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XXIV.
THE STANDARD OF STRENGTH FOR OUR ARMY;
A BUSINESS ESTIMATE. l
NE of the difficulties of the discussions on Army
O Reform is how to make a bridge between the ex-
perts and the public whose support is invited by re-
formers. As regards the Navy, the public have been
impressed by the idea that our Navy must equal in
apparent magnitude the navies of any other two Powers.
This idea is of course imperfect, as it may be necessary
to have a navy equal to those of any other three or four
Powers, and as it is also obvious that apparent may be
a very different thing from real magnitude, and the
public are not good judges on the point. The idea
serves, nevertheless, as a pivot of discussion, and gives
the public something tangible to go for. As regards
the Army, however, there is nothing analogous. Should
we have an army equal to a third or a fourth or any
other proportion of the army of anyone of the great
military Powers j and if so, which? or should we have
an army on the scale of one of the military Powers
themselves? or should we have the magnitude of our
Army fixed in some totally different way? There is the
farther difficulty as to the magnitude of the army re-
quired on a peace footing and on a war footing re-
spectively. This difficulty does not seem to exist as
regards the great military Powers which are free from
litt1~ wars, and whose armies are always potentially
convertible from a peace to a war footing in so short
1 From the "Nineteenth Century" of 1901.
242