ABSTRACT
The last decade of the Volunteers' existence saw the Force as much before the public eye as it had been in the first. But whereas applause had been the keynote of the 1860s, dispute and debate filled the 1900s. The Boer War led to a searching examination of Britain's military organisation, an examination which was to continue up to 1914, and which neither the Volunteers nor their successors, the Territorials, could escape. The early twentieth-century military reforms and debates on strategy have begun to receive considerable attention in recent years; 1 the account which follows focuses on one aspect only, the extent to which these reforms were affected by the political, and in particular the Parliamentary strength of the Volunteers. Not only the unsuccessful Conservative reform proposals, but also Haldane's plans for the Territorial Force, it will be argued, were greatly influenced by the pressure brought to bear by the Volunteer interest. The citizen soldiers used their political rights as citizens to bring to bear on government pressure greater than that at the disposal of the Regular Army.
