"Full late the Allies are realising the extent to which they need merchant ships. For a period of two and a half years, owing to timidity of governors towards governed, the problem was evaded. Tonnage urgently required for necessities was employed not by us alone, but by France and Italy as well, for the transport of luxuries. Only very slowly did the British Government come to the conclusion that exports and imports had to be limited. Even to-day tonnage is being wasted. Unless experienced shipowners do not know their business, it is being wasted by the Admiralty Transport Department; it is not being employed to the best advantage by our Allies owing to defective organisation at the port terminals; its carrying capacity is being reduced in consequence of delays in turning round ships at the ports, due to a shortage of dockside labour. . . . "If this nation is to continue the struggle, it must be fed, and that means more ships, more labour in the fields, in order to increase the output of home-grown supplies, and more labour devoted to the maintenance of our export trade, so as to produce goods to exchange for food and credit. The nation is merely an aggregation of human beings, and as individuals must be supported in health and strength and solvency, so must the nation be supported. We are living in iron' times. The urgent need to-day is an organisation of the whole population for the purpose of the war and, in particular, we must use all our available man-power in order to strengthen our sea power, since if that fails all fails." Finally it was suggested, a year ago, that the country needed a carefully co-ordinated and energetic policy for the strengthening and utilisation of the merchant fleet : "1. More labour must be released for the shipyards and engine shops, which are at present seriously undermanned. (The reference was to skilled labour still retained in the Army.) "2. The resources of the associated establishments throughout the United Kingdom should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the State in order to prevent unsuitable ships being built. "3. The existing shipping should be controlled so as to ensure the greatest possible advantage accruing to the nation at large, and, in particular, further restrictions should be imposed on the import of all kinds of luxuries in order to set free more tonnage for necessaries. "4. All British and Allied merchant vessels should be given defensive armament, and those engaged in trade with British, Dominion and Allied ports should be commissioned and then-being men-of-war-the enemy would have no shadow of excuse for treating masters who fell into his hands as francs-tireurs. 5. Every encouragement should be given to neutrals to place their vessels at our service. "6. Measures should be taken without delay to increase the dockside labour in order to enable ships to be turned round rapidly. Workers could be imported, by arrangement with the Trade Unions, for specific ports." Those suggestions were made in January, 1917-twelve months ago. Some progress has been made in the regulation of shipping and in requisitioning neutral tonnage under the careful organisation of Sir Joseph Maclay, but what is the position in regard to the shipyards and engine shops? (1) The existing yards of the United Kingdom, which turned out (in addition to an abnormal number of men-of-war) nearly 2,000,000 tons of merchant shipping in 1913, are still short of labour and of material. (2) Only recently has permission been given for the construction of forty additional slipways and the lengthening of three existing slipways-that is, building berths; and applications are now being considered for the grant of facilities for the construction of seventy-four other slipways. (3) (a) In March last Earl Curzon stated, on the authority of the Shipping Controller, that the then existing yards could turn out 3,000,000 tons in a year if sufficient labour and material were provided by the Government. (b) Some months later the Prime Minister stated that in 1917, with tonnage acquired abroad, we should obtain 1,900,000 tons in 1917. (c) On November 1st the First Lord of the Admiralty suggested that the British output for the year would not be much more than 1,000,000 tons. (4) Instead of launching 3,000,000 tons in this country during the past year, about one-third of that amount will be put in the water; and the losses due to enemy action continue from week to week, reducing our capacity for sea carriage, for the depredations still exceed our output. The nation has apparently not yet realised that there is plenty of food to be had over the seas and that there are ample supplies of raw material for industry available if we possessed the necessary tonnage. But the truth will penetrate in time. Consider the revelation which will then come! The First Lord of the Admiralty admitted on November 1st last that "if we had continued during the war with our merchant shipbuilding on its pre-war level, we should to-day have been between two and three million tons to the good "-in spite of the depredations of the Emden and her consorts, in spite of the losses inflicted by enemy mines, and in spite of the sink-at-sight policy of German and Austrian submarines. We not only failed to maintain the efficiency of our merchant shipbuilding yards in the early months. of the war, but, even after it was apparent that the submarine was a grave menace to our every interest, the shortage of labour and of material continued, with the result that in the year which has just closed the output of shipping was about one-third what Lord Curzon led us in March last to hope it might eventually be. In face of a situation which will become critical during the next three or four months, labour and material are being employed in the creation of three "National Shipyards," on the Severn, which it is admitted cannot become productive for a year at least. It has been stated that this policy has been approved by the War Cabinet; but without estimates as to the cost involved, which is now put at nearly £4,000,000, and it is confessed that no decision has been reached as to the use which will be made of these establishments when peace at last comes. What we do know, however, is that at this moment of emergency the unrivalled resources of this country for making good the losses to shipping are not being utilised to the fullest extent; a critical situation at sea is developing, reacting on prices and wages; and so far there has been no indication of an awakening to the gravity of the position of an island kingdom, which is the nerve-centre of an Empire, the life-lines of which consist of ships. When the war opened this country possessed only 3,600 sea-going trading vessels -that is, vessels of 1,600 tons or over; about half those ships are needed for essential naval and military duties; and from the balance has to be deducted the net loss due to the submarine campaign, allowance being made for our restricted shipbuilding output. Napoleon, when he was spending the last days of his life at St. Helena, declared that "England can never be a Continental Power and in the attempt must be ruined. Let her maintain the Empire of the Seas and she may send her ambassadors to the courts of Europe and demand what she pleases." A hundred years ago we were not dependent on sea-borne supplies, as we are to-day, for four out of every five loaves that we eat and for most of the raw material of industry, and the submarine had not made its appearance. Every consideration suggests the urgency of the shipping problem. We in these islands live by ships, our armies are carried and maintained by ships, our munition movement is dependent upon ships, and without ships the British Empire cannot continue to exist. The shipping problem is a war problem, and it is also an after-war problem, for when peace at last comes the world will realise how nearly Germany's ambition has brought all the nations of the world to starvation point, and that the only hope of salvation of life during the approaching inevitable period of famine on the Continent rests in ships. ARCHIBALD HURD. THE EVOLUTION OF OUR ARMIES. IN the autumn of 1917 the armed strength of Great Britain reached the zenith of its power. Before war broke out our fighting men were numbered by thousands; now we reckon them by millions. In 1914 we had in these islands six organised divisions; now we have a number, which cannot be publicly stated, but which provide cadres for more than three millions of men. Up to August, 1914, there was no higher organised unit than the division; now divisions are collected in corps and armies. We are fighting with many armies on many fronts, and in the comparatively short period of three years Great Britain has risen to be a military Power of the first rank among the nations of the world. How has this come about, what are the guiding principles which govern the military organisation of the Empire, and by what methods has the evolution of our armies been accomplished? These are the questions which it is proposed to examine to-day. The examination must be brief, for it covers much ground, and space is limited. Salient facts only will be stated, and deductions drawn. Details will be put on one side. While politics, and unhappily party politics, must, and do, dovetail into war problems, it is not the purpose of this article to have anything to say of them. All the writer is concerned with are the questions set forth in the preceding paragraph, and to which the editor of the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW asks for answers. 'For forms of Government let fools contest, For a right understanding of the subject under review we must go back forty years to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, when Prussian victories turned our minds into military channels, and led the way to the first beginning of that organisation which has given us the mighty army we now possess. The key-note to the Prussian successes was a short-service peace army supplemented by reserves, and capable of almost unlimited automatic expansion in time of war. When the system reached maturity it produced a vast number of trained soldiers, who were organised in Territorial army corps, each of which was a little army in itself, selfsupporting and self-administered under the supervising direction of a General Staff composed of the best brains of the army, which Mr. Gladstone once described as "the most tremendous weapon the skill of man ever forged." In 1870 Mr. Gladstone's War Minister, Lord Cardwell, set about the task of remodelling the British Army on the lines of the Prussian system. The problem differed from that which von Moltke had successfully solved in that British garrisons had to be maintained in India and other foreign possessions, while the German Army was only organised for home defence. One of Lord Cardwell's first steps was to remove Imperial troops from the self-governing Dominions, and require their Governments to assume responsibility for local defence; but this still left the garrisons in India and other Crown Colonies, which could not be maintained at their established strength by a three-year system of short-service enlistment. What Lord Cardwell did was to introduce a modified system, under which recruits were enlisted for twelve years, six of which (afterwards increased to seven) were to be passed with the Colours, and the remainder in the Reserve. Other reforms included the abolition of purchase of commissions, the introduction of the Territorial system of regimental organisation, and the establishment of what was known as a "consolidated" War Office, in which command and administration were brought together under the directing hand of the Secretary of State for War. To form the Territorial regiments · existing battalions were joined together in couples, regimental numbers being abolished, and regiments known by their county designations. One of the linked battalions was always to be abroad, the other at home. Sixty-seven regimental districts were formed, each being the recruiting-ground of a Territorial regiment, which, in addition to its two Regular battalions, consisted of the county Militia and any Volunteer battalions which might be included in the regimental district. Depôts were formed in each district, and charged with the duty of providing annual drafts to make good the wastage in the battalions serving abroad. The above is a brief summary of Lord Cardwell's reforms, which were persistently opposed by the Duke of Cambridge and the senior officers of the Headquarters Staff, to whom the word reform was anathema. Fortunately for the success of his plans Lord Cardwell was able to count on the support of Lord Wolseley, who came to the War Office in 1871 as Assistant-Adjutant-General, and was the War Minister's main prop in carrying out the changes which he initiated. The Cardwell organisation was a good beginning, but nothing more. The United Kingdom was divided into twelve districts, each commanded by a General, whose responsibility was a nominal, not a real one. Administration was centralised at the War Office, which remained the source of all power and responsibility. No attempt was made to create a thinking department after the pattern of the German General Staff, the heads of the War Office carrying on their duties in water-tight |