not want to raise any discordant note—but, perhaps, if we had always had the system of government that I sometimes talk about—if we had always had a soldier at the head of the War Office—things would have been different. [Cheers.] Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, if we had listened to the voice—now stilled—of a great soldier who recently laid down his arms we should have been better prepared. [Cheers.] But when you reflect that, taking our two great services—the Army and the Navy—we have had no less than eight heads of them in eight years, and four of them lawyers, can you wonder that we are not quite prepared for the great trial of strength to which we are called. [Hear, hear.] I almost wonder that we are alive. [Laughter.] It is a wonderful tribute to the inherent strength and vitality of the British Empire that it can stand a test of such a character. And so it comes about that we have been suddenly called upon, under our voluntary system of service, to ask the manhood of the country to come to its rescue, and to rally round the Flag.
One of the purposes of to-night's meeting is to endeavour to encourage that movement, and to face plainly one or two aspects of it to which I want to call your attention. Now I have said I have come here to look at public affairs as a plain, blunt man. I am not aspiring to office or to any public favour, and I do not go out of my way to humbug a public audience. I say deliberately—and those in authority would say so if they dared—that we are not doing so well as we ought with regard to recruiting. I will tell you in a moment a few startling facts. I do not blame the men altogether, because I do not think we have yet made an adequate, concerted, and satisfactory effort to bring home to their minds the exact gravity of the problem we have to face. I do not forget that, in the early days of recruiting, there were terrible scandals. I know that most young fellows get letters from their pals in the camps and trenches, and there have been all sorts of difficulties which have led many men to hesitate. I know that the terms of treatment and the pay of our soldiers in the past have been scandalously, wretchedly and meanly inadequate. [Loud cheers.] I wonder that a nation which, at a moment's notice, can raise four or five hundred million pounds, should haggle and grumble over a paltry few shillings to the only men who matter in a time of national crisis. [Loud cheers.]
Now just another word about this recruiting. Do you realize that three-quarters of Kitchener's Army, as we call it,
