cate conscription. But many words will have to be spoken,
many votes voted, and perhaps many blows struck before the British
people would submit to such an abridgment of their liberties, or such a
drag upon their commerce. It will be time to make such sacrifices when
the English Channel runs dry.

Without conscription we cannot have great numbers. It should therefore
be our endeavour to have those we possess of the best quality; and our
situation and needs enforce this view. Our soldiers are not required
to operate in great masses, but very often to fight hand to hand. Their
campaigns are not fought in temperate climates and civilised countries.
They are sent beyond the seas to Africa or the Indian frontier, and
there, under a hot sun and in a pestilential land, they are engaged in
individual combat with athletic savages. They are not old enough for the
work.

Young as they are, their superior weapons and the prestige of the
dominant race enable them to maintain their superiority over the
native troops. But in the present war several incidents have occurred,
unimportant, insignificant, it is true, but which, in the interests of
Imperial expediency, are better forgotten. The native regiments are
ten years older than the British regiments. Many of their men have seen
service and have been under fire. Some of them have several medals. All,
of course, are habituated to the natural conditions. It is evident how
many advantages they enjoy. It is also apparent how very serious the
consequences would be if they imagined they possessed any superiority.
That such an assumption should even be possible is a menace to our very
existence in India. Intrinsic merit is the only title of a dominant race
to its possessions. If we fail in this it is not because our spirit
is old and grown weak, but because our soldiers are young, and not yet
grown strong.

Boys of twenty-one and twenty-two are expected to compete on equal terms
with Sikhs and Gurkhas of thirty, fully developed and in the prime of
life. It is an unfair test. That they should have held their own is a
splendid tribute to the vigour of our race. The experiment is dangerous,
and it is also expensive. We continue to make it because the idea is
still cherished that British armies will one day again play a part
in continental war. When the people of the United Kingdom are foolish
enough to allow their little army to be ground to fragments between
continental myriads, they will