(2) Public gymnasia for the use of boys out of school hours, or after leaving school.

(3) Cadet Corps and Rifle Clubs.

(4) Volunteer Corps.

Our Association will give encouragement and financial assistance, where it is required, to each division or stage of this scheme. Moreover, one of its main objects will be to secure the co-operation and co-ordination of the numerous athletic clubs, which are already doing so much useful work in the district. In a word, it will endeavour to create system and method among the many existing agencies, while, on its own account, it seeks to impart to all of them a distinctly military object.

I will now describe the steps we have already taken and the success which has so far attended our efforts. Our experience may be of use to others.

As already stated we based our scheme upon the day-schools. We felt that if we could set the young people to work with their military drill, we should be preparing material for the more advanced parts of our scheme by the time we were ready for it. The Macclesfield district is about equally divided between town and country. It contains twelve town schools situated in the municipal borough, and twelve country schools situated at various distances outside the borough. Of course the town schools are far more numerously attended than the country schools. We asked the headmasters of these twenty-four schools to meet us in conference. We explained our scheme to them and invited first their co-operation and then their advice and criticism. I may say at once that we were met in the most cordial spirit. The teachers welcomed our scheme with open arms, and offered at once to do all in their power to make it a success. It meant additional work for them, but in the interests of national defence and for the sake of the health and physical wellbeing of their pupils they were prepared to make any personal sacrifices. There are few bodies of men and women more worthy of respect and gratitude than the teachers in our elementary dayschools. They labour with great zeal and devotion and receive very little public recognition of their services to the State.

After agreeing to the principle of our scheme so far as it concerned the day-schools, the headmasters undertook to appoint a committee from among themselves to work out details. This committee submitted to us the following general rules, which we at once accepted:

(1) That one hour per week during school hours should be devoted to military drill in all the schools of the district.

(2) That only children above the third standard should be drilled.

(3) That wherever possible a member of the school teaching-staff should act as

drill instructor, and that he should receive some small remuneration for his services from the Association.

(4) That a professional drill instructor employed and paid by the Association should visit and inspect the town schools once a month, and the country schools once a fortnight.

(5) That a covered hall should be provided by the Association in a central situation (for instance, the Volunteer drill hall) for the use of such town schools as do not possess playgrounds suitable for military drill.

We have now applied to the Board of Managers of each of the twenty-four schools to sanction the adoption of military drill, undertaking on the part of the Association to supply drill instructors free of charge to all schools that may need them, to provide some small remuneration for members of existing school staffs who may act as drill instructors, and to provide the use of a drill hall for any town school that may require it. We anticipate a favourable reply from all the schools, and have every reason to believe that this part of our scheme will be in working order in the course of a few weeks.

If military drill proves as popular in our schools as it has proved wherever it has been fairly tried, we shall at once proceed to establish public gymnasia in order to start the second part of our scheme before the winter of this year. With the Cadet Corps we shall have to proceed more cautiously, as it will involve a much larger outlay of money than either of the two earlier steps. We have, however, received so much encouragement and such cordial offers of help and sympathy, that we confidently hope to have our complete scheme in operation before very long. If our expectations are realised we shall be in a position to show what may be done in any locality-for we have no particular circumstances in our favour here in Macclesfield -by appealing boldly to the generosity and patriotism of one's fellow townsmen.

So much has always been accomplished in England by local efforts, and by movements nourished from local centres, that one may perhaps venture to hope the solution of the great and complex problem of national and imperial defence may be made easier by the modest labours of those who, in their own towns and villages, endeavour to train up a strong and healthy population fitted in every way to be soldiers of the Queen.

Macclesfield: April 25.

HENRY BIRCHENOUGH.

THE VOLUNTEERS AND

THE INSECURITY OF ENGLAND

TRAVELLERS on the Continent this year are not allowed to ignore the fact that the people among whom they pass their time are ill disposed towards England and Englishmen.

It is not, as is sometimes thought, the papers alone that express these sentiments; but even in hotels devoted to catering for Englishmen, the waiters, the boots, the chambermaids, every class of servant, favours the cause of the Transvaal and hopes to read in the telegrams of English defeats. They do not do their work any the worse, and the feeling is against their interests; they merely represent the ideas of every peasant as well as those of the more educated classes. Inquiries reveal the fact that there is scarcely a corner in Europe where the same feelings are not prevalent.

We hear more of them in France, but they are as strong, or stronger, in Russia, Germany, and Austria, and in all these countries the inhabitants seem to watch for the news from South Africa as eagerly as we do, but with different hopes for what it may bring forth. It is generally supposed in England, where this feeling is beginning to be known, that it is due to jealousy of our greater wealth, greater colonial success, and greater power; but that is not the prevailing cause or the cause at all among great masses of peasantry; the cause is as largely, or more largely, sentiment-a desire to take the side of those whom they consider weak and suffering from oppression.

The reason of this feeling may be a fair subject for argument and difference of opinion, but that it exists there is no doubt at all, and with this fact we have to deal. The number of men in Europe who hold opinions antagonistic to us must be very great; they must be counted by millions, and probably by many more millions than inhabit these islands. There is probably no Government now in existence in Europe the members of which really desire our downfall, and it is no doubt generally recognised by intelligent men that such an event would have disastrous results for many countries besides ours; but a mass of uninstructed opinion in many nations may

develop unexpected results, and governments before now have had to give way to waves of public opinion acting hastily and unwisely.

For our part we cannot change public opinion on the Continent: we must look it in the face. And that brings a remembrance of the text, When a strong man armed keepeth his house, his goods are in peace.'

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We have for our great comfort a strong wall of defence in our Navy, a power not to be lightly faced by a possible enemy-under favourable circumstances almost impregnable. But war is uncertain game, and he would be a very bold man who would say that there could not arise any conceivable combination of events under which, at some unexpected point, a weak place might not be found in any single wall of defence.

It is highly desirable that an enemy should see another behind it, and a third behind that, if possible, so that the whole prospect should be too much for a future possible successor of Napoleon, risen in response to an overwhelming, if unreasoning, cry for action.

This is fairly well recognised, and there has been considerable discussion as to the best means of forming an army of defence so organised that, in the absence of the regular Army, it may be capable of concentration at short notice without a hitch ; an army which for the moment we have not got, although there is no lack of men or

money.

It seems to be tacitly acknowledged that regular troops, sufficient in numbers for defensive purposes when at the same time foreign complications make large demands on them, would be too expensive, and the discussion so far has turned on whether an army for home defence should be an army of Volunteers or an army of conscripts.

The newspapers all say that the decision of the country is against a conscript and in favour of a Volunteer army, and as responsible ministers say so also, let us admit that such is the case, and that, unless good cause arises for a change of opinion, it will remain so.

Almost all the able papers that have been hitherto written on Army Reform have taken the line that the only solution of the question is to be found in some form of compulsory service. Seeing the difficulty of passing fresh legislation for this purpose, they mostly fall back on the Ballot Act for Militia, because that, although a dead letter, is a law still in existence, and would merely have to be put in force, which it is very certain would be easier than to pass new coercive laws.

The country has so far agreed to differ with all these writers, and it is a remarkable fact that no one has yet, with the feeling of the country pretty plainly before his eyes, tried to show how a reserve army of Volunteers could be so improved as to become a

defensive force on which we could all rely and go about our business with a feeling of security.

Is this because the experts think it impossible? It is certainly difficult, and the object of this paper is to detail some of the difficulties and inquire how they may be removed.

An army of Volunteers for home defence, supposing the regular Army to be in part or entirely employed abroad, must, it is evident, be somewhat differently constituted from the Volunteer force at present in existence.

Volunteers must, from the circumstances of the case, always possess qualifications for manoeuvring inferior to those of the regular Army. Much can be done with them if the officers and sergeants who lead them thoroughly know their work, and it will not do that the Volunteers shall any longer be led by officers who have an imperfect knowledge of drill and tactics.

It will not do that one-fourth should be composed of men who would not pass a medical examination for fitness to take the field; such men would only fill the hospitals and be an encumbrance when they were most wanted. It will not do to have a number of men unable to shoot with effect, nor will it be worth while to retain men who cannot find opportunities for drill.

There is perhaps a tendency in some quarters to think that as the Boers, who are essentially Volunteers, have done so well without regular training there is no reason why our Volunteers should not do equally well. But the cases are not parallel.

From boyhood the Boer is never without his rifle; until recently he had plenty of game to practise at; and he is not hampered in learning to shoot by want of ranges, as there is no risk of accidents in firing anywhere in so thinly populated a country. He is also never without a horse, and, in fact, never walks any distance; therefore, in the two important items of shooting and riding he wants no training, and it is probable that in anticipation of this war he did much more drilling than he has received credit for. Moreover, every Boer family owns at least one wagon, the oxen for which feed on the grass to be found at every halting place, consequently his transport is always ready; and independently of this, being of a frugal habit of living, he can, in the long journeys he is accustomed to ride, carry on his horse enough provisions to last for a week; while his horse can do the work on the grass with which the country abounds. To render our Volunteers of any use a transport must be so organised that it can be collected and put on the road at very short notice. It must be made possible to mass an army in a very short time without hitch or delay.

If 100,000 men are required at a given place, every man must be fed three times a day, and he cannot wait till the immense service required for this is being organised.