The Duke of Cambridge has issued a General Order con-
veying to the Volunteers her Majesty's congratulations on their attaining their majority, twenty-one years. The order was pro- bably intended in part as a compensation for the refusal to allow a general review in Hyde Park, but the occasion is really a remarkable one. No one expected the movement when it com- menced to last for more than a year or two ; but it has endured and expanded until the efficient Volunteers number 200,000, and are as well instructed as the majority of Militia regiments. The desire for military instruction has outlasted not only the fear of France, which gave birth to the movement, but at least two generations of Volunteers, few Volunteers serving for more than ten years. The fact is encouraging for those who believe that while a conscription is impossible in England, universal military training on the Swiss system is not ; but they will have to wait for the next great panic. Until then we shall get no Army, for all our expenditure, nor any reservoir from which to feed one.
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