entering on the
Entente, to have provided an army, not of 160,000, but of 2,000,000 men.
And it is remarked that this is what we had to do in the end. This
suggestion does not, however, bear scrutiny. No doubt it would have been
a great advantage if, in addition to our tremendous navy, we could have
produced, at the outbreak of the war, 2,000,000 men, so trained as to
be the equals in this respect of German troops, and properly fashioned
into the great divisions that were necessary, with full equipment and
auxiliary services. But to train the recruits, and to command such an
army when fashioned, would have required a very great corps of
professional officers of high military education, many times as large as
we had actually raised. How were these to have been got?

I sometimes read speeches, made even by officers who have served with
distinction at the head of their men in the field, which express regret
that the British nation was so shortsighted as not to have provided such
an army before the war. They point to the effort it made later on with
such success during the war. But to raise armies under the stress of
war, when the people submit cheerfully to compulsion, and when highly
intelligent civilian men of business readily quit their occupations to
be trained as rapidly as possible for the work of every kind of officer,
is one thing. To do it in peace time is quite another. I doubt whether
more was possible in this direction than, in the days prior to the war,
to organize the Officers' Training Corps, which contained over twenty
thousand partially prepared young men, and began at once to expand to
yet larger dimensions from the day when war broke out. For the corps of
matured officers, required to train recruits and to command them in war
when organized in their units, would have had to consist of soldiers,
themselves highly trained in military organization, who had devoted
their lives to this work as a profession. It takes many years in peace
time to train such officers. Because they must be professional, they can
only be recruited under a voluntary system.

Now, before the war it was difficult enough to recruit even so many as
the number we then had got, a number totally inadequate for any army
larger than the small one we actually put into shape at home. Every
source had been tried in my time by the able administrative generals who
were working under me at the War Office. I say "administrative
generals," for here