All that is wanted now is a little organisation and encouragement, and the thing will be done. Military critics may sneer at 'hedgerow defence,' as once they sneered at volunteers, but is there any reasonable man who will not agree that Great Britain would be stronger if she had six hundred thousand more riflemen within her borders; and is there any who will doubt that the people. would acquire more dignity and self-respect when they felt that they also were sharing in the duty of the defence of the country?

It has been urged that such a movement would hurt the volunteers. That I cannot believe. It would act the other way, for when a rifleman had acquired some taste for military things, his instinct would be to join the volunteers or militia, or even, when his standard was very high, the army.

The first thing for raising such a force is to have targets in every parish, and to provide the men with two or three rifles with which they can take turns to practise. The funds could be met by local subscription. If the men give their time the rich should give their money, since it is for the common good. Where proper targets cannot be obtained a Morris-tube range can always be fitted up. When the men are proficient at targets let them be practised at dummy heads out of trenches at unknown ranges. Finally, let them pass a Government standard, and be presented with a rifle and a bandolier in reward for their patriotic exertions. In this way you will rapidly form large numbers of local commandoes who will know little of drill and have no uniform save a soft-brimmed hat, but who will be good shots and formidable from their spirit and their numbers. In that direction Britain has a huge reservoir of military strength.

It is said sometimes that we distract attention from the fleet by developing the land forces, but surely the argument is exactly the opposite. If the land can take care of itself then the fleet is free to act, but it will always be at a disadvantage so long as it is bound to protect our own shores. It is also urged that if the enemy had command of the sea they could starve us out, and no system of land defence would be of any avail. I do not think that this argument is sound. To blockade the ports of Great Britain many hundred of ships would be necessary, and the operation would be a gigantic one. Prices would rise very much,

Where the land is given the thing can be done for thirty poundscrede experto.

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of course, and great hardship would result, but these high prices would attract food from all over the world, and no blockade could keep it out. I am told that the actual food in the island itself at any one time is sufficient to keep the population for six months.

To sum up, then, I hold that we can get the greatest value from our military forces by paying more for a higher article. The old system, it must be confessed, supplied at times the very highest. No payment could attract better troops than some of those in South Africa. But these were the fine flower, and the large residue were left at home. If we pay more we must have fewer, but we can make up for that by extending the voluntary system at home. That is the general thesis which I have endeavoured to defend.

With Mr. Fortescue's chief objection I have already dealt. It is that I have not made sufficient provision for foreign garrisons. The hundred thousand, which I chose as a symmetrical number for the purpose of argument, need not be closely adhered to. If thirty thousand more are needed for the garrisons it does not seriously affect the principle for which I am contending. Of course when he takes for granted that because the present garrison of India is 70,000 it must still be 70,000 however much the quality or mobility of the soldier be improved, he is disregarding my whole argument. I do not, as he says, practically presuppose the existence of another 100,000 men. These difficulties are all of his imagination. For garrison duty and for small wars the regular army, as I have sketched it out, would, I believe, be ample. When serious trouble came they would be strongly reinforced from the militia and volunteers, just as the regular American army, which is a small body, could be raised to millions. It is a waste of money to pay for a larger force than you need, if you can devise a means of increasing it on the few occasions when it needs increase.

Turning from this general scheme Mr. Fortescue then criticises my view that the cavalry of the future will be what we now call mounted infantry-my reason being that I look upon the magazine rifle as the master weapon. It is said frequently that the lesson of this campaign will not apply to other campaigns. But when the fighting was among the hills of Natal we said that cavalry would have a better chance on the plains of the Orange Free State. And yet on those plains it was found that the rule still held good, and that the irregular burghers-the men of all

others who should theoretically have been the victims of the cavalry-were able with their rifles to hold their own. It was not the fault of our horsemen, who were very keen and gallant, but it lay deep in the altered conditions of war. I by no means agree with Mr. Fortescue when he says that a mounted infantry man upon his horse is practically an unarmed man. A body of them riding among a crowd of fugitives and firing right and left could do as much execution as any lancers-and, personally, since Mr. Fortescue presents the unpleasant alternative, I had rather be pursued by the lancer than by the rifleman. The one I might possibly knock off his horse, but I should be powerless against the other unless I had myself a rifle.

Mr. Fortescue has several other criticisms to make upon points of detail. I agree with him that the pay of officers would be raised, but on the other hand there would be fewer of them with a smaller regular army. He ends by his old text that these things are much better left to the professionals.' The whole lesson of the war is that we cannot have too open a discussion of them, and that there is no reason at all why they should be left to the professionals. We left the infantry shooting to professionals, and they served out two hundred cartridges a year. We left the choice of guns to professionals. They rejected the 'pom-pom and they gave us field pieces with half the range of those of our opponents. A civilian should certainly express his opinion temperately, and be prepared to give his reasons, and to listen with respect to all objections, but surely the time for this argument of 'leave it to the professionals' is over.

'

Colonel Maude's paper consists largely of the same plea. His chief attack upon me is based upon the idea that my proposals are subversive of discipline. Far from this being the case I should hope to find in the highly paid professional the most perfect discipline and esprit-de-corps that the world has ever seen. In the days when soldiers were largely drawn from the uneducated classes, discipline and cohesion depended largely upon drill. It became, in fact, mechanical. The higher discipline, however, may prove to proceed from the reason and from the self-respect of the individual men, rather than from the exercises of the parade ground. Those very American soldiers, whose deeds Colonel Maude quotes with approval, would appear undisciplined and almost mutinous if judged by our standards. The saluting of officers, the simultaneous wheeling of a line of men, or the firing

of a volley which sounds like a single shot are not the essentials of soldiering. The essentials are the spirit of the men, the pride they take in their regiment, their devotion to their country, and the self-respect which forbids them to yield. These things make for cohesion and discipline, and they are in accordance with the spirit of our race. The Canadian regiment of infantry, for example, was formed from militiamen drawn from many parts of Canada, and could hardly be expected to excel in drill. Yet their discipline (founded upon self-respect) was so high that the whole regiment was deeply disturbed by the fact that one of their number had been accused of looting a fowl. I heard them speak of the trifle with more distress than they showed when discussing their losses at Paardeburg. Colonel Maude is mistaken if he thinks that I underrate the power of discipline, but I believe that it is not necessarily so closely connected with drill as he imagines.

Colonel Maude states incidentally what he himself considers to have been the lessons of the war, and I confess that my heart sank as I read them. The first is that good shooting is not a matter of much importance. 'I should have thought,' he writes, 'that nothing could more effectively have demolished the theory of the crack-shot school than our recent experience.' The second is that troops should not be encouraged to seek cover. 'I hold that we have devoted too much attention to individual cover for many years past.' The third is that after a sufficient artillery preparation the enemy's fire becomes unaimed, and your attack may then be made as safely in column as any other way. Under those circumstances he says that no arrangement of men in lines, groups, or columns can have any effect on the individual's chances of being hit.' Are these then the three lessons which we have gained from a year of warfare! I wonder how many South African officers would endorse them.

Colonel Maude regards Paardeburg as the blot upon the campaign, not because the attack was made, but because it was not pushed home, even if it cost us five hundred killed. Five hundred killed would with rifle fire mean over three thousand casualties, and what should we have gained which we did not get by a little patience? Colonel Maude says that it would have saved five thousand men who died of enteric. But this is a very wild statement. The Paardeburg cases came to Bloemfontein, and the total number of deaths altogether in that town was well under two thousand. Of these the greater number were in May, and

could have had no connection with Paardeburg. The wells in Bloemfontein have always been polluted, and the cutting off of the water supply had probably far more to do with the epidemic than the delay at Paardeburg.

Colonel Maude complains that the British attack was checked by a loss of 3 per cent. in their numbers. Here also his figures will not bear examination. There were, so far as I know, only four brigades under fire in the attack on Paardeburg. They were Macdonald's, Knox's, Stephenson's and Smith-Dorrien's. Twelve thousand men would be a fair estimate of their numbers. More than 1,200 were hit, so that the proportion works out at not less than 10 per cent.-which is very different from Colonel Maude's statement. That no power on earth could induce the men to move forward' from behind the ant-hills is, I believe, equally erroneous. The casualty list is in itself sufficient to disprove it. Men who lie tight behind ant-hills do not lose 10 per cent. of their number.

All this has little to do with my original thesis, but I am following Colonel Maude in his attempt to illustrate the three lessons which he has drawn from the war. He then discourages the suggestion that a corps d'élite of mounted infantry could be formed. You cannot select men in peace for employment in war.' I should have thought that the formation of Guard regiments and other special corps in every army would tend to show that it is not so difficult. A better class of man with better pay will on the average give a better soldier. In Colonel Maude's desire that the general conditions of life of the working classes should be improved, we are of course all of one mind. These things depend, however, upon deep-lying economic causes which are not readily altered.

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There is only one sentence of Colonel Maude's article to which I take serious exception. He says, 'I protest against the tone which Dr. Conan Doyle and most other correspondents adopt when speaking of our officers.' The 'other' is superfluous, as I was not a correspondent, but I should like to know which passage my book it is to which Colonel Maude refers. Is it this: The slogging valour of the private, the careless dash of the regimental officer-these were our military assets'? Or is it The British colonels have led their men up to and through the gates of death'? Perhaps it is a braver man than the British officer, or one with a more indomitable and sporting spirit, is not to be found.' This is