At a luncheon at the Hammersmith Town Hall on Thursday
of last week given by the Mayor to the local battalion of the National Reserve, Colonel Seely pointed out that the new regulations in regard to the National Reserve did not put a pistol to any man's head. " Every indication showed, however, that the Reserve would joyfully take up one or other of the honourable obligations that they were invited to assume." Colonel Seely went on to insist that in war the Reservists could not serve in the Reserve units, but must be drafted into units of the Regular or Territorial Army. No doubt all military experts will agree in insisting that now cadres cannot be created and a third-line army established, and we ourselves are obliged to assent to that opinion as sound. At the same time the great numbers of the Reserve—Colonel Seely calculates that there are 2,000,000 men eligible to enter the National Reserve—will make it very difficult to place in existing units all the men who will want to be placed in them in war, and also, without new units, to employ all the men who will be required in the case of invasion. This is a matter of preparation and organization which must be faced. We cannot forgo the services of valuable trained men in order to respect a military maxim however sound per sc. Though we wish the Government would do more than they propose to do for the National Reserve, especially in the matter of uniform, it must not be supposed that we are not grateful to Colonel Seely for what he has done. Ho evidently realizes fully the value of the Reserve. But though we are grateful, Colonel Seely must not think that the sense of gratitude is going to silence us in the future. We certainly mean, like Oliver Twist, to ask for more, and also to see that the Reserve gets it.
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