THE REVIEW OF THE RESERVISTS IN HYDE PARK,. JUNE 8mu,
1912: A PERSONAL IMPRESSION.
[To THE EDITOR OD TRU SPECTATOR."] SIR,—As the Spectator, or its Editor personally, has been an active promoter, or originator, of the Veteran Reserve, I should like to tell you of my experience or impressions at our Parade before the King in Hyde Park on Saturday last as they appeared to a ranker like myself. The thing was glorious, simply splendid. The weather was a trifle variegated, but that mattered little, for storm or shine would have been just the same to us serious Britons. It was the spirit and the aspect of the men, and the reception that the crowds gave us, that gave the glory and the splendour, for it is a glorious and a splendid thing to think, and to know, and to see with one's eyes, that on a Saturday afternoon, when we all want to go and play, 30,000 serious men of middle age, out of London alone, will answer to the call of an entirely self-imposed duty—and this, too, in time of peace. If there had been an alarm or even a possibility of war, the thing would have been a matter of course; the 30,000, or whatever the exact number present may have been, would have been 300,000 at ten days' notice. This is no empty boast, for it was proved as a fact just fifty years ago, when the first Volunteer force was formed on a distant rumour of possible foreign invasion. Our population, I 'suppose, is doubled now ; the likely men for a reserve force have increased in number more than that proportionately, from sundry causes too long to detail here. We are
at peace with all the world ; we are good friends, thank God! with all our neighbours ; and yet the mean streets, and the workshops, and the offices, and the fine houses of London alone have sent forth this respectable number of trained fighting men to show that they would be on the spot if the call should ever really come. That nineteen out of twenty of them were really useful and trained fighting men it was easy to see; many hundreds were two-medal and three-medal men ; if there was a grizzled beard here and there (the present writer, a Volunteer private of 1860-70, was one of them) possibly he has still a steady hand and eye with the rifle, and possibly he was right in thinking that if lie was still fit for the deer-forest, or the grouse-moor, or the salmon-river he was not unfit for military duty of sorts.
We had a longish wait at the beginning, for we bad to muster in Grosvenor Square at 3.30, and the King was not to be on the field till 6 p.m., but the time was far from wasted; we chatted together about the new drill and we surveyed each other ; all sorts and conditions of men, much variety of dress, coats of all shapes and colours, straw bats, billycocks, tweed caps, and shiny top-hats, but the right sort of heads and bodies underneath. A few of the heads when we took off our hats to cheer the King may have shown a bit of bald ; but, after all, old heads have their uses, and the average age of the men on the ground is, as the facts show, just about forty, and unless I am wrong in my history the average age of the British soldiers at Coruama, Badajoz, and Waterloo was not younger than that.
The streets of Mayfair were crowded as we marched through, and I think I saw in the faces of shop lads and middle-aged men, who were gazing at us as we passed along, an envious look which meant, " Well, why shouldn't I do that, too, when I have served in the Territorials for a few years, and when I can get a few hours away from work P" Why shouldn't they P I hope they will. He will feel himself more of a man and a gentleman if he does. An hour before, when I was lunching with a friend at my club in Pall Mall, he said to me, "I believe ".1 am qualified. I was in the Volunteers at Oxford twenty years ago. Why shouldn't I join ?"
The actual review in the Park, the inspection of the long lines by the King and by distinguished officers, the march- past, the break-up of the battalions, and the dismissal to our homes may be all commonplace enough to the conventional citizen, outwardly knit an every-day sight to some ; but under the surface some of us were up in the clouds—at least I know one who was. News, I fancied, had just come by wire that the enemy (we didn't care who it was, French, or German, or Asiatic) had just effected a landing at Dover ; their aeroplanes were floating above St. Paul's, and we could hear the boom of 13-inch guns from the coast of Kent. Most of us had never fired a shot in anger in our life ; our hearths and homes had become to us as a heaven on earth; the gaudia certaminis, the joy of battle, was upon us. All would be well if the Reserve battalions were well filled I—I am, Sir, &c.,
CHARLES STEWART.
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