How fortunate for the country it was that time was given to Associations to find themselves may be judged from the growing tension between the West Riding Association and the War Office. Sir William Clegg, speaking from the Chair on February 7th, 1910, complained of ‘a kind of attempt on the part of the Army Council to treat the Association as a mere adjunct of the Army Council, and not as a free and independent body. If their deliberations and resolutions were to be treated in such a high-handed manner, he for one was not prepared to devote his time to the duties of the Association.’ A few months later, on the motion of Alderman F. M. Lupton, of Leeds, seconded by Mr. A. J. Hobson, of Sheffield, a resolution was passed urging His Majesty’s Government ‘to give further effect to their own policy of placing the Territorial army under the control of the County Associations, and to permit these Associations, without undue interference, to perform their duty of providing a properly equipped Force on the grants allotted to them.’ Relations became a little less strained after a personal interview between Lord Harewood and the Secretary of State, when a conciliatory reply was sent to the Association by the War Office. But in 1912 the situation had grown acute again, and Lord Harewood did not hesitate to describe it as a ‘tension which had existed for a long time between the Army Council and that Association, especially the Finance Committee of the Association.’ Sir William Clegg repeated his former protest, which was supported by Colonel Hughes and other members, while Lord Scarbrough referred to the case of the Association against the Army Council as, in fact, ‘unassailable.’ We shall not further recall the features of this dispute, which turned on a question of accountancy. It was not the details but the principle which mattered, and the principle which governed the deliberations of members of the West Riding Association was amply vindicated in their resolution, carried on July 1st, 1912:
‘That the Association welcomes the reply of the Secretary of State, as indicating complete satisfaction with the financial position of the Association, and notes with pleasure that, as a result of the protest made, there is now every reason to hope that the relations between the Army Council and the Association will be cordial and harmonious in future.’
So, the Association ‘found itself’ at last. But the reconciliation came too late to make a prosperous new beginning. If war had still been postponed, opportunity might have been given to build up the Territorial Force on more generous and sympathetic lines, as suggested in the scheme of the West Riding, and to repair the disappointment of Associations. But, though Sir William Clegg spoke of ‘a clean slate,’ and Lord Scarbrough wrote more hopefully to General Bethune,[7] there was no time to take advantage of the change. The long threatened war was upon them, and, meanwhile, they had to encounter what Mr. Asquith, in November, 1913, called ‘the abstraction, whatever Government is in power, who has the public purse under his immediate control.’ This ‘abstraction’ proved a very real obstruction.
CHAPTER II
THE WEST RIDING TROOPS
The civilian effort before the war to create a ‘people’s army’ under the provisions of the Territorial Force Act, was a fine national exploit, whether in the West Riding or elsewhere. Equally fine, if not finer, though no basis of comparison can be fixed, was the response of the men, including officers and other ranks, to whom the appeal was made.
It is essential to see this clearly. Parliament might pass the best Act which ever adorned the legislature. The Secretary of State for War and His Majesty’s other Ministers might use all the eloquence at their command to popularize the Act in the country. The Territorial Force Associations, which were called into being under the Act, might attract the best brains in every county to crown the scheme with success. Throughout the complex organization, avoidable mistakes might be avoided, unavoidable obstacles might be overcome, and a kind of conspiracy of good luck might have surrounded the enterprise from its initiation. And yet, in the ultimate resort, one first condition must be satisfied: the men must be willing to come forward. For the Act spoke, as we have seen, of a ‘reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces’; and no power on earth, certainly no political power in England, could organize a voluntary force which was unwilling. If the troops out of whom the Territorial army was to be made were not willing to enrol in that army, and to bring to it the loyalty and devotion which had characterized voluntary service in the past, legislation would prove a dead letter. With or without the conditions which we have enumerated above (and some were lacking, as we are aware) the primary factor was the personal one; conversely, if the heart of the nation was sound, no weakness in the Army Council or at the Treasury could wreck the scheme beyond repair.
Accordingly, it is useful at this point to look at events before the war from a different angle of vision. Men in high places, ‘dressed in a little, brief authority,’ have always this consolation, when they contemplate their shortcomings, whether within or without their own control, that the near view is fuller than the distant. If every Territorial soldier in the West Riding had been privy to Lord Harewood’s difficulties, if every unit awaiting a headquarters had been admitted to the heart-breaking negotiations which preceded each grant of an eighth of an acre of ground, if every recruit grumbling at his boots had known how many pairs of boots were included in General Mends’ requisitions, no progress at all would have been made with the raising of the Force or its equipment. But the men who were raised and equipped were spared these disappointments and dubieties. They took their troubles in single spies, not battalions; and the single troubles which they encountered—too much rain, too few blankets, insufficient transport, and so forth—were counted as part of a day’s work, not as items in a quarterly return. They did not multiply their grievances by the calculus familiar to an Association; and it is precisely this restricted point of view which is valuable as a contrast and a corrective to Associational experience. For the final triumph of the Territorial scheme, as proved in the searching test of war, was a triumph achieved by individuals within the limits of their personal capacity.
It is well to recapture the spirit in which this triumph was achieved; and, fortunately for that purpose, we can refer to a West Riding unit, whose records go back from its War Diary of 1914 to the date of its original inception in 1859. A happy feature of this possession, unique and valuable in itself, is that the unit in question became in the fulness of time the same 4th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment, whose transport left England for France first of the 49th Division[8]; and, with the added interest of that coincidence, its faded pages may be searched for evidence to the men’s point of view. It was Lord Haldane who wrote (December, 1908), in a passage referred to above[9]:
‘The abstract and dry language of Statutes and Army Orders may command our rational assent, but what Cardinal Newman was fond of speaking of as real assent it will never command unless it is interpreted in the light which the historical method throws on it.’