第61章

"Our Indian troops are greatly in need of reinforcements," began the Prime Minister again."We must put English soldiers into the field, for we cannot rely longer upon the sepoys.""Certainly," said the Minister of War, "and drafts are constantly being despatched to Bombay.Forty thousand men have been embarked;of these more than twenty thousand have been landed in India; the remainder are still on the sea.A great fleet is on the road, and eight ironclads are stationed in Aden to meet any attack upon our transports.But it is really a question whether we are well advised in still sending more troops to India.My lords! hard as it is for me to say so, we must be prudent.I should be rightly accused of having lost my head if I did more than bare prudence demanded.Great Britain is denuded of troops.Now, I know full well, and England also knows it full well, that an enemy will never plant his foot on these shores; for our fleet assures us the inviolability of our island, but we should not be worthy of our responsible positions were we to neglect any measure for the security of our country.Let us, my lords, be cowards before the battle, provided we are heroes in it! Let us suppose that we had no fleet, but had to defend England's territory on land.We must have an army on English soil ready to take the field; failing this, we are guilty of treason against our country.The mobilisation of our reserve must be further extended.Ten thousand yeomen, whom we have not yet summoned to the ranks, are to-day in a position to bear arms and wave the sword.To-day every capable man must be enlisted.The law provides that every man who does not already belong to a regular army or to a volunteer corps can, from eighteen to fifty years of age, be forced to join the army, and thus a militia can be formed of all men capable of bearing arms.If His Majesty will sanction it, I am ready to form a militia army of 150,000 men.I reckon for India 120,000 men, for Malta 10,000, for Hong Kong 3,500, for Africa 10,000, 3,000 for the Antilles, for Gibraltar 6,000, and 10,000 more for Egypt, apart from the smaller garrisons, which must all remain where they are at present; I shall then hope, after having called up all volunteers and reserves, to be in a position to place an army of 400,000 men in the field for the defence of the mother country."The First Lord of the Treasury shook his head."Do not let us be lulled by such figures into false optimism! Great masses without military discipline, unused to firearms, with newly appointed officers (and they chosen, moreover, by the men whom they are to command), troops without any practical intelligence, without any understanding of the requirements of modern warfare, such are the men, as I understand, we are to place in the field against such splendid troops, as are the French and German.Whence should we get our artillery? In 1871 we saw the result, when masses of men with muskets were pitted against regularly disciplined troops.

Bourbaki was in command of an army that had been disciplined for months gone by, and yet his host, although they took the field with cavalry and artillery, suffered enormous losses on meeting an army numerically inferior, yet well-organised, and commanded by scientific and experienced officers.They were pushed across the frontier into Switzerland, like a great flock of sheep pursued by a bevy of wolves.""But they were French, and we are Englishmen!""An Englishman can be laid low by a bullet as well as a Frenchman.