term of “first line” military service. Scientifically these men are selected as the flower of the nation. The term of first-line service completed, the young man at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three goes into the first reserve. He must take part annually in certain manœuvers; otherwise he is free to work and to marry. At the age of twenty-six, twenty-eight or thereabouts, he is passed on to the second reserve. At about thirty-five, he becomes a “territorial” and remains in that classification until he is about forty-five, when his military duty is supposed to be done.
“Fighting age is athletic age,” say British soldiers. I do not have to tell Americans, a sporting people, that the best days of the average athlete, especially in sports like boxing or football which require intense effort and physical courage, come in the early twenties. Those first-line troops are the best troops.
Moreover, they are under arms when war breaks; they do not have to be gathered together, redrilled and redisciplined. So they go first into battle; lead all the early attacks; form generally the advanced forces all through. The second line, almost equally valuable, almost as much used, consists of men in the first reserve; and so on, until we get down to the territorials, the men between their late thirties and their middle forties. Theoretically, these “old” men are not supposed to get into action at all except when the necessity grows desperate. They
