Excerpt from The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 43: A Monthly Review, January-June, 1898

Our present Coalition Ministry has not always been fortunate in deciding what particular question has offered the greatest promise of popular approval and support and it must be confessed that our rulers have on the whole been more successful when they have obeyed that branch of their instinctive faculties that warns them to resist, than when they have yielded to the other branch that impels them to interfere. Here, however, they find themselves confronted with a real question of natural and unforced growth, as to which a definite and if possible a bold policy has become inevitable, but with regard to which we see them in apparently much the same dilemma as Mr. Cardwell and his friends - that is, afraid to act thoroughly, and afraid above all of causing any inconvenience to the War Ofiice Official. Judging from the principal utterance that has so far been delivered as to what is likely to be done, it would seem that the Government accepts the responsibility of materially increasing the Army, and begins also to recognise that the State has a duty towards the soldier when he leaves the colours. A large number of much-needed bricks are thus promised, with the hint that a little more straw may also be pro Nided. It is to be hoped that the improvements thus foreshadowed will prove successful in practice as well as in theory and the course Lord Lansdowne has taken in adhering to the main lines of the present system, as regards the Line battalions and the Reserve, may not improbably be justified by events still in the future.

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