ne. And we get to understand camp life, and the
open air, and all the things a soldier has to know about, sooner or later.
Suppose you were organizing a regiment. Which would you rather have--a
thousand men who were brave and willing, but had never camped out, or a
thousand who had been Boy Scouts and knew about half the things soldiers
have to learn? Which thousand men would be ready to go to the front first?"

"I never thought of that!" said Dick, mightily impressed. "But you're
right, Harry. The Boy Scouts wouldn't go to war themselves, but the fellows
who were grown up and in business and had been Boy Scouts would be a lot
readier than the others, wouldn't they? I suppose that's why so many of our
chaps join the Territorials when they are through school and start in
business?"

"Of course it is! You've got the idea I'm driving at, Dick. And you can
depend on it that General Baden-Powell had that in his mind's eye all the
time, too. He doesn't want us to be military and aggressive, but he does
want the Empire to have a lot of fellows on call who are hard and fit, so
that they can defend themselves and the country. You see, in America, and
here in England, too, we're not like the countries on the Continent. We
don't make soldiers of every man in the country."

"No--and, by Jove, they do that, don't they, Harry? I've got a cousin who's
French. And he expects to serve his term in the army. He's in the class of
1918. You see, he knows already when he will have to go, and just where he
will report--almost the regiment he'll join. But he's hoping they'll let
him be in the cavalry, instead of the infantry or the artillery."

"There you are! Here and in America, we don't have to have such tremendous
armies, because we haven't got countries that we may have to fight across
the street--you know what I mean. England has to have a tremendous navy,
but that makes it unnecessary for her to have such a big army."

"I see you've got the idea exactly, Fleming," said a new voice, breaking
into the conversation. The two scouts looked up to see the smiling face of
their scoutmaster, John Grenfel. He was a big, bronzed Englishman, sturdy
and typical of the fine class to which he belonged--public school and
university man, first-class cricketer and a football international who had
helped to win many a hard fought game for England from Wales or Scotland or
Ireland. The scouts were returning from a picnic on Wimbledon Common, in
the subu