58 
RECRUITING. 
your terms to the individual, you can dictate your terms to the 
community, you can dictate your terms to society, everything must 
give way to the convenience of the military machine. But I would say 
in passing, and I think it is a thing not sufficiently dwelt upon, that in 
countries which are in that happy or unhappy situation, advantage is 
not taken of the fact, and we find that in those countries an amouut 
of attention is paid to individual idiosyncrasy, to regimental tradition, 
and to military feeling, which contrasts most favourably with the 
state of matters in this country (applause). I know something—not as 
much, of course, as many a man in this room does—of the German 
Army and its organisation, and I say that the very last mistake they 
make in the German Army is to underrate the value of individual 
idiosyncrasy, regimental feeling or military tradition (applause). 
When you pass from a conscript army to a non-conscript army like 
ours, surely it must be obvious to everybody that keeping in view 
the object (which after all is the principal object,) the efficiency of the 
military machine, it can only be obtained by paying perpetual regard 
to the feelings, idiosyncrasies and ambitions of the individuals who 
are to form your fighting force (hear, hear and applause). 
I should like to ask as I have asked befor, and as I intend to ask 
again, whether we are paying as we ought to pay and as we know we 
ought to pay, sufficient attention to these considerations, whether we 
sufficiently devote our attention to making the career of arms one 
attractive to the kind of men whom we want to see in the army. 
Our Advantages as a Nation and how we Abuse Them. 
We have very great advantages ; we start with immense advantages 
in this country when we offer the career of arms to a young man. We 
have, I believe, and I think there is no one would contradict me, an 
innate love of soldiering and adventure in this country (applause). I 
suppose there is no youth worth his salt who has not at some time of 
his life made up his mind to be either a soldier or a sailor, or both, and 
that is no doubt a great advantage to start with. We have also the 
great density of our population ; we have the enormous competition 
for occupation of any kind which is driving people out to the four 
quarters of the globe, which is filling our great cities with unoccupied 
men, and which must necessarily send into the army scores, hundreds, 
thousands of men, if only we could assure them that the prospect we 
hold out to them was by one degree better than the prospect of neglect, 
misfortune, and starvation which dogs and awaits so many of our popula¬ 
tion. Then also, we have the great treasure of the splendid tradition 
of our army. We have the record of its great exploits, we have 
a tradition which has been fostered and fostered enormously to the 
advantage of the army and of the nation by the officers of the army 
and, in less measure, or, perhaps, in equal measure, by the historians 
who have written the accounts of what our army has done, embodied in 
books such as Napier^s great works. We have that tradition going 
through every rank of our army, and nowhere stronger, nowhere more 
fruitful in the work it does than in our regimental organisations, 
