If the Government are wise they will at once appoint
a strong Committee to deal with the National Reserve, a Com- mittee which we suggest might be presided over in chief by Lord Roberts, with Sir Edmond Elea as his Vice-Chairman and right-band man. Sir Edmond Elles, as Chairman of the Surrey Territorial Association, has had a longer experience of the National Reserve than any other soldier, owing to the fact that Surrey was two years ahead of any other county in organization. A proper appeal made on behalf of the King by Lord Roberts, the Colonel-in-Chief of the Force, would, we believe, at once add the names of an extra three hundred thousand men to the force, for the National Reserve has not yet tapped anything like all its sources of supply. The essential thing is prompt action. As a proof of the value of the National Reserve, which has so often been derided as worthless, we may note the fact that if the expeditionary force is embodied, some twenty thousand of the National Reserve—i.e., men who have taken the obligation known as Class L—will pass into the ranks of the units composing our Continental Field Army. But for these men it would indeed be impossible to complete the mobilization of the expeditionary force. So, after all, the National Reserve is of some use, and not merely " the plaything of a patriotic but uninstructed and impulsive civilian !"
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