The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-04-08 00:00:00

COMPARATIVE COST OF ARMIES.

A large meeting, at which his Imperial Highness Prince
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was present, was held in London
on Friday, in the theatre of the Royal United Service Institu-
tion, under the presidency of Lieut.-General Sir Lintorn
Simmons, LOB., R.F., inspector-general of fortifications,
before which Captain J. C. Ardagh, , read an exhaustive
paper, bristling with statistics, on "The Comparative Cost of
the Armies of different Nations and the Loss to a Country by
Conscription."

Having been introduced to the meeting by the chair-
man, the lecturer commenced by stating that in con-
sidering the comparative cost of different armies the
first question to decide as a preliminary step to the in-
vestigation was the etandard of comparison. The total
number of men of the English army under arms
amounted to 149,370. Dividing the 14 millions of esti-
mates by this number the cost per man under arms
was £93. The total war strength of the army was
330,750, and dividing this number by the 14 millions,
the result would be a cost per man of £42 per
annum. A favourite plan in England was to divide
the amount of the army estimates by the number
of soldiers on the establishment. It used to
be said that our army costs £lOO per head, per
annum, The home and colonial establishment for this
year numbered 127,562, and the estimates amounted
to fourteen millions. Dividing one by the other gave
about £llO per head. From this it would appear that
we did not Low get as good value for our money as
formerly; but, notwithstanding the increased cost of
articles of consumption, or, what was the same tlnog,
the diminished value of money, this was a transparent
fallacy, for we got so much more for our £llO now than
we did for our £lOO fifteen or twenty years ago that
we had every reason to be gratified. The fallacy lay
in this—that the peace establishment of the regular
forces was a most inaccurate standard whereby to
measure the military strength of the country. The
reserves, the militia, and the volunteers, were
altogether omitted, and yet they constituted numeri-
cally far the more considerable portion of our forces.
No two countries kept their budget accounts on the
same system, and none gave complete information
regarding the cost of their troops in an accessible form.
The result was that the annual budget was not a very
good comparative standard of the cost of government
and administration. The average taxation per head in
the principal European States was about 455. per
annum. England and France were above, Germany,
Austria, and Russia below this average. In France
there was one man under arms for every 82 persons of
the population. In Germany, 1 in 98. Then follow
Italy, 1 in 124; Russia, lin 127 and Austria, 1 in
150. England followed with 1 in 212, but if the
63,000 regular troops employed in India be reckoned,
we had one man under arms for 148 persons of popn-
lation, or much the same as Austria. In Austria lin
20 of the whole population could be placed under
arms on mobilisation. France and Germany could
produce 1 in 31, Italy 1 in 34, Russia at present was
content with 1 in 50, while we had in England and the
colonies, except India, 331,000 available men, or 1 in
96 of the population of the United Kingdom. Cap-
tain Ardagh then showed the cost of an infantry
soldier in different countries, after which he pro-
ceeded to consider the loss to a country by conscrip-
tion, and in aid of his argument quoted from a memo-
randum banded in to the Royal Commission of 1861. on
recruiting by Mr. Godley, the Assistant Under Secre-
tary of State for War, and published amongst the Par-
liamentary papers. Captain Ardagh was of opinir
that whilst there was a kind of abstract ideal justice in
the system of conscription without substitution—in
other words, universal personal service—in practice it
was a mere chimera. No nation ever had, he asserted,
arrived, or ever would arrive, at the point of insisting
on personal service. The real way
of ascertaining the
cost of conscription was to calculate what recruits could
be obtained for in the open market as volunteers, and to
consider the difference between this sum and what they
actually received as the indirect taxation representing
what the nation paid in this unjust and unequal
manner for submitting to conscription. In France a
labourer earned about £29 per annum, and an artisan £37
and upwards. Taking £33 as an average rate to com-
pare with the soldier's £2O we find that the state ap-
propriates £l3 from the earning power of each pri-
vate soldier, and a higher sum from the non-commis-
sioned officers. In conclusion Captain Ardagh viewed
conscription in any aspect as costly injustice, and the
fewer the men required in proportion to those liable
the greater was the unfairness to the unfortunates
drawn. There were, he believed, plenty of men to be
had at the market price, and if John Bull wanted. more
it would be cheaper for him to put his hands in his
pocket in time of peace and maintain a reserve than
to resort to a levy of raw recruits on the outbreak of a
war.
The reading of the paper was followed by a -discus-
sion, in which Lord Waveney, Colonel Robertson,
Captain Featherstonhaugh, RE., Mr. Knox, General
Sir William Codrington, and other gentlemen took
part, after which the proceedings closed with compli-
mentary votes to Captain Ardagh and the chairman.