CAPITALISTIC MILITARISM
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ARMY SYSTEMS OF SOME FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
We encounter peculiar forms in the army systems of countries such as England and America, Switzerland and Belgium.
Great Britain[1] has a mercenary army ("regular army"), a militia with a mounted yeomanry; besides, the so-called Volunteers, a force voluntarily recruited which, on the whole, is unpaid and numbered 245,000 men in 1905. The standing army, including the militia (in which the furnishing of substitutes is permitted) numbered 444,000 men in 1905, of whom however only some 162,000 were stationed in England. For Ireland there exists, moreover, a militarily organized police force of some 12,000 men. The standing army is largely employed abroad, especially in India,
- ↑ Since the above was written great changes have taken place in the army system of Great Britain. During the world war the mercenary army has disappeared and a conscript army has taken its place. Moreover, in the years immediately preceding the war Great Britain's volunteer forces underwent great changes in composition and name. The militia, too, ceased to exist, either in name or in fact, after 1908. [Translator.]
