280 Field-Marshal Earl Roberts [March 23, 



the last few weeks with so much force and eloquence upon the fact 

 that efficient and sufficient preparation for war means nothing more 

 nor less than the application of all that is best in the mind and 

 intelligence of a country to the business of National Defence. More 

 will depend in the long run upon the amount of thought you devote 

 to your Army and your Reserve than upon the amount of money you • 

 spend upon them. We have before us on the Continent of Europe, 

 the example of a nation of thinkers whose strength and prosperity 

 are the creation of thought, and there are few more convincing and 

 suggestive utterances in history than the remark of King Frederick 

 William III. of Prussia in 1809, at the opening of the Berlin Uni- 

 versity after an era of military misfortunes — and just three years 

 after the Battle of Jena — " We must regain in intellect what we have 

 lost in territory." When King Frederick William made that remark 

 Prussia was then in her darkest hour, dismembered as Napoleon had 

 left her. But Wilhelm von Humboldt had suggested the Berlin Uni- 

 versity as one means of regenerating the nation, and Scharnhorst had 

 just hit upon the idea of building up a great National Reserve by 

 passing recruits rapidly through an apparently small Army. 



It has become evident to me that, if the main elements of this 

 problem are to be grasped by the nation at large, we must dis- 

 tinguish radically and effectually between the two branches of the 

 subject which are commonly confused in argument and have too often 

 been confused in practical treatment. The proposition to which I 

 invite your attention is elementary, but its importance cannot possibly 

 be over-estimated. My proposition is that in this country, and in 

 this country alone, there is not only o?ie Army question to be dealt 

 with but two Army questions. Consideration has more and more 

 convinced me — as I hope to convince this audience — that our chief 

 difficulties have arisen in the past, and may arise in the future, from 

 the people of this country being unable to distinguish between these 

 two questions ; an inability quite natural to an insular and naval 

 nation, which up to the outbreak of the South African War, had 

 enjoyed nearly a century of practically continuous peace. 



The first question is that of the Regular Army ; the second ques- 

 tion is that of the Reserve. Now, what of the Regular Army ? It 

 is a small professional force, recruited upon a basis of long service 

 at a high rate of pay, and devoid, by reason of its constitution — and 

 mark me, necessarily, inherently, and permanently devoid — of that 

 power of large expansion, when a crisis arrives, upon which every 

 Continental Army depends for its success in war. 



Continental armies, in ordinary times, are not what our Army is, 

 and not what they are ordinarily supposed to be. They are entirely 

 different. They depend, when called to arms, not so much upon the 

 comparatively small numbers of men who are at any given period 

 with the colours, but upon the vast numbers who have passed through 

 the ranks. The Continental armies, as they stand at any moment 



