Lord Lansdowne's answer to the Duke of Bedford showed, in
our opinion, that the Secretary of State for War has less grasp of the essentials of the problem than his unofficial critic. After mentioning that thirty thousand applications had been received for the new Reserve battalions, and that twenty thousand had been actually enrolled, he deprecated the notion of adding thirteen years more to the Reservists' term, thus bringing the term to a total of twenty-five years, and then giving them a pension. That would be a very bad bargain for the public. To give a pension of 6d. a day to Reservists after twenty-five years' service would east:."?,000,000 a year. It would be better to give bounties when necessary. Lord Lansdowne went on to say that considerable progress had been made with the new regiments in course of forma- tion. He also stated that there were still at home ninety-two thousand men of the Regular Army, though these men were, of course, in no sense a field army, and included a large number of boys under twenty.
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