64 
EECEUITING. 
this question, and I believe tbat the plea upon which these changes 
have been justified, the plea of economy, is an absolutely unworthy, 
and an absolutely misleading plea (applause). I find that there are 
very few private soldiers and a very few friends of private soldiers who 
do not attach, just as I suppose any other member of the community 
attaches, much importance to the question of uniform. And when we 
take together and put in a focus the whole sum of advantage which has 
been supposed to accrue to the country from the changes of uniform, 
the assimilation of uniform—I find it rather like the tail of a comet— 
you can compress it into a tea cup. I think too a great deal more 
might be done to revert to reginental distinctions in the matter of 
uniform without any very great harm to the service (applause). 
A Summary. 
I have now merely tried to put in a brief way some of the things 
which have occurred to me as not likely to encourage the best class of 
recruits to join the army. I do not think there can be any doubt that 
whether or not I have properly diagnosed the causes, the results are 
pretty much as I have stated them to be, and that we are not getting 
the right class of man into the army. He would be a very bold man 
who would pretend that the soldiers we are now enlisting in our 
infantry regiments, or even in our artillery batteries are a fair repre¬ 
sentation of the manhood and strength of this country (applause). It 
is an absurdity ; everybody knows they are not. And in an army 
like ours, which must always be a small army, which must always be a 
campaigning army, and almost always campaigning under difficult 
circumstances, it seems to me a very low ideal which permits us to be 
content with anything less than a true representation of the manhood 
and physique of the country. 
Sir A. Haliburton on the British Soldier. 
Now I do not see that at present we are likely to get much 
further, unless there be a great change. I see that we have recently 
been told what is the official view with regard to the character of the 
recruits, and why we should not desire a change. Recruits we are told, 
and the passage is quoted with approval by a very great authority who 
has recently been enlightening us. “ Recruits, except for the Royal 
“ Engineers, are now drawn from the strata of poor workmen, dissipated 
" idlers, and rolling stones. It would not be desirable to hold out any 
“ large monetary inducements for the purpose of getting young men over 
“ 20. If you dip into that stratum you will frequently get very undesir- 
“ able men.” Now I call attention to that; that is the opinion of 
Surgeon-General Don, quoted with approbation by Sir A. Haliburton, 
and I say that if you are going to start from that stand point, if you are 
really to suggest that you dare not take men of 20 years of age because 
they are so bad when they are 18, that if you wait till they are 20 they 
will be irreclaimable blackguards. You will never get a proper class of 
men into the army. 1 I have never been able to see that the comparison 
1 Surgeon-General Don has since explained that I have misunderstood his meaning in the 
passage quoted.—A-F e 
