646
ARMIES
vast increase in the number of horses required by the army brought in from civil proprietors who have their names registered for the purpose. It implies the creation of a new “reserve” to keep up the numbers of the units in the field. This new reserve is formed in the following way :— When the “ reserve ” soldiers are called up to the colours those young soldiers who are not sufficiently trained to take their places in the ranks, or are not yet of a suitable age to be sent out, are relegated to depots left at home, their place being taken by the men from the reserve. There are also a large number of the “ reserve ” who are not required to fill up the vacancies in the battalion going out. These become what are known as “ excess numbers.” Haturally, the men left behind are at various stages of training. Some of them will in a month or so have completed their musketry training, and will then be quite fit to take their places in the ranks. Others have been laid up by some temporary accident or passing malady. It results from this that every month there are always coming on fresh men ready to take their places in the army at the front. The “ excess numbers ” of the reserve help largely to supply any deficiency. In this way, as a matter of fact, the numbers in units at the seat of war, as they have suffered from the attrition that wears them down in the field, have been kept during the South African campaign more regularly supplied with drafts than has been the case in any other in which the British army has ever been engaged, and much more perfectly than is recorded as the ordinary condition of most armies during a campaign. It is therefore a point not worth discussing whether the term “ reserve ” is or is not properly applied to the particular men who are called the reserve (because, as it is said, a “ reserve ” ought not to consist of men who are, many of them, at once put into the ranks in the field). That mistake, if it be a mistake, has been made by every nation in Europe; but in any case, the reserve behind the front, the reserve which fills up the losses of a campaign, has been provided more perfectly by this system than by any other that Great Britain has ever had. Moreover, for the purposes of keeping up a uniform strength at the front, it is one that continually and automatically renews itself, because, by the time that the “excess numbers” and the earlier lists of young soldiers who have been gradually sent out to the war in drafts have been exhausted, this reserve is supplied from fresh sources. Men wounded in the early stages of the campaign, or indisposed without being very seriously ill, begin to arrive at the depots after convalescence. The recruits enlisted since the war are, many of them, beginning to come to maturity. The interest and excitement of the war has drawn back into the ranks older trained soldiers who have offered themselves. In short, from various causes the drafts can be filled up month by month. This, of which we have given such an ideal sketch as presented itself to the minds of the framers of the scheme, is precisely what happened during the South African war. That was the value and importance of those 90,000 odd soldiers of whom we have heard as existing in England after the main army had been sent to South Africa, who, though they were not an army fit to take the field because they were only “details,” were yet an invaluable element in keeping up the fighting strength of the army. It is necessary further to observe that, whereas for Germany or France the time which mobilization ought to take depends on a competition in readiness with a neighbour across a frontier, for Great Britain that time depends on quite a different consideration. If the men are completely ready to embark as soon as the ships can be made ready for them, that represents the time and the only time at which there is any object in aiming for any other purpose than that of home defence.
[BRITISH
The organization of an army for war is designed to make it a body as flexible and mobile as possible in the hands of its commander. The ideal army that 0rgan;za Wellington had formed by the end of the Pen- tjon insular war was one that could, as he expressed higher it, “go anywhere and do anything.” The or- un,tsfor ganization of the British army during peace time has hitherto been essentially an organization by stations—a stationary organization. The units composing the several garrisons of the stations are in a continual state of flux and reflux. There has hitherto been no higher organization anywhere maintained as a whole complete in all its parts for more than a short time. In part this is an inevitable consequence of the different conditions of service between the army of a world-wide empire and that of countries like France and Germany, which have all their peace duties within a ring-fence of the borders of their fatherland. The corps which in Germany occupies a particular district is designed to move as a whole when it is required for war. The troops, which in England are stationed in a certain locality, have two entirely distinct functions. The several units are on a roster for foreign service, and will each in their due turn go to India or the Colonies, being replaced by other units from abroad. In the event of war they have hitherto been formed with other units into brigades, divisions, and army corps, but they have not been in these organizations prior to the preparation of the expeditionary army. The generals to command and the staffs to direct them have been appointed for the special purpose. To this there are two slight exceptions to be made. At Aldershot, in addition to the stationary headquarters staff of the general in command, there have been stationary brigadier-generals with their staffs. The units composing the brigades have been in the same condition of flux and reflux as the other parts of the British army. Aldershot was, up to the time of the acquisition of the ground at Salisbury, the one great training-place of the British army in England, just as the Curragh is in Ireland. It is still the principal training school of the army. Therefore, in order that all parts of the army may share in this training, battalions and batteries have been only kept there for a short tour and then either gone out to stations abroad or taken their turn at other stations at home. Thus the permanent peace organization of the higher parts of the British army has remained as described in the ninth edition of this Encyclopaedia, one of district commands. The organization for war has been a paper organization, different in practice for each campaign, according to its nature, but having as a basis the tabular statement of units given in Table B, which is at present the paper organization of an army corps. The other exception to the rule of perpetual flux and reflux has been the brigade of Guards. The three regiments of the Grenadier, the Coldstream, and the Fusilier Guards, to which was added in 1900 the regiment of Irish Guards, are not liable to ordinary or colonial service. Therefore, their organization at home remains constant, and they are available as a whole for active service in the same organization in which they are trained in peace. The close connexion by short steam journey with Gibraltar caused that fortress to be treated for a short time as a home station, and garrisoned by the Guards in order to reduce the number of line battalions abroad in proportion to those at home. That arrangement was soon given up, and it may therefore be treated as a temporary episode, but it did not very materially affect the broad distinction between the permanency of the Guards’ organization and the perpetual change of all other units. The new scheme laid before the House of Commons by Mr Brodrick in 1901 was an attempt
