BY FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS
V.C., K.G.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1912
CONTENTS
PART I
PEACE AND WAR
A Speech to the Citizens of Manchester
Letter to the Manchester Guardian
PART II
THE TERRITORIAL FORCE
Introductory Note: The National Service Leagueand the Territorial Force
The Mansion House Speech: Lord Haldane's SchemeExamined
PART III
THE NATIONAL SERVICE LEAGUE AND WORKING MEN
Introductory Note: Mr. Blatchford's Criticism ofthe Manchester Speech
Letter to the Times on Compulsory Service andthe Social Condition of the Working Classes
PART IV
TERRITORIAL OFFICERS AND THE PRESENT CRISIS
Address at the Annual Dinner of the KentishMen and the Men of Kent
My recent speech in Manchester has been so widelydiscussed, and, in certain quarters, so gravelymisrepresented or misunderstood, that, in the interestsof the cause which I there defended, I am impelledto place before the public a complete text of thatspeech with such notes and supplementary matteras seem necessary to make my meaning unmistakableexcept to faction or to prejudice.
No one who has followed with attention theefforts of the National Service League has any rightto imagine that we desire a strong army solely inorder to invade the territory of European or moredistant States; or that we wish to root out theTerritorial Force in order to establish in its placean army system modelled on the army system ofGermany; or, again, that we have the ambitionof resuscitating once more medieval blood-lust,anarchic plunder, and delight in war!
What, then, are our aims?
We desire, in the first place, that all patrioticmen within this Empire should be made to see andto feel that from one cause or another England, byneglecting her armaments, has drifted into a positionwhich it is impossible to describe otherwise than asa position of danger. We desire further that allpatriotic men should, without either insincerity ordelay, put to themselves the questions: How arewe to arrest that drifting, and how are we to evadeor overcome that danger? And, in the third place,with regard to foreign nations or empires, ourambition is simply that States well-disposed towardsus, whether near or distant, may have it in theirpower to mix with their friendliness respect, andwith their goodwill esteem.
In the following pages I have stated in brief thesolutions of these problems which, after someexperience of peace and war and after somedeliberation not free from anxiety, I have come to lookupon as the only workable solutions, as the onlysolutions consonant with our honour and ourcontinuance as an Empire.
And in view of the discussion and criticism whichthis speech has provoked, and still provokes, I maybe