men for whom repeated and violent shocking is more needed and more likely to prove salutary than the regimental masses of the British army.  One rather pleasant shock in store for them is the discovery that an officer and a gentleman, whose sole professional interest is the honour and welfare of his country, and who is bound to the mystical equality of life-and-death duty for all alike, will get on much more easily with a Trade Union secretary than a commercial employer whose aim is simply private profit and who regards every penny added to the wages of his employees as a penny taken off his own income.  Howbeit, whether the colonels like it or not—­that is, whether they have become accustomed to it or not—­it has to come, and its protection from Junker prejudice is another duty of the Labour Party.  The Party as a purely political body must demand that the defender of his country shall retain his full civil rights unimpaired; that, the unnecessary, mischievous, dishonourable and tyrannical slave code called military law, which at its most savagely stern point produced only Wellington’s complaint that “it is impossible to get a command obeyed in the British Army,” be carted away to the rubbish heap of exploded superstitions; and that if Englishmen are not to be allowed to serve their country in the field as freely as they do in the numerous civil industries in which neglect and indiscipline are as dangerous as they are in war, their leaders and Parliamentary representatives will not recommend them to serve at all.  In wartime these things may not matter:  discipline either goes by the board or keeps itself under the pressure of the enemy’s cannon; and bullying sergeants and insolent officers have something else to do than to provoke men they dislike into striking them and then reporting them for two years’ hard labour without trial by jury.  In battle such officers are between two fires.  But soldiers are not always, or even often, at war; and the dishonour of abdicating dearly-bought rights and liberties is a stain both on war and peace.  Now is the time to get rid of that stain.  If any officer cannot command men without it, as civilians and police inspectors do, that officer has mistaken his profession and had better come home.

Obsolete Tests in the Army.

Another matter needs to be dealt with at the same time.  There are immense numbers of atheists in this country; and though most of them, like the Kaiser, regard themselves as devout Christians, the best are intellectually honest enough to object to profess beliefs they do not hold, especially in the solemn act of dedicating themselves to death in the service of their country.  Army form E 501 A (September, 1912) secured to these the

[Illustration:  JOHN GALSWORTHY. (Photo by E.O.  Hoppe.) See Page 102]

[Illustration:  RUDYARD KIPLING (Photo by E.O.  Hoppe.) See Page 106]