only of character, but of intelligence and knowledge.  It should offer a career to the best talent.  A national army must therefore attract the picked men of the universities to become officers.  The attraction, to such men consists, chiefly, in their faith in the value of the work to be done, and, to a less degree, in the prospect of an assured living.  Adequate, though not necessarily high, pay must be given, and there must be a probability of advancement in the career proportionate to the devotion and talents given to the work.  But their work must be relied upon by the nation, otherwise they cannot throw their energies into it with full conviction.

This is the reason why, if there is to be a national army, it must be the only regular army and the nation must rely upon nothing else.  To keep a voluntary paid standing army side by side with a national army raised upon the principle of universal duty is neither morally nor economically sound.  Either the nation will rely upon its school or it will not.  If the school is good enough to serve the nation’s turn, a second school on a different basis is needless; if a second school were required, that would mean that the first could not be trusted.

There can be no doubt that in a national school of war the professional officers must be the instructors, otherwise the nation will not rely upon the young men trained.  The 200,000 passed through the school every year will be the nation’s best.  Therefore, so soon as the system has been at work long enough to produce a force as large as the present total, that is, after the third year, there will be no need to keep up the establishment of 138,000 paid privates, the special reserve, or the now existing territorial force.  There will be one homogeneous army, of which a small annual contingent will, after each year’s training, be enlisted for paid service in India, Egypt, and the oversea stations, and a second small contingent, with extra training, will pass into the paid reserve for service in small oversea expeditions.

The professional officers and sergeants will, of course, be interchangeable between the national army at home and its professional branches in India, Egypt, and the oversea stations, and the cadres of the battalions, batteries, and squadrons stationed outside the United Kingdom can from time to time be relieved by the cadres of the battalions’ from the training army at home.  This relief of battalions is made practicable by the national system.  One of the first consequences of the new mode of recruiting will be that all recruits will be taken on the same given date, probably the 1st of January in each year, and, as this will apply as well to the men who re-engage to serve abroad as to all others, so soon as the system is in full working order, the men of any battalion abroad will belong to annual classes, and the engagement of each class will terminate on the same day.

XX.