I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state how many of the enemy have been taken prisoners since the commencement of the war in South Africa, how many have been released on parole or otherwise, and how many are now in our hands as prisoners of war.

Up to the 9th February the total number of the enemy taken prisoners was 16,082; of these 447 are on parole, and 293 have died.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can now inform the House as to the number and situation of the camps of concentration in South Africa, both in the Colonies and the two late Republics, the number of the men, women, and children in each camp, and the actual nature of the shelter provided; whether medical attendance is provided, particularly for the women and children; and whether relatives and others desiring to mitigate the; situation of those confined in these camps are allowed reasonable access to them.

I am afraid I have no information to add to that which I have already given to the hon. Member. I do not think the hon. Member need be under any anxiety about these people. [Mr. ELLIS rose, but resumed his seat amid Ministerial cries of "Order."] Lord Kitohener telegraphed to me that he himself has gone into the question and finds that the people in the laagers are all contented and comfortable, and we must rely on his assurance.

I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I meant no discourtesy by my interruption, but allow me to say I asked him for facts, not for opinions.

"A stream of facts."

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what were the specific appointments made by Lord Roberts to posts of a civil nature in the Transvaal, and what were the terms of such appointments in respect of duration and remuneration; whether the persons in question have either discharged any of the duties of their posts or received any remuneration; and, in the latter case, against whom it has been charged.

There is no information at the War Office which would enable me to give the hon. Member a list of the civil appointments in question. Any such appointments made by Lord Roberts were temporary and terminable when the military administration gives place to civil government. The persons so appointed have, I believe, discharged their duties and received their remuneration. Any expenses of administration which cannot be defrayed from local revenues are provisionally borne by Army funds.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it has been officially decided that members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade who have served in South Africa are not entitled to the war gratuity that was by a recent Order awarded to all classes of troops engaged in the war; and whether, seeing that the members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade have been working with the Royal Army Medical Corps, doing the same duties and bearing the same risks and hardships, and also seeing that fifty out of the 1,900 members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade serving in South Africa have died in the execution of their duty, he will reconsider this decision.

The answer to the first paragraph of the question is in the affirmative. The war gratuity is a military gratuity, originally intended as a substitute for prize-money, and is not applicable to civilians employed on specific terms during the war. I may remind the hon. Member that members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade are paid at considerably higher rates than the corresponding ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

I beg I to ask the Secretary of State for War if he will state the amount of soldiers unclaimed balances for the past year, and what portion of these has been: handed over to the Patriotic Fund Commissioners.

Unclaimed balances are advertised for six years before they are transferred to the Patriotic Fund. As the balances of any one year are kept in hand for two years I before the account is closed, and the balance is invested, it is not possible to state the amount of unclaimed balances for the past year.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in the case of wounded soldiers whoso small kit has been lost in the field or left behind at Cape Town according to instructions, on their reporting themselves fit for duty a new set of small kit is supplied to them but is deducted from their pay; if so, I can he state whether the deduction is made in accordance with an Army Order, and will lie consider the advisability of cancelling such order.

Attention was called to this matter. I have had the regulations amended so that a soldier's necessaries lost, prematurely worn out, or damaged, on active service are replaced at public expense. Instructions were issued to this effect some little time ago.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that Private Woolley, a Reserve man, formerly of the Royal Horse Artillery, now resident at Leicester, who was invalided home from South Africa, and is certified by the military medical authorities to be practically blind, very helpless, mentally dull, subject to fits, and needing constant care and attention, has been granted a temporary pension of 1s. per day for twelve months; and whether that is in accordance with the practice of the War Office in such cases.

Woolley has been awarded a pension of 1s. a day for twelve, months in the first instance by the Chelsea Commissioners. At the end of that period he will be re-examined and his case reconsidered. His character while with the Colours was indifferent. He is stated to have been addicted to drink, and was frequently reported for other offences. While in the Reserve he was three times convicted by the Civil power for drunkenness and assault. As there is no evidence that Woolley's disability is the result of military service, the pension in question is the highest that can be awarded.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it has been brought to his notice that a certain number of Crimean and Indian Mutiny veterans serving as messengers in the War Office were recently retired at sixty instead of sixty-five years of age, the Treasury age limit, limit still applicable to messengers in their Government offices; and whether, seeing that these men are now reduced to their Army pension of a few pence a day, he will consider the advisability of granting them some small increase of pension to keep them from penury in their declining years.

The case of these men has been explained to the House on a previous occasion. In the War Office it is essential that the messengers should be active and able-bodied. It was accordingly found necessary to fix the age for retirement of temporary messengers at sixty. All such men who have fifteen years service as such receive a gratuity on discharge in addition to the Army pension of which they may be in receipt. I am afraid that it is not possible to do anything more for them as suggested.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will explain why certain officers, who have been lent to the Home Government for service in the China Expedition, should draw less pay and allowances when in China than they did while on service in India.

Officers of the Indian Staff Corps continue to draw Indian rates of pay while serving in China, Officers of the British Army leaving India would naturally revert to British rates of pay and China allowances, and these might be less than Indian rates.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if there are any objections to coast guardmen reporting illegal trawling to the nearest fishery officer.

The coastguards are directed by their instructions to report to the nearest fishery officer any breach of the Fishery Laws which may come under their notice in the ordinary course of their duty.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he intends, in accordance with the precedent of 1896, to appoint Commissioners to visit and report upon the University Colleges receiving grants from the State before any fresh allocations of the grants in 1902; and, if so, whether he can say when and by whom such visitations will he made.

Yes, Sir. Dr. H. G. Woods, formerly President of Trinity College, Oxford, and Dr. Alexander Hill, Master of Downing College, Cambridge, have consented to serve as Commissioners. Arrangements for the visitation are now being made, and it will begin at an early date.

I presume the officials and those interested in the conduct of the colleges will have an opportunity of stating their case.

Certainly.

Will the visitations be extended to other colleges of a similar nature, which have not yet-received the grants?

said that any college doing what was properly university work would be included in the inquiry. If any college which had not received any grant sent in an application from which it appeared that it came within the rule he would consider it.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the widespread condemnation of the portrait of Queen Victoria on the coinage first used in 1887, he has satisfied himself that the designing of the new coinage has been entrusted to the best possible artistic workmanship; and, if not, whether he will order designs from such a source, or else consider the advisability of retaining the present designs on the reverse side of the new coins.

The task of designing the effigy of His Majesty on the new coinage has been entrusted to Mr. De Saulles, the engraver to the Mint. I think the coinage of 1887 is a warning against entrusting this work to an artist unaccustomed to coinage and engraving. The whole question of the designs for the new coinage is receiving my careful attention. I do not, as at present advised, think that it will be found desirable to introduce many changes in the present designs on the reverses.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he can say at what date he expects to be able to circulate the Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops.

I am afraid I cannot fix a date; but the Chief Inspector assures me that lie is making every effort to get his Report out as early as possible.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the death of George Benton, which took place on 1st February at Messrs. Hooton's factory, Nottingham; and will he inquire whether this factory was erected before or after 1st January, 1896, and whether, in view of the nature of the accident, he will consider the advisability of applying the provisions of Section 9 of the Factory and Workshop Act, 1895, to all factories containing self-acting machines irrespective, of the date of the erection of such factories.

I have made inquiries about this accident, and find that the factory and the machine that caused the accident were erected long before 1896. The suggestion of the hon. Member was considered and found to be impracticable in 1895; and I do not think that the House would be likely to accept it new. Moreover, it would not, so far as I can see, have prevented the accident in question. Fencing will, however, be erected which should prevent the possibility of a similar accident in future from this particular machine.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the extra allowance recently conceded to married constables of the Metropolitan police to meet the high rent payable in the Metropolis will be extended to the Metropolitan police serving in the Government establishments at Devonport, where house rent is as high, and the men are obliged by the regulations to live within ten minutes walk of their place of duty.

No, Sir; the case of the Metropolitan police in the dockyards at Devonport was considered when the whole matter was before me, but the conditions under which they serve there are very different from those prevailing in London. There is no regulation requiring them to live within ten minutes walk of their place of duty.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has been called to the unanimous resolution passed by the Carmarthenshire Chamber of Agriculture as to the necessity of a Bill being passed to secure purity in beer, by laying down therein the ingredients of which beer may be composed, and the compelling of brewers at regular intervals to make a return of beer brewed and ingredients used; and, if so, whether he can assure the House of his intention to introduce promptly a Bill carrying out the purport of this resolution.

I have seen a copy of the resolution referred to, but the matter is not one which concerns the Board of Trade.

I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education if he will confer with the Treasury as to the possibility of removing the 17s. 6d. limit from the Evening Schools Code, and also as to providing a specific grant for physical instruction in evening continuation schools.

The Board of Education cannot undertake to make an application to the Treasury for the removal of the 17s. 6d. limit from the Evening Schools Code. A grant is already made for physical instruction.

I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Oriental collection of His Royal Highness the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg has been lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum; and, if so, what is proposed to be done with it, and whether it is intended to lend it for a time to the Bethnal Green Museum for exhibition.

The Oriental collection of the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, consisting of Indian arms, Chinese porcelain, and other objects of art, has been lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It will be exhibited during the summer in the Indian Section of the Museum, and afterwards in the Bethnal Green Museum.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether a Belgian company has secured a lease of a large area of Crown land at Llanelly noted for containing coal of a highly bituminous nature which is indispensable for the manufacture of steel, a staple industry of that district, the company intending to employ Belgian workmen and to ship the coal to Belgium; and, if so, whether he can inform the House if the covenants of the lease have been broken so as to enable him to cancel it, even if it be a sub-let, or if he can adopt some action which will prevent the steel manufacturers of Llanelly from being deprived of coal necessary for their manufacturing purposes, and British colliers from losing employment; and, in the event of the Crown Commissioner for Woods and Forests not being able to cancel the lease, whether, in the interests of British traders and British workmen, he can assure the House that in the future no Crown land will be sub-let or let to any foreign company.

The bulk of this area of Crown coal was let to some gentlemen at Llanelly in 1896 for a term of twenty-one years. They never succeeded in raising sufficient capital in Wales or England to work it properly, although they made great efforts to do so, and it consequently remained unworked. Recently an arrangement was come to by them with a Belgian gentleman who was willing to provide the necessary capital, and he has taken an assignment of the lease. The Commissioner of Woods has agreed to grant him a new lease for an extended term when he shall have sunk certain deep shafts. This agreement cannot be cancelled by the Commissioner. I cannot give an absolute promise of the nature suggested in the last paragraph, but such cases are not, I hope, likely to recur, and British subjects will, other things being equal, always be accepted as tenants in preference to foreigners or foreign companies.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, having regard to the negotiations now proceeding between the French and English postal authorities for improving the London and Paris mail services, the Postmaster General will direct the attention of the French postal authorities to the practical advantages business firms and correspondents generally in France and Great Britain—more especially in the provinces—would derive if the morning mail were started from London and Paris at 7.30 or 8 a.m. instead of at 9 a.m.

The question of an earlier departure of the day mail between London and Paris in both directions has already been fully discussed between the British and French Post Offices; and it is found that the change would in each case be attended by drawbacks of a serious nature. The hon. Member may, however, like to know that, as a result of a recent conference, the French authorities have, at the instance of the Postmaster General, made special arrangements for accelerating the arrival in Paris of letters sent from London by the day service in order that they may be distributed by an earlier delivery than heretofore.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the number of acres of land purchased by the Congested Districts Board in Ireland since the 1st April, 1900; the aggregate sum of purchase money paid; the average number of years purchase given; and the counties within which the transfer of property took place.

Since the date mentioned, the Board has purchased 5,711 acres in the counties of Donegal, Mayo, and Galway for the sum of £13,480, including landlords' and tenants' interests. In some cases the lands purchased were untenanted, in some tenanted, and in others partly tenanted; the number of years purchase cannot, therefore, be computed. In some cases the lands were subject to head rents, quit rents, and tithe rent charges, and in others they were free of all rents or charges whatsoever; and the latter, of course, commanded a higher price than the former. The Board is negotiating for the purchase of other estates comprising 13,390 acres.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Police-sergeant Sheridan and Constable Mahony, of Mullough police station, have been dismissed the service for placing boycotting notices in the pocket of a man named Ryan and subsequently arresting him; and what steps do His Majesty's Government propose to take to safeguard the public against such practices on the part of the police.

Sergeant Sheridan and Constable Mahony arrested on the 1st January, at Mullough, county Clare, a man named John Ryan, alleging that they had observed him in the act of posting a threatening notice, and that subsequently they had discovered two other threatening notices in his pockets. He was brought before the resident magistrate at Miltown Malbay on the following morning and remanded from time to time until the 26th January, when he was discharged from custody on the ground that the evidence would not have secured a conviction. No other course could properly have been taken when the evidence brought forward was, in the opinion of the Crown, untrustworthy. These police officers were not discharged for placing the notices in the man's pocket. They were discharged for supporting a charge by evidence of a character so unsatisfactory and conflicting as to render their further retention in the force undesirable in the interests of the public.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that in the Local Government Act for Ireland there is no provision to compel the users of traction engines to pay for excessive wear of public roads; and that the use of these engines has made the iron ore road, 650 perches in length, between Glenarm and Ballymena, almost impassable, and has increased the cost to the ratepayers by over £800 per annum for maintenance above the sum required before the mineral traffic began in 1870; and whether he will take steps to relieve the inhabitants of the districts of this tax by assimilating the law in this respect with that of England—namely, the Act of 1878—so that damages may be recovered in Ireland by the local authorities in regard to excessive wear on highways.

Under Section 23 of the Highways and Locomotives Act, 1878, as amended by Section 12 of the Locomotives Act, 1898, damages can be recovered by the local authority in England in respect of excessive wear on high- ways by reason of extraordinary traffic. These enactments do not apply to Ireland but I will consider the question of assimilating the law in this respect in both countries. I may add that, without further inquiry than I have been able to give to the matter, I cannot say how far the words "extraordinary traffic" apply to traffic conducted otherwise than by traction engines.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that, at the quarterly meeting of the Wicklow County Council on 25th February, the secretary reported that, although he had his calculations ready as far as possible for the estimates for the ensuing financial year, he was unable to complete them owing to the failure of the Valuation Office to forward him the revised valuations of the urban districts, and the total for the county, and informing him they would not be ready before the 1st March, although the Order in Council requires the estimate to be adopted by the county council by the 1st March; that he then communicated with the Local Government Board, and did not receive a reply until the 25th ultimo, stating that he could act on last year's valuation, but that the secretary reported this would be a dangerous experiment owing to the opposition, of some urban councils to the demands of the county council, and that in any case the letter from the Local Government Board was received too late to enable him to complete his estimate; and that the county council adjourned without adopting the estimate for the ensuing year; whether the Local Government Board will take the necessary steps to legalise the action of the county council when they adopt their estimate after 1st March, as they have been precluded from doing so within the time limited by the Order in Council owing to the failure of the Valuation Office in furnishing the necessary report in time; and whether the Government will take steps to increase the staff of the Valuation Office, so as to enable it to supply to county councils in Ireland information required by them in sufficient time to enable them to proceed with their business in a regular manner.

The facts are substantially as stated in the first paragraph of the question, but the county council received the revised valuation lists for all the rural districts on the 1st of February. There are two urban districts in the county, and the charge in the valuation of these only amounted to a sum of £220, so that there was really no valid reason why the estimate should not have been completed in Wicklow, as in other counties, with all necessary accuracy. The Local Government Board are not in any way in default, but as there has been some misunderstanding it will be prepared to extend the time for making the estimate in county Wicklow, so as to get over the difficulty. No increase is necessary in the staff of the Valuation Office.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state on what grounds the application for a cottage by a labourer, named Dwyer, of Rosheg, East Division of Kilpatrick, Cashel Union, county of Tipperary, was twice rejected by the Local Government Board, the house of applicant having been certified by the Medical Sanitary Officer as being unfit to shelter cattle; whether he is aware that a petition signed by the Roman Catholic and Protestant clergymen of the parish, and all the ratepayers, was forwarded to the Local Government Board to reconsider the rejection, and its prayer refused; and whether he will now take steps to have this application reconsidered.

The proposal was rejected in 1893 because Mary Dywer acknowledged that she was not an agricultural labourer. It was again rejected in 1899 because two cottages, erected in the vicinity for agricultural labourers, were occupied by a shoemaker and a blacksmith, contrary to the provisions of the Labourers Act of 1883. If this state of things still exists it does not appear that a different decision could now be arrived at.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the requisites for the new programme in Irish national schools are yet ready; will the Education Office make a free grant of those requisites to all schools; are the requisites manufactured in Ireland; and has any one person or company a monopoly in supplying those requisites.

All the requisites needed in connection with the revised programme can be ordered by managers of schools through the Commissioners' stores in Dublin. It is the intention of the Commissioners to make equipment grants of the requisites required for hand and eye training and elementary science instruction to the most necessitous of the national schools. Some of the requisites are manufactured in Ireland, and some are not. The answer to the second paragraph is in the negative.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state the number of emigrants who left Ireland from the 1st January, 1901, to the 31st December of the same year, and how many of the total left the province of Connaught.

The year 1901 is clearly a misprint for 1900. The number of emigrants from Ireland in the past year was 45,288, of whom 14,060 were from the province of Connaught.

May I ask whether that total is larger than the total for 1899, and the total for the year 1899 larger than that for the year 1898?

I believe the hon. Member is correct. The total for the past year is higher than the total for the previous four years, and lower than for several years prior to 1896.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that charges made by Dr. Bolster, Tinahely, against Nurse Joyce, an employee of the Shillelagh Union, were investigated by the guardians of that union, and dismissed as unfounded; will he explain why the Local Government Board, overriding the decision of the guardians, ordered a new inquiry to be held by their own inspector, Dr. Flinn; also, why the latter, after making arrangements to hold the inquiry in the Tinahely Courthouse, subsequently, without explanation to witnesses and other persons concerned, held the inquiry in Shillelagh; whether Dr. Flinn called for a list of witnesses on behalf of the accuser and accused, and also summoned Dr. Bolster's witnesses; and, if so, why did he not summon Nurse Joyce's witnesses; and whether he is aware that notwithstanding Dr. Flinn's statement to some of the guardians that there was nothing in Dr. Bolster s charges, he (Dr. Flinn) has given judgment against Nurse Joyce; and whether in view of Dr. Flinn s procedure towards Mrs. Joyce, he will order Dr. Flinn s decision to be reconsidered, and direct a new inquiry to be held.

The charges preferred by Dr. Bolster against Nurse Joyce were investigated and dismissed by the guardians. In view of the gravity of the charges the Local Government Board ordered a sworn inquiry to be held by its inspector, Dr. Flinn. The inquiry was held at Shillelagh, the usual and most convenient place. All the witnesses on both sides whose evidence was likely to be material were summoned, and attended. Dr. Flinn did not state that there was nothing in the charges against the nurse. The decision was arrived at by the Board, not by Dr. Flinn, whose duty was simply to obtain evidence. It does not appear that any further inquiry is called for.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, having regard to the fact that the Shillelagh Guardians have investigated charges against Dr. Bolster of neglect and indifference towards patients holding union tickets for his attendance on them, and have declared the charges sufficiently' established to demand inquiry, will he see that the inquiry into Dr. Bolster's conduct is held as soon as convenient.

The Local Government Board has called upon Dr. Bolster for his observations on the charges preferred against him; upon receipt of his reply the question of holding a sworn inquiry will be considered.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the constitution of the petty sessions bench at Gortin, in North Tyrone, which consists almost exclusively of Protestant magistrates, though the majority of the population of the district are Roman Catholics; and is he aware of the dissatisfaction existing in consequence among the Roman Catholic population; and, if so, would he be pleased to call the attention of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in whom lies the sole power of appointing to the Irish magistracy, to this state of affairs, with a view to redressing the grievance.

My attention has not been directed to the religious composition of the Justices in attendance at Gortin Petty Sessions; but I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statements. In answer to the second paragraph, the right hon. Gentleman must be aware that recommendations for appointments to the Commission of the Peace in this, as in other districts, should be made to the Lieutenant of the County, who will submit them, if suitable, for the consideration of the Lord Chancellor. It is not within my province to intervene in the matter of these appointments as suggested, but I will forward to the Lord Chancellor, for his information, a copy of the question and of my answer to it.

May I ask, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Lord Chancellors have conferred the commission of the peace quite irrespective of any recommendations from the Lieutenant of the County, and that it was done in many cases by the late Lord Chancellor Walker?

I am not aware of that. It is not the practice which is being followed.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in view of the refusal of the Congested Districts Board to an application from the Ballydehob district (county Cork) for one of the board's stallions suitable to the district, he will now take steps for the favourable reconsideration of this request.

The allocation of the Boards stallions has been made after full and careful consideration of the circumstances of each district, and the Board regrets that it is unable to send a stallion to Ballydehob this season.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that letters for Clogherhead, county Louth, are despatched from the Drogheda Post Office a short time before the arrival of the limited mail; that, consequently, all letters from England, Scotland, and abroad for Clogerhead lie in Drogheda or Termonfeckin for twenty-three hours before reaching their destination, which causes inconvenience to the families of Clogherhead fishermen, many of whom are absent from home at the Scotch fisheries during the season and send home part of their earnings for their families, and deprives the farmers there of the means of prompt information as to the sales of their cattle and sheep consigned to Liverpool and Salford; and whether this delay could be obviated by causing the postal messenger from Termonfeckin, who delivers letters within a half mile of Clogherhead, to go direct and deposit letters for that office, and make the few house to house deliveries required on his way back to Termonfeckin.

The Postmaster General will consider whether a second post can be provided in the way suggested by the hon. Member, who shall be informed of the result.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Return, Local Government Act (Ireland) Electoral Areas, moved for on 2nd August last, and ordered to be printed on 15th February, will be soon ready for distribution.

The Return, which is a very voluminous one, will, I hope, be ready for distribution in the course of the next fortnight.

I bag to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that an assessment of income tax has been made on interest received by the Meath County Council on credit balances in the hands of its county treasurer, pursuant to Section 2 of the County Treasurers Act, 1867; and that this income is applied by the county council to the relief of the destitute poor in lieu of poor rates; and whether he will direct the Commissioners of Income Tax to cancel this assessment.

Inquiry is being made into the circumstances of this case. Assuming, however, that the facts are as stated, the proper course for the Meath County Council to adopt, if they were dissatisfied with the assessment, was to appeal against it to the Commissioners for Special Purposes, from whose decision a further appeal lies to the county court judge. If the county council have failed to give notice of appeal within the time prescribed by law, it will not now be possible to alter the assessment for the current year. But it is not in my power to give the directions suggested in this question.

The question is, are they liable to pay income tax on this interest which they receive on their credit balances, and which, is applied to the relief of the poor? Is money applied to the relief of the poor liable to income tax?

I should be rather surprised if it is so, but it is a legal question, and it is impossible for me to reply to it.

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, as chairman of the county council, that it is so.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if his attention has been directed to the office accommodation at Clones, where, with a mixed staff, there is an entire absence of sanitary arrangements and no provision for heating; and will he undertake to give the matter consideration, with a view to improved arrangements for the public and the staff.

The post office at Clones is located at present, as it has been for many years past, in a shop, half of which is used for the purposes of a private business. The accommodation is admittedly inadequate, but it is the best that could be obtained. A site for a new Crown post office is in course of acquisition, and plans are being prepared for a new building, which it is hoped will be commenced during the present year.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if he is aware that a sorting clerk and telegraphist at Clones, who is only in receipt of 18s. per week, was recently refused payment of medical expenses incurred by him during illness, on the ground that the Department did not at that office provide gratuitous medical attention; whether inquiry will be made with a view to the sum claimed being paid; and if he will state what are the conditions requisite to claim free medical attention.

It is the case that a sorting clerk and telegraphist at Clones who was absent on sick leave was informed that his medical expenses could not be paid by the Department. It is only at offices to which a medical officer is attached that Post Office servants, whose pay does not exceed £150 a year, are entitled to free medical attendance; and Clones is not one of these offices.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, as Irish is taught in national and intermediate schools in Ireland, spoken and written by a portion of the population, the Post Office authorities in Ireland will take steps, by the appointment of competent officials, for the delivery of letters addressed in Irish.

No inconvenience has been found to arise from ignorance of the Irish language on the part of officers of the Post Office employed in Ireland, and it is not thought necessary to take any special steps to ensure that such knowledge shall be possessed by them.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he proposes to take action with reference to the powers of Metropolitan borough councils to oppose Bills in Parliament, having regard to the fact that Section 6, subsection 6, of the London Government Act, 1899, is practically inoperative in the Metropolis in consequence of the provisions of the Borough Funds Act, 1872, having to be observed.

The sub-section referred to in the question places the councils of metropolitan boroughs in the same position with regard to opposing Bills in Parliament as the councils of boroughs outside London. Some amendment of the Borough Funds Act generally is, I think, desirable. I could not undertake to propose legislation for this purpose at the present time; but my hon. friend the Member for South Islington has now before the House a Bill on the subject, and I should hope that he may be able to make progress with it.

I rise to make a motion which has never before been made by a Minister in this House, and I trust will never require to be made again—namely, that you, Mr. Speaker, do now leave the chair in order to consider Army Estimates amounting to close upon eighty-eight millions of money. It is just five years since I rose from this bench and in some degree apologised to the House for introducing Estimates to the extent of £18,000,000 in a time of profound peace. The progress of events has singularly dwarfed the Estimates which were presented in 1896. In 1898 it was my duty to ask for £19,250,000, with a further liability, which appeared on the Estimates of 1899, that brought them up to £20,500,000. In 1900 my right hon. friend the present Chief Secretary for Ireland moved for Estimates which, at the then rate and with the addition as to men, raised the £20,500,000 to £25,500,000. I have now to submit to the House Estimates for the year, apart from the war in South Africa, but including provision for reserves of stores which will not accrue for the next three or four years, amounting for the normal Estimates alone to £29,685,000. I propose to-night to devote myself mainly to a consideration of the normal Estimates. As regards these larger figures the House of Commons has almost become inured to them. They would have been regarded some years ago with perturbation; they are now accepted almost, I think, with relief, because they tend to show that we are taking steps which must lead to nearing the termination of the war. And even in respect of these large figures the House of Commons has been, in my judgment, corrupted and debauched by the graceful oratory of my right hon. friend the Chief Secretary, for he succeeded in so veiling his proposals last year that, although lie was making such great demands, he managed to preserve an appearance of moderation, and even of abstemiousness, which caused many Members as they left the House, when they heard him move for £50,000,000, to express their regret that he had not gone as far as £75,000,000. To-night I believe I shall best be consulting the interests of the House by dropping, except for a very few words, allusion to the War Estimates. We have had long discussions upon them, and I do not propose either to vindicate the policy of the war or to prophesy as to its duration. All I would say is that what we, have taken as the cost of the war is what we regard as being the full sum that we are likely to have to ask from the House of Commons. In taking so large a figure it is an earnest of our intention to pursue the war at all costs to a conclusion. We are sending out the reinforcements which we believe are necessary to that end. We have stinted the generals on the spot in nothing. On the other hand, though our demands are so large, and though our intention is absolutely determined as to the pursuance of the war, there are no Members of the House who will be as glad as the Members on this bench when it is possible to relieve the country of the cost of the war, and of all the Members on this bench there is none who will more gladly than the Minister who is now addressing the House welcome its termination. If I may take it that the House agrees with me that we may devote ourselves more to the large and, I admit, increasing cost of our normal military establishment, I propose to leave altogether aside the stale controversies with regard to the war—as to its conduct, as to who began it—and to go to the root of the matter with regard to the future organisation of our Army. I want to ask the House to consider what our Army is organised for. Is it in strength and character capable of fulfilling its proper functions? Are, we to pull down the existing system and build it up anew, or can we found on the existing system what is necessary to secure our home defence and our foreign obligations? We can do that to-night calmly and with out any degree of panic. But I would like to remind the House that this is not the first time that this House has been invited to consider the system of its Army. During the last century there were three occasions on which the whole Army system of the country was brought under consideration. The first was after the Great War, in which it took us years to provide the Duke of Wellington in the, Peninsula with the force which was necessary even to hold his own in a defensive position against the great force which was arrayed against him; and ultimately, I think, the extreme amount of the efforts of many years and of immense expenditure was that we were able to find him 65,000 men. But after that experience, when a partial disarmament began in 1814, we had profited by our experience so badly that in 1815, although there were something like 210,000 troops voted for that year, with the most supreme effort we were not able to provide the Duke of Wellington with more than 40,000 men in Flanders. As every one knows, this country, like other countries, went to sleep for forty years afterwards in military matters, and our organisation became so rusty in the later years of the Duke of Wellington that in the Crimea we were found deficient in everything that was needed to make an army except the bravery of our troops. We had not enough men; we had not enough horses; we had no commissariat and supplies; our officers were untrained, and our generals were inexperienced. Even after that experience, we took so little heed of our position that there was no time during the last century in which the British Army was weaker than between 1860and 1870. It was not only the army in this country that was insufficient, but the army which, after the Indian Mutiny, and after the great awakening in India, should have been maintained in that country was constantly short by hundreds and thousands of men, and, as is well known, with absolutely no reserve at home to draw upon. The third and last awakening came, in 1870, the period of the Franco-German war. We then had a real reorganisation of the Army. We had then great changes, the effects of which, I venture to say, have never been appreciated until the war which is now going on. But it is a most remarkable fact that so unpopular is Army reform, so wedded are the people of this country to past associations and prejudices which may be considered antiquated, that, whether it was some fault in the presentation of the subject, whether it was the personality of the man, or whether it was the general unpopularity of touching things to which men had long been accustomed, I have never in my experience heard a single cheer in this House when the name of the man who abolished purchase and who first started short service in the British Army has been mentioned. The unpopularity of Mr. Cardwell in respect of these matters was great at the time.

Not in this House.

The right hon. Gentleman has the advantage of me. He was in the House at the time. I am glad to hear his statement. I am thinking more of the country than of the House. I cannot help feeling that we owe something to Lord Cardwell's memory in view of the use to which we have put his great reforms in the course of the last few months. Surely the proudest inheritance of a statesman is not in the immediate cheers with which his fellow-countrymen may greet a popular but perhaps not altogether successful movement, but in the fact that after thirty years that system, with but small modifications, gave us 80,000 reservists, of whom 96 or 97 per cent. were found efficient, which has enabled us to keep, apart from Volunteers and Colonials, an army of 150,000 Regulars in the field for fifteen months, and which gave us those manœuvres which were too long dropped by successive Governments, and which are in the opinion of all our military leaders absolutely necessary in order to get an acquaintance with the practice of war. Now we have another great awakening, or rather a discovery, that there are many flaws and imperfections even in those portions of our Army system which were deemed to be best. I should like to state that, though I am here to state the views of the Government as to the changes that are necessary, I should like that it should be felt that the greatest change which has taken place with regard to our war policy is not in the Government but in the House of Commons and the people. I have over and over again endeavoured to persuade the House of Commons that it was necessary for us to organise our forces on the principle of being able to send two army corps abroad. I have had the scantiest attendance and backing of the House for these proposals. For home defence everybody was willing to act; but home defence in the minds of a great many Members represents not an organised army, not even with regard to our auxiliary forces, no compulsion with regard to drill, but simply the acceptance from every man of that amount of service which he desires to give—various proposals that are very pleasant and which can be reeled off easily—but which really mean the organisation of your Army on the system of the Boxers, an idea of a military system that every man should shoulder a rifle and stand in front of his own door. Not only have there been failings in regard to organisation, but there have been many doubts as regards the numbers. When, in 1898, I asked for 25,000 additional men I remember a question from that Bench and a great deal being said as to whether these numbers were necessary. What has been our experience in regard to organisation and numbers has also been our experience in regard to manœuvres. I have extracted from the House, with the greatest reluctance, compulsory powers in regard to manœuvres. They may be an imperfect preparation for war, but, in my opinion, they are better than no preparation at all. All our proposals in regard to manœuvres have been cut down largely by the House. With regard to ranges, we had need to fight a battle upstairs before Committee before we obtained power to close the smallest footpath, just as we have now, if we want to take property by compulsion, to run the gauntlet of judges and others, under whose auspices we pay, I say without hesitation and without fear of contradiction, on the average 50 per cent. more than the land is worth. I could give instances to prove it; and, as I see that hon. Members for Ireland take some interest in this question, I may say that in Ireland it is still worse, for there you have to deal not only with the landlord, but with the tenant. The result of all that is that up till now there have been the greatest possible difficulties placed in the way of the Government—not theoretically, because I admit this House has never refused demands for men or for money—but in all the accessories, in all that goes in the way of spending the money well and making the men efficient, this House has been reluctant to trespass on private rights or the feelings of individuals. I often hear hon. Members boast that we are by nature a fighting race. I can only say that we may be a fighting race, but it is only by accident that we are a military nation. Now we have to consider how we can turn that accident into a permanent opportunity. I should like to detain the House for a moment on the lessons which this war has taught us. In the first place, I think the House will agree with me that we can no longer lay to our souls the flattering unction that we have not got to be prepared to send two army corps abroad. I think the events of the last fifteen months have proved, first of all, that we must be prepared to send more than two army corps abroad; secondly, that these army corps must be better organised; and, thirdly, that, when you have parted with the force which it is necessary to send out of the kingdom, you must have a sufficient organisation at home for our own protection. In addition to that, it has been made obvious that our artillery is insufficient, and that our field artillery requires to be supplemented by heavier field artillery. Sir, it is also perfectly clear that the exigencies of modern warfare, the greatly extended positions which are held, and the necessity of rapid movement make it necessary that we should be provided with a much larger body of mounted troops. There is, as I have already admitted, a reform also needed in our Army Medical Service, and in our transport service. But there is another question, not so much of money and of men; we want a reform of our drill and training. We want less barrack square drill. We, want more scouting, we want more independence, more indi- viduality amongst the men. All these things will give us plenty of food for thought, and will give Lord Roberts a wide arena in which to exercise his great talents. But, having said so much as to the defects which have been brought to light by the war, let us, before passing, congratulate ourselves that, in the war, we, have still found the spirit of our troops as excellent as it has ever been. If our officers have not been trained to the highest professional pitch, no man in the world, whether he be our friend or our foe, can deny that they have shown the greatest bravery and gallantry on all occasions. In addition to that, we may also congratulate ourselves that both our gun and rifle practice has been good; and I think we may say this for our system: that, whether it was prepared or not prepared for all emergencies, it has shown marvellous adaptability in hastily providing a home defence which gave us more men in barracks in the course of last year than we had at any time of profound peace. I think that those who administer the Service may well be grateful to the country at large for having borne the very unexpected reverses with a patience and calmness and self-possession worthy of the greatest praise. In approaching the subject of reform, I would ask the House to allow me to mention two points on which we differ from any other nation in regard to the problems we have to face. In the first place, we have got to keep an enormous force abroad, quite apart from war, in a time of peace. We have got to provide, to equip, 115,000 men in India and the Colonies, mostly in tropical stations, and we have to attempt to do that, which no other Power attempts, relying entirely upon voluntary enlistment. If we arrive finally at a decision that we can build up on the present system, it will not be for want of consideration of what other systems can do. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean has impressed on the attention of the House more than once the desirability of having a separate Indian army.

That is putting it too strongly. A separate system of enlistment rather than a separate Indian army.

I have always thought that the right hon. Gentleman rather favoured that view, and have felt that the fact of my never having been able to find any way to accept it was the key of a good deal of his want of confidence in my fitness for the post I now occupy. At all events, I might explain to the House why we cannot accept the idea of a separate Indian army. In the first place, we have 75,000 men in India. If you are to have a separate Indian army, you must train the recruits before they leave this country. You must also have them at a certain age, because we never send men to India between eighteen and twenty years of age. The recruits require to train two years at home in order to fit them to go to India. That means you must keep two years drafts; and experience shows that if you want to keep a regiment of 1,000 men in India you must keep as drafts between 400 and 500 men in England who belong to no regiment, who are enlisted solely for the Indian Army, who are only partially trained before they leave, and who form a force accountable to nobody, and form no part of a unit at home. If, instead of these 400 or 500, you raise them to 800, and form them into a battalion at home, you will have the nucleus of battalions which with Reservists added makes up regiments. Reservists have given satisfaction to every general under whom they have served in South Africa. If you were to attempt a separate Indian army, you would not only have a much greater cost on your active list, but you would have men serving nine or ten years in India, and you would incur a greater expense for pensions. You would have a no more effective army in India and a less effective one at home. We therefore reject the idea of a separate Indian army. The next question is, Is our Army in future for home defence to be a voluntary Army, or is it to be recruited by compulsion? I am perfectly aware of the delicate ground on which I am treading in respect to the question of voluntary or compulsory service. I know very well how easy it is in this House to win cheap cheers by a proud declaration about adhesion to the voluntary system. I think the voluntary system for home defence is not a thing to be proud of, unless you get an efficient defence. I do not doubt that man for man a voluntary army is better than a, conscription army, but mass for mass a trained army of conscripts is better than an incompletely trained army of volunteers, and especially if it happens to outnumber them. Therefore my adhesion to the voluntary system is strictly limited by our ability to obtain under it a force with which our military authorities can satisfy the Government that they have sufficient force to resist invasion and can maintain it to their satisfaction. At the same time the Government fully recognise that, while the country is willing to pay heavily to escape invasion, it is incumbent on the Government to exhaust every means before coming forward with any such proposals, and especially under the circumstances of the present time. We have never had such recruiting as we had last year under the influence of the warlike spirit that pervaded the country and the conviction that the war was just and necessary. That war spirit has brought us the largest number of recruits to the Army in any year in any period of our history. The recruits for the Army were 46,000, and for the Militia, deducting those who went into the Army, 30,000. Ten thousand Yeomanry enlisted last year on the cavalry rate of pay, and 57,000 additional Volunteers joined during the year, making a total of 140,000 men who came forward voluntarily for service during 1900. Be it remembered that a large majority of these were recruited for service in the war, to which those who joined the Army were liable. Thirty-five Militia battalions offered for foreign service, and were at disposal for South Africa; 10,000 Yeomanry went and 10.000 Volunteers, and we can have another 10,000 when we want them. I think, then, that any proposal that did not proceed on voluntary lines would be, as it were, applying spurs to a willing horse; although I fully realise what the difficulty may still be in keeping up the required force with the advantage which is possessed by nearly every other nation in the world. I think the first thing to remember is that our Army must be a national Army, and any step in a direction which is contrary to our previous policy should not be taken until it receives the support, at all events, of the vast majority of the country. To take a step of that kind, which a future Government might feel it to be their duty to go back upon, would be, I think, disastrous to the Army and the country. On the other hand, perhaps I may be allowed to address one word of warning to the House with regard to that. I do not believe that this great spirit of recruiting will continue with the same intensity after the war is over. I am not at all certain that the ease with which money is obtained now will be borne out by the pleasure with which the taxation necessary for it will be paid. I never come down to the House of Commons without being subjected in the lobby to the demand that we should increase the pay, or that we should add to the expenditure in some direction in regard to the war or at home. I hardly ever get a letter from a Member that does not invite consideration of some great and, to his mind, undoubted hardship suffered by somebody or some class of individuals. There is no section of the various component parts of our national defence which has not been the subject of representation to me in some form or another in the last few weeks with a view to a great addition of expenditure. But I know also that if at this moment I am attacked for parsimony, I think the day is not far distant when I shall be attacked for extravagance: and I can well realise that among those who are loudest in calling for expenditure there may be many who would feel the pinch very heavily in years to come, and I even think, as I pass the lamp-post in Palace Yard, there will be plenty of people who would be glad to hold on to one end of a rope if they could only be persuaded that I myself or the Chancellor of the Exchequer was attached to the other end. Our proposal, therefore, is to lay down what is necessary for the country to obtain. We know that we can equip any force that is necessary, and let us see if we cannot train them. If we lack recruits, if the war fever is followed by a peace collapse, I think we shall be very pusillanimous if we do not make further proposals to the House. Remember that what we ask the House to do is to ensure us a system of defence for which not only our own forefathers made great sacrifices but for which our neighbours, whether they live under a democratic or despotic government, consider that at this moment no sacrifice is too great. I am, therefore, not going to accommodate the organisation I propose to our existing resources. I am going to consider how we can find proper resources for the organisation that is necessary. If I may trouble the House for a few minutes longer on this subject, I shall endeavour to lay down what it is for which we ought to prepare. In the first place, when we talk of home defence, let us not confuse our minds by considering the position and action of the Navy. The Navy is obviously our first line of defence, and if all naval matters were matters of certainty, we might dispense with an army for home defence altogether. I quite agree that invasion may be an off-chance, but you cannot run an Empire of this size on off-chances. We are bound, with Army and Navy acting together, to provide a proper system of home defence. I must also lay this down—we must have proper provision for foreign war. If five years ago I had tried to persuade anybody in this House that we should be sending three army corps to South Africa I should have been the object of ridicule to those who belittle our power of sending troops abroad, and I think I should have been the object of contempt to those who belittle the power of our opponents, especially in South Africa. Well, we have not only had to send three army corps but six army corps to South Africa—I mean the equivalent of six army corps. I trust we shall never have to send that number of troops abroad again; but we must remember that Africa is not the only continent on which we have great commitments. On two other continents we have commitments, and we must realise that we have interests there we are bound to defend. It may be contended—I do not deny it—that a wise foreign policy may go far to keep us out of enterprises and entanglements. [Opposition cheers.] Yes, but we have to recollect that we have great possessions, and great wealth, and that those possessions and this wealth, however peaceful our own inclinations may be, must at times be objects of enterprise to our neighbours. Let us lay to heart what was said to Crœsus in old days, "Remember that if any man come who hath better iron than you he will be master of all your gold." Do not let us build up our military policy on such a quicksand as the goodwill and forbearance of foreign Powers. I will not entertain the question of a European war, but I think no man in the House will be so bold as to say that under all circumstances we shall be able to keep ourselves free from European entanglements. The Government of 1880, which came in with probably the greatest peace policy of any Government, found themselves not merely at war in Egypt, but in 1885 on the verge of war with Russia. We cannot shut out the possibility of having to send a large force to defend our own possessions, nor can we suppose that if ever we should become unhappily entangled in a European war we can limit our enterprise solely to the defence of our possessions, and to the action of our fleet. It stands to reason if we have allies that none of them would be prepared to turn out every man they could muster and allow ours to rest at home. Therefore my proposition is that besides home defence we ought to be ready at any moment to send abroad three army corps with the proper cavalry divisions, in fact a force of one hundred and twenty thousand men; and the proposal which I submit to the House to-night contemplates that we should hold such a force in readiness with a proper admixture of reservists, and still provide ourselves with the power to defend ourselves at home when that force is gone. The proposals I have to make to the House are as follows: I propose to reorganise the Army on a new system, of which the bedrock will be that the whole country will be divided into six army corps by districts, that each district in time of peace will have the same relative proportions to the various arms that are necessary to make up the corps, and that they will be under the commanders who will lead them in time of war. This will be a great change on our existing somewhat haphazard system. It will be a great measure of organisation. But there will also be a great measure of decentralisation. My object is to centralise responsibility, but to decentralise administration. The army corps will no longer be a paper force. The British army corps of the past, as has been often pointed out, is got together in a moment of emergency. Commanders have been summoned and hastily appointed. Their staffs have often never seen their commanders. The brigade has been made up by taking a regiment from Malta, another from Edinburgh, a third from Dublin, and a fourth from Shorncliffe. These four have been dumped down together in South Africa or elsewhere, the colonels not knowing each other, and perhaps none of them knowing their brigadier. That is an organisation which cannot be considered an organisation at all. If you want to make troops work together, they must have some knowledge of each other and of their commanding officers. We propose that in these army corps districts troops shall be within reach of each other, that the different arms shall be complete, that the officers, as far as peace duties justify it, shall be appointed, and that we shall have a full staff as far as peace duties justify it. The stores will be massed with each army corps in the army corps district; the troops will not be immediately adjoining, but will meet for manœuvres. The transport will be arranged and will be under the commander of the army corps; each army corps will be complete in artillery and mounted troops. We hope by these means to obtain not merely greater efficiency, but some esprit de corps in these army corps. But the two cardinal points to which we look for the greatest advantage are the appointment for peace command; only of those officers who are certified by the military authorities to be fit to command in war. [Cheers.] I am glad to hear that expression of opinion by the House, because of all the proposals I have to submit there is not one which will call for so much support of Ministers by the House. All the forces of good nature, all the forces of prejudice, all the pressure which can be exerted will be exerted to induce us very often, I fear, by question or by motion in this House, to reappoint to positions for which they are not fitted, officers against whom no actual failure can be proved. I will not come down to this House and ask for these large Estimates in order to raise and equip troops who can be made efficient and then be made a party, for the sake of peace and quietness, to putting them under the command of inefficient officers. I feel most strongly on this subject, and the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Roberts, has decided that in future appointments will be made, not for five years but for three years, with power of extension, so that it may be possible for him at the end of that time to review the action of these officers and, if necessary, to replace them by others. That is the more necessary, because the second great advantage which we expect from this system is that we intend to delegate to the commanders of the army corps a very large amount of the authority which is now exercised in Pall Mall. I believe that the desirability of doing that, if it can be carried out, as I believe it can, is so patent to everybody that I need not labour it. But I do say this, with all the confidence of some experience, that these two steps, the appointing of men in peace, even if they are younger and more active, and even if it ends in our having to exclude men whom we should like to employ on other grounds—I believe that this is the only way by which we can secure the proper leading of our troops in war, and I believe that the proper delegation of authority is the only means by which we can redeem our military system and our officers from the paralysing effects of relying for every detail of their task in time of peace on a central establishment in Pall Mall. Perhaps the House would like to know where these army corps will be planted. The first three army corps are intended for foreign service, or, of course, for home defence in the first instance. The first army corps will be at Aldershot. It will be complete in every particular, except Reservists. It will include among the infantry a brigade of four battalions of the Guards. The system by which the Guards have acted as part of the garrison at Gibraltar will not be further followed. Arguments which had great force four years ago have, in one respect, less force now. I think I am right in saying that four years ago skirmishers were hardly divided from each other by a distance the breadth of this table; skirmishers in South Africa under modern conditions have been divided from each other by the length of this House, and the training of troops in a limited space has become infinitely more difficult now under the new conditions than it was when we first considered the garrison at Gibraltar. Under any circumstances, I think that it would be both useful for the Army and useful for the brigade of Guards that a brigade of Guards should be permanently stationed at Aldershot. The second army corps will have its headquarters at Salisbury Plain. We are building large barracks on Salisbury Plain, and the land acquired there is of inestimable value for the training of troops for musketry and for other purposes. By planting these two army corps at these particular centres we shall have them not merely in the best possible positions for the defence of the country, but also at the easiest points for embarkation and in the most facile position for manœuvring. Therefore those two are ideal centres for our first two army corps. The third army corps, which will also consist almost entirely of Regulars, will be quartered in Ireland. The barracks there have always been kept up on a considerable scale, and with a certain readjustment will completely house the troops necessary for that army corps, with the exception of three Militia battalions. The three Militia battalions, should the army corps go on foreign service, will, of course, be replaced by other troops. When I come to the fourth army corps I come to a subject which I think will be of great interest to the House. That army corps will have its headquarters at Colchester. With the full concurrence, I might almost say on the initiative, of the Commander-in-Chief, admitting for the first time that picked Militia and Volunteer battalions can be ranged with Regular troops in the first line, we propose to employ altogether in the last three army corps sixty battalions of Volunteers and Militia, which have been carefully selected. The Volunteer battalions will have special training, they will be invited on special terms to undertake special training liability each year, and if they cannot come up to those conditions, and if on the inspection each year, which will be by no means a formal inspection, any particular battalion is not found equal to its work, it will lapse from the army corps, and another battalion will replace it. We go further, we propose for the first time to give the Militia and Volunteers, within limits, a certain number of field guns. I have lived through, and so has the right hon. Gentleman opposite, three sets of opinion at the War Office. The first was that it was very desirable to have Volunteer artillery—Volunteers liked to join—but that it was not necessary to find them in guns. I think the right hon. Gentleman was at the War Office when it was decided that they might be entrusted with the handling of heavy garrison guns. I know that I was at the War Office when we persuaded the military authorities to go a step further and allow them to take heavy guns of position into the field. But that system halted there for twelve years. Lord Roberts is willing to make a great and final step in advance, and to agree that with certain training he will rely, from the experience of this war, on Volunteer batteries, a certain proportion in each of the last three army corps. The admirable practice made by the C.I.V. batteries in the Transvaal satisfied Lord Roberts that that step could be taken without danger. Therefore, in each of the last three army corps, while there will be a considerable proportion of Regular troops, and in each fourteen batteries of Regular artillery, one-third of the army corps, that is seven batteries, will be found in each of the last three army corps by the Volunteers and Militia. The army corps with its headquarters at Colchester will have attached to it some of the best London Militia and Volunteers. The fifth army corps, which will be stationed at York, will draw on the best Volunteer and Militia battalions of Lancashire and Yorkshire. We propose to house the sixth, and last, army corps in Scotland. I feel that the War Office owes so much to Scotland that Scotland ought to obtain a special place. Our Scottish regiments, even in comparison with others, and notably our Irish regiments, have done magnificent work in this war. As we all know, there is a great national feeling in Scotland, and I think that both by their patriotism and by their contribution to the national finances they are entitled to some consideration at our hands. Some part of our barracks loan will be spent in building necessary barracks in Scotland. The headquarters of this army corps will be placed in Edinburgh. The House will see, I think, that we have not adapted our organisation to our existing resources. I shall have to call on the House to produce the necessary result by giving us the necessary troops. The first difficulty in which I am placed is whether or not I am to ask the House to add to our Regular forces. I am reluctant to do so. In the last three or four years we have added between 40,000 and 50,000 men to our Regular forces, and I am not at all sure that we have not reached the limit of our recruiting power under present circumstances. In any case I should like to see the regiments already proposed to be raised, and the larger number of batteries that we added last year, and which are now to a considerable extent manned by Reservists—I should like to see their fate assured after the Reservists return to their homes before I ask the House in any respect to add to the Regular Army. But that does not prevent our needing more Regular troops; and I propose, therefore, that we should obtain those troops, not by raising fresh ones, but by freeing some of our Regular troops who are shut up in garrisons from the duties in which they are at present engaged. We propose to take three steps in that direction. The House may have seen—because it was necessary to put out an Army Order a few days ago—that in the first place we propose to raise eight garrison battalions. If we are to use to the full extent the military power of the country, we have got to take military opinion as to the longest period for which the men can properly serve and utilise the services of those who are willing to continue in the Army. There is nothing in the least degree repugnant to the spirit of short service if, having obtained the services of the man with the colours and in the Reserve, we proceed to utilise any further services he is willing to give to the country. We propose to form these garrison battalions of men of more than fourteen years service, and in some cases of twelve years, limiting their services, except in rare cases, up to twenty-one years, when in the great majority of cases they are still under forty years of age. I think the House will see the common sense of this proposal. When you are placing men at stations like Gibraltar and Malta, where at the outside they can only be a few miles away from their own barracks, it is not necessary to have so rigid a standard of the extremest physical competency as you require from men who may have for many weeks to undergo the hardships of a campaign. I think men between thirty and forty, and some perhaps even a little later, would be admirably qualified for that service. Lord Roberts has gladly consented to select from the large available force of men who leave the colours and Reserve every year enough men to make up eight garrison battalions. The terms we offer will, I. hope, prove sufficiently attractive. I will mention one point of special interest to the House: we give them the hope of a pension. That pension I wish to place on a wholly different footing from the pensions which have been given hitherto. Up to the present a man has got 10d. or 1s. a day on leaving the colours, and has got that amount until he dies. That is too much. It is not needed by a man when he is in full vigour of health and earning full wages, but it is too little when he gets to old age. To give a larger sum would be an enormous charge on the Exchequer. After all, many men will have earned it in the very prime of life, when they have still a long time in which they may hope to labour. We propose to give a pension which will be equivalent to what a man would have earned if he had been in the Reserve—namely, 6d. a day from the time of his leaving the garrison battalion—and to make that 6d. up to 1s. 6d. when he has attained the age of sixty-five, thereby, I hope, establishing a system of old-age pensions.

May I ask whether these will be men who have completed their Reserve service?

Certainly; we do not mean to impinge upon the Reserve in any way. Some men serve twelve years with the colours, and those men will not go into the Reserve afterwards, but may be possibly allowed to go into the garrison regiments if they desire it. But, incidentally, let me remind the House that this will meet a want that has often been spoken of in this House, that with the limited number of men who do want to give long service, we shall provide a man who enters the Army, subject to good conduct, with the certainty of a future career. That will give eight Line battalions for field service. I get five more by substituting at certain fortresses five Indian battalions, who in the tropics are equally efficient for the work and would save us sending five battalions of young soldiers into a tropical climate. We pay India for raising these five battalions. Already two or three of them have taken up their duties. We propose to raise those to five in the present year. By that means we gain thirteen battalions. I come now to a subject upon which I have a very strong feeling myself, but on which I cannot give an absolute decision or pronouncement to the House. The War Office view is that the time has come for the smaller coaling stations to be taken over by the Admiralty. I do not mean fortresses like Malta and Gibraltar, but the smaller stations, like Singapore and Colombo and others, which are not attackable from the land, and in regard to which, therefore, you would have this gain, that you would not have two authorities in the island, but one. You would have the Admiralty supreme in their own domain and you would not lock up our infantry, and, with a constant change of ships, you would give the Admiralty a chance of relieving some of those men and providing others as the exigencies of the service might demand. But that subject requires a great deal of examination, and the First Lord of the Admiralty has not yet seen his way to give a final decision. But if I am able to prevail, and I trust I may, we shall then have five more battalions, making eighteen in all available to be added for home service. The distribution will now be in the future—allowing twelve battalions permanently in South Africa and making provision for the coaling stations—seventy-nine battalions of the Line at home and seventy-seven abroad.

Will that include the Guards?

No; the ten battalions of the Guards are separate. I come now to the Militia. The Militia is a great problem. It is the old constitutional force. It has not only been a great stand-by in days gone by, but in this war it has practically helped us at moments of very great difficulty. Thirty-five battalions have gone abroad voluntarily, and by embodying others we shall of course have to start a nucleus for our reorganisation at home. The Militia should be 150,000 strong, but it is only 100,000 strong. There is something worse than that. We take in Militia recruits every year from 35,000 to 40,000 men. Deducting those who go to the Line, we have still left nearly 30,000 Militia recruits. They are engaged for six years, and by a very simple computation the House will arrive at this fact, that at the very least these 30,000 men, engaged for six years, ought to give us a force of from 150,000 to 180,000 men. As a matter of fact we have to take and train about 30,000 each year, and we only produce 100,000 of a total force on the six years engagement. The reason is very simple. The inducements we offer the men are not sufficient to keep them. The Militia service has always been on the principle of making it very easy for a man to come in and go out. By a very cheap system of purchase he can find his way out when he is tired of serving. We mean to make things better for the Militia. It is perfectly true that some men are lost by desertion, who probably come in to drill when they cannot find work; but there are others, and Militia officers tell me by far the larger number, who honestly think the Militia service is not good enough, and, especially when they marry, they decide to leave. Martial ardour and marital ardour do not seem to run together in the Militia, and we want to give them an inducement to get over that critical moment until, after two or three years of matrimony, they may be willing to contemplate a little war in order to get a little peace. With the object of getting them at the critical moment, we propose to make a special arrangement for them. In the first place we shall give the Militia in future the Army ration, the extra 3d. a day for rations which was given to the Army three years ago. In addition to that I propose to reconstruct the old conditions of bounties. At present the trained Militiaman gets a bounty of £1 10s. when he leaves; we propose to give him a sovereign at three other times in the year — £4 10s. in all; so that the net gain to the Militia will be 3d. extra a day during training and 3d. extra a day after training and in the intervals. We therefore hope we shall make our service more attractive in that respect. But we have another and much larger scheme. I propose also to establish a Reserve for the Militia. I propose to abolish the present Militia Reserve for the Army. I do so on two grounds. In the first place these men who have taken a pound a year hitherto and never expected to be called out to join the Army have given their services in South Africa in the most uncomplaining fashion. I doubt whether there are many of them who will take a pound a year for the liability of such service again. Therefore I propose to abolish the Militia Reserve; the more so as I think it most unfair to the Militia that they should themselves be forced to go into action after they have been denuded of a good many of their best men. In substitution of the Militia Reserve I propose to have a genuine Reserve of Militia, to be composed of two classes of men—Militiamen who have done ten years service in the Militia, and Line men who have done fourteen years service with the line colour and Reserve. A man after he has done fourteen years' service will have an opportunity of going into a garrison regiment or going into the reserve of the Militia. The Militiaman is to have two periods of service—that is to say, ten years, and an opportunity of enrolling his name as a reserve for the Militia. He will be obliged only to be called on for shooting training on such occasions as may be necessary. We propose to give this Reserve 4d. a day. We anticipate that their liability being only to serve inside the country—Great Britain and Ireland—the opportunity will be largely availed of. I have every reason to believe that, having fixed this, figure, we shall be able to get 50,000 men for the Reserve of the Militia, who will be available in case of the Militia being embodied for the defence of the country. That will make up the Militia from 100,000 to 150,000, without adding a man to those who are at present serving or calling upon the country for a single additional recruit. I believe that to be not only an inexpensive course, but that it will bring the Militia up to strength and fit it for the duty we propose to assign to it. Although I fear these proposals are very lengthy, I am afraid I must trouble the House at some little length further about the Yeomanry. The Yeomanry is our sole mounted force. Up to now it has accompanied the Volunteer reserve of this country. It has been drilled as cavalry in shock tactics. It has remained at its present figure of 10,000 to a large extent owing to the difficulties as regards expense, also to the fact that while our national wealth has so greatly increased, the agricultural classes from which the force is drawn have not kept pace with that increase of wealth. We mean to have in the Yeomanry a nucleus of that much larger body of mounted troops which is now required by the exigencies of modern warfare. You have now greater distances to cover, and flanking movements must be carried out by mounted troops, and scouting has to be done on a wider plan. Our artillery has also to be protected to a much larger extent. We believe that it is not only absolutely necessary to obtain more mounted troops, but that, under more favourable conditions, there are very large numbers of men in the country who would rather serve the King mounted than on foot. Our experience during the last few weeks, during which we have been able to raise 15,000 mounted men for duties in South Africa, shows there is no disinclination for that form of service. May I say one word in recognition of what the Yeomanry have done in past years in equipping and bringing together the Yeomanry force which has gone to South Africa, and which, without exception—except, perhaps, the colonial troops—have been of the greatest service to Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener? I feel so strongly the value of the services they have rendered, and the desirability of re- leasing them as early as may be possible, that I have asked Lord Kitchener, in view of the large number of mounted men who are now on their way out, to consider the hard cases amongst them, men who really have lost or may lose their employment, and he has undertaken as quickly as he can to deal with such cases, and release such men as soon as possible. Now, we intend to put our money on the Yeomanry, and we expect great results. I am glad to say we shall have some support for the changes we propose to make from the ranks of the Yeomanry themselves. I asked a number of Yeomanry officers to form a committee, which gave us a most excellent report in January last. They propose changes in drill, changes in uniform, and changes in the organisation of the force. They went at their work in a broad and enlightened spirit, and, as befitting men who ride horses, they took an extremely cheerful view of everything, even including the character and disposition towards them of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot honestly say that I shall be able to follow them in all the recommendations for expenditure which they made. But Lord Roberts, who has carefully considered their report, has come to the conclusion that we ought largely to increase them, and the title under which we propose to do it is the Imperial Yeomanry, now consecrated to us by excellent service in South Africa. Their uniform will be khaki, giving them a proper interval in which to change the present uniform at a minimum of loss. I say nothing of the officers, who may, perhaps, require to keep their mess uniform. We do not want to interfere with these old arrangements, but there must be a change of arms. It is impossible for us to contemplate training, the Yeomanry for sword practice, and Lord Roberts is strongly of opinion that the sword must be given up. He wishes them to be armed with a shortened rifle and bayonet. The officer will probably retain the sword, and in the further arming of the Yeomanry it is a question whether we should substitute the revolver for the sword. There is a great difference of opinion on that subject, but I will not detain the House by discussing it to-night. When I suggested to a friend, a Member of this House, that a revolver was more than an equivalent at close quarters to a sword, he said, "If you had to try it you would not think so." I invited him to bring his sword into Hyde Park the following morning, and I would come there mounted and with a revolver, and we would see who was the better man. I am bound to say that, although my friend did not accept the combat, he turned my flank, for he said, "It is all very well when one is pitted against one, but it is a very serious thing to go into a charge with a lot of men with revolvers in their hands," and he instanced the case of an officer in the charge at Omdurman who succeeded in putting a bullet into one of his own troopers and another into his colonel's horse. Consequently I do not propose to solve the great question whether Yeomanry should be given revolvers or a sword. The reorganisation will be on these lines. We shall train them for eighteen days, of which fourteen days will be obligatory. They will be trained in camp. The pay will be 5s. a day, with ration allowance and forage. The officers will receive cavalry Army rates and a consolidated pay of 10s. for rations and forage. But the greatest change we make, and which we think will bring in a large number of men, is the giving to each Yeoman who brings a horse of his own £5 a year. In the case of those who have not got horses of their own, we propose to provide them with a Government horse, which we believe we can do by developing that excellent system of registration by which for 10s. a year we obtained 14,000 of the very best horses on the very day we required them. We propose to extend that system by paying £5 a year to obtain a month's use of a horse as well as the registration. That will enable us to find mounts for these Yeomen who are unable to find horses for themselves. We propose that each regiment shall be of four squadrons making 500 men, and we propose to keep up all the county associations, to retain distinctive titles, and we shall try through the lord lieutenants of counties to form fresh regiments in other counties. We propose to bring the force up to a total strength of 35,000. Before I leave this subject I wish to say that I trust the day is not far distant when some of our colonial brethren who have given us mounted assistance during this war will be willing, subject to the consent of their own Government, to keep up mounted contingents, also under the title of Imperial Yeomanry, who, when occasion demands, will be available to join our own Yeomanry should they ever volunteer to go abroad. Now we come to the Volunteers. I am not going to speak at any great length about them. Everybody knows what their past has been; and do not let it be supposed that I am wanting in appreciation of the Volunteers when I say that what we desire in the Volunteer force is not so much numbers as efficiency. Those Volunteers who are to be members of the army corps must be efficient, or they will be absolutely worthless. You cannot brigade men with regular troops unless you get a certain training from them. What we are going to do with the Volunteers is this. We shall offer that each of these special twenty-five battalions of infantry shall attend camp for thirteen days, exclusive of their coming and going, and we shall give each man a daily grant of 5s., paid to the corps, and to each officer a daily grant of 11s. 6d. We shall require that every man shall have attended ten drills before he comes into camp that year, thirty, of course, if be is a recruit. We shall also require that every man shall have done his musketry for the year. We propose to give them such training in manœuvring and reconnaissance as will make them really valuable members of the corps. We propose to give a special train-ting to the fifteen batteries of field artillery which will form part of the army corps, and we have ordered, and I hope shall be in a position to place in the hands of the Volunteers before very long, in substitution for their present heavy guns, which are not of sufficient range, 4·7 guns, which will be placed in the positions selected for the defence of London. The remainder of the Volunteers will have the opportunity of going to camps as heretofore, but under rather more stringent conditions. We shall also require of them to have done a certain number of drills before they go into camp, and in future, not this year, we shall require—instead of thirty drills in the first year, thirty in the second year, and twelve in the third —thirty in the first year, thirty in the second year, and twenty in the third year. If Volunteers cannot fulfil these conditions, then we think we are better with a rather smaller force in camp, but a more efficient one. There is one other remark which I must make. There are at present a certain number of Volunteer companies of mounted infantry. They are very useful in their way, but we cannot have two forces of dissimilar description grouped together. After this year we shall have to ask these Volunteer mounted infantry either to make themselves a nucleus of the Imperial Yeomanry or attach themselves to one of the regiments.

Are you doing anything to improve the training of Volunteer officers?

We shall take steps by means of schools, but this is one of the numerous questions which have been before us. We fully realise that officers in both, the Militia and Volunteers will require further opportunities for training. When they are being trained all their expenses are to be paid.

What is the proportion between the Line regiments and the Volunteers in the last three army corps?

I think there will be one division of the Line and two divisions of Volunteers.

Is there any proposal to pay Volunteers going into ordinary camps? That is very important.

They will get a rather larger sum, 2s. 6d. instead of 2s., and the officers will get 8s. instead of 4s., but we shall put them under rather more stringent regulations as to the time they stay in camp. Therefore the net result of our proposals is this. We free a very considerable body of Regulars from garrison service for field service; we make up our Militia to war strength; we provide adequate artillery and mounted troops for all our army corps; we train better the Volunteers, who are to be given special grants. We shall have an additional number of Regulars — namely, 11,500; we shall have 50,000 more Militia in the new Militia Reserve; we shall have 25,000 more Yeomanry; and we shall have 40,000 more trained Volunteers. The net addition, therefore, under my scheme will be 126,500 men, and that, even allowing £60,000 for the staff of the new army corps, will be achieved by an expenditure of a little under £2,000,000. Before I say a word on central organisation I should like to clear away some mistakes which have entered into people's minds with, regard to the efficacy of our present arms. Questions as to the number of men are for politicians to decide on the advice of experts; but when you come to the range and power of artillery and the efficacy of rifles, obviously we have reached a point at which experts must be our sole guides. I have asked Lord Roberts to give me his opinion on the efficacy of our artillery in South Africa. His views are as follows—

"The testimony of generals in command and of our artillery officers, in which opinion I coincide, is that our field artillery gun is on the whole a good and effective weapon. It has powerful shrapnel; it has accuracy; it has moderate weight behind the teams, all of which are important elements in artillery guns. It is entirely satisfactory in these respects. The open country and clear atmosphere of South Africa have shown that, as regards range and power, an improvement is necessary. This has, to a certain extent, been effected during the war by the provision of slow-burning fuses. As regards rapidity of fire, some improvement is certainly necessary, and the matter is now under consideration. Our horse artillery gun needs improvement in several respects, and a Committee is now sitting to consider how its shortcomings can best be remedied."

I may here say, with regard to these matters, that I have put some £50,000 into the Estimates with a view to meeting any immediate provision which the Committee may suggest.

"A want which has been brought to light by the war in South Africa is the necessity of having a proportion of heavy guns to accompany the Army in the field, to be worked not as guns of position, but as a more deliberate and slowly-moving field gun. A good deal has been said about the impediment of such guns on the march. No doubt they do take up room, but they have the compensating advantage of a heavy shell at long range, and that outweighs the disadvantages."

We have already put on order 200 of the 4·7 guns, which are. I believe, of the precise calibre which it is desired to use as heavy field artillery. I hope they will be coming in very shortly. The House will see that Lord Roberts's opinion, subject to that modernising which all artillery is undergoing at the present time, is that we have no reason to be dissatisfied with the artillery gun, which I remember was accounted by our experts about three or four years ago still to be the best field gun in Europe. Then I have asked Lord Roberts to give me a Report as regards our rifle. We have heard a great deal about the Mauser rifle and its advantages as compared with our own Lee-Metford. I believe that these ideas have received no confirmation by the war. Lord Roberts says—

"Our rifles have stood the test of the campaign admirably as regards range, accuracy, mechanism, solidity, and thoroughness of their manufacture. But they would he still more suitable for Army purposes if they were a little shorter and a little lighter, because they could then be used by cavalry as well as infantry. These changes can, it is believed, be made without in any way affecting their range and accuracy. Experiments have been tried with an improved sight on a shortened and lightened rifle."

I have read these opinions verbatim, because I believe they will be very reassuring to the House. But I realise that, even if we provide the Army with a proper number of men and efficient weapons and good officers, it would be absolutely useless unless we can to some extent meet the defects which have been shown to exist in the drill and training of our troops. I said just now that we hoped to get less barrack square drill, and I should like to add that, if possible, I hope we may get less sentry-go. I believe that sentry-go is the most paralysing effort of the soldier's life. It is certainly not good for health, and not of any advantage to the young soldier. With regard to drill, in which I am somewhat out of my depth, I believe the German manual exercise has got three positions and that our manual exercise has ten positions. I cannot help thinking that the fewer positions and more musketry training you can give to our soldiers the better. And I think this bears also on the question of getting recruits. There is no doubt that this increased training of the soldier does to a great extent make his life during the time he has to be trained a harder one. I do not propose to deal again, as we did three years ago, with the question of the soldier's pay. I have myself the gravest doubts whether any increased pay we could give, unless we gave something like double, would really bring in a different stamp of recruit. It has often been said how recruits are attracted to the Army, but a great deal of it is due to locality and to association. It may interest the House to know that I have received from a high quarter a Return of the benefactions made by her late Majesty last year to those families who have got the largest number of sons serving in the Army. I find that of three sons in the Army in one family there were no less than 100 cases; four sons, 176 cases; five sons, 142 cases, six sons, 74; seven sons, 20; eight sons two; nine sons, one case; and one instance of ten sons serving in the Army. I think that shows that there is a considerable military feeling in certain families and in certain localities. What we are doing for the soldier this year is that we hope to make his life easier; we hope to give, by means of Garrison Battalions and Militia Reserves, something like a career for those soldiers who wish to go back to the Army. Lord Roberts is very anxious—and I entirely agree with him—that we should also try in some of our new barracks the experiment of cubicles, and in other respects see whether we can give more comfort in barracks. We also propose to change the dress of the Army this year, leaving the full-dress, which is absolutely necessary for the attraction of recruits, but having the same dress for fighting as for other work in this country. That will give the great advantage that when a regiment is ordered abroad it has in its possession, except its full-dress, the exact dress required for fighting in all circumstances, instead of having to be completely re-equipped. In doing this we have considerably improved the material and have added some underclothing as well. But if the difficulty of training the men is great, the difficulty of training the officers is much greater. I am not altogether satisfied that Woolwich and Sandhurst provide us with all the training we ought to expect in an officer. My hon. friend the Member for King's Lynn put to me a question of a very pregnant description when I was answering questions one day last June on behalf of the Under Secretary to the War Office, in which he wanted to know the precise dates on which Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, General French, and three or four other generals had left the Staff College. I was not able to oblige him. The dates had escaped my memory at the time, and Lord Roberts has not been able to refresh it. I am afraid there is no doubt, without saying a word against the Staff College, that it has been proved that men without a Staff College training have made a very fair hand at military affairs. Although I do not in the least degree prejudge what should be done, I do feel that the time has come to ask a small Educational Committee to report to us on the education given at Woolwich and Sandhurst and to consider whether or not any change in the system of admitting candidates to the Army should now take place. This is not an immediately pressing matter, for this reason—we must give commissions to a large number of men this year, and I hold, and I believe the House will hold, that the first claim on our attention for commissions in the Army are the men who in various capacities have gone out with the Militia and Regular troops to serve in South Africa, and have given satisfaction to their commanding officers. I propose to put at the disposal of Lord Kitchener a very considerable number of commissions this year, to be allotted on the reports of the commanding officers; and I beg here to make this statement, because I know a deluge of letters will reach mo otherwise, that I have no influence whatever with Lord Kitchener. In all probability it would rather go against the man if I were to interfere on his behalf. When we come to the drill and training of officers I do not want to be misunderstood. We say most distinctly that we shall require from officers in the future a larger share of professional spirit in the Army. I do not want to say a word against the accomplishments on which young Englishmen pride themselves and which add to their courage and endurance—whether it be polo, or hunting, or steeplechasing or cricket or any other manual acquirement. I clearly realise what the ad- vantages of those acquirements are to the Army. But it is not enough that our officers, when they get into action, should be brave or should be willing to volunteer to rush to the front. We must make it clear that professional requirements are to come first. While we will do our very best to get the cream of the youth of Great Britain into our Army, we must get out of the Army those who do not mean to enter it in a professional spirit. Before I leave this question of the training of officers, let me say that I must come to the House and ask for facilities for the carrying on of manœuvres—facilities which are in the interest of the country, even it at the expense of private individuals—in order to make things more easy than they are at present. We must at least give the officer a chance of learning his trade. There is one subject which is of interest to the House on which I must say a word. That is, the restricted field we have for obtaining officers by reason of the enormous expenses to which they are put. Nothing could be more difficult to deal with than this subject. I do not myself believe in sumptuary laws. They have been tried by many monarchs, but they have never succeeded; and to lay down that no mess is to charge more than 3s. for dinner, or that no one is to drink champagne is absurd. But there are some things that you can do. There is, first, the ridiculous expense of dress in the Army. If the House will pardon me I will give the chief prices of our uniforms and of those in the German army. I take prices of uniforms in the German army, in the stores of this country, and at a fashionable tailor's. Trousers in the German army cost. 25s., in the stores in this country 66s., and at the tailor's from 55s. to 105s. The highest price of tunics in the German army is 54s., the lowest store price here is 125s., and at the tailor's 108s. The great-coat of the German officer costs 70s. Our store price is 118s., and at the tailor's 168s. The forage cap in Germany is 5s., and £1 here. The items which approach each other are dog-skin gloves, which are 4s. in Germany and 4s. 3d. here, the difference perhaps being accounted for by the tax on dogs. The result is, that the cost to a second lieu- tenant entering the German army is £18 12s. 6d.; here at the stores the cost is £48 12s., and at the tailor's £86. I propose to establish a system of getting good cutters and makers, by which officers will be able to get from our Government establishments uniforms at cost price. The difficulty about that, again, is the same difficulty as besets us about the expenses of chargers. In a smart regiment I do not think that a Government tunic would be looked at. In the same way a Government horse is never taken in some regiments. We have supported the excellent arrangement by which an officer bound to provide himself with a horse is entitled to take one or two chargers by paying £10 to the Government for each horse—an excellent bargain to the officer. I think what we aim to do in these matters cannot be done by legislation or by Army Orders, but it can be done, we think, by influence. I think that Lord Roberts is prepared to call together the colonels of cavalry regiments when they return to England and put before them the difficulty which we are under of getting cavalry officers, owing to the enormous expense. I think we shall find that expensive corps do not always mean efficient colonels. In cases in which we find that young officers are unable to enlist because of the extravagance on the part of the corps, we may have to revise the arrangements as a whole, leaving aside the fact that a very rich man must always be allowed to spend his money as he likes if he does not infect others. Now we come to the next and, to many Members, the most interesting part of Army reform, and that is the reform of the War Office. I am not in a position to-night to enter into that engrossing topic the Order in Council. A good deal has been said about it lately in another place, but I am not able to go into it at length for two reasons. In the first place, Lord Roberts, who communicated with me on this subject before returning to England, entirely concurred with the Government in believing that at this moment, with all we have upon us, it is more important that we should carry on the business of bringing the war to a conclusion, preparing the Estimates, and getting ready our scheme for this year rather than in occupying our minds in mending the machinery by which the scheme is to be carried out. In the second place, Lord Roberts, not having before been at the War Office, was willing and anxious to have the experience of the War Office before he made up his mind as to whether any and what change was necessary. I will ask the House, therefore, to defer the subject for a short time. I have myself no strong preconceived opinions in regard to some of the points at issue. In the first place, I cannot contemplate any sort of struggle between the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of State for predominance. As far as Lord Roberts is concerned, when I was at the War Office before and he was not, I think that on almost every occasion of any difficulty I asked for his advice. I asked for it when he was in command in Ireland. My own feeling is that outside the charmed circle of the War Office there is almost as good advice to be got as is to be got inside, and I think the Secretary of State has not merely a right, but a duty, to make himself personally acquainted with a large number of officers. I myself have always endeavoured to see, without distinction, any officers returning from South Africa from high commands there. The position at this moment as regards the supervisional control of the various military officers is one which must be considered as time enables us to consider it, and we shall not unduly put it off. But to my mind, far beyond all regulations, and all laws, and all arrangements for division of duty, is the consideration that there should be hearty co-operation and mutual understanding between the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief; and I, of course, am specially fortunate as Secretary of State in having to deal with a Commander-in-Chief fresh from the command of 220,000 men in the field, who has got at his fingers' ends every detail of the military problems and has seen the work in the field of every officer he may have to appoint. Happy is the Minister who finds himself in such a case; and I have no fear that, in respect to reform of the War Office, anything will suffer from deferring for a short time the solution of these problems. But, Sir, let the House of Commons under- stand that the predominance of the Secretary of State in War Office matters is not nearly so much a predominance which he may desire himself as that which is forced upon him by the House of Commons. Take the last day or two. I could not come down here and say even that I have left to Lord Kitchener the arrangements with regard to prisoners and refugees without myself being urged to interfere with Lord Kitchener. I had to argue a week ago the question of courts-martial and other important questions of that kind. There was a general desire on the part of the House that the power of the civil Government should make itself responsible for the action taken by the chiefs of the Army. The main amount of interference with military affairs is caused by civilians in the House of Commons itself, who desire the personal influence of the Secretary of State in all departments. Before I leave the War Office let me say that I have myself asked for a Committee to advise us as to the changes that are necessary. I believe great changes are necessary. I am prepared to make them. At the same time I do ask that different and divergent questions may not be mixed up with any mistakes of the system there may be in the War Office. I hear nothing and read nothing but these unmitigated indictments of all that has been done by that Department— ascribing to the War Office all the failures that have occurred during the war. I believe that to be a grave injustice. This House and the Government and various Governments have told the War Office to organise with a view to a certain state of things. They have had to provide for sending double or treble the men abroad contemplated under their organisation. During the last fifteen months I believe the supplies for our Army have not been equalled in our history or in that of any nation in any war that ever took place. Lord Roberts himself states that the supplies sent to South Africa were ample in all respects for men as well as animals. Lord Roberts states—

"My wishes were always forestalled with regard to them. It is true that men did not always receive full rations, but that was caused by the length of the lines of communication and the difficulties of distribution.'"

I think that is a very considerable testimony. I think the fact that, without breakdown, the organisation, against great difficulties, has dealt with this war during the last eighteen months requires some consideration from the House, and I think it would be very hard if the House does not associate with this result the services of the Adjutant General, Sir Evelyn Wood, who has managed to find men as fast as they could be shipped; the Quartermaster General, Sir C. Mansfield Clarke, whose department has never been found wanting: and, last but not least, the Director General of Ordnance. Sir H. Brackenbury, who has had to meet demands never dreamt of in the supply of military stores and has never yet fallen short. It would be hard on them if they were not associated in the commendation of the House with those civilians who had worked not only from morning to night, but until advanced hours of the morning, to see that the War Office was not found wanting. But I entirely concur with those who think that the system of the War Office should be remodelled. I believe the great unpopularity of the Department is due to the fact that it is dilatory and too much tied up by regulations. It may be that the War Office system of dealing with letters is a dilatory system. The number of letters delivered at the War Office is 3,500 a day, which requires to be dealt with—a correspondence which is on a scale unexampled in any other Department, and, I believe, in most private businesses. It needs an admirable system to work operations of that kind. I have, however, laid down a variety of reforms which I trust may have some effect. In the first place, I have laid it down that all letters that do not involve reference to other Departments must be answered on the day. Secondly, I have largely stopped the Minutes from one person to another, holding, as I do, that if people cannot agree by writing a Minute on either side, they had better meet and settle the question. But I am sorry to say we have yet to teach officers at a distance that business habits are as essential as good military discipline. Perhaps the House will allow me to give one or two illustrative instances of what I mean. Shortly after I took office I received a letter from a Reservist who had made application to join the South African Constabulary, and who for two months had waited without receiving an answer. I made inquiry, and I was told that the man ought not to write to the Secretary of State, and I quite agree with that; but it is difficult to debar a man from taking some means to get an answer. But I wished to know whether the man was to be allowed to go or not, and I waited a considerable time for an answer. I waited a fortnight, and, hearing nothing, I wrote again, requesting a prompt reply, for which I waited another week. Then I sent a telegram saying that I must know, and still nothing came. At the end of the fourth week I thought the time had come to exercise my authority. I indicated to the authorities that if I did not receive an answer on the following morning somebody would go on half-pay. I got an answer the next morning. The application had gone about among military officers, but meanwhile the man's case was not settled, as it should have been. In consequence of the multiplication of such cases as this it became necessary that the Adjutant General should lay down a regulation that all officers should open their own letters. I do not mean that they should not employ clerks, but that each officer should be responsible for seeing the work done. I certainly think that the interest of the public service demands that a man under discipline who makes such an application should have a prompt reply. Here is another case. A paper came before me last November, and that paper was in relation to the question whether a particular cottage should be shut up, or pulled down, or repaired at an expenditure of £130. Then I ascertained the history of that paper. It started in 1896, and came to me in November, 1900. In the interval it had been touring about between three military officers. In the second year it reached the War Office, and the Assistant Under Secretary sent it to the Commander-in-Chief, who gave certain orders. Then, as officers had been changed meanwhile, it went again on its peregrinations, and the result was that, after four years, the matter stlil remained unsettled. I sent it to Lord Wolseley, requesting him to see that whatever orders he gave were executed. Making a little more inquiry, I learned the result, which reminds me of the trial of the pig in "Alice," for deserting his sty, the pig being found when sentence was pronounced to have been dead for some years. So, in this case, I found that the cottage over which all this had taken place had been shut up three years ago by order of the sanitary authority. Dealing with such cases, I cannot but remember that we have got to teach a body of men to whom we delegate large powers, which some of them use admirably, that business habits must be enforced. But I realise fully that neither rewards or penalties will carry us as far as we should go in this matter. You will not secure loyal service unless you retain the confidence of those who servo you. Too long there has been supposed to be a distinction between the civil and military departments at the War Office. There seems to be an assumption in the Army that duty to the Commander-in-Chief does not include the service of the War Office as such, and that the saving of money was not the saving of the country's money but the War Office money. Now, I wish to do everything in my power to remove this feeling. Lord Roberts is working with me in every respect, and I with him, to make the Army feel that loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief means loyalty to the War Office also. We cannot get rid of the civilian element, and I do not wish in any way to reflect on the admirable service of the eminent men who have served the War Office. Among the younger men, especially with high attainments, there is an ambition to render the best service in their power; still I think that the hard and fast line between the civil and military elements at the War Office should, so far as is consistent with the interests of the public service, be broken down. For many years it has been the custom of the Secretary of State to be, as it were, in laager encircled by civilians, with a civilian Under Secretary, a civilian Parliamentary Secretary, a civilian Financial Secretary, and a civilian private secretary; and through this hedge it was difficult for a military officer to approach him. Now, I have done what I can to break down this division. In the recently appointed permanent Under Secretary—Colonel Ward—we have a man of recent brilliant military experience, and recommended by Lord Roberts as the best military organiser for the post that he knew. I think myself most fortunate in having secured him. In the Parliamentary Under Secretary we are so fortunate as to have an officer who has served in the Guards and is one of the best Militia colonels, and who has ever taken the greatest interest in the service. Then, as the House well knows, as Financial Secretary we have my noble friend, whose services we are happy in securing after his recent South African experience, and who brings a fresh breezy atmosphere into the War Office. My private secretary is an officer of South African experience, and renders me the greatest possible assistance. We wish to carry this principle as far as we, can; and I. think there are many posts that can be most usefully filled by officers who can no longer go on active service, and more especially among those who have suffered in the war. I hope to take further steps in this direction, but for any general change in business I must wait to hear the conclusions arrived at by the, Committee which has given so much time and attention to the subject. To pull together what the House has allowed me to say, our object is to re-organise the Army, giving full equipment and stores, by strengthening the Regular military force, by bringing the Auxiliary forces up to strength and improving their training, by changes in drill and uniform, by training, by reform of War Office administration, the Medical service and the Transport service. On some points I cannot undertake that we will move in the present year. I have any number of cases brought before me every day involving what I may call immediately unproductive expenditure—the maintenance of schools, of cadet corps, the establishment of Volunteer reserves, the encouragement of rifle clubs—all these involve expenditure of large sums of money, and which, however ultimately desirable, do not conduce to immediate efficiency of the Army, and I must be content for the present to do as I have said. We shall ask the House to main- tain an Army of about 155,000 at home, a Reserve of 90,000, Militia 150,000, Yeomanry 35,000, and 250,000 Volunteers at least, allowing for some deductions under the more stringent conditions of service. We ask the House to take on the Estimates 680,000 men, the Field Army absorbing 260,000, the garrisons at home 190,000, the Volunteers for London defence 100,000, and the various staffs 4,000, so that in all we have 560,000 men allotted to various positions, giving a margin of 120,000 for recruits not trained, the sick, and other deductions in time of war. It is an organisation that may well tax the best energies of the War Office. I know there are many gaps in the details of ray statement and much that I have omitted. What I have aimed to do is to establish a standard up to which we can work and by which we can know what remains to be done. I must ask the House to look with favour on what I have attempted. I have been but four months in office, and I have had the advantage of Lord Roberts's advice for only half that time. During this time we have had to maintain 200,000 troops in South Africa and to equip and despatch 30,000 additional troops and to keep up the stores and supplies. The various reforms I have sketched out have involved an enormous amount of work at the War Office and a prodigious amount of correspondence. Added to this there have been more questions in the House and more debates in the House than ever War Minister had to engage in within such a period of time. The claims on my time have been great, and I mention this in. no tone of complaint, but rather to secure the indulgence of the House towards any imperfections they may find in the scheme I have placed before them. Moreover, there is at all times to be dealt with the current business of a great Department, which I have seldom been able to take up before the evening. Complaint would be out of place, for no man feels more than I do how much every effort which we can make is due, and how small that effort is compared with the efforts which we have required of our troops in South Africa in the last fifteen months. And when I think of the 10,000 or 12,000 men whose lives have been given for the country in this war, and the much larger number of men who have come home suffering from wounds and disease, I cannot help feeling that by far the highest monument which we can raise, and the best recognition which we can give to their heroism is by founding on their experience an army system adequate to defend their countrymen at home, and to fulfil the demands necessarily made upon us for our colonies abroad. It is because I have been fortified by this feeling that I have felt that we should shrink from no labour, that we should shirk no difficulty, and fear no criticism, and I have a profound conviction that it is possible to build up an army that will be adequate to our needs. And I cannot but hope that, long after the discussions which divide us with regard to the war and to other political topics have been forgotten, it may be written in the history of this Government—yes, and of this Parliament—that they have unflinchingly set their hands to the great national work of the reform of the Army, and thereby gained both for the Government and for Parliament the abiding gratitude of their fellow-countrymen.

I propose to ask leave of the House to withdraw the motion in order to carry out the pledge I gave yesterday to the right hon. Gentleman opposite.

That will be in accordance with the understanding. May I say that I should ill express the feeling of the House if I did not congratulate the right hon. Gentleman not only on the substance, but on the manner of the statement he has made.

congratulated the Secretary of State for War on the magnificent speech to which they had listened with appreciation and advantage. Dealing with the Estimates, the hon. Member called attention to the enormous loss of horses in connection with the South African campaign. That was a matter of which the Committee should take notice. Since the original Estimates were presented the total sum voted for remounts was no less than £8,100,000. While he recognised that this war had been carried on under exceptional circumstances, and in a climate which was very trying, he must call attention to the exceedingly bad arrangements which were made for the supply of horses. Our strongest cavalry regiments had 609 rank and file, but they had only 465 horses, or a permanent deficiency of 144. In the Household Cavalry regiments there were 404 rank and file, but only 275 horses, being a deficiency of 129. The result was that we had to go all over the world when the war broke out to find horses. We went to the Argentine Republic and to the London General Omnibus Company. The Argentine horses had been excessively bad. What we did in South Africa was to establish at a place called Maitland camp, a depot for horses, and the animals, imported from all over the world, were taken to that place. He had received a letter from one of the officers employed there, and referring to the way the horses were treated the letter contained the following—

"In October, 1899, war was declared, and I maintain that England at that moment was absolutely unprepared so far as remounts and horses generally were concerned. They therefore sent officers and veterinary surgeons to all parts of the globe and bought horses of every kind. This took time. The various regiments arrived at Maitland camp near Cape Town and waited there for their horses. The horses arrived in time, were at once seized on and sent up country. After four or live days in a truck they were detrained and marched with heavy men and much kit on their backs twenty or thirty miles, and so on day after day. The result was that they died in thousands, which was both cruel and costly. I therefore think some other system must be employed in the future."

The hon. Member agreed that some other method must be employed. Everyone acquainted with horses knew that after a voyage of 6,000 miles horses required alterative diet, gentle exercise, and good treatment. But our horses were hurried up country at once. If after the first two battles there had been sufficient cavalry we could have cut off the Boers in their retreat. He should like very much to know why Basuto ponies had not been employed. In a previous war there was a whole regiment who were mounted on Basuto ponies. The son of a popular Whip in that House, who had been out there, told him that he rode a Cape pony which carried him through the whole campaign. The gentleman was fifteen stone, and the pony which carried him, with full accoutrements, was perfectly well and fit now. We ought to have bought up every possible Cape pony. Besides their power of endurance, they were accustomed to the climate, and would have stayed the campaign better. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give attention to having a better registration of horses. He hoped also that the cavalry regiments would, in point of horses, be brought up to the number of men. In Ireland if stallions were lent to various counties the Government ought to have right of pre-emption in the produce. One of the greatest blots in connection with the war was the deficiency in horses. He urged that some provision should be made whereby we would not be subjected to the same experience in future.

said he did not know anything about the Cape horses. The best horses for cavalry were Irish horses. That market had been altogether neglected by the Government for the last fifteen or twenty years, and the consequence was that there was a comparatively bad supply of horses in Ireland when the war broke out. He wished to know if that was exclusively the fault of the Government. The House of Commons voted plenty of money to pay for horses. They voted £40 a horse. It paid the farmer to produce a good cavalry horse for that sum. But the farmer did not get £40. He had tried to get the figures from the War Office, and he had put question after question in the House, but he had got very little information. The Army authorities were ruining their last breeding ground for horses—Ireland— by the practice of buying through dealers. Last year about 6,000 horses were purchased from dealers and 209 from non-dealers. The dealer got £40 per horse and paid only £28 to the farmer: and when the cavalry officer purchased direct from the farmer he paid only the same amount—£28— in order not to spoil the dealers' market. The consequence was, that for the last ten years farmers in Ireland had found that it did not pay to produce horses for the Army. While he believed that Irish horses were best for cavalry purposes, he did not mean to say that they were best for artillery. As a general rule the Irish horse had not sufficient weight for the artillery. There were many inconveniences from having to buy horses through dealers. The remedy for this was to make the cavalry colonel buy his horses direct from the farmer, giving him the price which was now paid to the dealer. He hoped the Secretary of State for War would turn over a new leaf in this matter.

said he washed to support the hon. and gallant Member for North Galway in urging that remounts should he brought from farmers direct, not only in Ireland but also in this country. He had had some experience in the Yeomanry in the buying of remounts, and knew how easy it was to deal direct with the farmers in the west of England. It was the custom in the west of England for dealers to receive from £40 to £50 each for horses which they purchase in anticipation of a visit by an Army officer at half the money. He thought there ought to be a different system of purchase. The horses should be brought to certain centres for the inspection of Army officers and purchased direct from the breeders. The question was one of very considerable importance to breeders of horses in the west of England, and he earnestly pressed the right hon. Gentleman to turn over in his mind the possibility of meeting in some such way as he had suggested the wishes of the breeders of horses.

said he wished to ask a question with regard to the fittings on board the South African transports, and the enormous loss of horses in consequence of their being faulty. On one of the transports, lie believed it was the "Weimar," going from Bombay to Durban, the horses were swept overboard wholesale, simply because the fitting's were of a faulty character. Some of the transports, on the other hand, had iron fittings of the very best character. He suggested that the Government should lay down specific regulations as to the sort of fittings to be used on board the transports, and that in the event of there being a loss of horseflesh caused by fittings of a non-regulation character the owners of the vessel should bear the cost. The suffering involved ought in itself to be sufficient to attract the attention of the War Office to the matter, and the Committee were entitled to some assurance that the question should be looked into, so that a repetition of the scandals which were far too prevalent at the early stages of the war would be avoided.

said that he happened to be at Durban when the particular ship referred to by the last speaker came in. It was true that the few horses remaining were cut about in all directions, but it was hardly fair to put it down to the bad fittings. The real cause was that the captain of the vessel was not familiar with that part of the coast; he put out too far to sea, and there was a tremendous storm raging. There; might possibly have been faults in the fittings, but that was not the main reason.

said that as a matter of fact he was aware that a great deal of the loss of horseflesh on that ship was occasioned down below by a tank getting loose.

suggested that the hon. Member might be confusing two cases.

was certain he was not mistaken, as it was only recently he was discussing the matter with a man on the ship. It was the case of the 9th Hussars. The fittings were wooden and faulty. But he did not rest his complaint upon one case. It was a matter of public notoriety that in the earlier stages of the war the fittings passed by the Army officials in London and Liverpool proved to be altogether inadequate.

agreed that as a general rule Argentine horses were very unsatisfactory, ft would have been much better if more horses could have been purchased from Ireland. His experience of Irish horses was limited to one, for which he paid, as he thought, a very high price. But although he, worked that horse very hard in South Africa, ho had no difficulty in selling it out there for £10 more than he originally gave for it. That might be a good tip for the Government, because, if they did not want to bring the horses back, the people out there would buy them, as they were very glad to get hold of good horses. Another point to which he wished to refer was the burden borne by the cavalry and mounted infantry in the field. The weight was perfectly inconceivable. The saddles were loaded with forage, a lance, a sword, and a carbine, with perhaps five or six stone weight tacked on, so that it was almost impossible to keep the saddle in the middle. The consequence was that the horses suffered severely from sore hack, and were then absolutely useless for all practical purposes in the field. He saw no reason why the mounted troops should not have a certain number of light squadron carts, with, say, four horses apiece, which should follow at a distance and come up to the camp at night. These carts could carry the forage, tools, rugs, blankets, and so on, that were not imme- diately required by the men. The advantage of such a scheme would be that immediately a horse began to get a sore back it could be changed for one of the leaders in the cart, and, by being relieved of the saddle, it would be able to keep up with the regiment, so that the necessity of leaving it on the veldt, as so many hundreds and thousands had had to be left, would he avoided. The hon. Member was proceeding to refer to the proposed extension of the system of registration, when

ruled that that question did not come within the Vote under discussion.

said that on the proper occasion he would refer in a friendly manner to that subject.

looked upon the question of the proper supply of horses as one of the greatest importance. The registration system was one of the very best methods that could be adopted, and if a system could be devised by which the British Government might have a claim upon colonial horses—

reminded the hon. Member that the Committee were discussing a Supplementary Estimate for horses in respect of the war in South Africa. The general question of horses, registration, and so forth, was not open for discussion.

pointed out that Vote 6. Item D, included the registration of horses. Would not the discussion of the question therefore be in order?

If the Minister in charge of the Vote said that any of this money has been paid in respect of registration of horses the hon. Member would be right. But I understand that that is not so. The money is asked for in respect of the purchase of horses which have been or will be sent to South Africa before the end of the financial year.

passing from the registration to the transport of horses, said that the case of the 9th Hussars was but one isolated instance. There were at least half-a-dozen ships which sailed from various ports taking horses to South Africa in regard to which the same point arose. In many cases the enormous loss of horseflesh was due almost entirely to bad fittings. The ships had been fitted under the supervision of officers who were not experts in reference to that particular duty. In some cases ships sailed without veterinary surgeons of experience on board, and horses bought abroad were brought down to the ship-side absolutely raw and unprepared for the voyage. Where duly qualified veterinary surgeons were on board they were practically under the orders of officers —some of them Militia, and most of them infantry officers—who had no knowledge whatever as regarded the shipping of horses. The Army Veterinary Department had never received fair treatment at the hands of the authorities. At the time when the war broke out there were twelve vacancies, but only one member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons presented himself for examination. The main reason for that state of things was that, as in the case of the Army Medical Department, the views of the profession had not been attended to. The Army was consequently tabooed by the schools, and the best men were not forthcoming. The department was so framed and constituted that there was no arrangement for extension in the case of war. As nine-tenths of the British campaigns were carried on in countries more or less uncivilised, where if there was railway transport at all it was very limited, there was no army in the world which needed to be better provided for an extension of its veterinary department than the British. The difficulties of supplying an army in the field with only one line of railway were prodigious, as to a great extent, wheeled transport and pack animals had to be relied upon. The horses, mules, and oxen necessary for that purpose, of course, required veterinary treatment just as much as the cavalry and artillery horses. A large number of veterinary surgeons had to be employed; but was it to be supposed for one moment, seeing the great rise which had taken place in the social status and position of veterinary surgeons to-day as compared with a few years ago, that men would leave good practices to enter the Army for temporary employment under the conditions obtaining at present? Of course they would not. Large numbers of the men who were employed had proved absolute failures, as they had no knowledge whatever of the duties they were supposed to perform. Considerable responsibility rested upon the War Office authorities for not having established prior to the war some system whereby they could lay their hands upon, at any rate, a limited number of properly qualified veterinary surgeons of a certain standing.

I must remind the hon. Member that there is no money asked for in regard to veterinary surgeons.

pointed out that he was endeavouring to show that the loss of horseflesh was mainly due to the fact that the horses had not been properly taken care of. When they arrived in South Africa, instead of being prepared for transport by rail, they were sent under incompetent persons to the various depots up-country. They were put in charge of men from various cavalry regiments whose commanding officers had found them to be practically useless, as it stood to reason that no colonel commanding a mounted corps would send his best men to the depÔt to take care of horses. There was a sort of dual responsibility between the military and the veterinary officers in charge of the depot. Such a system was bound to do badly, and as a result at two crises of the war operations were delayed in consequence of the dearth of horses. Had a proper supply of horses been forthcoming many men who had lost their lives in South Africa would have been alive to-day. After the battles of Graspan, Modder River, and others, the general officer in command was unable to take military advantage of the success he had gained, because he had no cavalry either to turn the flanks of the enemy or to pursue the foe when they were in retreat. Another point in connection with this matter was the effect which the large number of horses, mules, and oxen dying on the march or in crossing the various rivers had upon the health of the troops. Probably a great deal of the enteric fever was caused by the contamination of the water supplies by the bodies of these animals. With regard to the large number of Argentine horses which had been purchased, it was known that hardened horses were not to be found in the Argentine Republic. They were bought there in a green state, and surely that was not the field to which the War Office should have gone. Others were bought in Hungary, where it was understood £7 or £8 per head was paid by the dealers through whom they were bought, but the British Government had to pay something nearer £40. He admitted there were great difficulties in buying horses in a foreign country, but surely a great and wealthy country like England could lay its hands upon a certain number of men with the necessary qualifications to buy horses in Hungary. The question of the weight carried by the horses was one of considerable importance. Members who were old cavalry officers had called attention to this matter over and over again. It was said that the British cavalry as mounted men were equally as good as the Boers, and yet the Boers with smaller horses were able to walk round the British troops. It stood to reason that the tremendous weight carried by the horse must tell in a long march. Moreover, the average British cavalry soldier took practically no interest in his horse in the matter of sore back, and a horse after two or three days sore back became absolutely useless. In South Africa no depots were provided for these horses with sore backs, and they were ridden until they were practically useless, and then they had to be despatched. Had those horses been sent to proper depôts they would have, in four or five weeks time, been not only equally good but far better than the new arrivals. His belief was that at the root of all these evils lay the want of proper organisation of the Army Veterinary Department. It was impossible all at once to extend a department to do ten times the work expected of it under ordinary circumstances, and he hoped that under the scheme foreshadowed in the able speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War—upon which he heartily congratulated him—he would not forget this great necessity in the Army Veterinary Department.

said that something had been stated about buying horses in the Argentine and in Ireland. He thought it was wise to buy horses at the present time on the other side of the equator. Horses had to change their coats at certain times of the year according to the season, and it stood to reason that horses bought in Ireland and taken over to the other side of the equator would have to undergo a change of climate which would be very trying to them. Therefore, he thought the Government were wise in purchasing horses on the other side of the equator. He was not arguing in favour of Argentine horses, but he thought horses could be bought, probably in Australia or elsewhere, which would serve the Army better than the horses bought in Ireland.

said he had been induced to make one or two observations in consequence of what he had been told went on in South Africa by an old friend of his who had been out there, and had witnessed the excessive waste of horseflesh which had occurred during the campaign. That waste meant a terrible loss of money to the taxpayers, and he could not help thinking that in this respect the forces had suffered from a want of organisation just as they had suffered from this cause in reference to the spread of disease in the Army. At a late period of the war, horses were shipped in large numbers under great difficulties, and with some defects in the transport arrangements. Those who were not military men or veterinary surgeons knew that horses brought over a long sea voyage always required a certain amount of rest before they were put to work. He was assured on good authority that when the horses came to be landed at Cape Town no preparations were made for giving them a short period of rest, and although they were suffering from all the ills of the voyage, made very often in ships inadequately fitted, they were entrained at once and sent up country to the depôt. Even when they arrived there they did not receive that period of rest which was absolutely necessary in order to fit them for the hard service of the campaign. Horses required proper and considerate treatment, but they never received such treatment, and they were put to carry those enormous weights referred to in the debate in that bad condition. How could such horses, carrying from twenty to twenty-one stone, fie expected to compete with the Boers, who were mounted on hardy ponies, carrying perhaps from 20 to 25 per cent, less weight. In all those matters of rapid movement on horseback no one knew better than the noble Lord that weight told more than anything else. They could not get pace if they did not look after the weight, and a weight-carrying horse, however good he might be, had no chance against an inferior horse if he had two stone more to carry. Not only had they been carrying on a wasteful and almost indefensible policy in regard to the treatment of horses, but they had not been giving the men such a, number of remounts as would enable them effectively to bring the war to an end. On the ground of humanity alone, and out of regard for the dumb creation, better care ought to have been taken of those unfortunate horses. Hundreds of horses had dropped down on the roadside in consequence of the labour put upon them when they were not in a condition to do it. The horses had died in thousands, and he should like to hear from the noble Lord the exact mortality among the horses. Those horses which had died on the roadside had been a source of great danger to the troops themselves. Their carcasses had been left there rotting in the sun, and often polluting the water supply, and if this had not produced enteric fever, it had contributed largely to that other disease known as dysentery, which had affected their troops in South Africa, and which had done so much to swell the list of deaths from disease. On these grounds he thought they ought to press this matter upon the attention of the noble Lord and the right hon. Gentleman his colleague opposite, in order that the great waste of horseflesh might be avoided in the future.

Perhaps I may be allowed to intervene at this stage in order to answer a few of the questions which have been raised. I can assure this Committee that the War Office authorities have not the slightest inten- tion of covering up any shortcomings. One question put to mo had reference to the purchase of Basuto and Cape ponies. I may say that we got every Basuto pony that it was possible to get, but our Commissioner found that there was not a great disposition to sell. I should like to point out that a large portion of this Tote which we are taking to-night is for horses and Cape ponies purchased in those districts which have come under martial law, and in consequence we have been able to obtain them. We sent out buyers to purchase not only Basuto ponies, but also Cape ponies, and they had obtained as many as they possibly could. Two or three hon. Members have spoken with reference to the future purchasing of horses for the Army, and I confess that I am entirely in accord with those who would wish us as far as possible to buy from our own breeders, and thus give them an inducement to produce a class of horse that will be useful to us in the future. I am not sure that I should confine this to trying to produce cavalry horses in this country, but I should try and extend it by having large stud farms in Canada and South Africa.

And Australia.

Australia is slightly different, because that is a country from which we draw upon so much for horses for the Indian Army, and we do not wish to interfere with that supply which must be kept up for India. Cape Colony and Canada seem to me to be suitable places where we might be able to establish some system of breeding horses. As far as Canada is concerned, I know it is open to the objection that in the winter it is impossible to send horses produced there into the warmer climates. I think, however, in South Africa it would be perfectly possible to do something in this direction very successfully, and I hope when the war ceases we shall be able to start some system of this kind. There is another system which has been mentioned, which personally I am very much in favour of, and that is whether we could not, by providing for the tenant farmers in this country and in Ireland a good class of mare and using sound stallions, obtain a lien on the produce. I know there are a great many difficulties in the way of carrying this out, but they might possibly be overcome. Upon the question of the general buying of horses there have been endless difficulties. I do not think that there is a single Englishman or Irishman who does not, in the first place, think he is the only man who knows how to buy a horse, and he thinks he can readily convince anybody else who is selling you a horse that he is really doing you, and that he could get you a better horse for the same money. I do not think that we can say a word against those persons who have been sent to buy our horses, for they have done their best. They have had very hard work to do, and, although they have had some failures, I cannot help thinking that the majority of horses they have purchased have not been of such a very bad class as some hon. Members would have us believe. With regard to the purchasing of horses at the present moment, my hon. and gallant friend may be pleased to hear that orders have been given for the purchase of 1,000 horses and cobs in Ireland, and we have also given directions that our dealers in Ireland and in England shall put themselves more in touch with the breeders of those, horses than with the dealers. If gentlemen of influence in the various localities would assist our buyers in any way it would lead to better results. I think hon. Members who understand anything about buying horses will certainly bear me out when I say that the amount of rubbish brought forward for artillery and cavalry purposes is extraordinary, and disapproval of these animals is very often expressed in very strong language. Two or three hon. Members have referred to the question of the weight carried by our horses in in South Africa. I do not think anybody could have been out there without being impressed with the enormous amount of weight that we have to put on the backs of our horses and men to send them out in an efficient state even for a three days march. That, of course, is one of the questions which will have to be dealt with, but it is hardly my place to express an opinion upon such a subject. I think it is one of those questions which can safely be left to those officers who have had the most experience in those matters, and it must be left entirely in the hands of the military authorities to make suggestions. My hon. friend the Member for West Newington spoke about the Veterinary Department, and I think that is one of the very few omissions which one can point to in the statement of my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War to-day. But though he omitted it in his speech, I may say he has not omitted it in his consideration, and an attempt is being made to put the Army Veterinary Department on a much more substantial basis than it has ever been before, and by the better terms which we propose to offer I think we shall be able to get a better class of veterinary surgeons than we have had during the present war. At the same time, it is obvious that it is perfectly impossible to have in permanent employment in the Army the number of veterinary surgeons required in time of war, and if we can come to some arrangement in regard to veterinary officers similar to that which we have arranged in regard to the horses, I hope that will be a step in the direction in any future war of saving our horses. The hon. and gallant Member was wrong when he said that we had no sick establishments for the horses. I know there was one at Bloemfontein, at Fisher's Farm, and there must have been something like 300 or 400 horses under treatment there. There was another such establishment at Pretoria, and there was also another in Natal.

There was also one on the Orange River.

I was not aware of that. It is very easy for hon. Members to talk about collecting sick horses and placing them in the depot. When a regiment was on the march there may have been cases where perhaps horses might have been saved by sending them to these; depots, but owing sometimes to the circumstances of the case and the distance you are from the main line, you are obliged to put the finishing touch to the horse by riding him on an extra day. Hon. Members must not judge in this respect simply by what they hear, and I would suggest that they might accept the verdict of some of those officers who saw these things and who are convinced that as much was done in that direction as is possible. With regard to giving the horses on their arrival at Cape Town a period of rest, there were many difficulties in the way. In the first place it was difficult to get a good camp for them, and it must also be remembered that what we wanted was a horse fit to take the field at the point of distribution. If you brought a horse to Cape Town and got him fit there, if you had then to put him in a truck for eight days, where he would not be regularly fed owing to the great difficulties in the way of carrying this out, when you came to take him out you can readily imagine that a great deal of the condition put on at Cape Town must go off before you get him to the district where he was wanted. The ideal treatment would have been to have taken all the horses to the distributing place and got them into condition there. That would have meant, however, an enormous expenditure of forage, which it was altogether impossible to give. It was as much as could be done to feed the few horses that we had got there, without having to supply some thousands of them while they were getting fit. With regard to the horses we are sending out now, it should be remembered that part of this vote is for a large number of the mounted trooops which we are now sending out as reinforcements. In addition to this the Vote includes payment for all the horses and ponies that we have taken in South Africa, and, in addition, we are at the present moment providing a reserve stock to endeavour to see if we can get some condition on them at Cape Town before they are sent out to the front. I think we shall be able now to send out three thousand a month over and above the demand that has been made. With regard to the fitting up of the ships, I have not provided myself with the figures as to how many horses have died owing to the defective fitting up of the ships. Of course it would be rather difficult to give those figures, because you must also take into account the sort of weather you bad on the voyage. There are other circumstances besides defective fittings to account for the great loss of horses. When the '" Suffolk" went down all the horses on board, belonging to the 10th Hussars, were lost, but when that regiment got to Cape Town the men were provided with Argentine horses, and I believe they outclassed any of the horses in the other two squadrous, so that all Argentine horses are evidently not of the same sort. All these ships are carefully examined by naval experts before the horses are sent out. There is a great difference of opinion as to how you should ship horses, but I believe that every possible care has been taken, and if this war has brought out defects, I am perfectly certain that if it requires any expenditure of money to put these matters right in the future my right hon. friend will be the last man to stand in the way of the money being spent. I do not think it will be found that these fittings have been as defective as has been made out, and I believe that the mortality on board has been more due to weather and to change of climate than to any defect in the fittings. I think I have now dealt with all the questions put to me, and I would like to say that we are endeavouring as far as possible to carry out the promises that we made in this House with regard to the future purchase of horses. We have written to Lord Strathcona, and we are arranging for buyers to go out to Canada. We are not purchasing any more Hungarian horses, but we are purchasing another class which we are told is very useful in South Africa. With regard to England and Ireland, more buyers are being sent out, and experienced officers are visiting various districts, and we hope that in this way we shall be able to come in touch with local breeders without purchasing so exclusively from dealers as we had to do in the past.

asked whether the noble Lord could say what the mortality had been.

I do not think I can, and I am afraid that it is impossible for anybody to say what it has been.

said there was no doubt that the mortality amongst the horses in South Africa had been greater than in any war in history. The loss of horses after landing had been absolutely gigantic and beyond all precedent, and there bad been no breakdown and no failure in the war more serious than that connected with the supply of horses, and it had had a most disastrous effect on the course of the war. Generally speaking, he found that the horses which came out with the cavalry regiments were in fairly good condition, for they had been properly looked after. The greatest loss took place in the case of the horses bought in Argentina, Australia, the United States and Canada, and in some of the Yeomanry horses purchased in England. They were landed in a very unsatisfactory manner at some of the ports, and then were put into various remount camps which were short-handed all along, though there was plenty of forage. There was not only a deficiency in the number of the men, but they were unsatisfactory. The deficiency was made up by the employment of raw Kaffirs without experience of horse tending. Then the horses were sent up to the front in that bad condition. The noble Lord bad described the great difficulty that took place in their transport. In one case the horses had been no fewer than eight days in the train. The boxes became slippery— the were not very good boxes in the first place—and the horses got knocked about in every possible way. At Craddock, and perhaps at Bloemfontein, the horses were fed out of the train and proper arrangements were made by the officer commanding there. That was the one bright spot in the life of the horses. Then the trains were sent up in charge of a very short number of men. There were often 200 horses in a train, and commonly 150, and there was only one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and six soldiers—although there were a few more at the last, and some Kaffirs. As all the horses had to be fed in the train the conditions of the journey were disastrous. Then the horses were immediately sent on marches of considerable length. In one case the horses, immediately after a three or four days journey in the train, were sent a march of thirty miles, and most of them died. The loss was gigantic, and that had a most disastrous effect on the course of the war. We had had good luck in that the enemy had no cavalry. One general officer who had commanded a cavalry brigade under General French had stated publicly that the army never could have reached the Portuguese frontier if the enemy had had any cavalry. Several speakers had referred to the weight required to be carried by the horses, as though that was an explanation for the losses. Of course everybody knew that it a horse had less weight to carry he could do better; but they must remember that the success they had met with in keeping horses alive had been much less in South Africa than in the Peninsula, where very few cavalry horses had been lost. There was the great march from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo, where only the artillery horses were killed and the cavalry horses were saved, although the weight carried by them was much greater than that carried now by our cavalry. In the French War of 1870 both the German and French cavalry carried more weight, and they were able to keep their horses alive, which the Germans did, but who carried by one stone the heavier weight, In the march to Russia by the Grand Army the cavalry horses carried a heavier weight than ours did in South Africa. Our loss in horseflesh in South Africa had been greater than in any previous war. It was evident that the noble Lord had given his mind to this matter, and he had shown the Committee that the lessons of the war had not been lost upon him, and that everything would be done in the future to prevent a repetition of the horrible loss of horses. He was inclined to think that if at the beginning of the war precautions had been taken, a great deal of the expenditure might have been saved. He could not but fear that the great destruction in horseflesh was due to the want of training on the part of the men in horse-mastership and in generally looking after horses.

congratulated the Secretary of State on the extremely lucid and clever speech which he had made. He regretted he was not an expert on this question, for he had not been to the front, although that was not entirely his fault. The regiment with which he had served, however, bad been at the front, and he had collected from his old comrades some information which might be of some use. In the first place, they had to deplore a waste of horseflesh from bad treatment. Some of the horses were hunters which had been used to careful attention in warm stables, and yet they had been put on board cattle trucks, and sent down to Southampton for shipment without a rag of clothing. Consequently they contracted the seeds of pneumonia, which was developed during the rough passage to the Cape. Then they were put in charge of Militia officers who had never seen a horse before. It was due to the Member for North Aberdeen that so many horses arrived alive. Even after arrival they were kept three days without food. When a Cape millionaire imported horses he reckoned on their taking a year to acclimatise, but these horses were sent up to the front without even waiting forty-eight hours, and the natural consequence was that they died like flies. In one particular regiment seven times the number of horses which the regulations required passed through the ranks. The question of horse-breeding had been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, who could not do better than look at a letter by Sir Walter Gilbey, which appeared in The Times of 27th December last. In that letter allusion was made to the stud farms established in Austria in 1876. The noble Lord had said that the plan would be to get a lien on the horses in these stud farms. What was the system adopted in Austria? The farmers sent their mares to the stud farms to be served without payment, and the produce was afterwards bought at £28 for cavalry horses and £26 for draught horses. There was another interesting letter, which appeared in The Times on 25th December last, signed by a cavalry officer. That writer alluded particularly to the question of Hungarian horses. It seemed to him that Hungarian horses were absolutely useless. They had straight shoulders, staring coats, and the only hard thing about them was their mouths. They failed when any weight was put on them. He did not always agree with the right hon. Baronet the Member for Forest of Dean, but he did so in regard to the weight which cavalry horses had to carry. The saddles were enormous—more like the equipment of an elephant. The stirrups were as thick as two of a man's fingers, and wherever there was a bare bit of horseflesh the authorities insisted on covering it with a buckle or something. The total weight the horses were supposed to carry was nineteen stone and a half, and he had been told by some friends of his that the only way in which they could keep their horses in condition was to ride on a stripped saddle and without any weight. Of course, it was absurd to ask an eleven-stone hunter to carry nineteen stone and a half. His hon. friend the Member for King's Lynn suggested that the campaign should be carried on by cavalry only, as had been done by Alexander 2,000 years ago, each man with three spare horses. That was how it had been carried on by the Boers. If we had had more remounts we should probably have done better in the war.

said he had listened with considerable interest to the speeches made, from the statement of the Secretary for War to that of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down; but as an Irish Member he must say that there had been a remarkable desire exhibited to ignore the claims of Ireland to a fair share of the purchases of remounts for the cavalry in South Africa. One hon. Gentleman had gone so far as to say that Ireland as a horse-breeding country should be ignored, that no money should be spent in Ireland, but that it all should be spent in the Argentine and other countries beyond the Equator. He would like to know how much of the taxation of this country was to be borne by the people of Argentine or of Hungary, where the horses were being bought at present. The noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the War Office had outlined some plan by which the Government were going to establish stud-farms—one in Canada and one in South Africa. But the noble Lord did not outline any scheme by which the horse-breeders in this country and Ireland would receive some benefit from such a plan. Now, it was generally admitted that Ireland, of all countries in the world, was the best for the production of useful horses; and why should Ireland be given the go-by in this respect? The right hon. Gentleman had said that something like 1,000 horses or cobs were to be purchased in Ireland; but from 150,000 to 160,000 horses had been sent to South Africa, and nearly 100,000 of these had died. From time to time the gaps caused by that terrible mortality had to be filled, and he would most respectfully submit that 1,000 was not a fair proportion to obtain from Ireland. The people of Ireland were, as a whole, opposed to the war, on the grounds of policy and humanity, and so far as they were concerned it would be to their advantage, from a political point of view, if Government did not trouble them with any orders. But the unfortunate part of the arrangement between the two countries was that they were still compelled to pay a proportion of the cost of the war; and therefore as long as they had to pay this large tribute, it was but fair and just that a proportion of the horses required should be purchased in Ireland. If the whole Irish market was only to supply 1,000 horses they were not receiving that fair proportion that was their due.

I said that there was one order for 1,000 horses, but it does not follow that that is to be the only order.

said he accepted the statement of the noble Lord, but he wanted to allude to the way in which these particular purchases were carried out. The horse fairs in his neighbourhood were very largely supplied with serviceable and useful animals, but no representative of the War Department had ever gone over to these large horse fairs, so far as he had been able to ascertain. A military officer might attend them for the purpose of buying remounts. He thought it would be right to give encouragement to the official dealers to go to these fairs. Better still, notice might be given by advertisement that on a certain day so many horses would be examined with a view to purchase. Another question he wished to raise on this Vote of three millions was the supply of provisions, forage and transport in Ireland. Complaints had been made in House already about the boycotting of Irish contractors to the Army. He would like to know what contracts for provisions, forage, clothing and other supplies had been given to Irish contractors. Very much feeling had been generated in Ireland on account of the great loss that accrued to the country by giving contracts to syndicates who had mainly their headquarters in London. It was not a pleasure to Irishmen to raise these points, but since England insisted on making them pay their proportion of the cost of the war, it was but fair and right that the Irish taxpayers should receive a fair share of the contracts.

said he should like to add his congratulations to the unanimous tribute which had already been offered to the Secretary of State for War upon the admirable address which he bad delivered that night. Attention called to the fact that forty were not present. House and forty Members being Members counted, present—

said it had never been his good fortune to listen to a statement more broadminded and statesmanlike than that of the Secretary for War that evening. The question of remounts was one of the most important that had arisen during the course of the present war. He was not sure whether the deficiency in the supply of horses ought not to rank as one of the foremost causes of the length, expense, and disasters of the war. In his opinion it was entitled to rank as equal to others which he would only refer to—namely, the insufficient supply of troops in South Africa before the war began, and the bad generalship which was displayed at the earlier stages of the campaign. Both of these sources of blunder were responsible for an amount of from £50,000,000 to £70,000,000. Many thousands of lives might have been saved if there had been prevision at the War Office or on the part of the military authorities as regards the quantity and quality of horses requisite for the war. It was absolutely deplorable when they thought of the waste of horses that had occurred, and what an enormous expenditure there had been in consequence of the want of prevision. He did not know what the total amount was, but taking the horses at £40 apiece, and that was probably the minimum cost, at least £6,000,000 had been spent upon horses, and if £500,000 had been spent judiciously before the war began upon the provision of a sufficient supply of horses and remounts the greater part of that money would have been saved. The country had a right to know who was responsible for this. There were three authorities that might be responsible. First of all there was the Cabinet. If the Cabinet as a whole decided that this money was not to be spent, then they were clearly responsible. On the other hand, it might be what was called the War Office that was responsible. The third authority that might be responsible were the military advisers of the Secretary of State for War and the Cabinet. He hoped that the Secretary of State for War would see that the responsibility for this frightful waste of horses and money was put on the right person. He thought the noble Lord the Member for the Westhoughton Division, who made a very interesting reply to the various criticisms which had been addressed to his Department on the subject, took rather an optimistic view of the efforts which had been made to obtain the necessary supply of horses in South Africa. Of course the noble Lord must be understood as referring to the middle stages of the war—about, say, the months of February and March last. Before the time when Lord Roberts's control came into full effect the efforts to obtain a supply of Cape horses were not exhausted. Whether they were exhausted after that date he greatly doubted, because the experience of the last few months showed that there was still a great reserve available in the north-western districts of Cape Colony, and even in some parts of the Orange River Colony, and also in Natal, and in parts of the Transvaal which were under our control. He thought something more might have been done earlier by sending some intelligent buyers into those parts. The noble Lord stated that English horses had done best during the campaign. The hon. Member supposed that was subject to the condition that they had a sufficient supply of food they could eat. The difficulty about horses foreign to South Africa was that the supply of food was so scant, so different from that to which they were accustomed at home, that they could not be nourished upon it. The advantage of having Cape horses and ponies was that they nourished themselves upon what appeared to be almost a barren country. They were placed out at night and they managed to get food where an English, Australian, or Canadian horse could not find a mouthful. Another advantage possessed by the native horses was their capacity for avoiding the numerous holes, obstacles, stones, and other troubles which, in that enormous open country, were met with in the course of the campaign. A native horse avoided a hole by instinct, whereas a foreign horse put his foot into it and broke his leg. This ought to have been perfectly well known to hundreds of officers before the war, and yet very slight effort was made to obtain these horses, which were there in thousands. He thought the amount of money spent on horses out of South Africa had been unnecessarily large. A large number of experienced buyers should have been earlier in the field. In this way a great part of the expense would have been saved. It would be very interesting to know from the War Office the comparative cost of the horses purchased in various countries, and also the cost of the transport, which was a very heavy item indeed. He doubted if it would work out at much less than £50 apiece all round. This question of horses was a remarkable illustration of the truth of the old adage that "You may spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar." If we ran similar risks, in case of war with a great European Power, we might find that we had spent not only £6,000,000, the greater part of which might have been saved, and £100,000,000 on a war which might easily have been managed for £30,000,000; but, in addition to the enormous expenditure, we might find that we had suffered great national and Imperial disaster. This above all was the lesson the late expenditure on foreign horseflesh taught. It was a crime and a blunder of the worst kind ever to sacrifice in questions of war the military position to the political, as had been done in South Africa. He hoped the mistake would be never again repeated.

stated that the hon. Member was digressing from the Vote before the Committee.

said he was trying to draw a general conclusion from the extraordinary expenditure on horses in this Vote, but he would not pursue that ject further. He hoped the Government would hear in mind that great facilities and encouragement should he given to breeders in England, Ireland, and Scotland wherever good horses could be reared. He admired the ingenuity of the hon. Member who made his conscientious objections to the war tally with his desire to have larger orders for Irish horses. He quite sympathised with the hon. Member's wish in that matter. While South African horses were by far the best in their native country, they would not be suitable for a European campaign. In a country not so and there was not the slightest doubt that English and Irish horses would be very much better. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Forest of Dean that too much stress was laid upon the question of the weight of our cavalry mounts. It was far more a question of nourishment. He saw General French's forces when they arrived at Kimberley, and afterwards at Paardeburg, and the condition of the horses was absolutely deplorable, not on account of the weight carried or the distance travelled, but on account of the want of food. The average Boer weighed one or two stones heavier than the British soldier, and he carried more ammunition than our soldiers. He hoped the Government would take every precaution to see that the Army did not suffer in future campaigns through want of prevision in regard to the supply of horses.

said the increase in the expenditure on horses during the past few years was startling. In the Estimates for 1899–1900 the total amount was £125,000; in 1900–1901 it was £2,100,000; and now, so far as he could make out, it was £5,500,000. There was an enormous difference between the first and the last-mentioned figures. The noble Lord the Under Secretary for War seemed to feel amused at that, but it was not very amusing for the taxpayers. It struck the hon. Member that to make up the difference there must have been a good deal of blundering, and perhaps plundering. He did not think all that money could have been honestly applied. He agreed with the hon. Member for the Ecclesall Division that if £500,000 had been spent earlier they would not have been asked to vote so large an amount now. It occurred to him that they had not got the proper explanation as to why so much money had been wasted on horses. It was all very well to plead the stress of the war. The stress of the war had been used to cover a good many acts which could not be very well defended in public. He heard a Liberal Member state in the House that he was in the Argentine when the Government buyers were there purchasing horses, and that the Government buyers selected the most inferior class of horses, and did not buy the ordinary class of Argentine horses. They gave the full price he supposed that was stated in the Returns sent to the War Office. It occurred to him that one reason why the Government buyers were anxious to get to the Argentine was that they could very easily buy inferior horses there and pay a nominal high price, and that this would not be detected so readily as if the transaction had been done in Ireland or England. He thought the Committee were not satisfied as to the reason for sending buyers to the Argentine while famous horse-breeding districts in Ireland were entirely neglected, and no effort made to purchase the horses that could be got there. Very many of the Argentine horses, probably three-fourths of them, were unrideable, and they were almost as vicious as the, most vicious mule. It appeared to him that most of the money here asked for had been wasted. Instead of a sufficient number of horses being purchased at the beginning of the war they were sent out in driblets, with the result that they were continually being used up and more asked for. Ireland had ground for very serious complaint in the manner she had been passed over in the matter of the purchase of horses. The Government seemed to have the same animus towards Irish horses as towards Irish Members. It had been stated that one of the reasons more horses were not bought in Ireland was the attitude of the Irish people towards the policy of the Government. But the Germans were as great pro-Boers as the Irish, and yet the Government would go to Germany for bad guns, while they refused to go to Ireland for good horses. The Government buyers raked the ends of the earth for horses, but nobody went to the western parts of Ireland, where some of the best horses for this purpose were to be obtained. The destruction of a large number of horses was due to the careless handling by the mounted troops. The Boers had always been particularly careful in that respect. When the Irish Brigade arrived at Pretoria and were received by President Kruger, instead of delivering to them a speech clothed in sentimental language, the President surprised them by making a short practical speech on the necessity of taking care of their horses. If the British troops had had a homily of a similar kind probably a large portion of the waste would have been prevented.

said he had been asking for some time that an inquiry should be held regarding the horses bought in Austro-Hungary in the spring of last year and the winter of 1899. From letters he had seen, it appeared that the agents sent from this country bought, right and left, horses of the very worst description, and made from £10 to £15 apiece on them. He was convinced that many of the disasters in the early part of the war were entirely due to the inferior animals that were sent out. With regard to future action, the demand made by the Government was for five-year-old horses at about £25. That was an impossible price at which to rear horses in Ireland or England. The age also was much too high. Draught-horses were used by farmers when they were only two years old. If the Government intended to go in for breeding themselves, it was not necessary to have large studs all over the country. Farmers in all parts of the country could breed thoroughly good horses, but the Government must pay the price. Ho suggested that horses should be bought at three years of age, not to be put at once into hard, active military work, but for use in barracks, where they would walk and trot about and be well fed. They would very well carry soldiers on parade at that age, and the difference of a year or two would save nearly £20 to the farmer. In Germany one and a quarter millions of money was spent every year by the Government in rearing and improving the breed of horses, and the same system could very well be adopted in England. As one who went in very largely for breeding both thoroughbreds and draught-horses, he would be very glad to give the authorities any information he could if they would make an inquiry into these matters.

said that he had recently had an opportunity of conversing with a gentleman whose experience of Basuto ponies was very great, and from him he gathered that, while at the beginning of the war a certain quantity of the ponies had been bought in Basuto-land, the purchases ceased at a very early stage of the operations, and no renewed attempt had been made until quite lately, although during the whole time the Boers were taking over the frontier, without the knowledge of the authorities, large numbers of these ponies for their own use. That was an instance of a great horse supply being untapped by the British Government, while at the same time it was being largely drawn upon by the army to which they were opposed. With regard to the Cape horses, there had been a difficulty, whether well or ill founded he could not say, in procuring horses to remount the cavalry and for the purposes of transport. But that difficulty was not in consequence of there being no horses at the Cape, but because the authorities had not taken the means to procure such horses as there were. Very clear proof had been given that there were any quantity of horses in the Cape. Since the beginning of the year nearly 10,000 horses had been captured from the enemy—so far as the newspaper reports were correct—and in addition a very large number had been purchased at the Cape for the supply of the Army. Why was not that supply drawn upon but year and at the end of 1899? The Committee were told that the military authorities were not able to purchase the horses. But in a great many districts martial law had been in force, and under that martial law horses could have been obtained as they were being obtained at present. The policy of destroying farmhouses was adopted in order to reduce the enemy to submission. A very much better policy would have been to commandeer their horses, as that would not only have deprived the enemy of their mobility but would have supplied the British Army with a possibility of movement which they did not then possess. Last year a number of regiments were returned to the House as being in a state of efficiency as cavalry regiments. At the time that statement was made there was in Ireland a cavalry regiment which had a complement of nearly 700 men, but only seventeen horses. To return such a body of men as efficient was absurd.

When was that?

The actual date was January, 1900, and the regiment was the King's Dragoon Guards.

At that moment they were being sent to South Africa.

said that his complaint was that the horses were being swept from this and other countries to the Cape, when at that very moment there were at the Cape thousands of horses now being utilised, and the interruption of the Secretary of State proved his case. It was very necessary that horses should be in a fit condition for work, but very often they were taken off the ship after a three weeks or a month's voyage and put straightaway into badly constructed horseboxes or open cattle-trucks, exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, taken five or eight days journey up-country, and then turned out on the veldt. To put horses to work in that soft and unfed condition did not add to the efficiency of the Army. The horses relied upon for the movement and concentration of troops were not fit to do a day's work, and in many cases they died by the score straight off. The hon. Member instanced a case where 200 or 300 horses were detrained on the way up and put into a kraal in charge of four Kaffir boys and a non-commissioned officer. It was practically impossible that under such circumstances the horses could be looked alter or even fed. What was the good of concentrating all those horses at one particular spot? It would have been much better to have taken a smaller number of the horses and had them properly looked after and attended to, and sent to the front in a fit condition, even though they were a week or a fortnight later. As an old soldier he welcomed the speech of the Secretary of State. It was necessary that the responsibility for mistakes should be placed on the right shoulders, not in order to inflict punishment upon particular officers, but to deter others from committing similar errors upon subsequent occasions. Another point in connection with the money asked for was that a large amount of it had been spent on the purchase of mules. According to a Consular Report, no less than 23,000 mules were shipped to South Africa from New Orleans alone. A scheme had been foreshadowed under which horse-farms were to be established either in Canada, Australia, or elsewhere, but no provision had been made for the breeding of mules. The mule, however, was the most useful of all transport animals, and he had had experience of its great value both for riding and draught purposes. He wished to enforce upon the notice of the Secretary of State for War, seeing the climatic conditions under which the troops were often called upon to serve, the necessity of providing as great a quantity of mules as was possible. In a great many places it was almost impossible to make use of horses with advantage where it was perfectly possible to make use of mules. He hoped the Secretary of State for War would not lose sight of that matter. They had to thank him for the close attention he had given to administrative reform, and not the least of those reforms was the provision of remounts for the Army.

said that probably in modern times there had never been such a great loss of horses as had occurred during the present campaign in South Africa. Undoubtedly it would have been a great advantage if they had had a large supply of horses in the country when the war began, but that was not the case. They had been compelled to buy an enormous amount of horses during an emergency. It had been suggested that the Government ought to have bought up all the horses available in Cape Colony immediately before the war, but no doubt there would have been many objections raised to the collecting of a large number of horses which the Boers would have seen could only have been got together for one particular purpose. Undoubtedly under the circumstances which occurred in the summer of 1899, whilst most delicate negotiations were going on, it would have been exceedingly difficult for the Government at that time to have set to work buying horses in South Africa. He held the opinion that the chief opposition to such a course would have come from hon. Members opposite. Horses had to be collected from all parts of the world and sent out to South Africa, and great losses had occurred. The Member for the Forest of Dean, who had given great attention to this subject, had stated that the transport arrangements were very bad, but from personal observation he was able to say that the transport arrangements were not so bad as had been alleged. They were sending out 6,000 horses a week at one time, and the arrangements for landing them were certainly not bad. Horses which had been on the sea for three weeks could not be expected to be in good condition, but it was remarkable in what good condition the horses were landed under the circumstances. He did not think there was that scarcity of men to look after them as had been complained of, for a very few men could look after a large number of horses in the enclosed camps in South Africa. The hon. Baronet opposite had mentioned Kaffirs as rather superfluous for this work, but the Kaffir who took charge of horses was, as a rule, a first-rate man, and was very often as good as half a dozen of some others. He did not think blame could be attached to the transport arrangements or to the condition of the horses before they were sent up country, but as they had to get this large number of horses at an emergency, whether fit or not, and send them straight up into the country, that undoubtedly was the cause of this extraordinary loss. The horses were in a poor condition, and it is admitted that the English horses undoubtedly stood the strain better than those horses from the the Argentine and other places. The great mortality among the horses undoubtedly arose from the scarcity of food and the fact that it was absolutely necessary to send them up country in trains by a single line of railway before the animals had a chance of getting into condition after their voyage. As it was not possible before the war to secure the horses in South Africa, it was not fair to attribute mismanagement to the War Office or to the people who had charge of affairs in South Africa. He agreed that they ought to have bought the horses in South Africa before the war began, but, as he had stated before, there were a great many difficulties in the way, and it was not fair to attribute blame to the War Office in this respect.

thought the House ought to have a better explanation as to why they should be called upon at the close of the financial year to vote £2,000,000 for remounts. There was a widespread feeling in the country that there was something unpleasant about the large purchases of horses in the Argentine, and that there had been an abuse in regard to the contracts for the purpose of horses in that country. The sum required now was enormous for this one Vote, which covered transport and remounts, the net total for the present year being £19,800,000. That was an appalling sum. He noticed the other day when a question was put to the Financial Secretary to the War Office as to the price paid for horses in the Argentine, the Financial Secretary declared that it was not consistent with the interest of the public service to state the price. That was a most extraordinary thing, because the price paid there was a matter of public knowledge in the Argentine, and it could not be denied by the noble Lord that hundreds of people in the Argentine Republic knew the price paid for these horses by the British Government. Surely those who had sold the horses must know, and in the Argentine Republic the man in the street would be able to tell them what price the British Government had paid for the horses. It was a significant fact that the British House of Commons, which had to pay for these horses, were refused information as to the price. He could understand the Government taking up that position if it were possible for a moment to argue that this matter could be kept secret. It was perfectly ludicrous, for they must have bought from a large number of horse-dealers, and therefore, it was an extraordinary position for the noble Lord to take up to decline to inform the British House of Commons what price had been paid. He was not a "horsey" man, but the hon. Member for South Fermanagh, who was a "horsey" man, and was one of the oldest members of the Fermanagh Hunt, had just informed him that he had a horse to dispose of, which he could confidently recommend to any officer in the British Army. Personally, he could not distinguish a horse worth £10 from one which was worth £100, and he was speaking on this subject simply from the point of view of the man in the street The sum of £19,800,000 was an appalling sum for transport and remounts. The taxpayers of the country were entitled to examine the use to which this money was put, and insist upon such information being given as would assure them that the money had been well spent. They required some better assurance that the money had not gone corruptly into the pockets of the contractors and other men who were making millions of money by transport arrangements and the purchase of stores and horses. With regard to the question of Argentine horses, the information he had gathered from the public press had made a strong impression upon his mind that, practically speaking, the enormous number of horses brought from the Argentine Republic had been a disastrous failure, for not one in ten of those horses had been of any value whatever, and the enormous sums of money spent upon them had been absolutely thrown away. He had been reading an account of the formation of the Colenbrander Scouts Corps known as Kitchener's Fighting Scouts. What did John Colenbrander say about the horse supply a month ago? He said that he attributed the efficiency of his scouts to the fact that they were not treated like a British regiment, and that out of every twenty horses offered them they rejected nineteen. They were allowed to have the pick of the horses. If that was true, it showed a very bad state of things, and would give grounds for the belief that millions of money had been wasted in the purchase of remounts. There was one extraordinary thing which puzzled him more than anything else in this war. According to the Estimates, they had spent millions of pounds in addition to all the resources of the British Empire before the war broke out. He would very much like to find out how much the Boers had spent in remounts. He would venture to say that the Boers had not spent £200,000 during the whole course of the war in remounts, and yet they had out distanced us all the time. The British Army had an enormous stock of horses to begin with, and they afterwards spent £8,000,000 on remounts, and now they were asked to vote £2,000,000 more. He did not suppose the Boers had spent £1,000,000 on the whole war, as against the £130,000,000 spent by us. He thought they were entitled to inquire how this had occurred. He was reading the other day with very great interest a Blue-book containing a number of despatches from British generals in South Africa which had been for a long time withheld. A portion of that Blue-book contained a lecture on geography from Lord Roberts, in which he explained certain facts which were already known to the school children in Ireland in regard to the area of the Transvaal and Cape Colony. That information was to be found in a 1s. 6d. geography, and it did not need any Blue-books to explain it. This information was set forth by Lord Roberts to account for the extraordinary difficulties that he had to encounter in endeavouring to conquer the Boer territories. Their difficulty was to find out where the Boers were. Their object was to catch the Boers if they could, and if they were on the track of De Wet, surely the largeness of the country would not allow him to get away it their horses were as good as his. He had followed the war with great interest, for he had never read of a case before where 30,000 farmers had been able to fight 200,000 soldiers. His reading of the case was that it had taken one and a half years for the British generals on the spot to learn the interesting fact that ten English soldiers were only as good as one Boer. This fact was beginning to be realised now. He had listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War with interest, but he doubted whether he would be able to carry out all the reforms to which he had referred. Lately an attempt had been made to kick all the Irish Members out of the House of Commons, and it seemed to be thought necessary that they should al be locked up in the Clock Tower. They evidently forget that the present Commander-in-Chief and the late Commander-in-Chief were both Irishmen. [An Hon MEMBER: He is an Ulster man.] That was the hen. Member's idea of geography, but Lord Wolseley came from the county of Cork and Lord Roberts from the county of Waterford. The hon. Member's geography seemed to be rather at fault. The speech of the Secretary of State for War was a very a able one, but judging from his study as an ignorant man in the street it appeared to him that the real moral of that speech was that they wanted more brain power. He had spoken of many things that were required, but what they really wanted was more brains. A system which required a man to possess an income of £500 a year before he could be a British officer was certainly not a satisfactory state of things. The real trouble seemed to him to be that they did not realise that brains were necessary in order to provide the horses. If they had had the brains at the head of affairs in South Africa they would have got the horses in time. The real trouble was that it took them a whole year before it dawned upon the minds of their British generals that they wanted two or three horses to each man in order to deal with the Boers. What astonished him throughout the whole of this discussion was that they appeared to think they had done the most extraordinary feat of arms by holding their own in South Africa for one and a half years, although their numbers were ten to one as compared with the Boers. They had sent out 270,000 men, and they thought that they had done something extraordinary. He had never been a file to understand why it was that an equal force of British troops ought not to be more than a match for an equal number of Boers. It had been said that they were fighting m a large and a strange country, but that was not a Very satisfying excuse. He entirely dissociated himself from those of his colleagues who had found fault with the Government for not buying Irish horses for this war. As an Irish Nationalist Member he fell no grievance that Irish horses were not bought. He hated this war and everything connected with it, and he had no desire to sell Irish horses or anything else in order to make a profit out of it, because he believed all such profit would bring with it a curse. So strong was his objection to the war that he would rather not see an Irish horse, or Irish soldier, used in it. But he objected to the taxpayers' money being used to defray "the cost of provisions and allowances in lieu of provisions," which was one of the items in the Vote. It was notorious that the Boer army had for a whole year lived almost entirely off these provisions. What explanation was going to be offered for the strategy of British generals which resulted in provisioning the Boer army at the expense of the taxpayers of this country? As an individual taxpayer he did not profess that this was a very great grievance. He honestly confessed that he would not object to the tax if it was going to provision the Boers rather than the British Army. But the ordinary taxpayer ought to know the reason why enormous convoys and provision trains were captured every week by the Boers. Why, a quarter of this Vote was for provisioning Botha, Delarey, and De Wet. The Secretary for War ought to give some explanation of this. No doubt Lord Kitchener had been evacuating a large part of the Transvaal territory and concentrating his troops along the railway line. But why should not Lord Kitchener retire from Bloemfontein and Pretoria and come back to the Cape? [An Hon. Member: Question.] That was the question, and he supported it by moving that the Vote be reduced by £1,000,000.

said he did not intend to follow the hon. Member for East Mayo as to what Lord Kitchener should do. As to the question before the Committee, the money embraced in the Vote was required to pay for horses that had been taken in South Africa and which were mounted by the local levies there, and also for the mounted troops they were sending out as reinforcements, and, in addition, to provide extra horses over those required for the moment, in order to have a reserve to fall back upon. The hon. Member talked of the Argentine horses, and asked that the price paid for them should be given to the Committee. He declined to state the prices paid for Argentine horses, because so long as purchases were going on it was not in the public interest that the prices they were paying should be mentioned. Some horses had been got in Cape Colony lately from the districts where martial law had been proclaimed. There had been no attempt in any way to conceal the prices, of hon. Members who alleged that the Government had been deliberately swindled in the purchase of horses would bring forward specific instances be should be glad to go into them. He could assure the Committee that there was not the slightest wish or intention on the part of his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War or himself to conceal any deficiencies that had arisen in this matter, and there was not one of them that would not be turned to good account, he hoped, in any future war in which they might unfortunately be engaged. An hon. Member said that they ought to encourage the breeding of English horses, and not establish stud farms in Canada and South Africa. His own idea was to distribute well-bred mares to the farmers and for the Government to get the produce for the purposes of the Army. [An IRISH MEMBER: And Ireland?] Certainly, Ireland too. He bad, he hoped, answered all the questions put to him, and he could assure the Committee once more that he had no desire to conceal anything.

Except the prices. How many horses were there in this purchase of remounts to the amount of two millions?

I am not going to tell the hon. Member anything from which he can find out the prices. The remounts include, besides horses, mules and trek oxen.

said that what they wanted was an assurance that the system under which the horses were landed at Port Elizabeth, the want of care when they were landed, and the way in which they had been sent up to the front, so that 90 per cent. of them died, would be put a stop to. It had been said that the horses had been well landed at Cape Town, but they had sure information that it was very different at Port Elizabeth; that there horses had been landed with broken legs, and that many had been put into trucks and sent up country at once, some of them remaining in the trucks for eight days without food or water.

I can easily give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance asked for. The whole question has been gone into most carefully, and the practice hitherto prevailing has been stopped. The horses are now being most carefully looked after.

said that was what they had been asking for. At Cape Town, he believed, there was an immense collection of provisions and stores. Now there was a danger of the plague being carried by the stores, and that was a very serious question. He would like to have some assurance that these stores were being kept purified and not sent to the troops all over South Africa in a contaminated state. [Laughter.] It was not exactly a laughing matter; that was exactly the way in which the plague was spread.

said that when he was putting his question to the hon. Gentleman in regard to the number of horses which were wanted he was not speaking without book. He had a letter on the subject from a gallant officer at the front, which perhaps the Committee would allow him to read. It was dated 6th January, 1901, and the officer recited a most dismal story in regard to the state of the Army, which would not be relevant to the present discussion. But in regard to the horses he used language consistent with that employed by the hon. Member below the gangway. He said—

"We want at least another 100,000 horses, not skin or hair trunks, but horses, Up to date the consumption of horseflesh has reached the enormous total of 250,000. This includes horses presently in use. The remounts have been bad, very, and in each case wherever the War Office buys horses they buy them £10 under market price, getting a bad driving animal instead of a useful riding animal."

That letter was not addressed to him, but had been put into his hands.

said he could not give the actual number of horses required at the front at the present moment. As to price, he had always said that every one thought he could buy horses better and cheaper than the War Office. In providing horses for South Africa the War Office was not guided by private letters from one individual to another, but by the requisitions of Lord Kitchener, and every requisition Lord Kitchener made would be met to the full and, if possible, reserve kept over.

said there was more than met the eye in regard to this matter. Perhaps if it were left to the noble Lord he might tell them all about these horses and what they cost. But the War Office sent out people to buy horses, and these people bought horses and sold them to the Government at a higher price, and thus made plenty of money. Why did not the noble Lord tell the Committee how it was that these horses, which the hon. Member declared were wretched animals, cost two millions? The other day he met a very impecunious friend of his, who came up and shook him so warmly by the hand that he was naturally under the impression his friend was going to borrow money. But he appeared to be doing well. "What are you doing," he asked his friend, who replied, smiling, "Oh, selling horses to the Government." It was very necessary that they should look into these Votes. He had heard the late Secretary for War say, in another place, that the late Commander-in-Chief was not a man of business, and the next speaker said that the late Secretary for War was not a man of business. If that was the way things were carried on why should they, in appeals to patriotism, vote two millions? He should be prepared to vote against the Government, because he had not received sufficient information from the noble Lord to enable him to say that they had only been reasonably "done" in the matter.

asked if it was true that 24,000 mules and 43,000 horses had been shipped to South Africa from New Orleans, as stated in the British Consul's Report, at an average cost of £20 apiece?

I am not aware of it.

said he hoped the noble Lord would pay more attention to the stores which were being returned from South Africa. Several sanitary authorities in Great Britain and Ireland had recently had cause to suspect a number of ships from South Africa in connection with the plague, and at this moment he believed the Local Government Board was arranging a conference between the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Loudon County Council, in order to spend a large sum of money to meet any emergency. But apart from the Army, if they got even a suspicion of plague in the Port of London—if there were only four or live cases well established—the damage that that would do to English trade in a month or two might amount to four or five millions of money in solid cash. He appealed, therefore, to the noble Lord to pay every attention to the stopping of the importation of infected stores which, after having been

I quite sympathise with what has been said by the hon. Member for Battersea, and anything that I can possibly do in the matter shall be done. I believe the sanitary authorities at Cape Town are taking every step in their power to prevent any means of contagion; but if it is wished, I am sure my right hon. friend will wire special instructions to the military authorities to take every precaution in conjunction with the sanitary authorities.

returned stores?

Yes, to that question as well.