funds provided, in many cases by great self-denial, should be carefully administered to the really necessitous under strict actuarial control. Changes in the circumstances of the widows are frequently brought before us: the voluntary work of our Executive and Finance Committee is no sinecure.

I see there is one point rather prominently pressed by Mr. Lang which practically has no difficulty about it at all. He draws a line between temporary and permanent relief; in neither of the three divisions is this distinction necessary. The wife and children come at once on the Fund when left behind; the sick and wounded soldier on his return to this country. In the case of the widow we give her 51. for herself, and 1. for each child, to cover the time until the necessary information can be obtained to place her on regular allowance.

The Royal Commissioners have further been accused of defrauding the Russian War widows and children of the moneys originally

subscribed on their behalf.

A reference to our eighteenth report (1880), page 6, from which I give the extract below, records a sufficient answer to this accusation. Received. The Fund originally subscribed amounted to 1,500,000%. Amount received as dividends, interest, annuities, and the result of changes in the investments, 1,502,000.

Paid. To widows and orphans, including payments for children in asylums, for educational, sick, and all other allowances, 1,518,500.

This shows that more than the full sum originally received had been distributed, and all the endowments, cost of management, pensions, &c., had been met without encroaching on the original fund subscribed. Of course, still more has been given during the succeeding years. The number of Russian War widows and children assisted up to date is as follows: 3,647 widows of privates, 231 widows of officers, 5,162 children of privates, 880 children of officers.

I have in this paper only dealt with the Russian War funds. We have some eighteen others under our control, the administration of which occupies the full time of the office.

NELSON

(The only surviving original Commissioner, and Chairman of the Executive Committee).

THE CIVIL AND MORAL BENEFITS

OF DRILL

THE British boy has one more year added to his school life. It is a step in the right direction. But what is to become of him after he leaves school, goes to work, becomes somewhat independent, has no more home lessons, and finds himself in possession of many hours of idle leisure both summer and winter? Is he to be left severely alone by the State, which has had him in hand since the day he was taken by his mother to the infant school? That seems to be the present policy, so far as England is concerned. The philanthropist and the religious both do something for him by setting up university settlements, gymnasia, guilds, Church lads' brigades, and boys' brigades. But the boy does not take very kindly to these admirable attempts to do him good. The evening schools connected with School Boards are a dismal failure. Thousands, tens of thousands of the boys and lads of our cities and towns ignore and stand aloof from all these well-meant institutions. They do not stand aloof from football contests, or theatres, or music halls, or the fascinating attractions of the streets. Is this state of things at all satisfactory either to the boy or to the nation? No! Can he be let alone with safety to himself or the commonwealth? He will soon be a powerful factor in national life, both in its 'play' and 'work,' as well as in its citizenship. What can be done with this virile, capable British boy? The answer is, Put him under compulsory drill.

What could be more repugnant to a certain class of people than those two words, compulsion and drill? Nothing can be too violent by way of abuse on the part of certain well-known members of the Peace Party of all those who venture to suggest that their so-called peace policy has found no favour with the greatest races, both of the modern and ancient world, or that the people which is running us hardest in commerce and in colonisation is the most drilled and the best disciplined nation in Europe. But are compulsion and drill in their nature and possibilities so ugly and wicked as some suggest? There is nothing new in the idea of compulsion as applied to the British boy. From five years old to fourteen he is under very strict and

drastic compulsion. The nation has stamped an evil adjective upon 'voluntary education,' and has set its powerful imprimatur upon compulsory education ever since the great revolution of 1870. But compulsion has been the watchword, in regard to child labour and its cognate matters, of those very people who denounce it as tyranny when it is proposed to apply it to any subject outside their pro

And more compulsion looms large in the near future, for the new socialism both hates and fears individualism with its license so often confounded with liberty. Compulsion is nothing new as regards the boys. Why should compulsion cease at fourteen years? Is not the boy at that age in the gravest need of discipline, and discipline not dependent upon the fitful opinion of parents, but upon the conscience of a great self-governed people? Let these boys alone, and thousands will grow into ''Arries,' the butt of cheap wit, or into Hooligans, the perplexity of the police and the nuisance of the cities of the poor.

The manufacture of these much-abused 'city boys' is put down to School Boards and free education. But the making of these 'social problems' is the result of letting the lads alone after they leave school. It might be supposed that the State had learnt in the sixties-when the awful facts set before Parliament as the prelude to the Education Act of 1870 roused public opinion to a white heat —that the street was the most evil school for even the best of boys. But the lesson, if learnt, was not taken to heart, and now, in 1900, boys at their most formative age are left utterly alone, so far as the State, the nation, is concerned, to pick up the manners and the morals of the gutter. But there would not be need of much compulsion if the drill took the form of a national movement. Boys, and especially British boys, are keenly susceptible to big ideas. a great function, a stately display; but they have a deeper love for everything that is national.

They love a crowd,

Individually, our boys, of all classes, are comparatively modest and most reticent about themselves, and they hate side' in any boy or man. But let some one suggest that British boys are in any way inferior to French or German lads, and it will soon be seen how much of passion and pride underlies the somewhat placid, not to say dull, exterior of the ordinary English lad. Drill would come to them, if it were made national, with a bigness and, to coin a word, with a Britishness, that would make it intensely popular.

But, further, it would present certain attractions dear to every boy's heart and imagination. It would be 'play,' not 'work,' ' recreation,' not 'school.' It would be strongly attractive by its comradeship and emulation, things greatly admired and sought after by all boys. It would also have the strong attractiveness of display by its uniform, field days, and evolutions on a large scale.

Doubtless a high moralist might object to such appeals to the

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boys' foibles and weaknesses. But does the critic remember to what the street and some of the popular amusements of the dark winter nights appeal?

But the objection will be raised, 'You want to make the boys into soldiers.' No, but into CITIZENS. What ought the ideal of citizenship to be? The Parliamentary and municipal suffrage, with political parties, and legislation for your own class, and to pay rates and taxes whereby other people's limbs and lives' may be bought to defend the non-fighting citizen in times of national danger? That is the citizenship of a shopkeeper, not the citizenship of a great and splendid nation.

Surely it were a higher ideal to teach every boy that the first duty of a citizen is to be ready to lay down his life for the sake of his own nation and people.

But what are the objections to drill? Are not its discipline and obedience as morally good as are its physical developments? Watch a football match, and mark the manner and morals of the spectators. Yet drill has taken in hand thousands of the class which crowds the football fields on high days, and made them the fit, well-disciplined, and splendidly brave men who are fighting for their fatherland in South Africa. Drill would mean a higher ideal of citizenship, better physical development, and discipline.

Are not some of our sports becoming a menace to our national life? Is not 'professionalism,' with its sordid seeking after 'gatemoney' and 'pay,' fast degrading sport into a kind of business in which the lowest tricks of the huckster combine with the worse methods of the gambler to rob a healthy recreation of its manliness and fairness ?

Might not drill provide an effective cure for this growing evil, and, while teaching boys the first principles of citizen life, guard them from the bad effects of play that ceases to be honourable ‘fun and fight' and becomes a cunning speculation and a tempting trade?

Seeing that compulsion is nothing new, and drill, intended not to make 'barrack soldiers,' but capable well-disciplined citizens, is nothing evil, the matter may be considered in another aspect.

The question will at once arise, 'How can this be done?' The British boy has plenty of leisure time in both summer and winter. Thousands of them misuse that leisure, because they are not taught how to use it wisely and well. And, further, every city, town, and village has fields, parks, or open spaces where very efficient and picturesque drill could be systematically and easily given to large bodies and companies of boys. In the winter months the big halls of Board schools and the big rooms of National and British Schools could be brought into use for CITIZEN DRILL. Yet another further question will be put: Who is to undertake this?' The nation,

acting through municipalities and County Councils, and by the help of Volunteer officers. The movement must be both national and local.

This, it must be admitted, is a large order.' But who can look abroad over the vast Empire which has fallen to our commerce and dominion, and take even a somewhat contemptuous glance at France, Germany, and Russia, and their ambitions, and not see that, in some form or other, a very large order' must be laid upon that Empire if its commerce is to be sustained and developed, and its defence made equal to undoubted dangers that surround it? The policy of magnanimous trust' has not been a success in South Africa, and its failure has taxed our military resources to the utmost. Might not a national system of boys' drill, rightly organised, grow into a Boys' Volunteer Movement, which in ten years could furnish the elements of a well-disciplined citizenship, out of which might be formed a People's army, that would make Britain impregnable by land and sea, the most sure guarantee for European and world-wide Peace?

G. SALE REANEY.