[TO THE EDITOR Or TUE "SPRCTATOR."] SIR, — Like most good things,
the idea of the Spectator Experimental Company is not wholly new. In 1863 and 1864 Canada was passing through certain searchings of heart as to her Militia system, and one of the Members of the old Legisla- ture of Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Mr. R. J. Cartwright— now Sir Richard Cartwright, Minister of Trade and Commerce in the Dominion Cabinet—evolved a scheme which has a curiously familiar look. In 1863 he twice addressed the House on the subject, and in 1864 he published a pamphlet still further elaborating his views. His proposal was that each year ten thousand young men—the population of Canada then was two or three millions—should be subjected to at least six months' consecutive actual training, in the open field if possible. These should, after undergoing this training, be freed from all further military discipline, but be required to hold themselves in readiness for a period of, say, five or ten years in case of actual war. Thus, if the reserve period were ten years, Mr. Cartwright calculated that after the system had been working for ten years the country would have the services of one hundred thousand trained men,—less, of course, wastage. Did Canada adopt his scheme P Not much. She is too true a daughter of England to adopt any system so
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