72 
RECRUITING. 
recruits ; he made enquiries of the parish priests, Protestant clergy, 
resident magistrates and heads of police, and from each he learned the 
same story to the effect that a father objects to his son going into a 
profession from which he will return at the end of seven years without 
any employment and no better fitted to get it than when he leaves 
home. 
Colonel A. E. Turner, c.b., a.a.g., r.a., said: General Maurice, ladies 
and gentlemen—I have been asked by my almost life-long and valued 
friend, General Maurice, to join in this discussion, and I can refuse him 
nothing, but I must say I do so with extreme reluctance, for being an 
official in the War Office and therefore a factor, although I must admit an 
infinitesimally small one, in the administration of that department 
which is now being arraigned before the public, I hardly think it 
prudent for me to open my mouth on the subject. I must, therefore, 
ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to receive what I say not as an expression 
of opinion, nor an exposition of views, but merely an attempt to lay 
before you in as few words as possible the circumstances which have 
led up to the present method of service, to show you by a few statistics 
-—very few indeed, for statistics are hard nuts to crack at this time of 
the evening (hear, hear), the results of that system of service, and 
then to state that which is considered to be an inducement to a man to 
join the Army. 
We have lately read a very able article by Sir George Clarke in 
which he writes that the requirements of the Army have not been 
properly laid down by any government. I hardly think that that 
is the case. Our requirements seem to me to be three in number ; 
First we have to keep up an army at home, which, with the Reserve 
called out aided by the Auxiliary Forces, is sufficient to repel an attack 
on the part of the greatest number which France or other foreign 
nation, under favourable circumstance to themselves, might throw on 
our shores ; Secondly we have to maintain and feed our garrisons 
abroad ; and Thirdly, we must be able, at any time, to send a small 
force abroad, without calling out the Reserve, to take its part in the 
small foreign wars abroad in which we are so constantly involved, and 
also to create or supplement on emergent occasions a garrison abroad. 
Now the strength of our army, at home, is at present 220,034 men, 
of whom 102,811 are abroad, and it is for that number that we have to 
obtain our annual supply of recruits. 
If you will allow me, in a very few words, I will just run through 
the state of the army at different periods since Waterloo. That seems 
a very big order, but I really mean a very few words. After 
Waterloo the Army languished rapidly, and in 1821 it consisted 
of only 101,000 men all told, deducting the troops of the East India 
Company, and of these 50,000 were at home. This state of things 
went on until the year 1847, when there were rumours of Wars 
on the Continent which resulted in the great Revolutions of 1848. 
The people of England then became most seriously alarmed about the 
condition of the Army, and their anxiety was not relieved, as you may 
suppose, when the Duke of Wellington said before the Commission of 
Sir John Burgoyne, that we could not put 5,000 men in the field without 
