20 MAY 1916, Page 3

We ought to have a million and a half Volunteers

at the very least. If we had, we might have something like two hundred thousand always on duty. The arms question is not going to prove in practice so great a difficulty as was supposed. For a good deal of the work for which the Volunteer Training Corps will be used, such as guard work, a shot-gun is a better, because a more deadly, weapon than a rifle. In all probability, a section cf trench-line held by a hundred steady men with double-barrelled shot-guns would prove a very formidable obstacle to an enemy advance. It is very difficult to miss with a " scatter-gun " a target so big as a man at thirty or forty yards.