SOME MISCELLANEOUS SUGGESTIONS ON RECRUITING. T HERE are, of course, a
hundred other ways in which a business firm would deal with the sudden multiplying of its employees. We shall not, however, trouble our readers for the moment with many more details. We have felt it necessary to write as we have written, but at the same time we feel obliged to say how painful it has been for us to do so. And for this reason. The men who are now doing the work of recruiting and struggling so bravely with the red-tape deserve the warmest thanks of all of us. They are working themselves to death in our cause, and it seems a shame to say anything which may look like belittling their efforts. Certainly our desire is not to belittle them, but to help them, by one or two simple suggestions, to gain a mastery of the situation. The red-tape impediments are tiresome and trouble- some, but, as we said at the beginning, they will not, after all, matter very much. The only really deadly blow that could be given to the flow of recruits would be an announce- ment that the men were coming in too fast, that the War Office would be overwhelmed if the rush were not stemmed, and that they did not for the moment know how to equip, arm, or train the men. Any announce- ment of that kind would be fatal, and would check the flow of men at once, and from that check recruit- ing would never recover. Whatever the military authorities may say at the moment, it is the duty of the Cabinet and of every civilian in the country to insist that the men who offer themselves now in answer to their country's call must be accepted, whether they come, as we should like to see them come, by the hundred thousand a day, or whether they come only by the twenty thousand—and we are very much afraid that this is the most that we are getting in this so-called boom, though in truth there has been no boom at all. We are only asking for the pitiable percentage of one man in every community of a hundred, and this contingent we ought to have got in one day. Instead of that we have been a month in getting, not half a million men, but only some two hundred thousand. It is no use disguising the fact that hitherto the response from the great centres of population must in some cases have been decidedly poor, and that no excuses about the difficulties of enlistment can avail. Even if we admit everything that can be admitted as to the red-tape obstacles, the offers to enlist have been far too small. No people have come forward in a better spirit than the small village communities in the South and West of England. The present writer knows of Surrey villages in which literally every man eligible to serve has come forward.
Perhaps he may be permitted to quote as an example a normal village in Surrey, in which an open-air meet- ing was held on Monday night. Besides Territorials and Reservists, the village had already sent some ten or twelve men into Lord Kitchener's Army. In spite of that, the immediate result of Monday night's meeting—the result before the meeting broke up—was the recruiting of seven men. But the parish has only six hundred inhabitants.
Now what do these figures mean ? They mean that if on that Monday night a meeting had been held in every community throughout the length and breadth of the land, and every community, quite apart from what it had done before, had done as well as the Surrey village in question, the whole of the half-million men asked for from Great Britain would have been obtained in one single evening. But if the village did well, it has not done better than hundreds of other villages throughout Surrey and the rest of the Home Counties. Surely the great centres of population are not going to let themselves be beaten by little hamlets in the Surrey hills, and beaten by ten to one. Yet many of them will be beaten unless they very soon show their mettle. If men find they cannot get to the recruiting officer, let them write their names and addresses on post- cards and send them to him at the recruiting office, together with the plain statement : " I undertake to enlist for the term of the war. When you let me know that you are ready for me, I will appear at the barracks for the medical examination, &c" No man must make the turmoil and confusion at the recruiting office an excuse for letting his love of country evaporate. If he does the simple and sensible thing— puts his desire in writing and sends it to the proper quarter—he will have helped the authorities, and will very soon get the call which he desires. The defence of the country is not a game in which it can be any satisfaction to find that the other side do not know the rules or play the game badly. It is a question of a man's doing his duty. If he cannot be permitted to do it on Monday, then the really patriotic man will quietly wait to do it on Wednesday or Friday, according as opportunity offers. But let him remember that his intention of doing his duty on Monday has become a most absolute and solemn obligation of honour which cannot be broken on Wednesday or Friday on the excuse that the authorities do not seem to want him.
One more suggestion we would make by way of post- script. It is that much more use should be made of the local doctors. It seems to us that, instead of the miserable 2s. 6d. now offered to the doctor, 5s. should be paid to him for every man that he passes. Doctors are very patriotic people, but we must not trade upon that. Let them have their proper fee for helping us just now.
Previous page
