54 
RECRUITING. 
to be allowed in this building at all. I hope, and I have some 
reason to think, that he will put himself on a proper footing by 
criticising what I have to say, and showing that he, at any rate, is not 
carried away by my revolutionary ideas. 
Recruiting Partly a Civilian's Question. 
But as I said the question of recruiting does present a common 
ground to soldiers and civilians; it is a point on which they may meet, 
because in this country we are in a different position from foreign 
countries; the two worlds, the civil and the military, are not the same. 
In Germany and in Prance they are co-extensive, and everything that 
is civil at one period of its life goes through the military mill; but 
here they are two totally distinct worlds, and it is the object of the 
military world to introduce into its ranks a certain number of civilians, 
and as a representative of that civilian world, and having as much right 
of course to speak for it, as you gentlemen have to speak for the 
military world, I have felt justified in acceding to your invitation to 
speak about this question of recruiting. 
The Present Condition of Recruiting. 
I suppose the reason why that subject was chosen was that recruiting 
is not in the happy condition of a country which has no history. As 
long as recruiting for the army was in a perfectly satisfactory state it 
would have been certainly an anomaly to ask any one to discourse upon 
it; but unfortunately we are in presence of a fact which no one can deny, 
that recruiting is beginning to have a history, if it has not already had 
one for some time past (hear, hear) and that, that history is not altogether 
satisfactory. We are in the presence of the fact which I think even 
the most sanguine person cannot deny, that recruiting at the present 
moment is in a very bad way. There is a failure both in quantity and 
in quality in the supply of recruits for the British Army (hear, hear 
and applause). My own belief is—and it is supported by evidence 
much more important than my own opinion—that the limit of 
recruiting upon present conditions has been very nearly reached, it it 
has not absolutely been reached. And in presence of that fact and iu 
presence of another fact, which is beyond dispute, that the time has 
come when larger demands will be made on the population of this 
country for the supply of recruits, we are face to face with a very serious 
situation indeed. It is quite true, of course, that a large number of 
recruits have been obtained and are being obtained for the army. I 
have before me (it is the only series of statistics I shall trouble you 
with) the figures of the recruiting for the last five years, and roughly 
speaking and omitting the hundreds, I find that there has been a 
progressive decrease in the numbers of men recruited, that in 1892 
there were approved 39,000 men, in 1893, 34,000 men, in 1894, 33,000 
men, in 1895, 29,000 men and in 1896, 27,000 men. I do not quote 
these figures to call attention to the fact of diminution, althoug*h that 
is important, but to justify my statement that there is still a large 
number of men to be got in the ordinary way, amounting to as much 
as 27,000 in a year. 
