to the small girl is something very like a stab to the grown man. Curiously enough, he and Basant Kor are always summoned together, and the contrast of their demeanour is curious. The girl holds her father's hand and takes the syringe with a smile; the man, who is something of a swashbuckler while out on the tenniscourt, slinks in as though he is going to be flogged, he is seized and held by the messenger while his base hide is being perforated-for he who winces must be pricked again,—and then adjusting his raiment with trembling fingers he sidles out with all alacrity. Kalan's attitude in the room is not edifying; he evidently hates Jordan and longs for the warm shallows of Abana and Pharpar. Basant Kor and Kalan furnish a contrast in demeanour, but the soldier and the Sadhu who follow them are at the very poles to one another, not only in demeanour but in everything else; each perhaps is a type of the country that begot him-the Tommy long and thin, with pink cheeks, careless smile, and hurrying steps; the "devotee," the selfstyled holy man, with his most unholy face smeared with ash to a horrid whiteness, his surly expression, his half bare and wholly plump brown body, his tapping staff and very deliberate pace. Surely there was never such a contrast as is presented by these two who enter the room in succession, the cheerful worker who earns his own bread and the sullen drone (who has perhaps a sting) who eats at the expense of others. as The soldier goes in smiling, clattering over the stone floor in his hobnailed high-lows; he is still smiling when he emerges, and he seems to regard the pricking-room part of a great medical joke. He joins his friends outside with a jest, and his place is taken by the holy man, who shuffles barefoot over the ground, his staff tapping on the stone floor; he casts back his soiled yellow garment as he enters, making his body still more nude than before, he receives the needle with holy stoicism, and he emerges with his head bowed on his hairy chest as he examines with interest the new little puncture that adorns his well-nourished stomach. Then he stalks off through the crowd with his air of sanotified sulkiness. It is difficult to love the Sadhu, or to feel that he is in any way a brother. Were he on his side to feel fraternal, one cannot help believing that his sentiments would be as those of Cain towards Abel. The odd thing is that he is here at all. His sort are really the relics of an older time, and they are not usually associated with anything so clean, so scientific, and so up-to-date as the House of Healing. However, his presence is but a proof of one thing, namely, that East or West, wild tame, washed or washed or unwashed, holy Brahmin or very baseborn sweeper, we all have one common bond-the fear of the or dragon that has sent us to the House of Healing. The East and the West, in the persons of the soldier and the Sadhu, have really proved the poet to be wrong, for the twain have met at that admirable institution. And what is more, they have met on terms of perfect equality, for, as was said before, the House of Healing is democratic. Its doors are open to all, and if an Honourable Member of Council desires its aid, he has only to arrive at 10.30 A.M., and he will receive with Basant Kor and Kalan, with the soldier, the Sadhu, and the rest of us, the magic cure which is effected by the tawny fluid. he was lying on his string bed Presently the sleeper stirred uneasily, and awaking, rose to drink water from the earthenware "chattie which stood close against the wall of the hut, and then, lying down again upon the bed, fell once more into uneasy slumber. It would have been interesting to ascertain the different circumstances in which all the applicants to the House of Healing had received their injuries: some had a leg But fate and the dragon bandaged, others an arm, were upon him; a beast came others a hand, and one came trotting steadily from the deep with the middle part of his shadows of the jungle, ran face swathed in a white cloth, swiftly across a brilliant patch above which his eyes peered of moonlit ground, half-vanout full of wonder and astonish- ished in the murky shade cast ment at what they beheld. by a bush, emerged again into This man was a wild-looking the light, and made straight person, of whose raiment the for the sleeper. Exactly what white cloth on his face formed happened, a watoher, had there at least a half-or would have been one, could not have seen, done so but for the blanket for the man was lying in the with which the House of dark shadow of his hut; but Healing had provided him, as the trotting beast passed and without which he would away the sleeper rose with a have been almost naked and ory, his hands pressed to his quite unashamed, and prob- face, which was streaming with ably very cold upon those blood. breezy heights. He was a man of the jungles, and he hailed from somewhere in Central India. One night Anon fear came upon him; followed a journey to a certain near city, where he interviewed the civil surgeon at the civil hospital. That officer applied the white bandage, and, sending an urgent telegram to the House of Healing, despatched the man of the jungles to the distant hills which he had never seen. Travelling in a continual state of surprise, which far eclipsed his fears, he showed his "chits" to important officials, such as ticketcollectors and guards, who passed him from train to train, putting him in and ordering him out of railway carriages, till, half-dazed with the sudden strangeness of his transition from village life to the busy bustling world, he at length reached the House of Healing -where he received what he stood most in need of in the shape of food and apparel, as well as of treatment. There was a time when the House of Healing was not. One does not like to think of that time, when it did not exist in this land of the dragon; for he, whom we all fear, straddleth, like Apollyon, across every way. Even now the House perhaps touches but the fringe of his viotims, but the fringe is a wide one, and it numbers very many hundreds in a single year; and so great is the fame of the House and of its achievements that a second House has already sprung into existence, and a third is being created, in other parts of the land. The House is maintained by those who wish it well, and its chiefest supporters are the great Government of the land and the lesser Governments of the provinces; district boards and municipalities lend their aid, and even railway systems, which are not usually connected with works of benevolence, transport free of cost those needy ones who demand the protection of the House. Therefore it would seem that the Governments, greater and less, are still in some respects our Ma-Bap, our Father and our Mother. As I was wending my way down the hilly road towards those hazy plains which had already swallowed up Basant Kor, I met a large party of patients who were being conveyed to the House of Healing. They were to be the sacrifice that the House demands, and they were to bear the ills of the people. They were rabbits. THE OFFICIAL CASE AGAINST COMPULSORY SERVICE. BY COLONEL CHARLES E. CALLWELL, C.B. "INTEREST in the question official "Memorandum" which of compulsory military ser- he has prepared for the use vice in these islands is very of the War Minister, and general, and it is important which forms the greater part that materials for forming a of the book, the majority of judgment on the subject experts will assent without should be before the public.' hesitation, With large portions of it the generality of soldiers will find themselves in substantial agreement. But it contains many passages which are open to criticism, and some of the statements which find a place in In these words Mr Haldane opens his contribution to a little volume which he has prepared in concert with his late colleague on the Army Council, Sir Ian Hamilton. It is a sentiment in which all who interest themselves it do not seem to be fully in defence problems in this country will cordially agree. The people are in need of trustworthy information this matter,—a matter which is from day to day attracting greater attention, and with regard to many aspects of which the necessary data for forming an opinion are not readily available. But it is unfortunately the case that some of the materials for forming a judgment which are served out in the ex-Ad on jutant-General's "Study in the Light of Experience" are not calculated to aid the ordinary man in arriving at a correct conclusion. The Inspector - General of Oversea Forces is a soldier of exceptionally wide and varied experience, and any opinions which he may express upon military questions will always be listened to with respect. To some portions of the un warranted by actual facts. It may, speaking broadly, be said to deal with two more or less distinot questions,conscription after the Continental pattern, and compulsory service, somewhat on the Swiss model, such as is advocated by the National Service League. Unfortunately, however, the two divergent forms of obligatory military service are not kept sufficiently apart in Sir Ian Hamilton's review to enable the reader to appreciate oorrectly their respective merits and demerits. We find some facts passed over in silence which have an important bearing upon the matter under consideration, and we find other facts so treated that, in the form in which they are presented, they almost cease to be facts. The methods employed are not those of the arbitrator, but those of the advocate. Were the Memorandum the ly for home defence, and it production of an unofficial per- shows that the the result of sonage, no great objection adopting such a plan would could be raised to a procedure which, after all, is not uncommon when individuals holding strong views on a subject make a statement of their case. But its author is not an unofficial personage. Little exception can, upon the whole, be taken to the manner in which the Memorandum deals with the application of normal Continental conscription to the United Kingdom. It points out that, were such a system introduced, we should still have need of a large force raised by voluntary enlistment to provide oversea garrisons; and it performs a valuable service in indicating how experience in France and Germany goes to show the great difficulty that arises in inducing the conscript to enrol himself of his own free will in colonial corps.1 The figures bearing on this point are significant and instruotive. The Memorandum considers the project of conscription if it were introduced with the idea of providing both expeditionary force and home defence army, and it points out very properly that expeditionary force so raised could not satisfactorily be employed on campaigns of long duration in far distant theatres of war. It deals likewise with the case of a conscript army designed pure an be to throw the nation back upon & defensive strategy. These points are elaborated skilfully in a form which converts a technical subject into an extremely interesting one, and a strong case is undoubtedly made out, even when looking at the question entirely from the soldier's and the strategist's point of view, against the adoption of this kind of compulsory service by us. At the same time, there are passages in the Memorandum where the objections even to this class of compulsory service are overstated. It is almost suggested, for instance, that the development of "war weariness" amongst the Japanese conscripts in Manchuria was the cause of the abandonment by the Tokio statesmen of the idea of farther advance after Mukden. Such an advance would probably have led to disaster, or at all events to a check, no matter how enthusiastio the soldiery had been, and those responsible decided against a continuance of the war on quite different grounds from a failure of morale amongst the troops. "France was a pleasant, fruitful land compared with South Africa," observes the author, when touching upon the war weariness of the German conscripts in January and February 1871. 1 It is important to remember that this is a case of asking men of probably twenty-one years of age and upwards to enrol themselves. |