I hold it to be the duty of every young man who comes to Shanghai to join some arm of the corps and to stay long enough learn his work in it properly. Still human nature is human nature, and a great many men have no taste for soldiering; to them drill is a weariness of the flesh and the range the abomination of desolation; and it is no more reasonable {to blame them than to blame anyone for disliking riding or dancing. All that the {community has a right to expect is that such men shall qualify for a year or two at most. The want of something like the Home Guard into which they could, after a turn on the active list, retire with the feeling they had done their duty, Keeps, I believe, a number of these out of the ranks of the Volunteers altogether and the public weal suffers in consequence. Then there are those who have been keen enough in their time but on whom years and family ties begin to tell—and this class that now-a-days is constantly increaaing. They, instead of chucking the whole and sometimes even turning sour critics of their successors' doings, as at resent, would gravitate towards the Home luard asa matter of course, and be delighted to do a drill ors" a year to keep old memories green. Finally there are men who have never done any soldiering all; there ought not to be any, but am afraid there always will be.' If in times of excitement they wanted to come into the Home Guard the community is not strong enough to refuse anybody's help, but they would have to learn the rudiments of drill which is in itself a fair task. Undoubtedly the old Volunteers would be, as they ought to be, the backbone of the institution.
Tu conclusion I should like to answer one or two of the objections that I have heard made to the Home Guard. It is said that the discipline could not be depended on. I do not hesitate to assort the discipline in the Home Guard would be just as good as in the Volunteers. Drill is not discipline any more than di just as well drilled as the German and a well-known writer on military subjects says of them "The soldiers wore well drilled, and the parade movements of all arms had lost none of their elasticity. The Guard was the most imposing corps in Europe. Foreign critics were loud in their praises of the artillery and allowed that the infantry were the most agile and intelligent of Again in the English Army it was the best drilled battalion in the whole brigade of Guards that broke out so badly a little time ago, and got exiled to Barbadoes for ite pains. Military discipline, "the unquestioning obedience to orders which may not be understood, or being understood may be considered wrong, simply because they are orders," is not inculcated by drill merely as drill, but by the daily and hourly submission to constituted he in which a soldier spends his life. Here nothing of the sort takes place and we must substitute for the mechanical habit of mind it engenders one derived from the superior intelligence of the men with whom we have to deal, an intelligence which, in the face of a common danger, would teach them to subordinate their own ideas and wishes to those of their leaders. But this intelligence would be equally present in the Home Guard! What I mean is that supposing a squad of volunteers or a squad of home guardsmen received an order to remain at a certain spot until a certain specified event happened, I should expect one to obey just as strictly as the other. Younger, and therefore more active, better drilled, and therefore more mobile, armed with better weapons and more skilled in use, the volunteer should be incomparably the more formidable fighting man, but as far as discipline is concerned I fail to see there would be any appreciable difference.
It is said that a Home Guard which was alive would tend to diminish the number of volunteers. I don't see how myself, but even if it did cause the loss of a few, what is that to the dozens it would set free for duty in the (front line in case of an actual fight? And after all, it is for an actual fight that the volunteers exist! It cannot be too strongly impressed on everyone that all the duties enumerated above must be done by somebody, and that as they do not require highly trained men to perform them the employment of such is a waste of force.
Again it is said that the Home Guard cannot be kept together, but as the experiment has never been properly tried, that isa mere assertion. The same was said of the volunteer movement in England, but the test of time has shown the reverse.
Finally, some people seem to think there no necessity for sich extensive preparations for defence. Perhaps there isn't, but s0 long as we are here b-cause the Chinese are unable to turn us out, and I don't think anyone will be bold enough to assert we should not all be sent packing to-morrow were the power only equal to the will, #0 long then as we are here by force, so long must we be prepared to stop here by force, and so long must we expect things to be made unpleasant for us when any combination of circumstances favourable to such a thing occurs. Take the events of 1891 to witness for that.
'At any rate—for goodness' sake don't let us underrate our foes, actual or potential. The history of British disasters in connection with savage or semi-civilised peoples isa history of that. Two instances are quite recent, one in South Africa, the other on the West Coast. There is an old proverb which sums up the case exactly; i "t's better to be safe than sorry.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.