But it may be urged that, although the Territorial Force is evidently not fit to perform its functions without a proper course of recruit training, surely it would be possible to secure that training in time of peace, instead of postponing it until the outbreak of war, as Lord Haldane proposed. If the nation still hugs this delusion, I hope it will abandon it before it drags us down to disaster. For one hundred years the voluntary system for Home Defence has been tried and found wanting. Under it a sufficient number of men have never been forthcoming, and can never be forthcoming, to devote enough time in peace to render the Army fit for war. Discipline cannot be acquired by homeopathic doses; nothing but a considerable period of continuous training can give individual soldiers and military units that self-confidence and cohesion which are essential to success in war; and no modification of the voluntary system, no amount of lavish expenditure, no cajolery, no juggling with figures, will ever produce an adequate and efficient Home Army. This truth was clearly expressed by the Duke of Norfolk when he said, with reference to the Report of the Royal Commission on the Auxiliary Forces, of which he was the President: "The breakdown is in almost every case attributed essentially to the nature of the voluntary system itself, which makes it impossible to demand a reasonable standard of efficiency without greatly reducing the forces." Curiously enough, Lord Haldane, speaking of the Territorial Force, seems to have recognized the correctness of this conclusion, for in the House of Commons on March 9, 1908, he said: "Because it is a voluntary Army on a voluntary basis, you can only give it just so much training as volunteers are able and willing to take...." Can anything be more condemnatory of the value of a Force, which will assuredly be required the moment war breaks out? And to quote the Duke of Norfolk again: "If you trust the present organization ... you will be leaning on a prop which will fail when the day of trial comes." What would be the result is simply this--for six months the striking force could not strike. The Regular Army could not leave these shores to assist our fellow-countrymen in India and the oversea Dominions, or to reinforce our friends and allies in accordance with the obligations of honour and mutual interest which we have undertaken. For six months the Navy would be hampered and shackled in performing its traditional duties of seeking out the enemy's fleets--it would, in fact, be deprived of that "greater freedom" which the Territorial Force was intended to give it.