No time limit was laid down for the period of incubation in the Associations, and it is difficult to estimate what would have been our degree of unpreparedness if the accidents of European politics had allowed less than the six and a half years from 1908 to 1914.
A rough estimate can be formed, and it is worth computing in the present context, and in the security of peace after war, by reference to an open letter, dated February 26th, 1913, which was addressed by the Committee of the National Defence Association to Mr. Asquith, as President of the Committee of Imperial Defence.[5] The signatories included the Duke of Bedford, Lord Fortescue, Lord Glenconner, Lord Scarbrough and Sir Richard Temple (who were all connected with County Associations), Lord Lovat, Mr. Walter Long, Lord Methuen, Lord Peel, Sir Samuel Scott and other men of weight. While drawing attention to their consistent support of the Territorial Force scheme, they felt bound to point out ‘that neither the Territorial Associations, nor the Territorial Force have yet taken sufficiently deep root as national institutions.’ They stated ‘with the utmost emphasis’ that ‘no remedy involving extra financial assistance to the Territorial Force at the expense of the Navy or Regular Army would receive their support,’ but they did not conceal their conviction that, ‘if such a situation as existed in the autumn of 1911 recurred’, ‘the present training, equipment and numbers of the Territorial Force are inadequate for the task that would only too probably be laid upon it.’ ‘It has come to the knowledge of this Association,’ they remarked in another paragraph of the letter, ‘that a large proportion of Officers responsible for the training and administration of the Force now hold the view that it is incapable under present conditions of carrying out the duties allotted to it in any sudden emergency. We desire most strongly to support and emphasize this opinion.’
The warning was too grave to be ignored. The Territorial Act had been on trial for five years, and the war, which actually arrived in the summer of the following year, might break out at any moment.
Urgent action was taken, accordingly, by the Council of Territorial Associations, and it is particularly interesting to the present record to note that the basis of their action was a scheme submitted by the Earl of Scarbrough on behalf of the West Riding Association. After passing a strong resolution in April, 1913, pointing out the ‘continued inefficiency’ in the establishment of Territorial units, and even stating that the success of the Force on a voluntary basis could be achieved ‘only by a considerable improvement in the terms and conditions of service,’ they lost no time in circulating the West Riding scheme through other Associations. So, at the October meeting of the Central Council, when replies and comments had come in, they were ready to ask the Prime Minister to receive a deputation, with a view to considering the whole matter.
This important interview took place on November 26th, 1913. On the one side were Mr. Asquith and General Seely, then Secretary of State for War; on the other were Lord Dartmouth (Chairman), Lord Fortescue and Sir Hugh Shaw-Stewart, Bt. (Vice-Chairmen), and the following Members of the Council of the County Territorial Associations: Lord Scarbrough, Sir Richard Temple, Bt., Sir Hugh Bell, Bt., Lord Cheylesmore, Sir Edward Elles, Sir Arthur Anstice, Mr. Tonman Mosley, Lord Glenconner, Mr. Dalgleish, Mr. Adeane, Colonel Colvin, Colonel Lambert White, General Tyler, Lord Denbigh, General Mends, and the Secretary of the Council, Major Godman. The deputation represented eighty-one out of the ninety-four Associations, and was recognized by the Prime Minister as ‘authoritative.’
It is well to recall at this point the essential dates in the situation. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act ‘for the reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces’ became law in 1907. Early in 1908 the West Riding Territorial Force Association was brought into being under the Act, and set to work in a practical way to raise, clothe, train and otherwise prepare its troops for the day of mobilization. They had worked hard for six years, with the shadow of coming war across their path. Yet at the end of 1913, when the substance behind the shadow was apparent to all who knew, the chairman of the West Riding Association, one of the most populous County areas, administered by men of public spirit, and possessing in General Mends an untiring and a highly efficient secretary, came to the Prime Minister to say: Our proper establishment of troops is little more than 18,000; we fall short by 52 officers and 2,724 other ranks; and ‘that is roughly typical of the general shortage, which, with a few exceptions, exists throughout the Counties.’ The failure was deplorable: ‘It is the fact that the strength to-day is less than it was in the last year under the old Volunteer system.’ But even more deplorable was the danger: ‘In spite of all the efforts which have been made in these six years, it would appear that the high-water mark of voluntary effort in normal years and under present conditions falls greatly below the minimum laid down by the General Staff as necessary for National Defence’.
November 26th, 1913: This was the date of the interview, and it was too late then to remedy the scheme. The total shortage of 1,400 officers and 66,000 other ranks; the 40,000 members of the Force under nineteen years of age and ‘only fit to be in a Cadet corps’; the absence from the annual camp of 1,362 officers and 33,350 other ranks, including 37 officers and 6,019 men ‘absent without leave’: these facts and figures might be cured by personal allowances to officers, efficiency bounties to other ranks, income-tax relief to employers for each qualified Territorial officer or soldier in their employ, grants to Associations for social purposes and for the provision of boots, shirts and socks, and by the rest of the moderate, wise and carefully devised recommendations which the Council of County Associations felt bound to propose to the Government, as ‘the minimum improvement in the terms and conditions of service that we think would be effective in attracting the right class of men in sufficient numbers.’ Public apathy, official discouragement, and the burden of other calls on the Exchequer might be purged of their worst effects by thorough changes of this kind. Even the evils pointed out by Sir H. Shaw-Stewart, that, ‘owing to the exigencies of political combat, these same classes that I speak of (i.e., landowners and employers) are just now being held up to the public as parasites, oppressors and robbers of the poor,’ and that, ‘except for Lord Haldane and his successor at the War Office, not one Cabinet Minister has ever had a good word to say for the work we are doing or, indeed, for the system we are endeavouring to carry out,’ might at last prove capable of adjustment. But time was essential for such experiments, and the sands of time were running out. Mr. Asquith, indeed, in his reply to the deputation, affected to believe it all remediable. There were the proper compliments to ‘the value of the work that has been and is being done.’ There were other aspects of the numbers and the training, and certain ‘encouraging features’ to be dwelt upon. There was a general undertaking that the Council’s recommendations ‘will be not only considered, and not lightly dismissed, but considered in a thoroughly sympathetic spirit.’ There was the final valediction, as suave as it was impenetrable: ‘We shall endeavour to produce as great an impression as we can on the Chancellor of the Exchequer consistently with his other requirements to meet your legitimate demands.’[6] And the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated, June 28th, 1914.
These, briefly, are the facts on which an estimate may be formed of the degree of preparedness reached by the Territorial Force more than six years after it came into being. Very happily, as we said above, this period was thus protracted. The defects were serious enough, but, had the crisis come earlier, Associations would have missed what the evidence of results proved to be valuable, that varied experience of organization, that knowledge of their own weak points, that sense of contact with officers and men, as well in their civilian relations as in their military capacity, and, generally, that power, essential to the satisfactory working of ‘a highly complex structure o’ various an’ conflictin’ strains,’ which Mr. Kipling has illustrated in his story of The Ship that Found Herself. The consolation administered by the Prime Minister to the deputation of November, 1913, though a commonplace, or because it was a commonplace, was justified in the succeeding years of war:
‘While we do not say that the present organization is in all respects satisfactory, we do believe that it is based on sound lines, and, so long as the same spirit which has existed from the beginning continues to animate officers and men, that the Force will increase every year in efficiency and capacity for the special functions which are assigned to it in our scheme of defence.’
The vista of years was contracted to less than one, our ‘scheme of defence’ was unrecognizably extended, but the animating spirit did not fail.