The Times correspondent ends his article with the following words
:—" The progress of this experimental com- pany should be watched with great interest during the next five months ; for, begging the test comparisons altogether, and entirely apart from first Line troops, it seems highly probable that the publicity of the success which I believe this experiment will attain may go far to solve the urgent question of the best means of reorganizing our system of national defence. It should be remembered that during the latter part of the late war Japan made fighting material in less than six months." We agree that our Experiment may incidentally show many ways of developing British military resources, but at the same time we urgently desire that the main idea of the Experiment shall not be forgotten,—that is, that it may afford a means of giving us a Militia Force which shall be large in numbers, strong in training and discipline, drawn, not from the casual labourers, but from the soundest stratum of the civilian population, and consisting of men who are both thorough civilians and thorough soldiers.
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