I myself became a volunteer because I was convinced that it was a
citizen's duty to train himself to bear arms in his country's cause. I
have been for many years an ardent advocate of the volunteer system,
because I believed, as I still believe, that a national army must be an
army of citizen soldiers, and from the beginning I have looked for the
efficiency of such an army mainly to the tactical skill and the
educating power of its officers. But experience and observation have
convinced me that a national army, such as I have so long hoped for,
cannot be produced merely by the individual zeal of its members, nor
even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which
animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to
be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers,
continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with
insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the
country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the
conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of
volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and
it is evident that those limits do not permit of a training sufficient
for the purpose, which is victory in war against the best troops that
another nation can produce.
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