The reports on the recruiting for the Army during 1895
are on the whole very satisfactory. About 35,000 of the 50,000 men who presented themselves were accepted. Of the remaining, nearly 15,000 were rejected by the medical officers. This does not mean, however, that all these men were hope- lessly unfit to fight, but rather that the medical tests were extraordinarily strict. The fact is, that the growing popu- larity of the Army as a profession allows the doctors to reject all applicants who are not up to a very high standard of physical well-being. In case, however, of any serious and immediate call on the Army, it would be quite possible to enlist all but a comparatively small proportion of the appli- cants. The truth is, that at a pinch we could get far more soldiers by voluntary enlistment than people imagine. They think of the war at the beginning of the century, when the population was a third of what it is now If we were only to reject really useless men, were to take men of any age up to forty, and were to allow enlistment for three years, or to the close of hostilities, the number of men who would join the colours would astonish the nation. As regards the ages of the recruits of 1895, the following facts are given. Of those attested nearly half—i.e., 17,000—were between eighteen and nineteen years, about 11,000 between nineteen and twenty- one, 6,000 between twenty-one and twenty-three, and about 3,000 between twenty-three and twenty-five. England and Wales supply the greater number of recruits.
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