The final Report of last year upon recruiting is most
satisfac- tory. Owing to the want of employment, to the increase of pay, and to the growing liking for the short-service en- listment, no less than 24,000 recruits offered themselves last year, and while the cavalry is above its proper strength, and the infantry within a few hundreds of its full number, it has actually been found necessary to raise the standard fixed for gunners in the Artillery. The Army is in fact complete, and the recruiting officers say the rejections on account of deficient physique are unusually few, a better class of men having come forward. The number of desertions remains un- fortunately as great as ever, desertion having become a profit- able trade, and the expediency of tattooing a small mark on every man who enters the Queen's service has again been publicly discussed. The practice had better be avoided, not because it is unfair or cruel, but because it tends to create the prejudice that soldiership differs from any other honourable business, which has always injured the status of the Army. The returns show that Lord Cardwell was in all important respects right in his estimate of the attractiveness of short service, and there is one important incident in the matter which should not be overlooked. Within twenty years there will be an average of half a million men in the British Isles, all under forty-two, who have been thoroughly drilled as regular soldiers, a defence against invasion of which it is difficult to over-estimate the value.
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