Colonel Seely, who addressed a meeting at Dumfries on Wednesday
night, concluded with a just tribute to the good behaviour of the British soldier. " The Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire had told him that during the Army manoeuvres in the Eastern Counties, in which 48,400 men took part, not one single case of crime had been brought to the notice of the police. The great British Army was now not only the bravest but it was the best-behaved army the world had ever seen. So he said to parents, Let your sons go into the Territorial Force or any other branch of the service." Whatever ground there may once have been for the old-fashioned prejudice of the middle and working classes against the Army on the score of conduct, the experience of recent strikes and manoeuvres—to mention only two test cases—has shown it to be without a shadow of justification to-day. The British private of to-day is in truth a kind of grown-up public-school boy. We doubt if any Secretary of State for War has ever understood him better or been more in sympathy with him.
Previous page
