A SUBSTITUTE FOR CONSCRIPTION.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE °SPECTATOR:] SIR,—Seeing in the Spectator of January 17th a short letter on conscription for the Army, I venture to offer the following as worthy of consideration by the War Office to replace the annual waste, from all sources, of the Army. Let every young recruit be made to understand that he has a chance to learn any of the under-mentioned trades during his term of service in the Army, and I do not believe that the British War Ministers need ever bother their heads about how to supply the country with sufficient soldiers for the needs of the Empire. The trades to be learned in the Army are all indispensable to the needs of the Army, and are as follows:— Blacksmiths, armourers, bricklayers, carpenters, mechanical engineers, telegraphists, electrical engineers, tailors, shoe- makers, and plumbers. If this was thoroughly tried I think the problem of the supply of men for the Army would be solved, and the very cream of the British workmen be drawn into the Service, for the simple reason that intelligent and ambitious young men who found it a hard matter to learn a trade in the large cities, owing to Trade-Union restrictions and various other causes, would be glad to avail themselves of the Service, if only to learn a trade. We should not then see the misery and woe seen since the discharge of the Reservists from South Africa simply because most of the men know nothing of a trade; while a capable mechanic in any of the above-mentioned trades is much bettor able to earn his living in any of those vocations than are the large army of men who want to be clerks
[If the trades were not taught to the exclusion of rifle- shooting and other military duties, but in the men's spare time, the plan of making the Army a sort of great technical night-school for the nation would be excellent.— En. Spectator.]
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