97

A.—s

progress yourselves with the idea of a General Staff, just as we have. You have, I think, some five General Staff officers in Canada at the present time. Now, as regards your General Staff officers, although you have a distinguished British General Staff officer with you, General Lake, there is no organic connection between what is your General Staff in embryo and our General Staff as we have just created it here. But supposing we were studying at home in the General Staff great questions of Imperial Defence, and, amongst others, questions of Imperial Defence in Canada, what an advantage it would be to us, and I think to you also, if we sent you a General Staff officer, in exchange for one of your General Staff officers, who should come over here and who should be working with us at the very problems which concern the defence of the Empire as a whole in Canada. And so with all the other affairs in the Crown's Dominions. It seems to me that we might broaden the basis of this General Staff which we have just created. It is a purely advisory'organization of which command is not a function. The beginning, of course, would have to be very modest. If these things were organized, and if we were to bring about such an interchange of officers as would tend to make the work of the General Staff in the largest sense the work of a military mind which had surveyed the defence of the Empire as a whole, it would, it seems to me, do much to bring about that uniformity of pattern in organization and in weapons, and in other details regarding military matters, which is to some extent essential if there is to be effective co-operation in a great war. I have circulated four papers for the information of the Premiers. It is not probable in the pressure of other business that you have all had time to read them. Mr. DEAKIN : We only received them when we came here this morning. Mr. HALDANE : But I can give you in a few sentences the substance of them, and it the less matters if they have not been extensively read, because we are not proposing that they should be adopted as representing any hard-and-fast view. The first of those papers, which are prepared by our experts here, deals with " the strategical conditions of the Empire from a military point of view," and it calls attention to the three great principles on which I have touched—first of all, the obligation of each self-governing community to provide, as far as possible, for its own local security; secondly, the duty of arranging for mutual assistance on some definite lines in case of supreme common need; and, thirdly, the necessity for the maintenance of that sea supremacy which can alone insure any military co-operation at all. Then the paper goes on to indicate what we are trying to do in making our contribution to this end : first, organizing troops for home defence to repel raids—that is the territorial army; secondly, a striking force, an expeditionary force is the proper phrase—the striking force is that small portion of it designed to act swiftly, and ready to assist any portion of the Empire; thirdly, a navy capable of maintaining command of the sea. Those principles may be said to represent the result of our reflection upon the events of the late war. The second paper points out the importance of assimilating as far as practicable war organization throughout the Empire, and of adopting a uniform system of nomenclature in regard to such organization. The value of any assistance which the self-governing Dominions may offer in the future to the mother country will be much increased if it can be given in the form in which it can readily be fitted into the organization of an entire army in the field. On that I should like to emphasize the absolute necessity of turning our attention to this in times of peace. It is too late when war

14—A. 5

Fourth Day. 20 April 1907.

Military Defence. (Mr. Haldane.)