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 have now examined the proposals of this democratic Bill; let us see how military training will affect the younger members of the community who would undergo it, especially those poor lads who suffer so much from confinement and want of fresh air in our crowded factories and slums. This is how Mr Blatchford, the editor of 'The Clarion,' describes his own experiences 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. "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. "We e were new men. We were We felt as if we had full of health. trebled our lung-power. We had learned to move and to walk. We felt as if we were walking on a cloud, as if our feet hardly touched the ground. We could all of us jump or vault the horse, climb ropes and walls, walk along a thin pole, do simple feats on the rings or the bar, use the bayonet, and move easily and steadily at the double-march for a long time. We were what the drillsergeants called 'set-up.' It is good to be 'set up,' it feels good." Mr Blatchford's enthusiastic statements will stand the test of submission to the cold evidence of statistics. Some twenty years ago, when in charge of a sub-depot, I used to weigh the recruits carefully before they left my command to join service units: I found that on an average every lad gained seven pounds in weight in six weeks, in spite of the fact that he had been doing five hours' marching and physical drill every week-day since he entered the barrack gates. "Barrack gates." Ah, there's the rub! One can almost see the anxious mother wince shudder at the thought of at the words, and her son being herded in barracks among low and vulgar associates. 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 a high opinion of the average British schoolboy of eighteen, 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 de 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 for for the Territorial Army work out as follows: Training in the second year. 142,000 third fourth 135,000 128,000 405,000 Behind this there will be a reserve of men trained to arms which, before the expiration of their liability to service, will amount to some 600,000 men. These numbers would cover handsomely the estimate made by that skilled and independent authority, the Military Correspondent of The Times,' who has recently shown that our requirements are 100,000 Territorials for garrisoning defended places and arsenals, 100,000 more for mobile local defence, and 300,000 for а central field army, or half a million men immediately available at all times. 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. Similar inquiries from eighteen firms in Lancashire, representing various industries and manufactures, show that on an average the percentage of lads of eighteen to the total number of work-people employed is only 3.4. Can it be contended that British employers of labour are so helpless that, knowing beforehand that some of of their younger hands will, at a certain date, be taken for military training, they cannot arrange to replace them? man 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 hood 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 strategio freedom for our fleets and for the Regular Army; that will bind our allies to us and help us to maintain with honour the blessings of peace. 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. 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 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 as- 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 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 Simla was a service managed by the Post Office, whether he thought that we should have rain before we reached the next stage. At first he fenced with the question. "Did his Highness wish to be driven more quickly?" But when I pressed the point, drawing his attention to the clouds and saying that with his experience he must have some knowledge of the signs the weather, I received the following oracular reply: "Without doubt there are clouds, but the matter is in the power of the Almighty." After that there was nothing to be done but to drive on, and, as it happened, I was fortunate enough to arrive in safety at the next stage before the rain came down. I found this habit of his sufficiently irritating. One day he came to tell me that his wife was seriously ill, and I at once sent for the native assistant civil surgeon, who had, of course, been trained in the English school of medicine. He reported that the woman was in an advanced stage of dropsy and suffering from pleurisy, adding that the only chance of saving her life was that she should be sent immediately to the hospital. To this my bearer at first objected, as the other servants said if his wife went to hospital she would die. On my pointing out that she would certainly die if she did not go to hospital, and assuring him of the care she would receive, he gave way. His wife, accordingly, was removed to hospital, but it was too late, and after two days' treatment she died there. The next morning I spoke to the bearer on the bearer on the subject, and pointed out that although his wife had actually died in hospital, this was solely due to the fact that he had not come to me in time. True to his one phrase he replied: "Without doubt she died in hospital;' and it need hardly be said that there was no touch of irony in this, as such an idea would have been wholly foreign to his mind. It may be added, by the way, that though he 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 One of my servants, a quiet, inoffensive man, who remained with me as bearer for fifteen years,-up to the time I left India, and was as honest as he was stupid, would never give a direct answer or commit himself to any kind of opinion. It was his custom to acquiesce in a general way with whatever was said to him, and he usually prefaced his acquiescence with his stock phrase, "without doubt." If he was asked, "What is this smell of burning?" his reply would be, "Without doubt there is a smell of burning." 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 and I am bound to own that at times A |