On Wednesday Education Bill No. 2 was got through Com-
mittee, and may therefore be said to be out of danger. On Thursday the House debated the Army Estimates, and Mr. Brodrick made the very satisfactory announcement that he intends to carry into practice almost all the recommendations of Mr. Dawkins's Committee. Incidentally he gave the figures in regard to the non-professional soldiers serving in the war. There were twenty thousand Yeomanry, ten thousand Volun- teers, and forty thousand Colonial troops all in the field at once. This means seventy thousand non-professional soldiers. If we add the twenty thousand Militia, we get a total of ninety thousand. But no one will venture to say that the non- professional soldiers have done badly. In other words, we can rely to a considerable extent, as do the Americans, on improvising the actual soldiers at a great crisis. What we ought not to rely upon improvising is the skeleton organisa- tion for the work of raising emergency troops. That should be mapped out and ready in peace time. Also, though you can improvise men with safety and success, you cannot im- provise officers. We ought to be able to have a large reserve of officers ready for an emergency call for men. How to do this is, we confess, a most difficult problem.
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