The more we consider the placing of the Volunteers under
the Adjutant-General instead of in a separate Department of their own, the more convinced are we that a step most injurious to the interests of the civilian soldier has been taken. Instead of giving the Volunteers an appropriate training and organisation, we have, we fear, entered upon a course which can be best described as one for making them into imitation Regulars. As an indication of this process we may note the first official act of the new regime as regards the Volunteers, criticised by a- correspondent in another column. The Army Council, pre- srunably at the instance of the Adjutant-General's Depart- ment, have begun to busy themselves with the uniforms of the Volunteers ! Such events fill one with despair as to Army reform. The War Office at its period of greatest petrifaction could not have paid more public homage to the notion that the uniform is the essential part of the soldier.
If we are ever invaded, and the War Office is entered by our conquerors, we may feel certain that they will find there a Major-General solemnly writing a Minute on the arrangement of the trimming on a new field-service cap.
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