THE SURREY VETERANS' PARADE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SFECTATOR.1 Stn,—Awakened from the usual decorous English repose and insular self-satisfaction, I read with great pleasure your article of June 25th last on the above subject, telling us how some thirteen hundred old soldiers of many kinds and many sorts paraded at the Horse Guards before the Minister for War and the most notable Generals of our generation to show there is a Reserve of Veterans. I will not repeat your most excellent article, if I may say so, but I wish to say that here in far- away Somersetshire we are trying to carry out your ideas. I hardly know whether Surrey or you, Sir, can claim precedence. I do not think either of you, in your ideas of patriotism, will care who gets the best of it so long as you get the old soldiers of England, every man Jack of them, to register their names and addresses on &Veteran Reserve. The movement in this county is under the direction of distinguished officers, and I am sure it will be an entire success. But I want to ask you, Sir, if other counties are doing the same thing as Surrey and Somerset. As you remark in your article, we ought to get one hundred and fifty thousand men already trained as a Veteran Reserve. I enclose a newspaper to show what we are doing in quite a small area, and I most sincerely trust the same thing is being done generally in other counties in England. All the men I am alluding to will, I believe, attest themselves for service unless debarred by reason of the War Office age-limit of fifty years for privates, which should be raised to fifty-five, and the four years' limit of service for Volunteers might with advantage be lowered to three and so embrace a considerable number of suitable men. In the Boer War there was no limit of age : I saw boys and old men fighting against us. Surely the conditions in England would be very similar should it be necessary to call out the Veteran
Colonel (retired).
Ilminster, Somerset.
[We are delighted to hear that Somersetshire is determined not to be behind Surrey, and we hope other counties will rapidly follow suit. There is not the slightest reason why they should not do as well as, or even better than, Surrey, for Surrey had no advantages, but rather the reverse, since county esprit de corps is necessarily apt to be somewhat impaired in the Metropolitan counties. Surrey, again, has no definite county centre. We agree that fifty-five years of age and three years in the Volunteers would be improvements.—ED. Spectator.]
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