"
"It seems to me," I said angrily, "you are knocking _esprit de corps_ on
the head with all this Army-Navy jumble. It's as bad as----"
"I know what you're going to say. As bad as what Kitchener used to do when
he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as good as
a column of two regiments. In the old days, when drill was a sort of holy
sacred art learned in old age, you'd be quite right. But remember _our_
chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory we work on is that
a thousand trained Englishmen ought to be about as good as another
thousand trained Englishmen. We've enlarged our horizon, that's all. Some
day the Army and the Navy will be interchangeable."
"You've enlarged it enough to fall out of, I think. Now where in all this
mess of compulsory Volunteers----?"
"My dear boy, there's no compulsion. You've _got_ to be drilled when
you're a child, same as you've got to learn to read, and if you don't
pretend to serve in some corps or other till you're thirty-five or
medically chucked you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. That's fair
enough."
"Compulsory conscripts," I continued. "Where, as I was going to say, does
the Militia come in?"
"As I have said--for the men who can't afford volunteering. The Militia is
recruited by ballot--pretty comprehensively too. Volunteers are exempt,
but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the Militia.
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