organization for the enrollment and utilization of people not in the firing line is still amazingly unsatisfactory.  The one convenient alternative to enlistment as a combatant at present is hospital work.  But it is really far more urgent to direct enthusiasm and energy now to the production of war material.  If this war does not end, as all the civilized world hopes it will end, in the complete victory of the Allies, our failure will not be through any shortage of men, but through a shortage of gear and organizing ability.  It will not be through a default of the people, but through the slackness of the governing class.

Arms and Equipment Needed.

Now so far as the enrollment of us goes, of the surplus people who are willing to be armed and to be used for quasi-military work at home, but who are not of an age or not of a physique or who are already in shop or office serving some quite useful purpose at home, we want certain very simple things from the authorities.  We want the military status that is conferred by a specific enrollment and some sort of uniform.  We want accessible arms.  They need not be modern service weapons; the rifles of ten years ago are quite good enough for the possible need we shall have for them.  And we want to be sure that in the possible event of an invasion the Government will have the decision to give every man in the country a military status by at once resorting to the levee en masse.  Given a recognized local organization and some advice—­it would not take a week of Gen. Baden-Powell’s time, for example, to produce a special training book for us—­we could set to work upon our own local drill, rifle practice, and exercises, in such hours and ways as best suited our locality.  We could also organize the local transport, list local supplies, and arrange for their removal or destruction if threatened.  Finally, we could set to work to convert a number of ordinary cars into fighting cars by reconstructing and armoring them and exercising crews.  And having developed a discipline and self-respect as a fighting force, we should be available not only for fighting work at home, in the extremely improbable event of a raid, but also for all kinds of supplementary purposes, as a reserve of motor drivers, as a supply of physically exercised and half-trained recruits in the events of an extended standard, and as a guarantee of national discipline under any unexpected stress.  Above all, we should be relieving the real fighting forces of the country for the decisive area, which is in France and Belgium now and will, I hope, be in Westphalia before the Spring.