THE NEW ARMIES

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 92, 16 October 1915, Page 10

THE NEW ARMIES

A COMPARISON WITH GERMANY. Extraordinary as it may seem to many people, there is fairly good ground for saying that Britain,-- without conscription, has" put under arms at least as many men as Germany with conscription, in proportion to the populations of the two countries. Taking as a basis' the latest and apparently most reliable figures available, it will be found that each countiy has mobilised a little over 7 per cent, of its population. The figures work out as follows^: — According to Mr. Asquith's announcement nearly 3,000,000 men have offered themselves for service at the front since the beginning of the war It is presumed that he refers to offers in Britain, and to offers of service, not actual acceptances and enlistments. He does not say what percentage of this number has been accepted for service, but it is well known that the British requiremente are now the reverse of strict, and it may probably be assumed that not more than 15 per cent, of those who offered have been turned down. That would leave 2,550,000 enlisted men. To this number may be 'added the 200,000 who were in the Navy and Naval Reserve when the war started, and about 500,000, not counting the Territorials, Indian, and colonial troops, who were then in the Army. This gives a rough total of three and a-quarter million under arms, out of a population of 45 millions. Now, according to the statement made lately before a British tribunal by a member of the British General Staff, Major Dillon, \D.S.O., Germany has under arms, including garrisons and troops guarding lines of communication, about 4,000,000 men. And according to the same officer, she has another 750,000 in training. These figures are, of course, only the Tesult of calculations, but they seem reasonable enough. Adding to these numbers the 183,000 men who were, when the war broke out, in the German navy or naval reserve (although as a iratter of fact it is likely that a proportion of these men, being unable to get to sea, is serving on land), it is clear that if the calculations are correct, Germany has, out of a population of 68 millions, 4,900,000 under arms. That works out as exactly the same proportion of the population that Britain has put under arms — 7.2 per cent. — Sydney Daily Telegraph. I

At a conference of history teachers in King Edward VI. Grammar School at Stratford-on-Avon, Sir Sidney Lee said : —"In that room Shakespeare received his education. Shakespeare did much to stir in his fellow countrymen's minds a sense of the dignity of their history and to give them confidence in their destiny, while at the same time he offered salutary warnings of the perils that lie in defects of character or intellect in a nation or a nation's leaders. That room, too, had recently received another noble title to fame — a title which practically reinforced Shakespeare's righteous and energetic doctrine of patriotism ; for in that room was educated Flight Sub-Lieut. Warneford, V.C." "Our Territorial engineers have just erected a monument in commemoration of the Battle of the Marne and of the memory of the French soldiers who fell at the "moment when the victory due to their bravery was on the point of being realised," says the Figaro. "The monument will mark exactly the spot at which Yon Kluck's «fmy w*e cheeked *ad tamed --b*ok,"