Personally, we should like to see a closer relation estab-
lished between the man who subscribes at home and the man who goes to the front. The subscriber should feel it a duty to help the man he has equipped if he comes home wounded or to look after those dependent on him when dead. He might, for example, insure the life of the Volunteer in whom he was specially interested. If all the great insurance offices could combine and pool the risks, a year's active service insurance might be obtained at a moderate rate per cent. There is yet another reason for support- ing the raising of a volunteer force by private aubscrip- tions. It means decentralisation and relieving the over- worked and harassed War Office. Associations which spend their own money are not tied by red-tape, and can do things which the State cannot or dare not do. We venture to say that if a Voluntary Committee were formed in the City to-morrow to augment our dangerously low supplies of artillery, and had a million at their back, they would obtain guns from private firms in England, Germany, France, and America while the military authorities were still considering what colour the wheels should be painted,—provided they buy the guns, to which action, however, they must not as yet be considered to be in any way pledged.'
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