enlisted over 29,000 men; in 1877 and in 1878, over 28,000; and in 1879-the last year embraced in our published returns-over 25,000.

But it is said we are now enlisting boys: the extracts I have already given from the Recruiting Commissions of 1860 and of 1866 describe the worthlessness of the recruits we obtained under the long service system of those times; so even were it impossible to show that the men who now enlist are of a better type, it could not be affirmed with any regard for accuracy that we are worse off now under the existing system of short service. I think, however, that a perusal of the tables given in the last General Annual Return of the British Army, which was presented to Parliament last year, will prove incontestably that man for man the recruits we obtain now are morally better, and physically stronger, than those we enlisted prior to 1870.

At page 62 of that Report it is shown that from the year 1861 down to 1870 the number of recruits of superior education in every 1,000 enlisted ranged from 52 to 68, whilst in the first year given in the table after the introduction of short service, that proportion rose with a bound to 137, and went on annually increasing until we find that on the 1st of January, 1880, it stood at 576 per 1,000 men. In 1865 there were 109 courts-martial to every 1,000 men in the army; in 1879 that proportion had fallen to 85. In 1869, the number of minor punishments inflicted by order of commanding officers was 1,405 per 1,000 men, and in 1879 it had fallen to 1,386. In 1861 the percentage of deserters to recruits was 41, in 1879 it had fallen to 16. In 1871 and 1879 the strength of the army was identical, so we can compare the returns for those years with advantage; in the former year the net loss by desertion was 3,055 men, being a percentage of 1.66 on the total establishment of the army, while in the latter year those numbers were 1,807 and 0.99. If statistics are of any value, these figures tell a healthy story of moral improvement in our army that no amount of club gossip and irresponsible letter-writing can gainsay.

With reference to the physique and youth of the recruits we obtain now, there seems to be a generally accepted belief that the immaturity of the men we enlist and send to India is directly attributable to the short service system. I hope to prove that the recruits who now join are far superior physically to those we sent to the Crimea, whom Lord Raglan condemned as worse than useless, or than those we sent to India during the Mutiny, whom the Recruiting Commission referred to as 'boys.' But were I unable to do so, I should in any case wish to impress upon my readers that there is no necessary connection between the short service system and the physique of the men who enlist, beyond the fact that, as enlistment for short service with the colours is more popular than for a long term, we are more likely to obtain stronger and in every way better men under the former

than under the latter system. Were it thought advisable to do so, there is no reason why we should not now lay it down as a rule, that no man under twenty-five years of age and five feet ten inches in height should be enlisted. We could do so under the short, quite as well as under the long, service system. The only point involved, and it would be common to both systems, is, that you will have to offer the man of twenty-five far better pay than the youth of nineteen or twenty years of age. This question of age is not one of sentiment, it is one of money. The man of twenty-two, twenty-three, or twentyfour years of age has already adopted some settled means for earning a livelihood; to enlist would not be to better himself, and consequently we obtain very few recruits of that time of life. It is different with the very young man of nineteen or twenty years, for he is still more or less, as it were, a waif and stray, and is more easily attracted by the glamour which must always in some degree hang round the career of a soldier.

We hear on all sides complaints that our recruits are younger and weaker than those we obtained formerly, and because short service is distasteful to many of our older officers, we are told it is that system to which these melancholy results are attributable. Here is what our published statistics tell us. In 1846, before the introduction of the Limited Service Act,' in the cavalry and infantry the number of men per 1,000 under twenty years of age was 126.9; in the army generally in 1871 there were 190, whilst in 1880 there were only 100 per thousand under that age. In 1871 there were in the army 490 men per 1,000 between twenty and thirty years (this is the class of men that forms the backbone of every army), of whom there were 664 per 1,000 in 1880. This satisfactory result is obtained without including our army reserve, who in the event of war would rejoin the colours, and who, being all men of between twenty-four and thirty years of age, would, had their numbers been included in the returns from which these figures are taken, have made the comparison between former years and 1880 still more strikingly in favour of the army of to-day. The average age of the recruits who joined in 1863 was twenty years and three months; since then there has been a gradual but small increase in age; and in 1877, the last year included in the return from which I quote, that average age was twenty years and seven months.

The standard of height for the infantry of the line is now five feet six inches, and for chest measurement it is thirty-four inches, no recruit is accepted who does not fulfil these requirements, which are in excess of those in all, and are much higher than those in most continental armies. Some indeed are in favour of lowering these standards, because in consequence of them we are forced to reject so many recruits whose chest measurement is only thirty-three inches, but whom, in every other respect, it would be desirable to enlist.

Without in any way going back to the very low standards to which we have often had to resort in the days of long service, we could at any moment increase the number of our recruits very considerably by reducing our standard to that of Germany or of France. 1873 there were in every 1,000 men in the army 412 under 5ft. 7in., and 588 over that same height; in 1880 the numbers were 398 and 602 respectively. Surely these facts show a decided improvement in the physical strength of our soldiers, and afford a positive denial to all the wild statements which are so commonly bandied about as to the inferiority of the recruits who now enlist under the short service system, compared with those we used to obtain formerly.

All changes, all reforms are very distasteful to some of our oldest officers, who, in order to enlist the popular sympathy on their side, declare that short service and the recent reforms in our military organisation are destructive to discipline, to esprit de corps, and to the regimental system. These expressions are shibboleths wherewith to conjure on all military questions, just as a cry of No Popery,' or 'The Church in danger,' has before now been used to excite the masses politically. Outside the army very few indeed know what is meant by the Regimental System,' but they know it is the common name for a military idol. No one can value more highly than I do the three essentials to military excellence that I have named. Without discipline and esprit de corps no army can hold together on active service or ever be worth much, and every one who has really served in one of our regiments during war, who has commanded a company on active service, knows as well as I do that our admirable regimental system is above all things calculated to foster the growth and further the maintenance both of discipline and of esprit de corps. It is, however, because I wish to have better material, both in a moral and a physical sense, to work upon and to imbue with these attributes, that I rejoice in the fact that the old order of long service has given place to the new one of the present day; and it is because I wish to see them intensified and extended so as to embrace the militia as well as the army, that I advocate the complete fulfilment of the localisation scheme embodied and fully described in the Report of the Militia Committee, over which Colonel Stanley, the Secretary of State for War under the late Government, presided. I cannot in this article enter upon any description of that scheme-I may possibly do so later on-but I earnestly hope that Mr. Childers may not be deterred by any such clamour as that now raised against short service, the unsoundness of which I have endeavoured to expose, from carrying out that scheme in its entirety, and to its only logical conclusion.

G. J. WOLSELEY, Lieutenant-General.

HOLLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL.

It would be necessary to go back to the years 1830 and 1831 in Dutch history to find the parallel to the national movement which has passed over Holland in the first months of this

year.

The news of the armed rising of the Transvaal Boers has produced the effect of an electric shock through the whole of the Netherlands. All classes, all political parties, all religious denominations, have equally shared in the general enthusiasm. The smallest villages and remotest districts have followed the example of the large towns in organising meetings to discuss the interests of the Transvaal, and to raise money for alleviating the sufferings caused by the war in South Africa. One of the most considered of Dutch savants, the almost septuagenarian Professor of Natural Science at the University of Utrecht, Dr. P. Harting, has taken the lead in drawing up a memorial to the British nation, which, after having been signed in a few days by a number of Dutchmen forming the most distinguished part of the nation, has been sent to England and published by the various organs of public opinion. Under the auspices of the same Professor, a Transvaal Committee has been formed, composed principally of men holding high scientific positions, whose object is to enlighten public opinion as much as possible about the dispositions and intentions of the Boers.

The whole Dutch press, irrespective of its political opinions, has declared itself in favour of the Transvaal Boers. The Dutch papers have daily devoted a great part of their columns to the Transvaal, in order to satisfy the universal interest. In a word, no foreign event has for years excited the minds in Holland so much as the present war in South Africa.

It need hardly be pointed out that the general movement in this country has a very peculiar character, completely different from the isolated manifestations in favour of the Boers in Germany, France, and America. In Frankfort, Paris, or New York, either political calculations or the indefinite sympathy for all nations fighting for their independence may have had their influence, but in Holland the feeling of community of race was uppermost.

We have ancestors in common with the African Boers, of whom we are justly proud. In struggling for their independence, the Boers VOL. IX.-No. 49.

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are doing now what our common ancestors did three hundred ago, when they declared themselves free from their allegiance to the mighty king of Spain. The history of that ever memorable eighty years' struggle, which since our schooldays has been a household tale with us, is remembered in South African homesteads with as much enthusiasm as on the marshy soil which witnessed it. In those South African farms Dutch manners and customs prevail, Dutch Calvinism is professed in its most characteristic form, and the same language which is spoken at Amsterdam and at the Hague may be heard on the Drakensberg and among the rocks of the Lang Nek pass.

When, a hundred years ago, the American colonists rose against England, a strong political party in what was then the Republic of the United Netherlands succeeded in forcing the Stadtholder to give his assistance to America. Dislike of England, more than sympathy for the Americans, was the motive of that party.

Fortunately at present the situation in the Netherlands is wholly changed. Not an atom of hostility towards England is mixed up with the sympathy for the Boers. On the contrary, it is the general respect and cordial friendship for Great Britain which keep the friends of the Transvaal in Holland from too loud protests.

No Dutchman will accuse England of having annexed the Transvaal from mere love of conquest, or from any idle wish to increase the number of her subjects. We willingly recognise that the form of government of the Transvaal was imperfect, and that the political institutions which the English Government established were in theory much better; we do not doubt for a moment that Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Theophilus Shepstone were actuated by a sincere wish for the welfare of the inhabitants of the Transvaal; we accuse English officials of no tyranny, and we are fully convinced of the truth of the declaration of Sir John Lubbock in the House of Commons, that the Transvaal will be none the less free because it forms a part of the great Empire of Great Britain.'

But we recognise as decidedly the right of the Transvaal Boers to refuse all those benefits. If they prefer their imperfect form of government to the better organised English administration, simply because the one is self-government and the other a form of government imposed by a foreign Power, they do exactly what the Spaniards did in the beginning of this century. When Napoleon wanted to replace their own medieval type of government by more free institutions, they found a powerful ally in England in their just resistance to the constitutional king imposed on them by France.

We, of course, do not mean to compare the motives of the French Emperor with those of the English Government of 1877, but in both cases the result was the same. What the Boers are doing now, we believe every European nation that loves its independence would do. We Dutchmen would be the first to act in a similar way if a covetous