e want
accessible arms. They need not be modern service weapons; the rifles of
ten years ago are quite good enough for the possible need we shall have
for them. And we want to be sure that in the possible event of an
invasion the Government will have the decision to give every man in the
country a military status by at once resorting to the levee en masse.
Given a recognized local organization and some advice--it would not take
a week of Gen. Baden-Powell's time, for example, to produce a special
training book for us--we could set to work upon our own local drill,
rifle practice, and exercises, in such hours and ways as best suited our
locality. We could also organize the local transport, list local
supplies, and arrange for their removal or destruction if threatened.
Finally, we could set to work to convert a number of ordinary cars into
fighting cars by reconstructing and armoring them and exercising crews.
And having developed a discipline and self-respect as a fighting force,
we should be available not only for fighting work at home, in the
extremely improbable event of a raid, but also for all kinds of
supplementary purposes, as a reserve of motor drivers, as a supply of
physically exercised and half-trained recruits in the events of an
extended standard, and as a guarantee of national discipline under any
unexpected stress. Above all, we should be relieving the real fighting
forces of the country for the decisive area, which is in France and
Belgium now and will, I hope, be in Westphalia before the Spring.

At present we non-army people are doing only a fraction of what we would
like to do for our country. We are not being used. We are made to feel
out of it, and we watch the not always very able proceedings of the
military authorities and the international mischief-making of the
Censorship with a bitter resentment that is restrained only by the
supreme gravity of the crisis. For my own part I entertain three
Belgians and make a young officer possible by supplementing his
expenses, and my wife knits things. A neighbor, an able-bodied man of 42
and an excellent shot, is occasionally permitted to carry a recruit to
Chelmsford. If I try to use my pen on behalf of my country abroad, where
I have a few friends and readers, what I write is exposed to the clumsy
editing and delays of anonymous and apparently irresponsible officials.
So practically I am doing nothing, and a great number of people are
doing very little mor