hall work-work which, though important, they have not the time thoroughly to carry out themselves. They will merely have to take over and incorporate in their ranks welltrained young soldiers of the best stamp to be got in the country, and with these they will be able to go straight on to the interesting and sporting work of tactical exercises in the field. "We were new men. We were full of health. We felt as if we had We have now examined the Mr Blatchford's enthusiastic proposals of this democratic statements will stand the test Bill; let us see how military of submission to the cold evitraining will affect the younger dence of statistics. Some members of the community twenty years ago, when in who would undergo it, especi- charge of a sub-depot, I used ally those poor lads who suffer to weigh the recruits carefully so much from confinement and before they left my command want of fresh air in our to join service units: I found crowded factories and slums. that on an average every lad This is how Mr Blatchford, gained seven pounds in weight the editor of The Clarion,' in six weeks, in spite of the describes his own experiences fact that he had been doing of the "Training that Makes Men " :— "I had always been a delicate boy, and I do not think I had ever known what it was to feel well until I went for a soldier. I was thin and pale and languid. I had been nine years in a factory town, working long hours in a smoky, dusty building, getting but short commons and hardly ever leaving the town. five hours' marching and "Barrack gates." Ah, "Then I found myself in the Isle of Wight in the summer, getting good and regular food, going to bed early, and living an athletic and active life in the open air. Every morning I began with a run of a thousand yards on the grass under the elms. Then I went through the appointed portion of my gymnastic training; then I spent hours marching or running on the open parade, or performing the bayonet exercise or position drill. If I went out of barracks I had to walk smartly and to hold myself erect. It is easy to guess the result of such a change. Personally I am not prepared to admit that there is any risk of the good young men being contaminated by those of less good character if all are brought together to train for the defence of the land that gave them birth. I have British schoolboy of eighteen, a high opinion of the average and I am quite certain that the presence of thousands of these, in camp or barracks, or in the ranks of a national army, will raise the tone of their less fortunate and less carefully educated brother British lads. In Germany those who pass a very stiff educational test are allowed to serve as "one year volunteers.' These favoured ones do not reside in barracks, but they have to hire their own accommodation and pay for their own uniforms; in fact, they receive nothing from the State beyond their military education. In Switzerland, on the other hand, all classes and all ranks of life are mixed up in the same barrack-room, and under an unwritten law, all going through the military course together, address each other with the familiar "thou," and this pleasing custom is duly observed should old comrades of the barrack - room meet in after life. A Swiss gentleman, describing his experience of military training, wrote: "I don't believe it would be possible for the English race to get on such terms of perfect equality; I can't see the son of a lord doing his training side by side with a labourer on his father's estate." One can only reply, "Why not? Have you never seen an English lord in the cricket field taking orders from a professional bowler?" There still remains one point in connection with the proposed training-that is, the time of year at which it should be carried out. Undoubtedly it will be best if the recruits are allowed to commence their training at different periods of the year, for trades and manufactures, as well as agricultural operations, have their slack and their busy seasons. If recruits come up at the time which suits them best, the interference with business will be reduced to a minimum. The moral advantages of military training are obvious, for in a few weeks it turns the lounging, loafing, dirty cornerboy into the bright, clean, smart soldier, a man with self-respect as well as respect for proper authority. Let us turn, however, to the severely practical aspect of the question. Will the proposals of this Bill solve the problem of Home Defence in a satisfactory manner without undue interference with trade and manufacture and at a reasonable expense? We will examine first the question of numbers. From the census of 1901 we find that there are about 416,000 lads who reach the age of eighteen in any one year, and the number available for recruit training, after making all deductions for medical rejections, legal exemptions, recruits for the Navy and for the Regular Army, men for the mercantile marine, and emigration would be about 150,000. Allowing for an annual wastage of 5 per cent, the numbers available available for the Territorial Army work out as follows: Training in the second year. 142,000 "9 fourth third 135,000 128,000 405,000 Similar inquiries from eighteen Behind this there will be a reserve of men trained to arms which, before the expiration of their liability to service, will manufactures, show that on amount to some 600,000 men. an average the percentage of These numbers would cover lads of eighteen to the total handsomely the estimate made number of work-people emby that skilled and independent ployed is only 3.4. Can it be authority, the Military Corre- contended that British emspondent of The Times,' who ployers of labour are so helphas recently shown that our less that, knowing beforehand requirements are 100,000 Ter- that some of their younger ritorials for garrisoning de- hands will, at a certain date, fended places and arsenals, be taken for military training, 100,000 more for mobile local they cannot arrange to replace defence, and 300,000 for a them? central field army, or half a million men immediately available at all times. As to expense, careful estimates show that, allowing for a good staff of Regular officers and non-commissioned officers to carry out the recruit training, the additional cost, over that of our present system, will not exceed four millions a-year. This is not too great a sum to pay for a reform that shall restore vitality to our manhood and give new ideals of conduct to a people who are being taught their rights, but not their duties; that will break down some of the barriers of class distinction; that will give us strategic freedom for our fleets and for the Regular Army; that will bind allies to us and help us to maintain with honour the blessings of peace. The training should be adequate, arguing from the results attained in Switzerland, and in judging of this point we must never lose sight of the great advantages that national service bestows on the instructors, first by placing in their hands the picked manhood of the nation, and secondly, from the fact that each recruit is posted to that arm of the service for which he is best fitted by previous training in civil life, and, ipso facto, he is partially trained when he joins. Under section 9 of the Territorial Forces Act it is distinctly stated that the recruit "shall be posted to such one of the units as he may select," so that a recruit may join a battery of artillery merely because he is attracted by "a hairy hat with a red bag." As regards interference with trade and business, inquiries in Norway and Switzerland prove that this is very slight. our It was the Barons who extracted from the King the great Charter of the People's Rights: will the Lords of the present day lead the movement that shall urge King Demos to accept a Charter of the People's Duties? A GUNNER. STRAY STORIES FROM INDIA. BY SIR ARTHUR U. FANSHAWE, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., C.V.O. stones." "Oh! confound it!" ejaculated my friend, "I can't keep a man like that in my service." To which came the immediate rejoinder: "Beg pardon, sar, in your Highness's service no time to worship anything!" The quickness of the change, in order to fall in with his master's mood, was as characteristic as the adroitness of the evasion. To my thinking the best stories from India are those which have a savour of the finesse or subtlety that is characteristic of the Eastern mind. The type of such stories is the well-known reply of a Mahommedan servant who had been out with his master for a day's snipe - shooting, the result of which was a very meagre bag. He was asked whether his master had shot The reply evasive has its well. "Yes," he replied special home, of course, in the gravely, "the Sahib shot ex- East, though it is indigenous cellently, but Allah was very in certain Western countries merciful to the birds." The also; and indeed the minisfollowing story, which is not terial answers to questions in so well known, has something our own House of Commons of the same character about provide a liberal education in it. An old friend of mine the art of evasion. The native once asked his Madras servant of India usually shelters himabout his religion, and and the self behind a universal "God following conversation ensued. knows," but his variants of "Hallo, Ramaswami! what's this safe text are sometimes your religion?" Ramaswami, amusing. On one occasion I who came from a missionary was driving up to Simla in district, thought that he would an open carriage, and at one please his master by an 88- of the stages noticed that a sumption of humility, and bank of heavy clouds, which accordingly replied, "Beg had previously been concealed pardon, sar," — a favourite by the high hillside, was movform of beginning a sentence ing up in an ominous way. with the the English speaking My waterproof and umbrella Madras servants,-"Beg par- were in another conveyance don, sar, I'm a heathen." behind with my servants, and "What do you mean by a I was doubtful whether it heathen?" said my friend, would not be wiser to wait genuinely surprised by the for them to come up. Accordanswer. "Beg pardon, sar," ingly I asked a Hindu Inreplied the man, with the mis- spector, who had been desionary ritual still in his mind, puted to accompany me, as "a worshipper of stocks and the conveyance of mails and passengers on the hill road to I found this habit of his sufSimla was a service managed ficiently irritating. One day by the Post Office, whether he came to tell me that his he thought that we should wife was seriously ill, and I have rain before we reached at once sent for the native the next stage. At first he assistant civil surgeon, who fenced with the question. had, of course, been trained "Did his Highness wish to be in the English school of driven more quickly?" But medicine. He reported that when I pressed the point, the woman was in an addrawing his attention to the vanced stage of dropsy and clouds and saying that with suffering from pleurisy, adding his experience he must have that the only chance of saving some knowledge of the signs her life was that she should of the weather, I received be sent immediately to the the following oracular reply: hospital. To this my bearer "Without doubt there are at first objected, as the other clouds, but the matter is in servants said if his wife went the power of the Almighty." to hospital she would die. On After that there was nothing my pointing out that she to be done but to drive on, would certainly die if she did and, as it happened, I was not go to hospital, and assurfortunate enough to arrive in ing him of the care she would safety at the next stage before receive, he gave way. His the rain came down. wife, accordingly, was removed One of my servants, a quiet, to hospital, but it was too inoffensive man, who remained late, and after two days' treatwith me as bearer for fifteen ment she died there. The years,-up to the time I left next morning I spoke to the India, and was as honest as bearer on the subject, and he was stupid, would never pointed out that although his give a direct answer or com- wife had actually died in hospimit himself to any kind of tal, this was solely due to the opinion. It was his custom fact that he had not come to to acquiesce in a general way me in time. True to his one with whatever was said to phrase he replied: "Without him, and he usually prefaced doubt she died in hospital;" his acquiescence with his stock and it need hardly be said that phrase, "without doubt." If there was no touch of irony in he was asked, "What is this this, as such an idea would smell of burning?" his reply have been wholly foreign to would be, "Without doubt his mind. It may be added, there is a smell of burning." by the way, that though he If you said to him, "Who's that talking so loud?" he would listen, and then sagely observe, “Without doubt he is talking loud;" and I am bound to own that at times knew perfectly well that I would gladly have called in the best medical advice for his wife, he had preferred to have her treated by a Brahmin telegraph messenger who was |