From ‘How to Use Our Home Guard Volunteers’, The Spectator, 19 June 1915:
There is a technical objection which for the moment seems to raise an insuperable barrier against the military authorities getting what, in many cases, they so eagerly desire, and against the Volunteers rendering the aid which they are equally anxious to render. Clause 6 of the War Office letter of November 19th, 1914, to Lord Desborough, the letter which regularized the position of the Volunteer Training Corps and contains the War Office recognition of all those affiliated to the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps, and is also the charter of the Volunteers, makes the following stipulation: “No form of attestation involving an oath is permitted.” In other words, the Volunteers, however willing, are not allowed to give, either temporarily or permanently, the kind of obligation without which the military officers under whose command they would pass declare, and, as we have shown, very reasonably declare, that they cannot employ them. In other words, the War Office have raised an obstacle against themselves.
For ourselves, we cannot help believing that the King— that is, the Executive Government—has at this moment the power to invoke the Royal prerogative and to compel any man, under the penalties of felony, to assist in repelling the King’s enemies. Owing to the Zeppelin raids and the people killed thereby, the country has technically been invaded, and is being invaded, by the King’s enemies. Technically, also, men guarding vulnerable points, standing by to put out fires, and guarding prisoners are all doing part of the work of repelling the King’s enemies and driving out the invader—work which every one of us can be compelled to do ‘under the common law, and a refusal to do which renders us liable to the pains and penalties enforced on felons. But though those who exercise the ancient Royal prerogative in this respect might exercise their authority over every one of us, they can also if they like pick and choose certain persons over whom to exercise it. If that is so, why should they not pick and choose persons who, as members of the Volunteer Training Corps, have come forward and voluntarily undertaken to place themselves at the disposal of the military authorities for the purpose of resisting the invaders of the realm ? The men might take the ordinary oath of allegiance, coupled with a proviso that they understand that they would be guilty of felony if they did not obey tho orders of the King’s officers set over them.
Comments