80 
RECRUITING. 
could be kept together and would be better able to look after themselves. 
It has been exceedingly effective within the limits assigned it, as far as 
I can see it in the Infantry, and I wish to goodness we had the same 
for the Artillery, when the smaller unit makes it even more necessary. 
The Infantry get their recruits now every three months. That is one 
valuable form of the depot. It is the type of Caterham which 
Mr. Arnold-Forster justly praises. But the depot system proposed for 
supplying India, is the forming of large depots irrespective of territor¬ 
ial connection of any kind, in which, unless we get our recruits much 
older, men must be for two or three years. That is quite a different 
matter. The supply of battalions from depots for long service in India, 
is one which we have tried, and one which has broken down in our 
hands. That the operation of training continually fresh men is a very 
unpleasant one for an officer who has to do it is undoubted. But if we 
adopted the three years’ system we should have that work to do. 
Mr. Forster’s proposal would not relieve us of it. To do away with it, 
as Lord Lansdowne said the other day, means five millions a year extra 
cost to the country, if we are to produce the Army we are able to pro¬ 
duce by giving the mere sufficient training, and then sending them into 
a reserve. 
We give men very much more training in the English Army 
than any Foreign Army does ; we give seven or eight years, and in 
any Foreign Army only two are given. If we do for the reserve 
what must be done to make it effective under any system of three 
years’ service, giving them proper training, after sending them into the 
reserve, why we should not be able to trust them when they come up 
so regularly—as they have done, I cannot see. The last time they were 
called up they joined to within 2 per cent., and for active service within 
5 per cent. The fact that a certain number were not able to join within 
the time required for them, nearly accounts for the deficiency. 
They are never counted in the reserve after they have twice missed 
reporting themselves on a quarter day. 
I do not think that the argument is a sound one, that officers 
would, on the three years’system, be training men whom they would 
see again, but that in training men for India, they are sending 
them were they will not see them again. The case seems to me 
to be exactly the reverse. It is an extremely problematical 
question whether an officer will, during his service, see again men 
who have been sent to the reserve brought in for war to his 
battalion. On the other hand, the interchange of officers between the 
home and Indian battalions is so frequent that officers constantly on 
arriving in India see the benefit in the well-filled ranks of the Indian 
battalion, of the training on which they have been engaged when with 
the home battalion. Actually the other day I was rather startled by 
the way in which the name “ Gordons ” was used by Colonel Mathias 
in addressing the old 75th in India. Officially correct as it was, they 
have only of course become Gordons by. the amalgamation with the 
old Gordons, but the answer was made that most of the officers who 
were in the Dargai business were men who had been trained in the 
old Gordons. That shows the completeness of the interchange that had 
been going on between India and England. The connection between 
