It is worth remembering that the Volunteers are now no
untried body of whom it is possible for military men to say, that it remains to be seen whether they will be of use, and so on. All the soldiers who have seen the Volunteers at work at trench-digging admit that, putting aside the Engineers, they are distinctly better than the ordinary infantryman. Some of the trenches, in parts of England which must be nameless, dug by Volunteers most willingly for nothing a day and nothing found, are unquestionably far better examples of the military art than trenches dug by navvies at " six shillings a day and all found." In all these circumstances we most earnestly urge the Govern- ment not to let the Volunteer Bill fall. If they do, it is quite possi lo that the Volunteer movement, now in a very critical position, will fall with it, leaving a sense of bitterness amongst some three hundred thousand men who are the very pick of our civil population. Is that a state of things which any of us can desire ?
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