The speech was a lucid and forcible statement of the need for compulsory military training. It was interesting reading at the time it was delivered, and in some respects it is even more interesting to-day. It was compactly put together, not a thing of patches. A man who read any part of it would read it all. Yet in accordance with custom, controversy raged around three isolated passages.
The first of these runs as follows: "In the year 1912, our German friends, I am well aware, do not—at least in sensible circles—assert dogmatically that a war with Great Britain will take place this year or next; but in their heart of hearts they know, every man of them, that—just as in 1866 and just as in 1870—war will take place the instant the German forces by land and sea are, by their superiority at every point, as certain of victory as anything in human calculation can be made certain. Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck. That is the time-honoured policy of her Foreign Office. That was the policy relentlessly pursued by Bismarck and Moltke in 1866 and 1870. It has been her policy decade by decade since that date. It is her policy at the present hour."
The second passage followed upon the first: "It is an excellent policy. It is or should be the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history. Under that policy Germany has, within the last ten years, sprung, as at a bound, from one of the weakest of naval powers to the greatest naval power, save one, upon this globe."
The third passage came later: "Such, gentlemen, is the origin, and such the considerations which have fostered in me the growth of this conviction—the conviction that in some form of National Service is the only salvation of this Nation and this Empire. The Territorial Force is now an acknowledged failure—a failure in discipline, a failure in numbers, a failure in equipment, a failure in energy."[[1]]
The accuracy of the first and third of these statements now stands beyond need of proof. It was not truer that Germany would strike so soon as her rulers were of opinion that the propitious hour had struck, than it was that, when the British Government came to take stock of their resources at the outbreak of war, they would find the Territorial Army to be lacking in the numbers, equipment, training, and discipline, which alone could have fitted it for its appointed task—the defence of our shores against invasion. Slowly, and under great difficulties, and amid the gravest anxieties these defects had subsequently to be made good, hampering the while our military operations in the critical sphere.
The second statement was of a different character, and taken by itself, without reference to the context, lent itself readily to misconception as well as misconstruction. A certain number of critics, no doubt, actually believed, a still larger number affected to believe, that Lord Roberts was here advocating the creation of a British army, for the purpose of attacking Germany, without a shred of justification, and at the first favourable moment.
The whole tenor of this speech, however, from the first line to the last, made it abundantly clear that in Lord Roberts's opinion Britain could have neither motive nor object for attacking Germany; that the sole concern of England and of the British Empire with regard to Germany was, how we might defend our possessions and secure ourselves against her schemes of aggression.
POINTS OF CRITICISM
Lord Roberts, however, had in fact pronounced the intentions which he attributed to Germany to be 'an excellent policy,' and had thereby seemed to approve, and recommend for imitation, a system which was revolting to the conscience of a Christian community.