Everywhere you see the powers of offence increasing. Armies become larger, navies are founded, railways, telegraphs, all the apparatus which science has placed at the disposal of war become more perfect and more effective, and these things may, by one of those strange currents that sweep across the ocean of international politics, be united in one great wave and dash on our shores.

Has it become more or less likely since 1900 that one of those strange currents may unite in one great wave and dash on our shores? If such a wave had dashed on our shores during the South African War, how could it have been beaten back? How could we have dealt even with a raid? How could we deal with it now?

It will be answered that the Fleet is our guarantee against such a catastrophe. It is a great guarantee, the Fleet. It is the great insurance which all Englishmen should constantly insist upon being kept up; but science has bridged the Channel, and the Fleet may be eluded. Nor would the Fleet be a real first line of defence if it is only to be considered as a line of defence. Naval history teaches that true defence generally consists in offence-in finding out the enemy's ships and in destroying them. To make the Fleet really useful, to allow it to develop its full effectiveness, two things are needed. One is a well-found expeditionary Army to drive home the attack. It was not Trafalgar that bled Napoleon, but the Peninsular Army resting on a base secured by the sea. The second postulate is to give the Fleet all and every mobility for its own operations without tying it to the shore, to hover over an unarmed population. And this mobility can only be imparted through the knowledge that the Fleet leaves behind it a country full of men trained to arms, organised and equipped, on whose shores no foreign host would lightly descend.

What, therefore, are the requirements imposed upon us by our Imperial and international position.

The first requirement is an irresistible Navy, and a Navy with a real Reserve. At present the Naval Reserve is some 25,000, hardly enough for full complements in time of peace. General service would furnish the Navy with an ample Reserve, and would allow the Fleet full freedom of action. Nor can any military proposal be accepted which would in the least interfere with this first condition of our existence? The second requirement is that of a well-found voluntary Army ready to go anywhere with the cooperation of the Fleet. Thirdly, we need a population of trained men to make our shores safe from attack, and to give us efficient Volunteers capable of providing trained men to replace any gaps in the Regular Army. The wave of enthusiasm that carried men to the front in South Africa would have had a very different effect if it had carried trained men on its crest. Half its force was spent because the men were largely raw material. To say that Lord Kitchener was supplied by the War Office with all the men he asked

for is but a half-truth. Was he supplied-was it possible to supply him-with men of the quality he required? Would the war not have been pressed more vigorously to a conclusion if the generals had been spared the necessity of training ab ovo a large proportion of the men sent them? It was no fault of the War Office that it was

impossible to send trained men. The country did not hold them.

Does the experience of the South African War therefore allow the belief that Mr. Brodrick's scheme, or any scheme founded on the existing basis, will answer our requirements? Does not that experience rather cry for a reconsideration of the whole basis, for looking resolutely at that contingency which the Army Corps proposal was admittedly designed to avert? It may be answered that the Army Corps scheme, or indeed a progressive enlargement of that scheme, depends upon the expenditure we are willing to incur. Rates of pay, advancing by sixpences and shillings instead of by pence, would possibly get us more efficient men than we can obtain at present. But even the largest expenditure and the largest Regular Army that there is any chance of the country supporting would not provide for those crises in which the Regular forces must be supplemented by the enthusiasm of the whole population. Certainly the Government's proposals do nothing to insure that a wave of patriotism in any dark hour should bring trained men, not raw material, to fill up the deadly gaps in the line.

Efficiency goes with economy. The present system gives us neither. General service would bring universal interest and criticism to bear upon our Regular military organisation, and the existence of some 2,000,000 trained Militia in the United Kingdom would decrease and not increase the expenditure on the Regular Army. What the decrease would be is very difficult to calculate. Various estimates of savings, some of them very large, have been put forward. A continuance of the present system, on the other hand, certainly means vast increased expenditure with no certainty of a better return. Is this business-like ?

The problem, therefore, before us, now that Mr. Brodrick has happily put forward the necessity of a standard of military strength, is what force of Regulars it is necessary to maintain for expeditionary purposes, for India and the foreign garrisons, and for the core of a home defence force associated with a trained population. There is here no intention of endorsing the theory of confiding home defence exclusively to 'hedges and non-professional fighting men.' On the Regular force alone would there be liability to foreign service; but, if it needed replenishing at some distant theatre of war, the men who would volunteer to fill up the ranks would be not raw material, but trained men whose limbs were made in England.' And they could volunteer without emptying the country of every semblance of an organised unit, and without draining it of trained efficients.

It has been objected that such an organisation would appear to look too closely to home defence, and would therefore dissatisfy Colonial sentiment. It is difficult to see where the supposed Colonial objection comes in? On the contrary, the efforts which some of the Colonies, like New Zealand, now contemplate making for home defence might be related to and dovetailed into such a system. We might have the whole Empire full of trained men, understanding each other's training and methods, and ready to fuse together. The British Empire full of a pan-Britannic Militia would certainly be an enormous influence on the side of peace.

The old objections that such a scheme is un-English' and an 'interference with individual liberty' scarcely require resuscitation to be dismissed. New responsibilities need new methods of meeting them; but, as a matter of fact, the proposal reverts to the ancient principle of this country, that every able-bodied man can be called out in defence of the land—a principle actually embodied in the Militia Act. And there is no more interference with liberty in making a citizen serve the State for a term than is involved in making him pay rates and taxes. The proposal will be scouted by the working classes, we are told. Why a slur should be put upon the working classes, who are at least as capable of self-sacrifice and exertion for the common weal as any other class, if the necessity for it and the call to duty are made clear, passes comprehension. Barracks no doubt are regarded with detestation, but compulsory military training, on Swiss lines modified to suit British circumstances, would inspire no disgust. It is not necessary to copy foreign models slavishly. All we have to do is to turn to that force, the Militia, which, although it has been reduced to a shadow of an independent force, yet by its contributions to the Regular Army has proved the backbone of national defence. General compulsory service in the Militia can be advocated as a great democratic measure-compulsory service for a period not exceeding a year between the ages of eighteen and twentythree and liability to short periods of training thereafter. Training on similar lines for the seafaring population would allow us to embrace the whole nation. The haphazard working of the ballot, which may pick out the bad material and leave the good, would disappear. Ardent defenders of the voluntary system urge that compulsion would sweep in the good and bad. Does voluntaryism bring in only the good? No substitutes, again, would be tolerated, nor exemptions except for specific causes, in the case of all classes and incomes.

Such a system would not, it is believed, diminish the national output of industry. It is the conviction of cultivated Germans that what is lost in time by their severe service is amply regained in the better training of their population. This is an opinion which is gaining ground among many of the most intelligent employers of

the country. The objection to it probably proceeds in part from that same unreason that makes us terminate the school age at an earlier age than other countries. Time is not lost which is employed in training a worker or in repairing his strength, and the expenditure on such objects is not unproductive, nor would such a system encroach on the earnings of the working classes.

How would general service assist in coping with the recognised evils of our modern civilisation? Our ears ring with warnings of foreign competition. From what quarters is our commercial and industrial position most threatened? If Germany threatens us, the threat does not come from a country which is superior to us in natural resources. It comes to us from a country inferior in this respect. But the enormous strenuousness of Germany, the deep appreciation of education, the marriage between scientific research and industry, and, above all, the admirable organisation, industrial as well as military, of the German people, make them formidable rivals. German rivalry can only be met by education and by organisation. The competition of the United States, indeed, is primarily due to the colossal natural resources of that country, or rather continent. But the Americans place a value on education only second to the Germans, and, if the talent for organisation is not so conspicuous among them as in Germany, because it is not so strikingly illustrated in a great Army, it is really no less remarkable, and can boast no lesser triumphs in the field of industrial combination.

The faculties of organisation, combination, and quick apprehension are undoubtedly faculties that would be promoted by universal training. The system might also be utilised in many ways in the direct interest of education. There would be a premium on education in any reduction in training that would be allowed to persons proving educational or military qualifications, and this might be employed to brace up the whole of our disorganised, unstandardised secondary education. Military qualifications could be brought by those who had passed through cadet corps. And the proficiency of cadet corps, which have now been started with signal success in several districts, could be promoted by drill becoming an obligatory subject in all schools. The Lads' Drill Association, founded by Lord Meath, can point to signal success since it began its work in 1898. School managers and teachers are unanimous in pointing to the moral and physical results that follow from adoption of the Association's programme. The ugliest blot on our civilisation is the overcrowding in the large cities and the lowered standard of morals and physique in our urban dwellers. About a fourth of our population live about or beneath the poverty line, leading an existence which impairs the health and character of the present generation, and sacrifices all hope of future generations born under such conditions. There is no panacea for this state of things. But at least general training,

temporary transference to country air or sea breezes, temporary care for the human animal, and good food, would do something to impart tone to this population.

Such are some of the advantages, apart from military considerations in the widest sense of the words, to be gained from general service preceded by compulsory drilling in the schools. There are many other benefits we can surely calculate upon. Some of us who are far from being Jingoes, to whom the cheap Jingoism in vogue before the South African War was as repugnant as it seemed dangerous, regard the Empire, on the whole and with every discount made, as a great instrument for good, committed to the British people, and a most solemn responsibility, for which they must account. Nothing is more vital than that the whole people should realise this responsibility, and have some dim notion, at any rate, of the ideals for which the Empire stands. Can the mass of the people, whose present unconscious.contributions to these ideals are made through the pint pot and the tobacco bowl, realise through such oblations the ideals which they are called upon to support? Is it too much to suppose that personal training and exertion in the interests of the Empire, and the sense of associated fellowship bred by common and universal service, would make the Empire something more immediate, dearer, and more real?

C. E. DAWKINS