We say without hesitation that if the National Reserve bad
nos been established it would have taken ten times as long as it actually did to get into touch with this very valuable bcdy of men. Let us recall what the National Reserve did at the beginning of the war. The first thing they did was to provide without any trouble or confusion, but by a simple call, some thirty thousand men to complete the Special Reserve--a body upon which the mobiliza- tion
of the Expeditionary Force, we will not say depended altogether, but depended for its completion. If the National Reservists had not been there to make up the deficiencies in the Special Reserve, there would have been a very ragged edge indeed to the Expeditionary Force. Next, the home service section of the National Reserve—i.e., the £5 bounty men—immediately gave us a large and well-trained force for forming Guards for railway lines and vulnerable points. How many men have been called up altogether for this duty the War Office have always refused to say, but we shall probably be safe in putting the number at over fifty thousand in all.
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