, will not of itself be a sufficient attraction. It has already been tried this autumn and has failed, and nothing remains but to increase the pay. If, however, pensions are to be abolished, the proportionate increase of daily pay to render the service attractive must necessarily be so much the greater. Then where will be the saving ? Mr. Trevelyan tells us that if "the Short Service Act was vigorously worked by men who believed in it, the saving would be three-quarters of a million." It may be so ; but when he gravely says that the cost of the Contagious Diseases Act would be con- siderably diminished if the army consisted entirely of young men, at the age when the temptations of nature are the strongest, instead of aimless elderly bachelors, one is inclined to doubt the cor- rectness of his calculations. Mr. Trevelyan has evidently forgotten the old French proverb. Si jeu- nesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. Into the scheme laid down in these Speeches for the re-organization of our Reserve Forces it is useless to enter at any length. It may be very good, or it may be quite the contrary ; but in any case, in common with the thousand-and-one schemes of the same sort now before the public, it will no doubt receive the ( 11 ) attention it deserves at the hands of Mr. Card well. Mr. Trevelyan earnestly protests against the notion of " adopting the ballot as a sort of poor-law test lo drive people into the Volunteers,' ' and in that and in his subsequent remarks upon the same subject I think he is right. The bodily transformation of the militia into second or third battalions of the line, and the drilling of each militiaman for a year, are far more questionable suggestions, involving, as they do by the very conditions of the service proposed, the destruction of the peculiar character of our old constitutional force — a very great increase to the estimates Mr. Trevelyan in smaller matters is so anxious to cut down, — to say nothing of the idea which would soon take possession of the national mind, that an army ready for offensive or defensive purposes should be employed in doings something. That whatever re-organization may be decided upon must not only begin at once, but be complete, all will agree in. But then it is quite a pleasure to sail in the comparatively calm waters of Mr. Trevelyan's remarks upon the Reserve Forces, away from the thunder and lightning which are constantly growling and flashing in the distance. Like the storms in the horizon, the whirlwind of denunciation throughout these Speeches is constantly working round in a circle, to pour out its withering wrath u]3on the devoted head of the Horse Guards and the Purchase System in some such sentence as this : "I do not hesitate to say, that unless the Grovernment commences by clearing out the Horse Guards, any plan of army ( 12 ) re-organization which they propose will be a failure ; and any scheme for amalgamating the militia, unless it is grounded on the complete and instant abolition of purchase, can be nothing but a nostrum." Or again, " The wretched misgovernment of our army must cease, and above all, the command of that army must be taken from the hands of a class, and restored to the nation at large." Of the Horse Guards, so summarily ejected into the streets, it is, perhaps, unnecessary to speak. The doom of amalgamation already rests upon it as soon as Mr. Cardwell can make up his mind what building, old or new, is to contain the two departments ; and its position, now defined in theory, can hardly be other in the future than that to which public opinion points, viz, subordinate to the War Department in practice as in theory. But what has this to do with the Purchase System? What connection, I must again ask, have the shortcomings of two depart- ments — the confusion, anarchy, and indecision that are popularly supposed to reign in the one, and the abuse of patronage and obstructiveness which Mr. Trevelyan tells us reigns in the other — to do with the system of promotion in our cavalry and infantry regiments ? If abuses really exist in Army Ad- ministration, or in Army Promotion, is it not common sense to try fairly and impartially to rectify them by putting the saddle on the right horse ? Had we not far better endeavour to find out the origin of the mischief in each, not in a Quixotic spirit confusing the one thing for the other, lest in the insane rage ^- ( 13 ) for sweeping reforms, confusion be made worse con- founded, and good, bad, and indifferent be destroyed together ? For the benefit of those who have paid no atten- tion to the subject, I will endeavour, then, shortly, to examine what the system of Purchase is not and what it is. It cannot, in my opinion, be described, as the author of these Speeches would have the public believe, as a system in which " efficiency is sacrificed to idle show, and worth and capacity are nothing without a large balance at their bankers." Nor can it be fairly said to be ^' a close preserve for the wealthy and influential, in which brokers and jobbers arrange between them who are to lead our battalions, and in which ' promotion goes by money and not by merit.' " Such a description of it would have been more applicable before the days ^of Army Examinations and the Crimean war, but even then it would have been open to the charge of being a grotesque caricature, not to say a gross exaggeration, taken from individual instances, rather than a correct account of the actual working of the system. At that time it must be frankly admitted that ignorance of professional knowledge (not necessarily a proof of incapacity) was more commonly the rule than the exception. But the introduction of examinations before and after entrance into the service, followed by the Camps of Instruction at Chobham and at Aldershot, the Crimean war, and the attention which military matters received both in and out of Parliament, very much altered for the better what ( 14 ) was objectionable in it. Royal Commissions upon Purchase and Promotion were appointed, examina- tions were exacted of all officers up to the rank of Captain, which no amount of money — no balance at the bankers could evade ; and it is no secret that young officers failing to pass these examinations after a second or third trial, have been recommended to leave their regiments to save the discredit of being passed over.* It has become, therefore, impossible that a grossly ignorant and inefficient officer should ever, under the system of Purchase, obtain the com- mand of a troop or company. Mr. Trevelyan, for some purpose, quotes the answer of the Duke of Cambridge before a Royal Com- mission, declining to take the responsibility of select- ing Commanding Officers of regiments, and there is evidently some misconception about it. My own belief is, from personal knowledge of instances in which the Horse Guards have interfered in the pro- motion of field-officers, that His Royal Highness's words have not been given their full interpretation. What it seems to me His Royal Highness intended to convey was, that the task of selecting officers to command regiments over those who were senior to them, would be most invidious, and would give rise to much heartburning and recrimination, coupled perhaps with accusations of that sort of favouritism which we know now has been one of the chief * These Examinations have been made still more stringent, searching:, and comprehensive by the recommendation of the Eoyal Commission on Military Education. ( 15 ) causes of the total collapse of the French army. What he did not say was that the Commander-in- Chief commonly exercised a negative power of se- lection ; in other words, that though he declined to select, he refused to appoint, any officer to the com- mand of a regiment, whose previous character and qualifications for command had not been vouched for by Inspecting-Grenerals, in their half-yearly confi- dential reports.* Whether I am right or not in such an interpretation of His Eoyal Highness's words, of this I feel sure, that there could be no practical objection to the exercise of such a power of negative a^ selection by the Horse Gruards, and that it would have the support of public opinion in and out of the army. Still, with every human precaution taken, I am free to admit that there can be no absolute guarantee against incapable and inefficient officers. They are to be found in all armies and* under all systems, for no man's capacity for command can be determined until it has been practically tested in the rude crucible of war ; but I think I have said enough to prove that under the present regulated form of the Purchase System, ignorance and inefficiency are checked and weeded out in every rank from the ensign to the colonel, and that promotion dependent on money and money alone, without other qualifica- tions, does not exist. Nor can it with any more show of reason be affirmed that the army is a close preserve for the wealthy and the influential, and that poor meritorious * ►^ee Queen's Eegulations, 1868, paragraphs 189, 190. ( 16 ) officers have little or no chance in the race for pro- motion. I do not say that there are not individual cases of hardship in the army. That would be claim- ing for it a superiority over every other walk of life. But this I do say, that the cases of hardship under the Purchase System are comparatively few and far between, and that the poor officers of the service gain much more than they lose. To a man of Mr. Trevel- yan's foregone conclusions, it would be perhaps useless to point to the fact that three of the ablest generals we have had within the last quarter of a century, viz. Sir Charles Napier, Lord Clyde, and General Have- lock, have, notwithstanding their want of fortune, risen to high command despite of the Purchase System ; but it may interest him to learn that an officer by no means undistinguished, who has obtained all his com- missions without purchase except one, at this mo- ment commands one of the regiments of that " most fortunate and privileged" branch of the service, the Foot Gruards. This is only one living instance of poor officers who have gained prizes, out of many others, which I feel it were only waste of pen and ink to enumerate. To return to the main question. What then is the Purchase System ? As it now exists, with its checks against ignorance and incapacity, I answer that it is the best and cheapest system ever devised in the in- terest of the State for keeping up a constant and steady flow of promotion, and for filling the higher ranks of our regiments in peace-time with young officers. I say, in the interest of the State, for irre- ( 17 ) spective of the immense advantage I have just men- tioned, in a pecuniary point of view the State is very much the gainer. Officers, as a rule, pay for their own retirement, and are content to serve for little more than the honour and glory of wearing Her Majesty's uniform. Abolish the Purchase System, and apart from the capital sum required to compen- sate the present holders of commissions, the estimates would have to be annually burdened with a large full-pay retirement list in order to ensure the pre- sence of young officers in the higher ranks of the ^rmy. Mr. Trevelyan is at pains indeed to point out to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce that the abolition of the Purchase System would be the cause of great and immediate economies, and he instances how the number of regimental officers might be reduced, how honorary colonelcies might be abolished, and how the votes for widows pensions and distinguished services, and the 40,000/. a year given to army agents might be cut out, but he entirely forgets to add that all this paring down and saving of expense might just as well be made under the Purchase System as under any other form of regimental promotion. The Purchase System is neither more nor less answerable for this waste of public money, if it be a waste, than the seniority system of the Artillery and Engineers, and it would be just as reasonable to say that if the system of buying advowsons in the Church were abolished, the incomes of the archbishops and bishops might be reduced. ( 18 ) In the same strain the speaker tells his patient audience " that the principal expense of the system lies in the enormous sums paid yearly, partly to compensate officers for their losses by purchase, partly to facilitate the transactions connected with purchase, and partly to enable officers to be pro- moted who cannot afford to purchase ; " as if these " enormous sums," as they are here called, came out of the pockets of the tax-payers of the country. But what is the fact? Surely Mr. Trevelyan, with the attention that he has evidently paid to army matters, added to his official experience, must have heard of the Eeserve Fund — of the manner in which it was. formed and supported, partly by the sale of first commissions during the Crimean war and partly by the compulsory contributions exacted from officers exchanging in and retiring from the service; be- cause I cannot conceive it possible that if he has given himself the pains to read the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, published in 1868, upon that very subject, he would not have known that " the enormous sums " he alludes to come out of this fund, and not, as his audience must have inferred, out of the pockets of tax-payers ! But I wish I could compliment the author of these Speeches upon the accuracy of his financial statements as I conscientiously can upon the smartness of his oratory. The merchants of Edinburgh are told that the calculation arrived at by the Committee of the War Office, that purchase could be abolished for 2,355,288/., is not understated, and Colonel Anson ( 19 ) is taken to task for thinking it too low. But Mr. Trevelyan seems entirely to have forgotten that 1857 is not 1871, and that a calculation that might or might not have been correct as regards regulation piices then is certain to be below the sum required now, from the fact that at that time, owing to the mortality of officers in the Crimean war, a very large proportion of commissions had been obtained without purchase, which in the natural order of things have since been sold. What, however, must be thought of the calculation that one-third of this sum, viz. 78 5,0 9 6Z., would be a sufficient compensation for over-regulation prices in the face of Mr. Ham- mersley's evidence (a gentleman who from his posi- tion in the house of Messrs. Cox & Co. is likely to know something about the matter), just recently given before the Royal Commission on over-regula- tion prices, that the value of over-regulation money alone invested in commissions was over three millions and a half! I have already stated what I believe to be the advantages of the Purchase System to the State. Let me now briefly say what I think are its defects. There cannot be a doubt that it very considerably diminishes the pay of the officer, owing to the amount of capital he is obliged to invest in his commissions, and its action often presses very hardly upon his family, if through disease or wounds con- tracted in the service, or from any reduction of the army, he be forced to retire or go upon half-pay. As the regulation now stands, an officer must pro- ( 20 ) vide himself with a medical certificate that he is not suffering from any mortal disease before he can be allowed to sell his commission. No matter whether the disease which must shortly end his life had its origin in wounds received on the field of battle, or in years spent with his regiment in a tropical climate, the money which he has spent in the pur- chase of his commission, the sole remaining provision perhaps of his wife and family, is confiscated for the benefit of the senior qualified officers of each subordi- nate rank to his own in the regiment; and what makes it even worse is that he dies in the certainty that it must be so confiscated. Similarly, officers sud- denly reduced to half-pay through no fault of their own, are, by the mere fiat of the Grovernment of the day, mulcted in the difference of price between the half and full pay of their commissions — a fine amounting in some instances to thousands of pounds — ^without any hope of compensation, unless the Keserve Fund is in a sufficiently flourishing state to bear the burden of reimbursing them. Unhappily for many of these poor officers, this fund has been so scandalously mis- applied by successive Secretaries of State for War in providing officers of the non-purchase branches of the service, who have never contributed one farthing out of their money toward its support, with bonuses on retirement from the service, that it is at present well- nigh, if not quite, exhausted. The remedy, indeed, for these defects should not be difficult to find. The abolition of the vexatious regulations that I have mentioned, the rigid applica- ( 21 ) tion in the future of the Eeserve Fund for the benefit of the purchase branches of the service alone, and some further indirect increase of officers' pay, such for instance, as the payment of regimental bands by Government, &c., would do much to remove the present causes of dissatisfaction. But the question, I apprehend, is not so much their removal, as whether these grievances form any real ground in the interest of the public and of the army, for the abolition of Purchase, root and branch. As a matter of money, there can be no doubt on which side the interest of the nation lies. Abolish Pur- chase, and the Exchequer would at once be called upon to pay compensation amounting to several millions, without reaping a single advantage that has not been, or may not be, obtained under the present system of promotion. And what is the sub- stitute that we are promised ? Mr. Trevelyan has no hesitation in answering the question in the Pre- face to these Speeches, by telling us, " that the machinery he would prefer is the one which secures us our admirable Artillery and Engineers ; " and that at a time when every artillery and engineer officer in the service openly finds fault with the slowness of promotion under which he is languish- ing. After this, there seems no difficulty in entirely agreeing with one of the last sentences contained in the pamphlet, viz. that the question is getting be- yond the range of controversy ; it might be added, of common sense. For my own part, I do not pretend to foretell what the Government in its wisdom may ( 22 ) propose, but I cannot believe tbat a practical body like the House of Commons will be readily content to sacrifice, at a great cost to the country, a system which, with some defects, has on the whole worked well, — which stood its ground in the Crimean war, when the system of selection, as represented by the Staff, utterly broke down, — with which those most interested in the matter, the officers of the army, poor as well as rich, are, as a body, contented, and for which, above all, no better substitute has ev§r, when really tested, been proposed. " Better bear the ills we have, than fly- To others that we know not of." LONDON: PKINTED BT EDWARD STANFORD, 6 AND 7, CHARING CROSS. PR '■".•'• \ . ,-'?«/•* T