The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-16 00:00:00

ARMY REFORM.

A meeting, called by theMayor,was held on Wednesday
evening in the Victoria Hall, Leeds, on the subject of
Army Reform. His`Worship presided, and Mr. Trevelyan,
M.P., Mr. S. Beaumont, M.P., Mr. Carter, M.P.,
-and other gentlemen spoke in support of resolutions,
declaring it absolutely necessary that there should be
a re-organisation, of the army ; that, as an essential
condition of an efficient scheme of reform, the sale
and purchase of commissions should be extinguished ;
and that the Commander-in-Chief, if the reorganisa-
tion of the army was to be accomplished, should
be an officer of administrative ability favourable
to the reform. A petition to Parliament embodying
these resolutions was passed, Mr. Baines being requested
to present, and Mr. Carter and Mr. Wheelhouse to sup-
port it. •_ _ _ _

Mr. Trevelyan, in the course of his .observations, said :
I ask in what condition is our army ? You may gene-
rally tell in what condition any institution is by the
amount of money that is spent on it, and by the result
that that money produces. What is the money we spend
on our army? Two years ago we spent £15,000,000 ; last
year we spent £14,000,000 ; this year we spent £13,000,000
that is to say on an average we have spent over
£14,000,000 a year. What do we get for these £14,000,000?
The full force of the army in England is 6,000 artillery-
men, and 11,000 cavalry mounted upon 6,000 or 7,000
horses—riding, I presume, like the Knights of St.
John, in the days when Knights were not ashamed to
appear two on a horse. There are also 57,000
infantry and 8,000 men of the reserve—in all
82,000 men. You must deduct at once 10,000,
who constitute the depots of the regiments, and are em-
ployed in drilling recruits for regiments that are quartered
abroad. From the 72,000 men that remain you must
deduct 10 per cent, for the ordinary consumption of
casualties in warfare—that is to say, for the newly-joined
recruits in the home regiments, for the sick, for the people
who are told off as orderlies, as officers' servants, as
clerks, and so on—leaving something like 65,000 men.
Now, we have done a great deal for Ireland in the
last two years, but the most sanguine Liberal who
believes that the Irish Church and the Irish Land
Acts were only two clauses of the same message of
peace will scarcely admit that we should require less
than 25,000 men to garrison Ireland, if we really had
a war to the knife with any first-class maritime
Power. And then if we put only 10,000 men aside for
the garrisons of those great fortresses of Portsmouth,
Plymouth, and Chatham, which contain material, and
guns, and equipments, we reduce the number of troops we
could place in the field to 40,000 men. That is to say, for
twice the sum paid for the whole Prussian army we could
put into the field one Prussian corps. I am aware, of
course, that we spend a certain sum of money upon the
Militia and the Volunteers ; but you must remember that
we are talking now of the men who are ready to meet the
enemy in the field, and the experience of this war has

proved one thing completely, and that is that no troops
are fit to meet the enemy in the field except they are
men who are thoroughly well drilled, who are well
equipped, and well armed, who have joined the service for
a certain time in peace, who are absolutely in the hands
of their officers, and whose officers are absolutely in the
hands of the military authorities. Now to none of these
conditions do the militia or the volunteers answer. As
has been truly, and with much force, said from this plat-
form, the volunteer officers are not men of pro-
fessional knowledge. Eighteen months ago Mr.
Cardwell, in moving the Army Estimates, said that the
first duty of the State ought to be to make every volun-
teer officer efficient whatsoever his social status—that is to
say, that men who were asked to command companies be-
cause they were popular members of Parliament, and men
who were asked to command regiments because they were
rich and benevolent men of business or country gentlemen
should be forced to shew proofs of real military efficiency,
or give up their commands. What was meant likewise
was, that officers should not be allowed to go on holding
commissions in the Militia, the Yeomanry-
teem- at Ins mtate promise has

simply been that the War Office has engaged to pay these
overworked Members of Parliament and men of business
50s; a y ear if they will make themselves • efficient. An
(IVerworked 'Member of Parliament would very much
sooner pay that 50s. ten times over than have to go through
his drill and get the amount of military knowledge which
would make him a good officer. With regard to the
Militia the case is different. The officers of the Militia
are very much better than many people give them credit
for. Their fault is—first, that there are not enough of
them ; the Militia is very much under-officered ; the
second fault is that they are of very unequal character.