MILITARY TRAINING.
[TO TRH EDITOR OF TOO " SP scrA-roic.'1 Sin,—Referring to your remarks in last week's " News of the Week," I should like as an engineering employer to point out bow easy it would be to secure the necessary military training without putting any burden on the employer. It is, of course, a fact that no works could allow their adult workmen to absent themselves for a lengthy training; but if the youths are dealt with before they become full workmen the problem is greatly simplified. In engineering works youths are engaged in con- siderable numbers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and serve an apprenticeship of five years. If this term were extended to five and a-half years, so as to allow of six months' military training, and one six-months batch of youths of about eighteen years of age was always absent from the shops for the training, very little, if any, inconvenience would be felt, for the places of the youths going out for training would be filled by those just returning. As to the annual training, it is not at all unusual for works to be closed down in the summer time for a whole week, during which the training could take place. With such a scheme in force there would be no difference observable in our shops except this, that those who bad passed their training would be physically, and probably intellectually, benefited, and consequently (to put it merely from a selfish point of view) of more value to their employers. Unfortunately, when I put this scheme before the military authorities, I was met with two difficulties which rendered it impracticable : (1) in the Territorial Forces there are no funds available for any six months' training; (2) in the Special Reserve—late Militia—where such training is provided for, men render themselves liable to foreign service. If such a scheme as this could be carried out generally in the workshops of this country, we should in a few years have the bulk of the men in our factories, both staff and workmen, capable of defending their
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