Hams just returned from a trip to Singapore and contacted a number of Shanghai Boys in and around that city, it would appear that a lot of points regarding British Army recruits require some explanation which should be known to prospective volunteers as there now seems to be considerable misunderstanding.
The majority of the men whom I|snd cool, in fact they are issued w contacted and heard of seem to be under the impression that coming from Shanghai, or for that matter anywhere in China, to serve their country they must get commissions whether they were qualified for such commissions or not, The men already sent have had considerable difficulties io contend with, They have been drafted in small numbers into units already established and trained, to all intents and purposes, under active service conditions, This drafting of entirely untrained men—except for a little service in the local volunteers—naturally does not make a smooth course for these men, and while it can hardly be very satisfactory to the units into which these men are Grafted, these regiments or other branches of the service are made up entirely with men who have had proper army drill and training in their respective units, a great majority having at least some years service while others have already seen active service; Consequently a recruit going into such a body of men is naturally at first rather out of his depth, In most cases—as one would expect—I found that special arrangements had been made by the units concerned to give these recruits concentrated short training, whereby they get through in several weeks what would usually take from three to six months, I must say that most of the recruits seemed to have come out quite well under these conditions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.