"
"But a hundred thousand isn't enough for garrison duty," I persisted.
"A hundred thousand _sound_ men, not sick boys, go quite a way," said
Pigeon.
"We expect the Line to garrison the Mediterranean Ports and thereabouts,"
said Bayley. "Don't sneer at the mechanic. He's deuced good stuff. He
isn't rudely ordered out, because this ain't a military despotism, and we
have to consider people's feelings. The Armity usually brackets three Line
regiments together, and calls for men for six months or a year for Malta,
Gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day. Three battalions will give you nearly a
whole battalion of bachelors between 'em. You fill up deficiencies with a
call on the territorial Volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we
call a Ports battalion. What's astonishing in that? Remember that in this
country, where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty
fair notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the
open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young."
"Not much adventure at Malta, Gib, or Cyprus," I retorted. "Don't they get
sick of it?"
"But you don't realise that we treat 'em rather differently from the
soldier of the past. You ought to go and see a Ports battalion drawn from
a manufacturing centre growin' vines in Cyprus in its shirt sleeves; and
at Gib, and Malta, of course, the battalions are working with the Fleet
half the time.
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