Within a few miles of these fields were stationed a thousand soldiers, who were chafing at and weary with the monotony of their daily routine, an unvaried one for over a year. The majority of these men would have welcomed the acceptance of such a task as this. But follow the events which happened, and it is proved convincingly that some silly, ridiculous reason prevented any approach, by those who sit in Chairs at the Admiralty to those who sit in Chairs at the War Office, to utilise this unemployed labour, or to save the nation's pocket in so simple a matter. The expenditure of money seemed to be of no consideration whatsoever, although the House of Commons was at this particular period shrieking for economy in others, which they were quite unwilling to commence themselves; whilst the Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith) addressed a great economy speech to the massed delegates representing 4,000,000 organised workers at Westminster on December 1st, 1915. So a contract was offered and entered into with a civilian to do the work. Owing to Lord Derby's scare-scheme system of recruiting instead of National Service (which ought to have been enforced immediately after the Boer War, as pressed by Lord Roberts and others), the unlucky contractor lost most of his young men and was quite unable to get more than a very few old men who were past the age of strenuous labour. His job progressed so slowly that the Admiralty realised the work might not be finished for months and months to come if permitted to continue on the then present line. What was it that prevented the Admiralty, on this second occasion of necessity, from approaching the War Office, or even one of the officers in command of the thousands and thousands of troops stationed in Norfolk, a few of whom could and would gladly have completed the work in a few hours without a penny extra expense to the country? Instead of incurring any possible suspicion of an obligation from the War Office, an appeal was made to the newly-formed City of Norwich Volunteers for their men to put down their names for this work. That loyal, energetic, and patriotic body of Englishmen, which was drawn from all ranks of society, although working at their various vocations all the week, immediately acquiesced, without stopping to reason why, and agreed to go to Bacton the next ensuing Sunday. The distance from Norwich to Bacton is twenty miles, but the nearest station is about three miles from the fields in question. By reason of the War Office having taken over control of the railways, these men could, by a simple request from the Admiralty to the War Office, have been provided with free travelling passes. They had expressed their willingness to walk the remaining three miles of the journey, do the work gratuitously (although quite unaccustomed to any such rough manual labour), find their own rations, and walk the return three miles to the station afterwards. Such, however, was not acceptable, nor permitted.