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The Army Of A Dream
by
“Do they follow their trade while they’re in the Line?” I demanded.
“Why not? How many well-paid artisans work more than four days a week anyhow? Remember a Linesman hasn’t to be drilled in your sense of the word. He must have had at least eight years’ grounding in that, as well as two or three years in his Volunteer battalion. He can sleep where he pleases. He can’t leave town-limits without reporting himself, of course, but he can get leave if he wants it. He’s on duty two days in the week as a rule, and he’s liable to be invited out for garrison duty down the Mediterranean, but his benefit societies will insure him against that. I’ll tell you about that later. If it’s a hard winter and trade’s slack, a lot of the bachelors are taken into the I. G. barracks (while the I. G. is out on the heef) for theoretical instruction. Oh, I assure you the Line hasn’t half a bad time of it.”
“Amazing!” I murmured. “And what about the others?”
“The Volunteers? Observe the beauty of our system. We’re a free people. We get up and slay the man who says we aren’t. But as a little detail we never mention, if we don’t volunteer in some corps or another–as combatants if we’re fit, as non-combatants, if we ain’t–till we’re thirty-five we don’t vote, and we don’t get poor-relief, and the women don’t love us.”
“Oh, that’s the compulsion of it?” said I.
Bayley inclined his head gravely. “That, Sir, is the compulsion. We voted the legal part of it ourselves in a fit of panic, and we have not yet rescinded our resolution. The women attend to the unofficial penalties. But being free British citizens—-“
“And snobs,” put in Pigeon. “The point is well taken, Pij——we have supplied ourselves with every sort and shape and make of Volunteer corps that you can imagine, and we’ve mixed the whole show up with our Odd Fellows and our I.O.G.T.’s and our Buffaloes, and our Burkes and our Debretts, not to mention Leagues and Athletic Clubs, till you can’t tell t’other from which. You remember the young pup who used to look on soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country–the gun-poking, ferret-pettin’, landed gentleman’s offspring–the suckin’ Facey Romford? Well, he generally joins a Foreign Service Corps when he leaves college.”
“Can Volunteers go foreign, then?”
“Can’t they just, if their C.O. or his wife has influence! The Armity will always send a well-connected F.S. corps out to help a guard battalion in a small campaign. Otherwise F.S. corps make their own arrangements about camps. You see, the Military Areas are always open. They can ‘heef’ there (and gamble on head-money) as long as their finances run to it; or they can apply to do sea-time in the ships. It’s a cheap way for a young man to see the world, and if he’s any good he can try to get into the Guard later.”
“The main point,” said Pigeon, “is that F.S. corps are ‘swagger’–the correct thing. It ‘ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don’t you know,” he drawled, trying to render the English voice.
“That’s what happens to a chap who doesn’t volunteer,” said Bayley. “Well, after the F.S. corps (we’ve about forty of ’em) come our territorial Volunteer battalions, and a man who can’t suit himself somewhere among ’em must be a shade difficult. We’ve got those ‘League’ corps I was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape through their ten days’ camp; and we’ve crack corps of highly-paid mechanics who can afford a two months’ ‘heef’ in an interesting Area every other year; and we’ve senior and junior scientific corps of earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high explosives, and do their ‘heefing’ in a wet picket-boat–mine-droppin’–at the ports. Then we’ve heavy artillery– recruited from the big manufacturing towns and ship-building yards–and ferocious hard-ridin’ Yeomanry (they can ride–now), genteel, semi- genteel, and Hooligan corps, and so on and so forth till you come to the Home Defence Establishment–the young chaps knocked out under medical certificate at the Second Camp, but good enough to sit behind hedges or clean up camp, and the old was-birds who’ve served their time but don’t care to drop out of the fun of the yearly camps and the halls. They call ’emselves veterans and do fancy-shooting at Bisley, but, between you and me, they’re mostly Fresh Air Benefit Clubs. They contribute to the Volunteer journals and tell the Guard that it’s no good. But I like ’em. I shall be one of ’em some day–a copper-nosed was-bird! … So you see we’re mixed to a degree on the Volunteer side.”