The National Service League has issued a useful ani timely
pamphlet showing that the cost of adopting the principle of universal training—such training to be four months for the infantry, and not more than two additional months for the artillery, engineers, and cavalry—would be about £4,000,000. It is calculated that under universal training not more than a hundred and fifty thousand lads would be given the four months' recruit training every year. After training they would be passed into the Territorial Army under existing conditions. There would be Territorial service as now for three years after the recruit training, and then a period of eight years in a Territorial Reserve. About four hundred and sixteen thousand young men reach the age of eighteen each year, but, following the Swiss precedent, about forty-eight per cent. would, it is calculated, be rejected on medical grounds, or excused from service under certain legal exemptions. Personally, we should like to see no legal exemptions, and to reject as few lads as possible on medical grounds, for the men rejected on medical grounds are those who get most out of, and most need, a military training.
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