VII.
The Government which had thus tardily followed Sir Charles Dilke's lead had lost the confidence of the country. The General Election of 1905 gave the Liberals a large majority. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Prime Minister, had not forgotten Dilke's vote in the cordite division of 1895, and did not share his view of the necessity to be ready for war, and to rely, not upon arbitration, but upon the organization of defensive preparations. Dilke was not included in the new Ministry, in which Mr. (now Lord) Haldane was appointed Secretary of State for War. Mr. Haldane undertook a fresh reorganization of the military forces of the country, taking the Committee of Defence and the Army Council as they were left by Mr. Balfour after the changes proposed by the Esher Committee. The Order in Council gave the Secretary of State the power to reserve for his own decision any matter whatever, and to impose that decision upon the Army Council, a power not contemplated by the Esher Committee's report. Mr. Haldane availed himself of this power and of the assistance of Colonel Ellison, who had been Secretary to the Esher Committee, but was not a member of the Army Council, to prepare his scheme. It consisted in the organization of an expeditionary force, which was to be composed of six divisions and a cavalry division, with a total field strength of 160,000 men, fully equipped for war, together with additional troops at home to make good the losses of a campaign. This force was to be made up of the regular army (of which the establishments were reduced by some 20,000 of all arms), of its reserve, and of the militia, renamed special reserve, also with a reduced establishment, and with a liability to serve abroad in case of war. The Volunteer force was to be renamed the Territorial force, and its officers and men to be brought under the Army Act, the men to be enlisted for a term of years and paid. It was to be organized, as the Norfolk Commission had suggested, into brigades and divisions. But the further suggestion of the same Commission, that a member of the Army Council familiar with the volunteer system should be charged with its supervision, was not adopted. Mr. Haldane's view was that the territorial troops could not in peace receive a training which would prepare them for war, but that, as England was not a Continental Power and was protected by her navy, there would be six months' time, after a war had begun, to give them a training for war. The force was to be administered by County Associations to be constituted for the purpose. The scheme was gradually elaborated, and in its later stage improved by the transformation of the University and some other volunteer and cadet corps into officers' training corps. The works which, at the suggestion of Sir John Ardagh, had been prepared for the defence of London were abandoned.
Mr. Haldane first expounded his plans in March, 1906, and in the debate of March 15th Dilke said:
"There was a little too much depreciation of the Volunteers; and although he had always been considered a strong supporter of the 'blue-water' view, yet he had always believed in accepting from the Volunteers all the service they could give, as he believed they would give an enormous potential supply of men."
Mr. Haldane explained (February 25th, 1907) that the expeditionary force would require only seventy-two batteries, while the army actually had a hundred and five; there was therefore a surplus of thirty-three batteries which he would use as training batteries in which to train men for divisional ammunition columns. Upon this Dilke's comment was that "if the officer difficulty could be solved, then the real military problem would be solved." We could raise men fast enough through the volunteer system, and turn them into good infantry, provided there was a sufficient supply of officers qualified to train them; but the infantry which could thus be produced in a few months would require to be supplemented by artillery and cavalry which could not be improvised. He would have faced the cost of keeping up these arms, and would not have saved by turning batteries into ammunition columns.
In the debate on Mr. Haldane's Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill (June 3rd), Dilke voted for an amendment of which the purpose was to establish a department at the War Office under an officer having special knowledge and experience with the militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, ranking as third member of the Army Council. This amendment, however, was not carried.
In an article in the Manchester Guardian of June 6th, 1907, Dilke explained his main objections to Mr. Haldane's scheme and to the Bill which was to lay its foundation.
"The cost," he wrote, "must undoubtedly be large, and it is difficult to see where the substantial saving on Army Estimates, twice promised by Mr. Ritchie when Chancellor of the Exchequer, but not yet secured, is to be obtained. As an advocate of a strong fleet, I have a special reason, equivalent to that of the most rigid economist, for insisting upon the reduction in our enormous military charge, inasmuch as the money unexpectedly needed for the army will come off the fleet."
Dilke thought that the defence of Great Britain depended upon the navy; that so long as the navy was equal to its task invasion was not to be feared. The function of the military forces would be to fight an enemy abroad. He, therefore, held it a mistake to increase expenditure on troops which it was not proposed to train to meet foreign regulars. The Territorial army would be the volunteers under a new name, but without an improved training. As the linked-battalion system and the long term of service were retained, the regular army would still be costly, and its reserves or power of quick expansion less than they might be. Mr. Haldane would be compelled to retain a high rate of War Office expenditure, and this would involve a reduction on the outlay for the navy, which was all-important. Mr. Haldane, however, had the support of a very large majority, and argument was of little avail. Sir Charles Dilke therefore threw his weight into the debates on the Navy estimates, in which he consistently supported the Admiralty in every increase.
Year after year he persevered in the effort to counteract the tendency to exaggerate the importance of military schemes and military expenditure, especially upon troops not fully trained and not kept ready for action abroad, and to point out that the effect of such schemes could not but be to reduce the amount of attention and of money devoted to the navy. In 1904 (March 1st) he had said:
"It was an extraordinary fact that, in all calculations on the subject of the expenditure of the army, the cost of the army outside the United Kingdom was never taken into account. We were spending vastly more upon the land services than we were upon our naval services, and so long as that was so he confessed that he should view with more than indulgence what was called the extravagant policy in regard to the navy."
In 1907 (March 5th) he expressed his disapproval of the sweeping change by which the defence of ports by submarine mines had been abolished. "Newcastle had been defended by means of an admirable system of submarine mines which had no equal in the world. So good was it that the volunteer submarine miners of the Tyne division were employed to do the laying of electric mines at Portsmouth and other naval ports. Newcastle was now without that defence." He explained that these mines, which had cost a million, had been sold. Had they fetched £50,000? He was not content with Mr. Haldane's account of the steps taken to prepare for defence against possible raid. On this subject, writing for the United Service Magazine of May, 1908, a paper entitled "Strong at all Points," which enforced his view of the supreme importance of the navy, he said:
"The provision for time of war, after complete mobilization of the Territorial army, may be perfect upon paper; but the real question is, how to obtain the manning of the quick-firing guns, say on the Tyne, in time of political complication, by trained men, who sleep by the guns and are able to use them when awakened suddenly in the dead of night."
In the discussion of the estimates of July 31st, 1907, he said that, "bearing in mind the enormous importance in naval matters of a steady policy, he should resist any reduction that might be moved." On the same occasion he pointed out that, "if there was any danger from Germany, it was not the danger of invasion or from the fleet, but it was her growing superiority in the scientific equipment of her people." Yet he declined to encourage panic, and in the debate of March 22nd, 1909, when the Opposition moved a vote of censure because of a supposed unforeseen start gained by Germany in shipbuilding, pointed out the reasons for not indulging in a scare.
Dilke closely watched the new developments in armament and construction, and from time to time pressed them upon the attention of the Government. As early as 1901, in an article reviewing the progress of war in the nineteenth century, he had said: "The greatest change in the battlefields of the future, as compared with those of a few years ago, will be found in the developments and increased strength of the artillery." In 1907, in the debate on the Navy estimates, he suggested that "the reserve of guns was a matter which needed the utmost diligence." Docks, he thought, were proportionately more important than battleships. In 1907 (April 25th) he said: "A base was needed east of Dover—Rosyth or Chatham: he need not suggest or criticize the spot that should be chosen. Whether the Hague Conference prohibited floating mines or not, they would be used; and that being so, they must contemplate either the extension of Chatham or the creation of an establishment at a different point of the east coast." To this subject he repeatedly returned. In 1908 (March 3rd): "The necessity for a large establishment in a safer place than the Channel had been raised for many years, and was fully recognized when Rosyth was brought before them. Both parties had shirked the expenditure which both declared necessary." On March 10th: "There were important works, docks and basins in which big ships could be accommodated, and these by universal admission should be made as rapidly as possible. Big ships were worse than useless if there was no dock or basin accommodation for them…. The limited instalment of one dock and one basin contemplated was only to be completed in eleven years. He believed that was bad economy…. The need for this expenditure had long been foreseen." Again, in 1909, on July 1st, he pointed out that the Governments of both parties had shirked the expenditure on Rosyth, of which the need had been known as early as 1902. The delay had been enormously grave. The report which contained the whole scheme had been presented to Parliament in January, 1902; the land had been bought in 1903, and the contract was made only in March, 1909.
Sir Charles's command of detail made his hearers apt to suppose that he was mainly concerned with technical matters. But no impression could be farther from the truth. Never for a moment did he lose sight of the large issues, and of the purpose to which all measures of naval and military preparation are directed. It was to the large issues that his last important Parliamentary speech on the subject of defence was directed.
"We talk a little," he said on March 7th, 1910, "about the possibility of invasion when we talk of our Territorial army, but we do not—the overwhelming majority of us—believe the country is open to invasion, or that the fleet has fallen off in its power of doing its duty as compared with days past…. No one of us who is prepared to pay his part, and to call upon others to pay their part, to keep the fleet up to the highest standard of efficiency and safety which we at present enjoy—no one of us ought to be prepared to run the Territorial army on this occasion as though it were the main and most costly portion of the estimates that are put before the House. The Territorial army is defensible as the Volunteers were defensible. It is an improvement on the volunteer system, and it might have been made without the statute on which it is based, but that it will add an enormous expenditure to our army is not the case. Our Territorial army, in fact, cannot be kept in view as the first object which we have to consider in the course of these debates…. It is supposed to be the one certain result of the last General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty…. If you put the doctrine of invasion so high, and if you tell them that in any degree their safety depends upon the Territorial army trained and serving here at home, then you run a great risk of compromising your naval defence and taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another, and of being weak at both points, and creating a Territorial army which could not face a great Continental force landed on our shores, and at the same time detracting from the power of your fleet…. The Territorial army, like the Volunteers, is really defended by most of us, in our hearts if not in our speech, as a reserve of the regular, expeditionary, offensive army for fighting across the seas…. My right hon. friend Mr. Haldane has always maintained the view that your army and army expenditure must depend upon policy. It is no good fighting him; he has both Houses of Parliament and both parties in his pocket. He is a man of legions political as well as military. The school represented by myself and the dominant school represented by him have differed, not upon the question of policy dictating your armaments, but upon the question of how your policy and your armaments together would work out."
Sir Charles Dilke's last utterance on defence was a review of Sir Cyprian Bridge's Sea-Power, and Other Studies, in July, 1910. It was a plea for reliance upon the navy to prevent invasion and upon a mobile military force for a counter-stroke. "I confess," Dilke ended, "that, as one interested in complete efficiency rather than especially in economy to the national purse, I join Sir Cyprian Bridge in asking to be shown, at least, the mobile, efficient, regular force ready for immediate service across the seas."
In the effort of a quarter of a century to have his country prepared for the struggle which was to come Dilke was associated with others, many of them conspicuous for knowledge and zeal; the services of Arnold-Forster, of John and Philip Colomb, and of Chesney, have been too little appreciated by their countrymen. Of their common endeavour Dilke was the chief exponent. At every stage of the movement his was its most characteristic and most comprehensive expression, marking the central line of thought. Some of the dominant ideas were his own. From him came the conception of defence as not merely national but imperial. He first pointed out the true function of the Prime Minister in relation to it. The actual development proceeded along the lines which he drew—a strong navy; a general staff at the War Office; a regular army of first-rate quality, that could be sent abroad at short notice, most likely for the defence of Belgium against attacks from Germany; expansion to be sought, in the first instance, from the numbers furnished by the volunteer system. There were points which he failed to carry—the provision of arms and ammunition for the multitude of soldiers who would be forthcoming from the Empire, as well as of that modern artillery which must play so great a part in a future campaign; the search for generals capable of command in war; the enforcement of the responsibility of Ministers for preparations neglected. What was accomplished and what was left undone give the measure of Sir Charles Dilke as the statesman of Imperial Defence.