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Hokitika Guardian, 22 May 1926, Page 2

■\ i.TFiouoir the liavv claims the title of senior service. Captain E. W. Shopp'ard. says a. ifevieworV begins his “Short History of the British Army to 1911,” with a reference to the Celtic warriors, who “unarmed and undisciplined as they were, put up no discreditable opposition to the veterans of Rome, led by the first of the Roman generals.” However. the houseearles of Canute, a personal bodyguard of mercenaries, may l e regarded as the germ of our standing army. After extinction of the Danish line they were maintained by the Saxon rulers. They formed the little hand that at Hastings died to a man around the corpse of the last of the English kings. With the introduction of the feudal system came the rather inefficient feudal levies, who were replaced by foreign mercenaries. But the armies' who won Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, were English; they consisted partly of pressed men. partly of volunteers enlisted in “free companies,” under some wealthy and popular leader. They won for themselves a reputation as the finest soldiers of Europe. Then and later, when the war was over, the troops were disbanded, but in the reign o[ Charles 11., who retained certain units of Cromwell’s Hew Army, we have for the first time a permanent army in the modern sense. The wars in which the British Army lias, been engaged fall into two classes, those'fought against Continental Powers and those which h ave been waged within the Empire, or in the process of its extension. In regard to those wars in which British troops have been matched against a civilised and regularly organised adversary, Colonel Sheppard , remarks that that on no occasion have they appeared in the field except as a part, and seldom as the main part, of an allied force.- That is true of campaigns from the time of Elizabeth onwards; but the troops who fought against France in the Hundred Years War were wholly English. Perhaps Captain Sheppard would not allcsr that

tho French feudal host was an "organised’’ army. Again, in these wars Britain had never relied solely, or even chiefly, .on her regulars. Her settled policy has always been to reduce the military establishment to-be-low the margin of safety, and then when war breaks out, to send overseas the tiny force available as a sort of forlorn hope. 11l this way time has been gained for the hasty raising and arming of recruits. Tho initial operations have usually seen the complete disappearance of the regulars, leaving nothing but it trained cadre and a tradition of valour to their successors. Again and again it has been the task of the regulars to perish', “gathering into their hearts the spears of the enemy’s first and fiercest- onset,’’ while the great victories have been won by amateur soldiers who came from peaceful pursuits, when their country was threatened, and returned to them when their work was done. In the Great War history’ merely repeated itself on an increased scale. The “Old Contemptibles” and “Kitchener’s Men’’ had their counterparts in many wars of the past.