every man who brings a horse, and mounts will be found for those who do not.

Of the Volunteers, twenty-five battalions and fifteen batteries of field artillery are to be specially trained for home defence as an integral part of the home army corps. The training and conditions. of service of the Volunteers are to be generally improved.

The result of these changes is an effective addition to the Army as follows:

This is to some extent misleading, however, because the 50,000 Militia and the 40,000 Volunteers are already supposed to exist in the army. The actual net addition asked for is, therefore, only 36,500 men. The other 90,000 are only additional in the sense that they are to be made effective.

The total number of men for the Army, which Mr. Brodrick asks Parliament to sanction, is made up as follows:

And these 680,000 men Mr. Brodrick apportions thus :

To complete the outline of the scheme it must be added that Mr. Brodrick pledges himself to supply full equipment and stores for the whole of this force, to improve the artillery, to reform and reorganise the transport and the medical service, to improve the education and training of officers, and last, but not least, to reorganise the War Office itself.

Such is the task the Secretary of War has set himself to accomplish. It is a task from which any Minister might well shrink, but Mr. Brodrick approaches it with just those gifts of character which are most likely to carry him to success. Moreover he enjoys the immense advantage of having the cordial co-operation

of a Commander-in-Chief whose proved abilities, unrivalled experience, and never-to-be-forgotten services to the nation endow him with indisputable authority.

The present writer does not pretend to any qualifications whatever which would warrant him in criticising the purely military aspects of the scheme. That is the business of professional critics. But there are certain general observations which may be made with propriety by any civilian, who has carefully studied the question of national defence. One of these is that for the first time we see established for the military forces of the kingdom some such standard of strength as has been established for the Navy for several years. It is, of course, a rule accepted by both political parties that the Navy shall always be equal to the navies of any two Powers that could combine against us. Mr. Brodrick now lays it down that we shall always have three Army Corps immediately ready in every detail for foreign service without in any way trenching upon or disturbing our system of home defence. If this portion of the scheme is accepted by both political parties, and a standard of strength and efficiency is established, below which the Army will never be allowed to fall, a distinct step forward will have been taken, and a source of solid satisfaction will have been given to all Army reformers.

Another obvious remark is that the scheme proceeds upon the old lines of voluntary enlistment. We are to continue to appeal to the same class to come into the Army, only we are to offer slightly increased inducements. There is no broadening of the basis of our system of national defence. The old field is to be cultivated by a process of more 'intense' culture. There is no question of opening up fresh ground. This can only mean that the scheme is, after all, a stop-gap scheme. The military needs of the Empire must and will go on increasing. Nothing can prevent it. The cause does not lie with us. It lies in the change in the international situation. Ministers, to whichever party they belong, are as impotent to check the growth of armaments as to stop the growth of population or the passage of time. The suggestion that a conciliatory diplomacy can be any substitute for efficient armed forces is childish. It is the policy of the lamb towards the wolf in the fable, and everyone knows how powerless that was to avert the catastrophe. One must have had a House of Commons training to acquire so simple a faith in the power of the tongue. Our dangers and difficulties are far more likely to increase than to decrease. Our old isolation is as much a thing of the past as our sea-girt frontiers. The colonial activity of other European powers is giving us neighbours in every quarter of the globe, and their proximity brings with it the clash of interests and the possibilities of quarrel. It is not only that the expansion of our own Empire involves the expansion of our military force, but the expansion

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of other peoples' empires also carries with it the same consequence. Even if we could limit the growth of our Empire, we should not necessarily limit the growth of our armaments, since we should still have to defend what we hold against constantly increasing odds. If we are slow to realise these facts ourselves, they are very clearly realised abroad. It is not only our hostile critics but those most friendly to us who compare unfavourably the enormous extent of our imperial responsibilities with the narrow basis of military organisation upon which they rest. I happened to be on the Continent when Mr. Brodrick presented his scheme to the House of Commons. I can bear witness to the favourable impression the obvious courage and sincerity of his speech created in quarters not usually too kindly disposed to British statesmanship, and certainly not sanguine of the efficiency and actuality of British Army reform. But politicians and publicists were practically unanimous in their verdict as to the inadequacy of the remedy for the disease, which the campaign in South Africa had made patent to the whole world, and in their conviction that the scheme itself was the last word-the swan-song, so to speak -of the purely voluntary system. And, indeed, Mr. Brodrick did not conceal from the House of Commons that this was also his conviction. In one of the most striking passages of his speech he said :

Is our Army in future for home defence to be a voluntary Army, or is it to be recruited by compulsion ? I am perfectly aware of the delicate ground upon which I am treading in respect to the question of voluntary and compulsory service. I know very well how easy it is in this House to win cheap cheers by a proud declaration about adhesion to the voluntary system. I think the voluntary system for home defence is not a thing to be proud of unless you get an efficient defence. . . . Therefore my adhesion to the voluntary system is strictly limited by our ability to obtain under it a force with which our military authorities can satisfy the Government that they have sufficient force to resist invasion and can maintain it to their satisfaction. At the same time the Government fully recognises that while the country is willing to pay heavily to escape compulsion, it is incumbent on the Government to exhaust every means before coming forward with any such proposals, and especially under the circumstances of the present time.

The circumstances' to which Mr. Brodrick refers in the concluding words of this passage are the readiness and enthusiasm with which thousands and thousands of volunteers have come forward to fight for the Empire at a moment of crisis. Many will think that these are also just the circumstances which offer a strong government a unique opportunity for making a great change. It is only when you touch the deeper springs of emotion in a people that you can prepare it for great national sacrifices. The opportunity has for the moment been missed, and one can only wait patiently, and hope that when it recurs the sacrifices asked will not be still heavier. While it is possible that in the present state-I will not say of public opinion, but of parliamentary opinion, the government of the day is bound to exhaust every other means before coming forward

with a proposal to abandon the purely voluntary system, no such obligation is laid upon writers, who are not hampered by the exigencies of political parties, and are concerned only for the fortunes of their country. It is their clear duty to prepare the way by every means in their power for the change which is surely coming to us, as it has already come to each of the other great European communities, I mean the change from a wholly mercenary to a largely national Army.

In approaching this question I am aware how unlike our circumstances are to the circumstances of our Continental neighbours, how different our needs, our obligations, and our dangers are from theirs. I do not overlook the fact that, whereas they have for the most part to defend compact territories, we have to defend widely scattered possessions; that, while the vast majority of their land forces must always serve at home, a very large proportion of ours, even in times of peace, must serve abroad. Nor do I forget that in our case naval forces, and in theirs land forces, are the predominant element in schemes of national defence. But all these differences seem to me arguments not against the principle or basis upon which we in England should build up our military system, but solely against any wholesale imitation of the details of Continental systems. There is no similarity, it is true, between our respective circumstances, but there is absolute likeness in the magnitude of our responsibilities and dangers. They have been driven by menace to their national existence to base their military systems upon the training in arms of their whole male population. The details they have worked out according to their individual requirements. We are, I believe, being driven in exactly the same direction, but we are absolutely free to settle our own details according to our own needs.

No doubt we are being impelled mainly by the rapid growth of our imperial responsibilities and the acknowledged difficulty of meeting sudden dangers abroad and at home with an army recruited solely by voluntary enlistment. I doubt if we realise how much we are also influenced by the pressure of European public opinion. When all European armies were mercenary armies we were all on the same footing, but now that it has ceased to be the practice among the majority of civilised peoples to entrust the defence of their country to paid servants, the obligation of personal service in defence of the fatherland is becoming an obligation every man feels it a duty to fulfil and no man desires to avoid. In our own time a great change has come over public feeling with regard to this question in Continental countries. Time was when young men sought to evade the duty of military service, when they preferred to cross the sea to England and America, even if such flight involved perpetual banishBut gradually such evasions have become rarer and rarer. Today they are condemned by public opinion and are of comparatively

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infrequent occurrence. A couple of generations have sufficed to remove the grievance and to accustom the minds of young citizens to look upon military service as one of the duties of life, which is performed quietly, naturally, and without heroics. One of the consequences of this change is that our neighbours are beginning to despise us for delegating the defence of our Empire to what they regard as mercenary troops. I do not think we realise how deep this feeling is in their minds. We think their dislike of us is entirely due to envy. I fear there is in it a considerable element of contempt. And the greater our prosperity, the more splendid the Empire becomes, the stronger is this feeling on their part, that our power is maintained and defended not by the personal service and personal sacrifice of each individual citizen, but by a people which sits at home and pays others to fight for it. The picture is no doubt distorted, but it is salutary at times to see ourselves as others see us.

There can be little doubt that a good deal of the prejudice which exists amongst us against compulsory military service is due to misconceptions and to well-worn traditions with regard to the imaginary horrors and ruinous consequences of conscription. Within the limits of a short article it is obviously impossible to deal fully with so large a question, but one or two points may be touched upon. There is no serious reason, military or other, why compulsory military training in this kingdom should conform to the Continental type. There is indeed every reason in our national character and in our actual military requirements why it should not. One of the most objectionable features in the foreign system is barrack life, but why should that be essential to effective military training? It might just as well have been urged as an argument against compulsory education that you would be obliged to send every child in the land away from home to a boarding-school. It is perfectly feasible to establish a system which will not withdraw lads from their own localities at all, but will be carried on over a series of years, very much as our elementary education is carried on in the earlier years of life, with the least possible disturbance to local and home life. I am speaking of course of military training and not of military service.

Another well-known objection is the 'deplorable economic waste of withdrawing young men from the pursuit of industries during the period of their military training. Again I say we need not and probably should not adopt the Continental plan. With our shortened hours of labour there is plenty of time in the life of a youth for the acquisition of useful military instruction without any very serious interruption to the industries of the nation. We have an idea in this country that it is rather clever of us to have the whole of our male population uninterruptedly engaged in the production of wealth, while our neighbours have to take a couple of years out of the life of each of