The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-12-23 00:00:00

MR. FORSTER ON THE VOLUNTEER

NIOVENIENT.

The Right Hon, NV. Pa Foster, , in distri-
buting the pries to the Bradford Rifle Volunteers on
Saturday afternoon, referred to the unfavourable pro-
phecies with which the commencement of the volunteer
movement had been received by many persons In Ott
country, and contended that none of thee 'Dad been
fulfilled. While our regttlaa roice, efficient and good as
it was, from circumstances a great many of which could
not be helped, cost, man for man, more than the regular
army of any other country in the world, he old not
believe that there was any country that nOt at 'so
cheap a price such a defence ab We had in our
180,000 volunteers. (Hear, hear.) Nothing had more
completely proved the way in which volunteering had
taken hold of the mind of the country than the fact
that notwithstanding the new and stringent regela-
tines that were introduced two or three !7'eata llgn, the
number of men in the rant had probably not
diminished at nil, for though at the beginning of last
yenr the number was 4,000 lees than the highest reached
More those regulations were introduced, he was in-
clined to think that number had now been reco'i-ered.
With regard to the officers, they nente now in a very
different position from that in which they were at the
time that he himself "made believe" to be an officer,
nnd it was pleasing to find that there was in the
country so large a number of men willing to make
such sacrifices in order that they might become
efficient volunteer officers. The moral advantages
of the movement to both parties and officers
had, he thought, been very considerable. (Hear,
hear.) There had been a feeling among them
that they had been really doing something to serve their
country, and that was a very good motive. Then the
discipline was a good thing, and those who had been
volunteers would admit that they were physieally the
better for it. Another thing that had been prophesied—
and that very confidently-- was that this volunteer
movement would excite a war spirit in the country,
and make t eglishmen more inclined to rush into war
than before. Well, now, not only had the prophecy
not been fulfilled, but precisely the opposite thing had
happened, He believed, if they took the eighteen
years that had elapsed since the volunteer movement
was established, the country had been less
inclined to rush into unreasonable, unnecessary,
sr unjust war than it was in the 18 years before.
He believed this was owing not a little to the
volunteer movement. Nothing made people more
likely to rush into war than a feeling of panic—not
fear, but a sense of insecurity, and the sense of in-
security had been very much removed by the volun-
teer movement. Volunteers could really learn little
of actual fighting, but as volunteers they studied war
more than they otherwise would have done, and the
more a man turned his attention to war the more
dreadful he would think it. He might be the more in-
clined to face it if it were his duty, but he would also
feel more the responsibility of having anything to do
with exciting a war feeling unless in a case of necessity.
(Hear, hear.) When he said that, he remembered
that the responsibility rested upon us all. If he
had supposed that this movement excited what he
might call a war spirit in tho country, nothing
would ever have induced him to have had any-
thing
,to do with it. It was a serious thing to
fight oneself, but it was a still more serious thing to his
mind, and a still more grievous, responsibility, to set
another man on to fight; and a man ought to have
very good grounds for believing he was in the right
before be did it. Taking the present position of the
countrirhe diAnotbeli.ev,e we had ever hula time in
which volunteering had been more ptilitdar;) On the
. othea hand, he did not remember the time when he
should say the feeling of the country was more pacific.

He did not mean by that that the country would not
be ready to fight if it thought that England must
engage in war, and that either her interests or her duty
were affected. He preferred using the word duty to
honour; duty included honour, and duty was the
word that ought to be used when we thought of
such a serious matter as war. He did not
believe the country was ever more inclined to go
to war if the duty of England could not be performed
without it, or if her interests were really dangerously
and injuriously sffected. But he alto believed that
the country W 3,8 never more determined to keep at
peace if it rightly could do so. ( Applause.) We heard
a great many rumonrs of war now, and he had seen one
or two sp, eches which seemed to conptmplate that the
volunteers might have some work. He would not talk
In that strain himself, because he did not believe it:
He had no belief, whatever we might hear about war,
that England would go to war. (Applause;) He thought
the danger of it was very slight indeed, nay, even more
than that, he was more sanguine than many were that
other countries worild not go to war with one another.
Most earnestly did he trUst that .that would be
so. He was not now going to tslk aToout the
Eastern Question, except just to say this, thzit si
member of the Opposition, he trusted he might have
to dangratOeite 44overtittpent when Parliament met on
preserving the pea6e of E4drotie, err en their iaving done
their part tawards preserving the peaceof rigtoPa?, and
accomplidhing the great object of tfie protection of the
Christian subjects of turkey. (Applause.) If that
were the case, he thought the Government would find
as much pleasure in the Opposition as the- would
ansong their own supporters. Mr. Forster then re-
marked that during his recent visit to the &est he was
nahre iirmre.7.sed with the horrors of war than he had
ever been befoie. I wonld also say that hethought the
Servians had been rather unfairU trOated bathe remarks
that had been made about their courage. What; s'scro tha
facts? He would not say that the Government of
Servia was or was not right in engaging in war with
such a large country as Turkey, but in doing it they
had to make r levy nttoslly sr, mane. Every man of
fighting age, and a great many that deft too young or
too old, was obliged to go into the army. Well, they
were not natural-born soldiers, and it was a tremen-
dous strain to put upon any country. He dared say
that in Bradford they were very courageous people,
but imagine every able-bashed man in Bradford
obliged to go to fight. Did they think they would
all fight as we might wish them to do? l'Tot only
hat, but the Servians had scarcely any drill, and
they had to meet the Turkish soldiers, who—he
would say nothing about their officers and generals—
were very courageous men, and had been thoroughly
drilled. They also had to fight limier a disadvantage,
many of them, of haVing only nauzsle-loaders,
whereas their enemies had the best new rifles. They
would excuse him making those remarks, because he
did not think it was quite fair to heap upon this un-
fortunate people, who, if they had done wrong, had
expiated it in great misery, having suffered all the
horrors of ware—to heap upon them also the impu-
tation of cowardice, which he did not think they
deserved. On the contrary, he thought that country
had as large a proportion of men as it was reasonable
to expest from any country who had shown great
courage. (Cheers.)

The Times has the Ltottint Yesder 'upon Mr.
Foreter's speech
By Nlrtue of lineage, Mr. Forster ought to be a burning
and shinieg light of the Peace Society; but in the speech to
the West York Me Brigade, he said that he himself had
be n a captain of Volunteers, and he became fervid in his
praisea of a motement which has greatly increased the light-
ing power of Ilingland. The doctrines of universal peace and
philanthropy have it matt be coefessed, a hard time of it
last now, when the sons of their apostles stoutly refuse to
let the national cheek be turned to the snifter. The rude
methods which Prince Bismarck invoked at the outset of
his career must be applied to many parts of the world, and
not least sternly to the most civilized parts of it, before
Arbitration tan take the place of battle. The gigantic
armies of the Continett arl all to many signs of distrust
and expectancy, and more than tine Country will have to
be rudely shaken before Europe can reduce its arme4
forces to the level at which they stood on the morrow of
Waterloo. England has, happily, no need to engage in the
ruinous race of armamente ; and, speaking to Volunteers,
Mr. Forster had a right to express pride in the feet that,
without the did of a conscription, she bad drawn a sufficient
sense of security from the addition of ISO,OOO Volunteers to
the regular forces. But we have no right to be Pharisaically
thankful that we are not as France or Germany, for, in
truth, our military armaments are shaped by our geo-
graphical position. Mr. Forster's speetth on the advantages
of the Volunteer movement was really a discourse
on the advantages of the English Channel That "silver
s.treak " has been the most important fact in our
hiatory. It has averted from us the worst evils of
wer ; it has enabled us to save our free in3titutions
final the shock of revolution ; and it dill permits ul to abide
by our old fashioned system of volun 1:7 en 'lament end a
small standing artily at a time when the whole Continent,
from she I,Torman coast to the Ural, is one colossal camp. It
engineerlog skill could make the Channel as easy to pats as
an eqUivalent piece of land, we Should instantly have to
establish a great army by conscription, and to encompass
Landon with as many forts as those which surround Pdris.
But for all military purposes the Channel is as broad as it
was in the time of the Past napoleon, and hence we live at
home at ease, with our 129,000 regular troops, our 180,00
Volunteers, and the few forts or bitteries that arm our naval
stations and our maritime townie

Mr. Forster did not show the fall measure of our advert-
taees, for he said that our regular soldiers, if as good as any
In the world, urn the most etpettsive. In a certain obvious
sense that is true, since each of them costs about a hundred
pounds a year, while those of France and Germany do not
cost half so mush. But Mr. Forster knows that such a com-
parison Is mhleading, and that man for Man the German
Array is in reality a much more expensive machine than our
own. An eminent Political Economist has written an in-
tercating book on "the things which are Sean" and the
"things which are not seen "in expetalitere. A spendthrift
ievulgarly supposed to do good to trade bemuse(' he viably
flings his money about A foolish prejudice, on the other
hand, is often cherished agaiust the careful capitalist who
spends little in personal Intake in Order that he
may have the enure to? profitable ineestment. What
is not seen in the one Case is the mete waste of money,
and, in the other, the stimulus given to industries which
Increase the sum of national wealth. Precisely the same
distinction, as Mr. Forster might have painted out to tho
Yorkshire 'Volunteers, may be drawn between the system of
enlistment in Germany and England. What we see is the
sum drawn by each soldier from the small portion of the
national wealth represented by the proceeds of the taxes;
what we do not see are the vast possibilities of capital which
Governments extinguish when they send men by hundreds
et thousands from the field and the factory to the drill.
ground. Our own method, no doubt, dooms a large number
to be consumers instead of producers; but moat of them,
although edmiraVe soldiers, have not shown much apbittele
bar profitable industry, whereas the German system re-
ettlessly exacts its tribute from scholars, merchants,
artisans, and peasants—from the fl swer of the community.
Economists have made some interesting calculations of the
amount which the conflict with France cost Germany in the
shope, not only of direct eipenditure, but also of the losses
stistained by trade, and that heightened etcpenstre living
which is among the consequences of the war. A still more
profitable problem might be set before the German Political
Economtsts. Let them calculate hose much their Military
system has directly and indirectlY stibstrtOted from the wealth
of the country in the course of halt a century, and they will
find, we suspect, that the figures are much more formidable
than those recently given by Mr. Bright to attest the pro-
fligacy of our own expenditure on wars which he believed to
be needless. We do not say that such a calculatioe would
suffice to cotideren thO Military preparattens of Europe.
Prussia, we admit, displayed a wise forethought
when she silently drilled the whole of her male
population after the battle of Jena, and the present
gigantic army of the Germau Empire ma) be a stern neces-
sity. But let us not efdrget the tremendous though tinseen
cost of the as etetn. Freedom from its crushing weight has
hefeed to make this country the richest in the world, and the
best able to stand a long war. If, as Lord Beaconsfield says,
it does not trouble itself to ask whether it could endure the
pressure of a third campaign, one c f the causts is that our
military system has enabled us to let a greater proportion of
our peetele than in any other tountey engage In proAtable
industry, While We halm been accumulating capital, the
Continental Poe ers have been wasting it as really as if they
had been flinging it into the sea.
It may be said that, wars are now ix. short end sharp as
van:oy to,reach what may Se celitee the reberve of national
reealth. That Was certainly true in the Franco-German
contest, which, although it cost more day by day than any
other war on record, was yet so soon over that at the close
neither combatant had come nearly to the end of his pecu-
niary resources. But the circumstances of that coefl'et were
so peculiar as to form no safe guide to the probabilities of
the future, It is pot likely that atch another setles of
,O.etortats will Ea:op be r^speeted at the atteee o 2 a campaign.
Latortotta sieges might still prolong a contest and give the
victory to the combatant with the greater power
of endurance. Should a war break out between Russia
and Turkey, it might last longer than either State
would find convenient, since the nature of the invaded
country peculiarly adapts it for defensive warfare. We may
polot Wet Vies, dtertteehle !act % all the more 01ear17 because
we share tne opinion of Mr Forster that this country has
very little reason to anticipate any necessity to do battle for
its intereett, and it will certainly not waste its accumulated
treasure in the champloeship of any chimerae. The 180,000
Volunteers are amply sofa dent to 'evil a reserre of deleute ;
pami Viet *ere fat is, iarhaiie, the best proof of our pro-
:ounci security. Mr. Forster rernieded the Rifia.nen of
Yorkshire that they could not hope to be the equals ot
Regular troops. The events of the last few years have suffi-
ciently shown how inferior must be the best untrained levies
to carefuUy drilled regiments. The Freneh . Mobiles
were naturally ap beim at ant. m'6u ih the world ; they
were rittide of thb same stud as the Imperial Guard,
which all but foiled the best troops of Germany at
Gravelotte ; yet they were scattered like chaff by the onset
of the rigidly drilled invaders. The practice of warfare
demands more and more skill in the mike-. test as It bails
for more and more eniture reteohg the 'ollicerte But our
Volunteer itrm i an admirable nucleus of a great defensive
force, and it helps, as Mr. Forster said, to keep the country
above the fear ot foolish panics. For some years we have
not been disturbed by wild predictions of invasion and ruin.
Many things have coatributed to strengthen us against those
fits of national hysterics, and among the causes ot our calm-
ness must be counted the feeling of self-rellattee sehich bias
been spread throngla the civil commttnity by the Volunteer
force.