THE PROPOSED EXPERIMENT IN MILITIA. TRAINING.
[THE experiment proposed by Colonel Pollock for which we are asking subscriptions may be briefly described as follows. Colonel Pollock declares that if funds sufficient to meet the cost are raised, he will undertake in six months to give a military training to one hundred young Englishmen of between eighteen and twenty of the wage-earning class which will make them individually more proficient soldiers in the field (i.s., in attack and defence, outposts, advanced, rear, and flank guards, &c., &c.) than any company selected at short notice from the Regular infantry now in the United Kingdom. Let that company, for example, be selected from whichever is considered to be the best battalion now 0 Aldershot. Moreover, the hundred recruits shall also be well grounded in drill, gymnastics, and musketry. It is clear, if Colonel Pollock can form such a company in six months, that a fact of the utmost importance will have been ascertained, and that we shall be able without misgiving to urge that our present Militia Force shall be organised on the basis of six months' recruit training, with only a week's camp each succeeding year plus local training, upon a system resembling that now followed by the Volunteers. On such a basis we could have a Militia Army of two hundred thousand men whose civil employment would not be injuriously affected,—a force of real value which would yet not impose any intolerable burden on the national resources. The experiment, if a success, should also render impossible the carrying out of the policy of abolishing the Militia put forward by the late Secretary of State for • War. It is in view of these considerations that we are endeavouring to obtain the £9,500 which Colonel Pollock considers necessary for his experiment.] SUBSCRIPTIONS RECEIVED AND PROMISED UP TILL SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17rn :—Y-2,945 15s.
SUBSCRIPTIONS RECEIVED DURING THE CURRENT WEEK :—
A Friend £50 0 0 Morton Latham... ... .1!3 0 0
Sir William Chance, Bart.
5 5 0 A. PO. I
1 1 0 Cheques should be made payable to "'Spectator' Militia Train- ing Account," and crossed "Barclay and Co., Gosling's Branch."
Previous page
