VOLUNTEERING AT HOME.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1614, 23 April 1879, Page 3

VOLUNTEERING AT HOME.

Commenting on the report of the departmental committee on volunteers, the “ PallMall Budget” has the following : Unless the whole volunteer system is a mistake, the capitation grant to volunteers is really a very cheap way of maintaining, if not an actual, at least a possible army of something like the magnitude which the defence of the country demands. Money would be excellently invested which gave the regular army an efficient recruit, or the volunteer army a rejoined soldier, in time of war ; and though the grant to each efficient volunteer cannot be counted on to do this, there is no doubt that a certain considerable percentage of it will have this result. The directions which real economy should take are two — care that the capitation grant for each man is not larger than it need be, and care that the grant is fairly earned in each case. As regards the first, the committee feel no doubt. The capitation grant does not do more than provide strictly necessary expenditure ; and as regards three items specified in the report it fails to do even this. As regards the second, the committee recommend that the number of drills required from each efficient during the first two years shall be sixty instead of thirty-nine as at present; that a physical standard shall be fixed, to which all recruits shall be subject; and that no grant shall be payable for any volunteer who is over fifty years of ago. At present there is nothing to prevent a veteran of eighty from drawing the capitation grant for his corps provided that he is able to attend his nine drills per annum. The committee are further of opinion that the efficiency of the force generally would be greatly increased by the increased adoption of regimental camps. “Commanding officers,” they say, “ are almost unanimous in attaching the highest importance to camps as affording the only means available to volunteers for acquiring the knowledge and habits of military life. They consider generally that a week in camp equals, in the amount of in struction acquired, that obtained otherwise throughout the whole year.” The main hindrance to the formation of camps is the expense, and to meet this the committee recommend that a sum of 2s per head per day over and above the present grant shall be allowed to corps for those men who remain not less than throe nor more than six consecutive days in camp. It might bo worth while to inquire whether, in the neighborhood of largo towns, a modification of the camp system might not be found useful which should not require the same absence from work. There may bo many lyoung clerks, for example, in London who would not care to spend half

their fortnight’s holiday in ft volunteer camp, a>'d yet would be very willing to go down to Wimbledon for an evening drill after their work is over, sleep in a tent, go through their camp duties, and get another drill in (he morning, and then go to town for their day’s work, with the prospect of coming back to camp at right. This might bo a very inferior thing to spending a week on end in camp, but it would be practicable for a much larger number of men, and as such might be worth making easier by some adaptation of rules and arrangements. At all events there can, in our judgment, be no question that any economy to be effected in the cost of the volunteer force should aim at getting more for the money spent, not at spending less money —at making the volunteers better worth what they cost, not at diminishing tlie number of volunteers.