The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-18 00:00:00

WORK FOR THE LORDS.

At this season of the year when so many appeals are
made to the charitable, it is perhaps not inopportune to
call attention to a deserving class of men who seem to
be reduced to a painful state of destitution, and on
whose behalf, so far as we are aware, not a voice
has been raised, not a purse opened. We allude
to the House of Lords, of which august body no
less than four members have lately appeared in the Bank-

-uptcy Court. For a long time, as is well known, the
infortunate Lords have found work very slack, and from
io fault of their own have been compelled to stand idle,
while others, perhaps not more capable but only more
fortunate than themselves, have had no lack
_ _

of employment—indeed, have worked so hard that
they have asked permission to remain in what they term a
state of " relaxation" during a period such as rarely
occurs in the world's history, viz., when half Europe is
in flames. It is difficult to point out any form of charity
that would be acceptable to the Lords. Their
habits have been such that an ordinary soup kitchen
established in 'Westminster for their relief would
perhaps not be popular, although a pottage a
turtle might possibly overcome their natural re-
pugnance to accept charity. Some kind-hearted persons
maintain that the most charitable course to pursue with
regard to destitute Lords is to take no notice of them,
but it is impossible to see them reduced to such straits
without at all events making an effort to help them.—
Pail Mall Gazette.

MR. TREVELYAN, M.P., ON ARMY REP ORM.
The following speech was delivered by Mr. Trevelyan at
the public meeting held at Birmingham on Monday night,
on the subject of Army Reform. The honourable gentle-
man said : During the course of this movement nothing
has been more marked than the cry for a
" National army," a prhase which indicates the in-
stinctive feeling of the people that their present
army is not, in the true sense of the word,
" national." General Trochu, speaking of the French
army, says : " Under Louis XIV., and till the Revo-
lution, the army continned to live in the middle of
French society, with an isolated existence of an exclusive
character. It was the army of the King, the Royal
army, which inspired the nation only with a passing
interest, which lasted while a war lasted, and then ceased.
If the army beat the enemy, people praised it. If it was
beaten, they " lampooned it." In the same way the dis-
tinction between the " constitutional" Militia, the " popu-
lar" Volunteers, and the " Royal" Army has deeply
injured all three forces. The distinction was curiously
brought out in the House of Commons in 1868 by a dis-
tinguished officer, who said that "it was the pride of the
army that they were the servants of the Crown. He hoped
the army of this country would be always the Royaf
Army." I hope so too, exactly in the same sense that the
Militia, the Volunteers, the Navy, the Civil Service, the
County Court Judges, the schoolmasters, and the staff of
the Post Office are the servants of the Crown. But by
keeping up a distiction between the Line and the Militia,
you foster ideas which, I am fully convinced, are at the
bottom of one-half of the evils which the whole nation is
now deploring, without knowing how to remedy. You
will never make service in the army popular till you
enable a man to be a soldier without ceasing to be a
citizen. You cannot do this without introducing short
service. You cannot introduce short service without
localising your army. Men will not join in sufficient
numbers to enable us to defend the country cheaply
and securely unless they are allowed to enlist
for not more than a year in a regiment which is quartered
close at hand to their home ; and decent men will not join
unless you.place at the Horse Guards a set of officers who
will encourage, instead of tacitly discouraging, the
dismissal of the thousand or twelve hundred hopelessly
bad characters who render the service uncomfortable and
disreputable. We do not require more than 70,000
infantry soldiers for our Indian and Colonial service ;
therefore that number are all whom we shall require to
enlist for a period of seven years. Every regiment
should henceforward consist of three battalions. Each
battalion should consist of four large companies of from
180 to 200 men, officered by five officers. Modern warfare
imperatively demands that the unit of battle should be
much larger than our company, and much small than our
battalion. I will not weary you with the proofs of this
opinion, the result of much study and inquiry in quarters
where information was to be had. The Prussian companies,
somewhat under officered, are 250 strong, with 5 officers.
In action everything depends on the captain, and 200 men
are about the number who can well be in the hands of one
officer. Well then, a regiment should consist of three bat-
talions, each containing about 750 men and 23 regimental
officers. One battalion should consist of long service men
and should be for foreign service. The other two should be
for home service, and each company should comprise non-
commissioned officers, and a certain number (say 10 to 20)
privates, all of long service ; while the ranks should be
filled by men enlisted from the neighbourhood in which
the regiment is permanently stationed, who, on first
joining, should be drilled continuously for a year, or
for the nine months which are not harvest or
hay-making months ; and who, after their con-
tinuous drill was over, should be liable to a fort-
night's annual service at the time of the yearly man-
oeuvres, which should henceforward become a national
institution. Good pay, and a handsome retaining fee,
would fill up the ranks with plenty of fine young fellows.
The regiments should be commanded by army colonels
and major, and the companies should each have two or
three permanent army officers, supplemented during the
annual manoeuvres, when the whole battalion should be
called out, and in war time, by men of the class of
our present militia officers, who befere they earned
their commissions should serve for a year at
the headquarters of the regiment six months at
least of which should be passed in the ranks. At the
rate of twenty-three army officers to a foreign battalion,
and 13 to a home battalion, our present number of officers
of the foot guards and the line would suffice to command
exactly one hundred and ten regiments, or 330 battalions,
containing 237,500 rank and file. These should be supple-
mented by a certain definite number of volunteers, all
men of military age, and ready to submit to military
discipline and obligations, commanded by officers who
have given the State a guarantee that they are fit for their
posts, and organised into battalions, attached each to a
particular regiment. The regiments of this new army
should be attached each to a particular locality, and a par-
ticular brigade, and the brigades again, to a particular
division. We should keep exactly as many generals
as we want to command these brigades and divisions, and
to do service at foreign stations, and no more. In the new
army rank should mean service ; and when a general was
past service he should retire on an adequate pension. We
must have no more unattached officers of any rank what-
soever, and no more half-pay, except for people who are
temporarily invalided. By amalgamating the militia and
the line, in the manner described, I do not hesitate to
say that you will improve both. And you will greatly
raise the standard of morality in the army. When
your young soldiers are all being worked hard at
learning their profession by officers who were not ashamed
to take an individual interest in each man ; when they all
look forward to return to citizen life in full time to marrY,
the Contagious Acts, about which we hear so much, will
go the way of the punishments of flogging and of brand:
ing. The instant abolition of purchase is most important
for the interest of regimental officers themselves. The
feeling about in the nation is such that if we
went to war, our first reverse (and we cannot
expect unbroken success) would bring the whole
system down with a run. Now, the well-known
operation of a war is to lower the price of commission
almost to nothing. After the Crimean War,
the interests involved might have been bought uP
for what was comparatively a song ; and it
deeply to be lamented that our statesmen were s°
shortsighted, and their military advisers so wedded to
what existed that the opportunity ,then afforded W
ay
allowed to pass by. If owing to the resistance of itscer •
military men (and, if the army was allowed to speak e
mind, they would not turn out to be as they now seem),
ce
question of purchase is deferred till the next war, offi,
will have most substantial reasons for regretting
they did not further the efforts that are now being naaue
for its extinction.

Fifty-five of the more than eight hundred wen
employed in the two establishments of the Gloucester
Waggon Company, at Gloucester, are now on strike.
The districts west and south-west of the metropolis
were visited on Tuesday morning, about eight o'clock
ct
.
with a violent hailstorm, accompanied by thunder O
of
lightning. Snow has since fallen in London, though n
in any considerable quantity.
A medal has been struck in commemoration of the
siege of Paris. It is deSigned exclusively for those
tipersonof
s
who have not deserted the capi
andring the me
danger. The medal is of bronze, bears on one side g's
d
group representing Paris driving back the enemy, an °as°
the other the words " French Republic." A space hi
been left in which each citizen can have his name inscribeu.
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