OBJECTIONS TO JOINING.
lTo ma: EDITOR Or Tan " SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—I am doing my best in this country parish to get young men to enlist. It is a district of bucolics, sluggish and slow to move. I begin by asking what they are going to do. They fidget about and "Can't, say." "Is there any serious reason against your joining ? " "Well, no, I can't say as there is." "Then why don't you join ? Surely you must realize by this time that every man is needed." Then, by degrees, with some pressure, I elicit one or more of the four following replies: (1) "I 'ears tell as they don't get enough to eat." (2) "Jim Fletcher, 'e went up an' they wouldn't 'are 'im 'cos 'e were a inch too narrer across the chest, or 'cos 'e were a inch too short, or 'ad bad teeth." (3) "My father or my mother won't 'ear on't." (4) "I should lose my job." The first two objections are the most often proffered. I submit that it might be a good plan to have an authoritative list of the average daily rations of Regulars and Territorials put up in the post-offices and published in the leading papers, especi- ally the halfpenny ones. Could not a little less pedantry and red-tapeism obtain in the system of recruiting as regards height, breadth, and teeth ? Of course, as regards the last two objections there will be no cure but a wise and fair system of compulsion, already advocated, I am glad to say, in the correspondence of Tuesday's Times. I am thoroughly con- vinced of the last point, for since my return, two years ago, from a ten years' sojourn on the Continent, I have been trying to help the National Service League, with the most dispiriting
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