THE BAKBAEIANS 17 



connected with the hunting of a pack of hounds with tact and 

 efficiency, and makes time to take some part in county business, is 

 doing much to oil the wheels of life and make his countryside a 

 kinder and more genial and therefore a happier and better place for 

 all sorts of men to live in. The same qualities are wanted in other 

 and more strenuous spheres, and new openings are being made. 



A Kadical War Minister has turned the old Volunteers into a 

 Territorial Army. It may for lack of men under the existing system 

 of voluntary enlistment be but a skeleton army, but the skeleton 

 may yet make flesh and stand on its feet as genuine an army as that 

 of Ezekiel's vision. In the meantime he has done his best to utihse 

 the natural genius for leadership which the English gentleman 

 possesses, by turning all the old school cadet corps and the poor " Bug- 

 shooters " into Officers' Training Corps, and at Cambridge there are 

 opportunities of learning the work of every branch of the Service. 

 Naturally cavalry work specially interests those who hunt and love 

 horses, and the cavalry unit of the Cambridge O.T.C. is most zealously 

 taken up by the " bloods," who turn out at unearthly hours to learn 

 their work before breakfast. 



There is other work for poor Barbarian " younger sons " who have 

 to turn out and earn their livings, and whose experience and tradi- 

 tion of leadership is available for that administrative work which 

 is the " white man's burden." Also, as life at home becomes more 

 socialised, there may be more of such work for men with the instincts 

 and training of a country gentleman to do at home, and should 

 Barbarians take some of the headship now in the power of the 

 capitahst Philistine, the future might not be so bad. Here is a 

 story which shows how the matter appears to working-class men who 

 have practical experience of Barbarian government — I mean blue- 

 jackets. An ex-naval officer, a shipmate of mine on a yacht, fell in 

 with some bluejackets at a seaport town on the East Coast. In the 

 course of a general review of their conditions of service they said 

 explicitly that they wanted full-blooded gentlefolks for "orficers." 

 The working class were " all right," and gentlefolks were " all right," 

 but the middle classes were " rotten." Sometimes they had middle- 

 class officers who came into the Service to make a living. There 



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