confront the German invaders. In two out of these three cases the raw levies impelled by zeal and enthusiasm defeated the highly-trained troops. In the third case, I do not believe there is any soldier who will not say that had Gambetta been able to give six months' training to his levies—if he had in addition to that the support of 150,000 trained, seasoned troops—the history of Europe would have been different to what it is to-day. [Applause.] In this case we have got those conditions. The men who will be raised and who will enlist to-day will be able to receive five or six months' training at least before they are sent to the front. In addition to that, they will have the support of the best-trained and most highly disciplined and most effective army on the Continent of Europe to-day, namely, the British Army. [Cheers.] For this purpose you want to secure the best young men of the nation, the cream of the nation, the steady, sober-minded, intelligent young men. It takes less time to convert an intelligent youth into a soldier than a man of less acute intellect. As General Hunter said in his evidence before a Royal Commission about ten years ago: "The intelligent man will pick up in a single day what you can hardly drill into the mind of the other fellow in a year." [Laughter.]
So, therefore, it is important that we should secure the cream of the youth of this country for the purposes of this army. A few men of that type in any battalion improve its quality. [Hear, hear.] They raise the average, they lead their battalion without any additional stripes—[laughter]—they permeate the whole army, and, therefore, in a few months' time, if we can only get the right type of young men to join, you will have one of the most magnificent little armies ever turned out of this country. That is what we are aiming at [Cheers.] In order to do that you must convince the young manhood of this country of the righteousness of the war. [Cheers.] And this committee must take every step for the purpose of attaining that essential object—by meetings, by speeches, by lectures, by literature, by leaflets, by circulating every information, and by putting and presenting in its proper light the real causes that prompted this country to declare war. [Cheers.]
Now, I have only one or two more words to say upon that particular topic. When you are raising a great national democratic army—I mean an army that summons into its ranks every class, every creed, and every rank of life—the
