Martin Leake, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was awarded the Victoria Cross on May 13th, 1902, is granted a clasp for conspicuous bravery in the present campaign. For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty throughout the campaign, especially during the period October 29 to November 8th, 1914, near Zonnebeke, in rescuing, while exposed to constant fire, a large number of the wounded."

He is said to be the first man who has ever received a clasp to the Cross in the fifty-nine years of its existence. When he earned the Cross he was a Surgeon-Captain in the S.A. Constabulary. Lieut. Leake went out with a party of English Red Cross surgeons to the Balkan War; so he has done honour to his school on many occasions in the service of humanity. The school has also 3 D.S.O., 1 C.B., 1 C.M.G., 1 M.C., 2 Legion of Honour, and 19 mentions in despatches

A great deal is done to stimulate keenness in this contingent of the O.T.C. The school is divided into five houses, each being drilled twice a week by its own non-coms., and there is a C.O.'s parade once a week. They have a drum and fife band, buglers, signallers, and cyclist detachment, while educational courses on military tactics are given in preparation for the examination for "Certificate A."

Bedford Grammar School, with its extremely high standing as an educational foundation, yet differs largely from the character of the schools which have so far been mentioned. It is probably representative of a greater mass of material. Its corps began in 1886, and at the beginning of the war its strength was 290 of all ranks. A month after the war began it had increased to 350, which is just about its present number 1,500 Old Boys are with the colours, 105 have been killed, and 158 have been wounded. The C.M.G. has been awarded to 5; the D.S.O. to 12; the M.C. to 22; the D.C.M. to 1; the Order of St. Stanislas to 1; and the Croix de la Guerre to 1; while 80 have been mentioned in despatches. It is entirely an engineering corps.

What I have written is not to be regarded as in any sense an attempt at a history of the schools and war. It is merely a few examples of what school training has been doing as a preparation for the defence of the country, and without any intention of making a distinction between those which are mentioned and the great number which are not mentioned.

Scotland produces the same testimony. Glenalmond, Merchiston, and Loretto are small schools as compared with the Public Schools of England, each running to a total of about 130 boys. Glenalmond, which approximates nearest to the English model, was the first of these Scottish schools to have a Cadet

Corps, having begun it in 1875. At the beginning of the war there were 151 Old Glenalmonds serving in the Navy and Army; by the end of the year the number had risen to 406; and at the present time it stands at 492, which is 64 per cent. of all Old Boys under 40 years of age. Of the total number, 95 per cent. hold commissions. Its O.T.C. always numbers over 100, and it sent 104 Old Boys to the Front in the South African War. Its list includes 41 killed, 51 wounded, 2 C.M.G., 2 D.S.O., 3 M.C., 1 D.C.M., and 24 mentions in despatches.

Merchiston, which has its home in the old Castle of the Napiers of Merchiston, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, began its corps in 1884 as a Company of the 1st Battalion of the Queen's Edinburgh Rifle Volunteer Brigade. It has progressed ever since, and at the present moment includes practically every boy in the Upper School, numbering 130 members. It has a list of no fewer than 500 serving in the Navy and Army. Its casualties are already a large number.

Loretto was late in taking up the movement, owing to the difficulty of such a man as "Almond of Loretto" finding a sympathetic attitude on the part of such a crusted old institution as the War Office used to be. About 400 are on service in the present war, of whom 250 have commissions. A cònsiderable number did not wait for commissions, and of these a large number are non-commissioned officers now, the remainder being privates. The O.T.C. numbers at present over 100, who are being trained by the second in command, as its C.O. has been in the trenches with his old regiment almost since the war began. Casualties among Lorettonians have been numerous, and distinctions also have been many, including the D.S.O. and the M.C. in a number of instances.

Among the great day schools of Scotland, Edinburgh Academy has sent over 800 men to the colours, over 600 of them being officers, while a large and keen O.T.C. is training more. Already this school has gained a V.C. to add to 7 which it has to its credit in previous wars. Another Edinburgh day school, George Watson's, of the highly endowed "Merchant Company," has a splendid corps which only began in 1905. In October last year the corps was up to its full strength of 180; but the headmaster at once decreed "conscription," and put the whole senior school, numbering 560 boys, into it. Not only was the decree accepted, but some younger boys, who had been excluded from the decree, petitioned to be brought under the scheme, and they had their way. The result is a Cadet Corps of half a battalion being prepared for the future, while the Old Boys have made a splendid response in the present.

Three schools in Glasgow have contingents of the O.T.C.Glasgow Academy, Kelvinside Academy, and the High School. The Academy contingent was begun in 1902, when the South African War gave the youth of the country a military stimulus, and it is now 240 strong, while its former members have supplied many of the local Territorial regiments with officers. An official War Office report commends the O.T.C. in the words: "This school has taken more certificates and commissions than any other in Glasgow." The High School Cadet Corps was founded in 1902, and is at present a splendid force, the influence of which is doubtless to be found in the fact that 1,200 Old Boys are fighting for their country, nearly 500 of them being officers. Kelvinside Academy has the honour of being the first Scottish day school to have a Cadet Corps, which it started on its career in 1893. The school is neither large nor old, yet it has over 400 Old Boys serving, most of them with commissions. Dollar Institution and one or two other day schools throughout the country have corps; but those which have been mentioned practically exhaust the scope of the movement. I have seen all these Scottish contingents of the O.T.C. at work and on parade, and at all times they show a creditable spirit and a soldier-like appearance, which is enhanced by the fact that they all wear the kilt.

I have heard it said that the War Office is not satisfied with the O.T.C. in the particular of its supply of officers to the Territorial Army in times of peace, and that some changes are likely to take place when the war is over. This element of dissatisfaction probably applies more to the residential public schools than to the day schools. In the case of these Scottish day schools, the O.T.C. has largely officered the Territorial regiments, especially since the war began. There is no doubt that they had the material partly prepared for the work of war, and in so far as the O.T.C. had accomplished that alone, the movement has justified its existence and has commended its extension.

With all this evidence before the nation, why should not the elementary schools be brought into touch with a similar form of training? There is only one really arguable difficulty in the way, and that is the circumstance that the leaving age is fourteen years. But the whole tendency is towards making attendance at continuation schools compulsory until the age of seventeen years. The real obstacle in the past has been the cry of the demagogue against "militarism." The mere elements of military drill taught in school "fostered the military spirit"; and the phrase was used so often on platforms with opprobrious intention that at last people who sought votes and public office became afraid to have anything to do with military

drill in schools. The subject, which at one time had a respectable place in the "Code" of education, became attenuated, until it sank into a system of physical exercises which passed through various absurd and useless phases, until at last it has somehow stumbled into a fairly decent system, so far as it goes. The more the exercises are given a military character, and combined with military movements, such as forming fours and marching, the more keenly are the boys interested. A system of physical drill and exercises suited to age and continued through the school course could easily be linked with a system of Cadet Corps up to the age of seventeen. If these Cadet Corps were made compulsory with due restrictions, the Cadet Corps could feed the Territorial Army under the same easy compulsion, and physical training would be continuous. Every social class would be under the same rules, so that if a public school boy did not take a commission in the Regular or the Territorial Forces, he would be obliged to do his turn as a private from year to year, as he is doing now voluntarily in war time. It is "compulsion," but it is not "conscription"; and it avoids the one real objection to "conscription" which was noted at the beginning of this articlethe separation of the young man from civil life and industry for a couple of years continuously at a most important period of his development as a part of the great national industrial organisation.

It is a pity and a shame that the tendency of a national educational system should be to suppress the natural instinct of the boy for soldiering; that instinct is simply, in a civilised nation, the instinct of defence. That tendency has gone on steadily in our country since 1870, while the tendency in Germany during the same period has been all in the opposite direction; and it is time now that we should make a drastic change. The two wonderful movements of the Boys' Brigade and the Boy Scouts, purely voluntary and, in spite of their popularity, only reaching a small minority of the possible numbers, are proofs of the instinct of the boy and of the almost unlimited influence for good of the training. If the whole boy population of the country were brought within the scope of such a training, and their thoughts afterwards directed by law towards the continuance of the training on the lines which have been suggested, the problem of the "Citizen Army" would be solved without any consciousness of compulsion.

It must be asserted that the elementary schoolboy has as much grit as the boy of a higher social grade who is a member of the O.T.C. Most of the Australians who have come over in the contingent to fight for us have had the kind of cadet training which

is here proposed, and have been educated in the same class of school. The material for officers is largely there in the schoolmasters of England and Scotland. Most of the training colleges for schoolmasters in England, if not all of them, have college companies of the Territorial regiments.

St. Mark's College, Chelsea, formed the first of such companies in 1867 in connection with the 2nd South Middlesex. It is now "B" Company of the 10th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. At the beginning of the war the Company, numbering 132 members out of 136 students, was mobilised and sent to India with the Battalion, and a large number of old students have received commissions.

Bede College, Durham, has its Company in the 8th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, and sends practically all its students into the Company, which is serving at present.

The movement is needed on military grounds; it is needed on civic grounds, that the potential citizen may know the duties as well as the rights of him who can say "civis Britannus sum"; and it is needed on the ground of moral training. If the masses of the population adopt the principle it will be carried out, for they have the voting strength which leads the leaders. The principle will probably be brought home from the trenches by the hundreds of thousands of working men who are doing their duty there at present, and by the other hundreds of thousands who are now ready to go. They know that it is either that principle for the future, or the Continental system.

A French writer, Alphonse Séché, in his work entitled "Les Guerres d'Enfer," gives a powerful warning to Democracy on this point. He does not regard this war as the end of all war, but merely as the first of a new order of wars. The masses will have to do for themselves that "clear thinking" which the paid politicians have declared to be so necessary, but which they, although paid for doing it, have either not done, or have failed to impart to their constituents in their opportunist fear of being regarded as prophets of evil.

M. Séché declares that there will be no time for preparation after war has broken out. On account of the tremendous risks, organisation and preparation will be on a scale and of a character such as only Socialists have imagined. In time of peace men of every age and grade will have to undergo military and industrial training for defence, and even women will be trained for that purpose too. If Democracy will not perceive these truths and adapt itself to the new Socialism of defence which is so like the Socialism of industry advocated by many of its favourite leaders, then Democracy is as good as dead.