[“C.-B.” said at Newport that no man had done more for the Army than he, as Minister for War. A little later he declared himself the champion of disarmament. 1]
Incoherent-minded Polly.
Will you never see the folly
Of these contradict’ry speeches
You’ve so often made before?
They may please, perhaps, the readers
Of the “Daily News’s” leaders: 2
But to us they seem more foolish
Than “Your food will cost you more”.
One would think from your orations
And your fervid protestations,
You were quite the keenest patriot
Ever seen on Britain’s shore.
’Tis but rhetoric. And, alack, ’tis
Very different from your practice;
Oh, how could you “starve” the Army,
Knowing “Food would cost them more”?
There’s a proverb (quite an old ’un)
Designating silence golden;
Thus the less you say, the better,
On the subject of the war.
When you stir that recollection
You do not inspire affection;
Better stick, my “C.-B.” Parrot,
To “Your food will cost you more”.
On 27 November 1903, the Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, made a speech at the annual dinner of the United Club. While noting that “the ordinary subject of his Majesty is not now content unless he finds eight columns at least on the fiscal question prepared for him with his breakfast”, Balfour confined himself to matters relating to the Army. He criticised Lord Rosebery and Campbell-Bannerman, who was Rosebery’s Secretary for War in 1894-5, for pursuing “a deliberate policy, so far as I can gather, of starving the Army”—he meant starving of resources, not of food, as is implied in the poem.
Campbell-Bannerman responded in a speech at Tredegar Hall, Newport, South Wales, two days later. He reminded his audience that, six months after he had left office, Balfour, in a speech at Manchester, on 15 January 1896, had declared that: “there never was a moment, I believe, in the recent history of this country when the British Empire was a better fighting machine than it is at this time, thanks to the energetic efforts of successive Governments, principally the Unionist Government, which existed between 1886 and 1892, and the Home Rule Government, which succeeded between 1892 and 1895.”
On the role of the Army, particular in relation to a continental war, the The Times reported Campbell-Bannerman thus:
He was as friendly to and as cordial an admirer of the Army as any man and as anxious to protect our safety and our interests, but he remembered what a witty Frenchman once said of the kingdom of Prussia—that Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country. He did not want such conditions to be realized or even approached here. He did not want to see a military England, still less a military Scotland or Wales, saturated with military ideas and regarding military glory, military aptitude, military interests, as the great thing in life. We were essentially a nation of peace. [. . .] Let us give up the idea of sending army corps to take part in a Continental war. Let us have handy and ready forces prepared for any emergency such as might at any moment in such a wide Empire arise. Let us have a sufficient force at home of Regulars, and well-trained auxiliaries, to make our shores secure behind a watchful Fleet, and maintain in efficiency our foreign and colonial garrisons. That was the true policy.
Campbell-Bannerman never mentioned disarmament, and nothing in his speech resembled in any particular the statements attributed to him by the Express.
2See poem 23 fn 04.
