1906.] on Imperial Defence. 281 



before the order for national mobilisation is given — and we pray 

 that it may be long before that dread signal is made which summons 

 millions of men from the paths of civil life, and plunges whole 

 nations into conflict — the Continental armies, I repeat, are at ordinary 

 times not fighting machines, but training machines. Short service 

 upon the system which we call " conscription," but which the Germans 

 call by a strong and homely word of their own meaning " defence 

 duty," is designed to pass as many citizens as possible through the 

 ranks, so that their country may count upon the largest number of 

 her sons in the hour of need, and to return them as rapidly as possible 

 to the pursuits of civil life in which the vast majority of them live 

 and die in peace, just as the vast majority of our citizens live and die 

 in our own favoured island. If there were fewer of these trained 

 men, the risks of their being called upon for war would, I venture to 

 think, be much greater, much more frequent. The stupendous dislo- 

 cation of civil life by setting in motion these enormous masses of men 

 is the strongest safeguard of the peace of the world to-day. These 

 conditions make wars terrible when they come, but they make wars 

 rarer, and prolong the intervals of peace to an extent that no other 

 conditions in the modern world have ever secured. 



For every other European nation but ourselves, the problem of 

 military organisation is not a double problem. Continental armies 

 create their own reserves by a perfectly continuous and natural pro- 

 cess. The very object of the Continental short-service system, in 

 time of peace, is to create the great reserve upon which the country 

 will depend in time of war. There is no possibility of that confusion 

 of practice and idea which, owing to our unique circumstances, has 

 perplexed and thwarted the efforts of generations of Army reformers, 

 and disappointed the hopes and expectations of the country. 



In this country alone we possess an Army by means of which it is 

 impossible to create an adequate reserve. I leave the United States 

 of America out of my calculations, as the conditions of her existence 

 are altogether different, and she is not burdened with Imperial 

 responsibilities such as ours. I shall put the question in an even 

 simpler form, if I say that the British Regular Army is the only 

 Army which does not create, in any full sense, its own Reserve. This 

 is a necessary consequence of the fact that it is based on a voluntary 

 long-service system, and that the greater part of it is always on 

 service in various quarters of the Empire. It is not mainly a training 

 organisation. It is a separate and complete machine in itself which 

 exists as a garrison of the Empire, to keep watch and ward over our 

 frontiers, and to maintain the pax Britannka. It is always on duty 

 as I have said, and is, at all times, in spite of its comparatively small 

 scale, an actual working Army, fulfilling important and indispensable 

 duties in time of peace. It does not, therefore, carry out the ordi- 

 nary purpose of a training Army as the Continental armies do. 



My object to-night is not to show how an adequate power of expan- 



