A REGISTER OF TRAINED MEN.
[TO 11111 EDITOR. Or TUC "SnomirOm.".1 read with much interest your article of last week :nn "A Register of Trained Men." It may interest your readers to know that such a register was actually originated by me in the North-Eastern District in 1901. You were so kind as to write an article on the scheme which I then started under the name of "Local Guides for Home Defence." This corps initiated the idea of Motor Corps, the -Legion of Frontiersmen, and Boy Scouts. It also included all rifle clubs, bicycle corps, &c. I send you the form which had to be signed, and you will see that the last question—viz., "Kindly write on the back the names and addresses of any person in your neighbourhood whom you would recommend me to invite to join the Corps of Guides would have supplied the register you speak of. Lord Roberts wrote thanking me for starting this scheme, but later the authorities decided not to proceed with it. The Petty Sessional Division was the unit, and only working those along the coast from Berwick to the Wash, we obtained about a. thousand signed forms, some of which were endorsed with as many as thirty names. Therefore if it had been persevered with, and the Lords-Lieutenant had taken it up, as Lord Grey did in Northumberland, or in the same manner as they after- wards ran the Territorial system, we should by now have had a voluntary local commando in every Petty Sessional Division.
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