Because if it turns out that you had in times of profound peace so large a force in the colony, as was enough to meet a most Unexpected Crisis, and to cope successfully with a civil war, how is the question to be answered,—"Why an army should be wanted in peace, equal to the establishment which a war requires"?

As the House is aware, that war threw a strain upon our military resources quite unexpected in its magnitude, and the end of February or the beginning of March, 1900, was the lowest point reached during the whole of the war from the point of view of military defences at 68 home; and as we were at the moment straining every nerve in meeting the Unexpected Crisis 7,000 miles away, it did not seem to us that that was otherwise than a reasonable hypothesis to take as showing the lowest depth which we were ever likely to reach in the matter of home defence.

When they were faced with an Unexpected Crisis, such as a serious repair bill or inability to work through illness, such people found themselves facing a very real financial catastrophe.

Outside, in the rest of the world, there is a loss of faith in the capacity of the West to measure up to an Unexpected Crisis.

Europe is likely to be more dependent on North America for sudden reinforcement in the event of an Unexpected Crisis.

All that is by way of background to explain that the board's proposals are not a sudden response to an Unexpected Crisis, but are the next logical step in a long-term pattern of adjustments to services to take into account what is required and what is now available.

What is really difficult for them to cope with, however, is the Unexpected Crisis, when a child or parentis ill.

We did not take the view that because our circumstances in the world were more limited in terms of the interventions we could make, we should reshape our defence forces in such a way that we would be incapable of responding to an Unexpected Crisis as we had responded in the past.

It includes other roles, including, crucially, homeland security and upstream intervention, and there is even a faint hint of the scenario that dare not speak its name - general mobilisation for an Unexpected Crisis.