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“But a hundred thousand isn’t enough for garrison duty,” I persisted.

“A hundred thousand sound men, not sick boys, go quite a way,” said Pigeon.

“We expect the Line to garrison the Mediterranean Ports and thereabouts,” said Bayley. “Don’t sneer at the mechanic. He’s deuced good stuff. He isn’t rudely ordered out, because this ain’t a military despotism, and we have to consider people’s feelings. The Armity usually brackets three Line regiments together, and calls for men for six months or a year for Malta, Gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day. Three battalions will give you nearly a whole battalion of bachelors between ’em. You fill up deficiencies with a call on the territorial Volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we call a Ports battalion. What’s astonishing in that? Remember that in this country, where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty fair notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young.”

“Not much adventure at Malta, Gib, or Cyprus,” I retorted. “Don’t they get sick of it?”

“But you don’t realise that we treat ’em rather differently from the soldier of the past. You ought to go and see a Ports battalion drawn from a manufacturing centre growin’ vines in Cyprus in its shirt sleeves; and at Gib, and Malta, of course, the battalions are working with the Fleet half the time.”

“It seems to me,” I said angrily, “you are knocking esprit de corps on the head with all this Army-Navy jumble. It’s as bad as—-“

“I know what you’re going to say. As bad as what Kitchener used to do when he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as good as a column of two regiments. In the old days, when drill was a sort of holy sacred art learned in old age, you’d be quite right. But remember our chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory we work on is that a thousand trained Englishmen ought to be about as good as another thousand trained Englishmen. We’ve enlarged our horizon, that’s all. Some day the Army and the Navy will be interchangeable.”

“You’ve enlarged it enough to fall out of, I think. Now where in all this mess of compulsory Volunteers—-?”

“My dear boy, there’s no compulsion. You’ve got to be drilled when you’re a child, same as you’ve got to learn to read, and if you don’t pretend to serve in some corps or other till you’re thirty-five or medically chucked you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. That’s fair enough.”

“Compulsory conscripts,” I continued. “Where, as I was going to say, does the Militia come in?”

“As I have said–for the men who can’t afford volunteering. The Militia is recruited by ballot–pretty comprehensively too. Volunteers are exempt, but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the Militia. They have to put in a minimum three weeks’ camp every other year, and they get fifteen bob a week and their keep when they’re at it, and some sort of a yearly fee, I’ve forgotten how much. ‘Tisn’t a showy service, but it’s very useful. It keeps the mass of the men between twenty-five, say, and thirty-five moderately fit, and gives the Armity an excuse for having more equipment ready–in case of emergencies.”

“I don’t think you’re quite fair on the Militia,” drawled Verschoyle. “They’re better than we give ’em credit for. Don’t you remember the Middle Moor Collieries’ strike?”

“Tell me,” I said quickly. Evidently the others knew.

“We-ell, it was no end of a pitman’s strike about eight years ago. There were twenty-five thousand men involved–Militia, of course. At the end of the first month–October–when things were looking rather blue, one of those clever Labour leaders got hold of the Militia Act and discovered that any Militia regiment could, by a two-thirds vote, go on ‘heef’ in a Military Area in addition to its usual biennial camp. Two-and-twenty battalions of Geordies solemnly applied, and they were turned loose into the Irish and Scotch Areas under an I.G. Brigadier who had private instructions to knock clinkers out of ’em. But the pitman is a strong and agile bird. He throve on snowdrifts and entrenching and draggin’ guns through heather. He was being fed and clothed for nothing, besides having a chance of making head-money, and his strike-pay was going clear to his wife and family. You see? Wily man. But wachtabittje! When that ‘heef’ finished in December the strike was still on. Then that same Labour leader found out, from the same Act, that if at any time more than thirty or forty men of a Militia regiment wished to volunteer to do sea-time and study big guns in the Fleet they were in no wise to be discouraged, but were to be taken on as opportunity offered and paid a bob a day. Accordingly, about January, Geordie began volunteering for sea- time–seven and eight hundred men out of each regiment. Anyhow, it made up seventeen thousand men! It was a splendid chance and the Armity jumped at it. The Home and Channel Fleets and the North Sea and Cruiser Squadrons were strengthened with lame ducks from the Fleet Reserve, and between ’em with a little stretching and pushing they accommodated all of that young division.”