At half-past five in the afternoon, on Monday, April 12th, 1915, the first detachment of troops in the West Riding (1st Line) Territorial Division left England for France. Their going, like all English goings and most English home-comings, was quiet and unobserved: the War Diary of the Division merely states that thus ‘the move to France commenced’; further, that Divisional Headquarters left Doncaster the next day, embarked at Folkestone on the Invicta, and reached Boulogne 9-50 p.m.; that the General Officer Commanding the Division, accompanied by five Staff Officers, travelled by motor-car on April 14th through St. Omer and Hazebroucke to Merville, where Divisional Headquarters were established in the Mayor’s house, 40 rue des Capucines; and that a telegram was received by the General from H.M. the King, and a loyal reply was despatched. So, the time of preparation was over, the time of action had begun.

The new adventure, which was to prove so searching, was founded securely in the past, and this latent sense of tradition explains, or helps to explain, why over 30,000 recruits were taken by the West Riding Territorial Force Association between the date of the outbreak of war and April 14th, 1915; why the strength of the County units had reached three-quarters of the pre-war establishment[1] fully as early as that date, and why the expedition to France proceeded in the ordinary course of duty. For the spirit of adventure was not new, though overlaid by many years of ease. Deep in the consciousness of Yorkshiremen, as of men ‘from every shire’s end of England’, were echoes of long-ago wars in defence of their country on foreign soil, under Wellington, under Marlborough, under the Houses of York and Lancaster, and away back to the Plantagenet kings, when the first ‘verray parfit gentil knight,’ with his squire, ‘as fresh as in the month of May’, led his troops to fight for the right,

Thus Lord Haldane wrote correctly, in December, 1908: ‘The organization of the Territorial Force, ... novel as in material respects it is, ... is the outcome of a process of development, the beginnings of which lie far back in the past.’[2]

Some account of that ‘organization’ in the West Riding, remembering its roots in the past, is necessary in advance of a history of what the troops wrought in the field. They did not spring fully armed from the head of Mars. On the contrary, their martial equipment was a long and complicated affair, mixed up with questions of finance and administration, which were left, in the worst years of military ardour, to the public spirit of a few local men. The menace of foreign aggression in the consulship of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith was not a popular subject, and the Haldane Act, 1907, ‘to provide for the reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces, and for that purpose to authorize the establishment of County Associations, and the raising and maintenance of a Territorial Force,’ was let loose on the counties of the United Kingdom at a time when, twice in one year, a general election was to be held on domestic issues unconnected with peace and war. There was worse than public apathy to contend with. Public apathy might retard enlistment under Section IX. of the Act, but a part of the opposition to the new measure was founded on more positive grounds. Speakers who went up and down the Riding to explain and recommend the scheme had to lay the spectre of ‘compulsion’: in those days of tumbling privileges the one unanswerable argument before which even duty was dumb. Thus, there is a report of a speech at Malton by Mr. (the late Colonel Sir) Mark Sykes on May 4th, 1908, in which,

There was a meeting at York on the same day, at which the elders of the Council discussed a recommendation of the Finance Committee ‘to encourage corporation employees to join the Territorial Army.’ On that occasion one councillor was of opinion, that

Another councillor considered that ‘this was an attempt to establish municipal conscription.’ Another gravely pointed out that ‘to encourage’ did not necessarily mean ‘to force,’ but might be stretched as much as to mean ‘persuade.’

We shall not attach names to these dead controversies. They have buried their dead to-day, and the graves of Flanders and Gallipoli bear mute but eloquent witness to the sudden glory of patriotism which dissolved ‘encouragement,’ ‘force,’ ‘persuasion,’ ‘compulsion,’ and ‘conscription’ in the single light of national defence. But this perception was not yet, and the passive and active resistance which sections of opinion in the country, not excluding the West Riding, presented to Lord Haldane’s Act was recognized by its author himself. Speaking at Leicester in the same week as the elders of York met in council, the Secretary for War declared—

and when a man at the back of the hall shouted that the scheme would lead to compulsory service, ‘he was caught hold of by half a dozen police, and flung out’—to join the suffragettes. We cannot neglect these facts, old echoes though they be to-day. Nor shall we pause to ask if a bolder policy might not have been more successful, and if the appeal should have been directed to the real menace of German aggression. The whole tendency of the times was against emphasizing that aspect, and the pacific instinct of the nation was fostered rather than rebuked by the voices of responsible authority. It was not a healthy atmosphere for the New Act, and the Roman author of the maxim, si vis pacem, para bellum, never explained how to do it if a Government cried peace, and the Government was the people.

Still, the Act was launched, and the counties had to make the preparations.

There were two difficulties inherent from the start, and it is probably correct to associate them with the public apathy towards the scheme. For one thing, the burden of preparation fell a little obviously on a class, which, in the years before the war, lay under a cloud of misrepresentation. That it was a simulated and a temporary cloud, at least in its chief manifestations, the war itself was to prove; but it was spread fast enough and thick enough at the time to darken initiative and counsel. Not the best Government imaginable could contrive to have things both ways. If they chose to load certain classes in the community with the reproach of obstructing the ‘people’s will,’ it was unseemly to rely on individuals from those classes to popularize a branch of their legislation. Thus, the recommendation of a ‘people’s budget’ by abusive ridicule of landowners, and the promotion of a reform of the Second Chamber as the cause of ‘people versus peers,’ however expedient as a means of affixing a stigma for abuses, would prove impolitic, to say the least of it, when members of those orders were invited to take a leading part in recruiting for a ‘people’s army.’ The same ‘people’ might not see the point of leading and following at the same time. Yet the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act constituted ‘the Lieutenant of the County.. . president of the Association,’ and the Lieutenant, thus placed in power, was, almost without exception, either a peer or a landowner or both. Next, it assigned to the Association the duty of ‘recruiting for the Territorial Force both in peace and in war,’ and we have seen that this duty was liable to be misconstrued as legalized conscription. The risk of such misconstruction was certainly not diminished by the obloquy which was poured, for other purposes of the legislature, on the order to which the presidents and some other of the more leisured members of the recruiting Associations belonged. Secondly, these political conditions reacted on the Government to some extent. For good or ill, the success of their plans for social betterment and domestic reform was a little obscurely involved with the maintenance of the open door to foreign imports, the rejection of commercial preference within the Empire, and, as a necessary corollary, with the doctrine that ‘free trade’ would keep the peace. This avoidance, on the highest principles, of any action likely to seem provocative abroad, so firmly upheld at the Foreign Office till the sixtieth minute of the eleventh hour, made us rig Dreadnoughts with apologies and raise recruits with muffled drums. It followed from all these causes-the preoccupation of Ministers, the social status of county leaders, the talking peace to ensure peace—that, once the Territorial Act was launched, no member of the Government except Lord Haldane appeared openly anxious to make it go. The early annals of Territorial Force Associations, as they came into being under the Act, are plaintively and miserably punctuated by what Sir William Clegg, in the West Riding, used to call the ‘pin-pricks of the Army Council,’ and a large part of their work of initiation, which is always the most difficult part, was achieved by personal effort against alternate or simultaneous doses of public indifference and official neglect.

Still, the Territorial Force grew. Its foundations were well and truly laid on that old inexpugnable spirit which, as we saw above, was already alive in Chaucer’s England, and which, when the new summons came, flared up through disappointment to success. The six and a half years’ record of the West Riding Territorial Force Association, from its inaugural meeting on January 17th, 1908, till the outbreak of war in 1914 is typical of the experience of other counties, alike in the obstacles which were encountered and in the resolution which partially overcame them. It derives special interest from the fact that the population of the West Riding is much more than twice as large as that of any county outside London, except only Lancashire; but the chief interest of the record lies in the after-history of the Association. The achievement of its units in the field is a final, triumphant vindication of the confidence of those who helped to raise them, a complete reward for the courage they displayed, and a proof, if proof were wanted, that the nation’s need is the measure of the nation’s power. Hence, if we dwell more particularly on some of the difficulties which confronted that Association during the epoch of preparation, the true merits of the Territorial Army scheme, when tried by the supreme test of action, will be more abundantly manifest.

First, as to personnel, H.M. Lieutenant for the Riding since 1904 had been Colonel the Earl of Harewood, A.D.C., of the Yorkshire Hussars, and formerly of the Grenadier Guards, who, accordingly, became first president of the Association. With him were united as chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, Colonel the Earl of Scarbrough, A.D.C., commanding the Yorkshire Mounted Brigade, and formerly of the 7th Hussars, and Sir William Clegg, J.P., sometime Lord Mayor of Sheffield. These formed a powerful triumvirate, and ‘had done their best,’ as Lord Harewood remarked on January 17th, 1908, ‘to set matters on a preliminary footing.’ The president and chairman were still in office in 1920, but in February, 1917, Lord Scarbrough had received the appointment of Director-General of the Territorial and Volunteer Forces at the War Office, with the temporary rank of Major-General, and was thereafter compelled to interrupt his closer supervision at the Association. ‘Our loss,’ the president said at the next quarterly meeting, ‘is a great gain to the country,’ and the compliment paid to Lord Scarbrough by this appointment was appreciated by the Association as a whole. Sir William Clegg continued in office till the end of 1915, when, to his colleagues’ great regret, his election as chairman of the Appeal Committee under Lord Derby’s scheme and the pressure of other duties caused his necessary resignation. He was succeeded as vice-chairman of the Association by Brig.-General (Sir) R. C. A. B. Bewicke-Copley, (K.B.E.), C.B., in April, 1916.

It will be no derogation from the importance of the military members of the Association appointed by the Army Council, of the representative members similarly appointed on the recommendation of the West Riding County Council, the County boroughs of Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Rotherham, Sheffield and York, and the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, and of the members co-opted by the Association to complete its statutory establishment,[3] if we turn next to the person of the secretary. The right choice of a candidate for this post was properly regarded as an essential condition of success, and at the inaugural meeting of the Association (January 17th, 1908), no other name was proposed but that of Brig.-General Horatio Mends, C.B., formerly of the 60th Rifles, at that time Brigadier General-in-charge of Administration, Northern Command. To the immense benefit of the Association, General Mends’ term of office as secretary, except for a short interruption due to ill-health in 1909, continued right through the twelve years under review, and, alike in peace and in war, he has amply and fully sustained the confident belief expressed at the time of his appointment, that ‘he combined every requisite which Mr. Haldane had laid down as essential for the secretary of an Association.’ His assistants came and went according to the claims of other duties. They have included Captain J. U. M. Ingilby, Captain M. L. Porter, Major A. B. Boyd-Carpenter (later, Deputy Assistant-Director under Lord Scarbrough at the War Office, and, since December, 1918, M.P. for East Bradford), Major H. C. E. Smithett and Captain W. Mildren, M.B.E., of the T.F. Reserve, formerly Staff Q.M.S. in the Army Pay Corps, York, who was appointed superintending clerk at the beginning, and who has rendered admirable service.

Second only in importance to a secretary was a place of meeting for the Association. It would need the powers of an epic poet to invoke the muse to sing the rival claims of Leeds and Sheffield as headquarters of the West Riding, and the historian who is not a Yorkshireman must be content to set the fact on record that York was finally selected for reasons which seemed sufficient to the high contracting parties. Once in York, there was no hesitation in approving premises at 9, St. Leonard’s as a permanent local habitation.

We need not set out in detail the obvious necessary business of the appointment of committees, the distribution of duties, the drafting of regulations, and so forth. It was new work, and not very easy work, but the Association commanded the services of men of experience and affairs, and some spade work had been done in advance. One point particularly occurs to a reader of the Association archives: the concentration on the magical word, Mobilization. This event governed the deliberations of all concerned: not as a shadowy abstraction, which superior authority set them to work at in the dark, still less as a haunting terror, created by a jingoistic press, but as a real, present and an urgent duty, and as the test of validity for all their acts. This idea so constantly before them lent actuality to their proceedings. They spent no time in discussing if and when a state of war might arise. Their practical function was to assume the war and to prepare for it.

Apart from the recruiting problem proper, the provision, that is to say, of the full number of officers and other ranks required to complete the establishment of the units to be raised in the West Riding, there was an immense amount of work to be done, military as well as administrative, before the Association could say to the War Office: press the button, and the troops will march out. The Haldane Act had created the machinery, and the Association had been formed to make it work; and, since, at any moment from that date, the crisis of 1914 might have been precipitated, the new local authorities were well advised in aiming at instant readiness. But if we project ourselves back into the chaos of 1908, out of which Lord Harewood and his colleagues were entrusted with the task of evoking order, if we sympathize with their sense of responsibility, and recognize how gravely it was increased by lack of knowing when the crisis would occur; in other words, if we look at the problem through the spectacles of the West Riding Association, we must be equally just to other aspects. The Haldane Act set up ninety-four Associations: ninety-four engines wanting fuel, ninety-four skeleton organisms awaiting breath and articulation, ninety-four committees hard at work as if each was solely responsible for building the Territorial Force. Translate this conception into the terms familiar to official routine in the placid years before the war. Imagine the accumulation of papers, the multiplication of minutes, and the comparative unexpectedness of the call to decide a series of questions which lengthened with the life of the Associations. True, a Central Council of Associations was formed at an early date,[4] which served as a kind of clearing-house between the counties and Whitehall, and which, while it did not preclude the independent access of Associations, submitted as many as thirty-two recommendations from November, 1908, to July, 1909. A few of these topics are worth recalling. On November 9th, 1908, the Central Council recommended ‘that travelling grants be given to individuals coming to Section, Company and Battalion drills over a distance of two miles.’ A deputation waited on the Secretary of State on the following February 27th. In May, an intimation was sent that a circular Memorandum might be issued on the subject. In July, the matter was raised again, and another deputation was received on the 23rd of that month. On August 7th, the War Office decided not to make any grant for the payment of men in towns coming to drill. ‘In rural corps, in which the companies, etc., are recruited over a scattered area, the War Office will consider an extra grant based on the cost of bringing in men of outlying sections for Company drill two or three times a year, and will shortly issue a letter asking for the necessary information on which a grant should be based.’ That letter was issued on September 9th. On the 13th of the next month, the Central Council expressed the opinion that, ‘if the Territorial Force is to be made of real value, ... this can only be done ... by giving financial assistance to men to enable them to come into drill.’ On March 16th, 1910, a War Office letter was issued, granting a small allowance towards the cost of bringing in outlying sections to enable them to carry out squadron, battery or company training, but refusing to authorize as a charge on Association public funds, any expenses incurred by individual officers or men in travelling from their homes to their local troop or section headquarters to carry out their ordinary drills. A wise decision, no doubt; certainly, a carefully considered one; but, perhaps, a little disheartening in its extreme regard for the public purse and in the consumption of sixteen months during which voluntary recruits were not told what their patriotism would cost them. Sometimes the decisions came more quickly, but then they were usually in the negative. A proposal in February, 1909, ‘that boots other than lace-up be supplied for wear by mounted men with overalls when walking out’ was refused in the following May. A recommendation during that May ‘that a special grant of 6d. a head be allowed to Associations for provision of refreshments to men who are detained on parade, or on actual military duty, for not less than four consecutive hours,’ was turned down on August 7th.

The general tendency should be clear from these examples. At the one end, in Yorkshire and elsewhere, throughout the ninety-four headquarters, were brand-new Associations, eager to sweep clean and to sweep swiftly. At the other end, in Whitehall, were the War Office and the Treasury, fast bound by the traditions of their code, and tied particularly by a Government committed to retrenchment on Army estimates. We hardly know which to pity more, the Minister responsible to the House of Commons or the Territorial Force Associations which his Act had called into being.

Meanwhile, for historical purposes, it is essential to remember that, during this period of preparation, the Territorial Force was the Associations. It depended on them for recruits, premises, ranges, arms, equipment, clothing (even to ‘boots other than lace-up for wear by mounted men with overalls when walking out’), everything that makes an Army; and they depended in turn, far more closely than they had anticipated, on the decisions of a harassed Army Council and the resources of a depleted Treasury. Happily, this period was protracted by the repeated postponement of war. In 1908 and, again, in 1911, the threat of war was averted, as we are now aware. Time was given, accordingly, if not for the complete fulfilment, at least for the partial satisfaction of the means devised for the fulfilment of the chief object of the Haldane Act. This was, as we saw,

No time limit was laid down for the period of incubation in the Associations, and it is difficult to estimate what would have been our degree of unpreparedness if the accidents of European politics had allowed less than the six and a half years from 1908 to 1914.

A rough estimate can be formed, and it is worth computing in the present context, and in the security of peace after war, by reference to an open letter, dated February 26th, 1913, which was addressed by the Committee of the National Defence Association to Mr. Asquith, as President of the Committee of Imperial Defence.[5] The signatories included the Duke of Bedford, Lord Fortescue, Lord Glenconner, Lord Scarbrough and Sir Richard Temple (who were all connected with County Associations), Lord Lovat, Mr. Walter Long, Lord Methuen, Lord Peel, Sir Samuel Scott and other men of weight. While drawing attention to their consistent support of the Territorial Force scheme, they felt bound to point out ‘that neither the Territorial Associations, nor the Territorial Force have yet taken sufficiently deep root as national institutions.’ They stated ‘with the utmost emphasis’ that ‘no remedy involving extra financial assistance to the Territorial Force at the expense of the Navy or Regular Army would receive their support,’ but they did not conceal their conviction that, ‘if such a situation as existed in the autumn of 1911 recurred’, ‘the present training, equipment and numbers of the Territorial Force are inadequate for the task that would only too probably be laid upon it.’ ‘It has come to the knowledge of this Association,’ they remarked in another paragraph of the letter, ‘that a large proportion of Officers responsible for the training and administration of the Force now hold the view that it is incapable under present conditions of carrying out the duties allotted to it in any sudden emergency. We desire most strongly to support and emphasize this opinion.’

The warning was too grave to be ignored. The Territorial Act had been on trial for five years, and the war, which actually arrived in the summer of the following year, might break out at any moment.

Urgent action was taken, accordingly, by the Council of Territorial Associations, and it is particularly interesting to the present record to note that the basis of their action was a scheme submitted by the Earl of Scarbrough on behalf of the West Riding Association. After passing a strong resolution in April, 1913, pointing out the ‘continued inefficiency’ in the establishment of Territorial units, and even stating that the success of the Force on a voluntary basis could be achieved ‘only by a considerable improvement in the terms and conditions of service,’ they lost no time in circulating the West Riding scheme through other Associations. So, at the October meeting of the Central Council, when replies and comments had come in, they were ready to ask the Prime Minister to receive a deputation, with a view to considering the whole matter.

This important interview took place on November 26th, 1913. On the one side were Mr. Asquith and General Seely, then Secretary of State for War; on the other were Lord Dartmouth (Chairman), Lord Fortescue and Sir Hugh Shaw-Stewart, Bt. (Vice-Chairmen), and the following Members of the Council of the County Territorial Associations: Lord Scarbrough, Sir Richard Temple, Bt., Sir Hugh Bell, Bt., Lord Cheylesmore, Sir Edward Elles, Sir Arthur Anstice, Mr. Tonman Mosley, Lord Glenconner, Mr. Dalgleish, Mr. Adeane, Colonel Colvin, Colonel Lambert White, General Tyler, Lord Denbigh, General Mends, and the Secretary of the Council, Major Godman. The deputation represented eighty-one out of the ninety-four Associations, and was recognized by the Prime Minister as ‘authoritative.’

It is well to recall at this point the essential dates in the situation. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act ‘for the reorganization of His Majesty’s military forces’ became law in 1907. Early in 1908 the West Riding Territorial Force Association was brought into being under the Act, and set to work in a practical way to raise, clothe, train and otherwise prepare its troops for the day of mobilization. They had worked hard for six years, with the shadow of coming war across their path. Yet at the end of 1913, when the substance behind the shadow was apparent to all who knew, the chairman of the West Riding Association, one of the most populous County areas, administered by men of public spirit, and possessing in General Mends an untiring and a highly efficient secretary, came to the Prime Minister to say: Our proper establishment of troops is little more than 18,000; we fall short by 52 officers and 2,724 other ranks; and ‘that is roughly typical of the general shortage, which, with a few exceptions, exists throughout the Counties.’ The failure was deplorable: ‘It is the fact that the strength to-day is less than it was in the last year under the old Volunteer system.’ But even more deplorable was the danger: ‘In spite of all the efforts which have been made in these six years, it would appear that the high-water mark of voluntary effort in normal years and under present conditions falls greatly below the minimum laid down by the General Staff as necessary for National Defence’.

November 26th, 1913: This was the date of the interview, and it was too late then to remedy the scheme. The total shortage of 1,400 officers and 66,000 other ranks; the 40,000 members of the Force under nineteen years of age and ‘only fit to be in a Cadet corps’; the absence from the annual camp of 1,362 officers and 33,350 other ranks, including 37 officers and 6,019 men ‘absent without leave’: these facts and figures might be cured by personal allowances to officers, efficiency bounties to other ranks, income-tax relief to employers for each qualified Territorial officer or soldier in their employ, grants to Associations for social purposes and for the provision of boots, shirts and socks, and by the rest of the moderate, wise and carefully devised recommendations which the Council of County Associations felt bound to propose to the Government, as ‘the minimum improvement in the terms and conditions of service that we think would be effective in attracting the right class of men in sufficient numbers.’ Public apathy, official discouragement, and the burden of other calls on the Exchequer might be purged of their worst effects by thorough changes of this kind. Even the evils pointed out by Sir H. Shaw-Stewart, that, ‘owing to the exigencies of political combat, these same classes that I speak of (i.e., landowners and employers) are just now being held up to the public as parasites, oppressors and robbers of the poor,’ and that, ‘except for Lord Haldane and his successor at the War Office, not one Cabinet Minister has ever had a good word to say for the work we are doing or, indeed, for the system we are endeavouring to carry out,’ might at last prove capable of adjustment. But time was essential for such experiments, and the sands of time were running out. Mr. Asquith, indeed, in his reply to the deputation, affected to believe it all remediable. There were the proper compliments to ‘the value of the work that has been and is being done.’ There were other aspects of the numbers and the training, and certain ‘encouraging features’ to be dwelt upon. There was a general undertaking that the Council’s recommendations ‘will be not only considered, and not lightly dismissed, but considered in a thoroughly sympathetic spirit.’ There was the final valediction, as suave as it was impenetrable: ‘We shall endeavour to produce as great an impression as we can on the Chancellor of the Exchequer consistently with his other requirements to meet your legitimate demands.’[6] And the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated, June 28th, 1914.

These, briefly, are the facts on which an estimate may be formed of the degree of preparedness reached by the Territorial Force more than six years after it came into being. Very happily, as we said above, this period was thus protracted. The defects were serious enough, but, had the crisis come earlier, Associations would have missed what the evidence of results proved to be valuable, that varied experience of organization, that knowledge of their own weak points, that sense of contact with officers and men, as well in their civilian relations as in their military capacity, and, generally, that power, essential to the satisfactory working of ‘a highly complex structure o’ various an’ conflictin’ strains,’ which Mr. Kipling has illustrated in his story of The Ship that Found Herself. The consolation administered by the Prime Minister to the deputation of November, 1913, though a commonplace, or because it was a commonplace, was justified in the succeeding years of war:

The vista of years was contracted to less than one, our ‘scheme of defence’ was unrecognizably extended, but the animating spirit did not fail.

How fortunate for the country it was that time was given to Associations to find themselves may be judged from the growing tension between the West Riding Association and the War Office. Sir William Clegg, speaking from the Chair on February 7th, 1910, complained of ‘a kind of attempt on the part of the Army Council to treat the Association as a mere adjunct of the Army Council, and not as a free and independent body. If their deliberations and resolutions were to be treated in such a high-handed manner, he for one was not prepared to devote his time to the duties of the Association.’ A few months later, on the motion of Alderman F. M. Lupton, of Leeds, seconded by Mr. A. J. Hobson, of Sheffield, a resolution was passed urging His Majesty’s Government ‘to give further effect to their own policy of placing the Territorial army under the control of the County Associations, and to permit these Associations, without undue interference, to perform their duty of providing a properly equipped Force on the grants allotted to them.’ Relations became a little less strained after a personal interview between Lord Harewood and the Secretary of State, when a conciliatory reply was sent to the Association by the War Office. But in 1912 the situation had grown acute again, and Lord Harewood did not hesitate to describe it as a ‘tension which had existed for a long time between the Army Council and that Association, especially the Finance Committee of the Association.’ Sir William Clegg repeated his former protest, which was supported by Colonel Hughes and other members, while Lord Scarbrough referred to the case of the Association against the Army Council as, in fact, ‘unassailable.’ We shall not further recall the features of this dispute, which turned on a question of accountancy. It was not the details but the principle which mattered, and the principle which governed the deliberations of members of the West Riding Association was amply vindicated in their resolution, carried on July 1st, 1912:

So, the Association ‘found itself’ at last. But the reconciliation came too late to make a prosperous new beginning. If war had still been postponed, opportunity might have been given to build up the Territorial Force on more generous and sympathetic lines, as suggested in the scheme of the West Riding, and to repair the disappointment of Associations. But, though Sir William Clegg spoke of ‘a clean slate,’ and Lord Scarbrough wrote more hopefully to General Bethune,[7] there was no time to take advantage of the change. The long threatened war was upon them, and, meanwhile, they had to encounter what Mr. Asquith, in November, 1913, called ‘the abstraction, whatever Government is in power, who has the public purse under his immediate control.’ This ‘abstraction’ proved a very real obstruction.