The Homecroft System of Life and Education eliminates the difficulties arising from a reliance in time of war on untrained levies in a country like ours, where so few are physically fit, without long training, for soldierly service. The Homecrofter, earning his living by digging it from the ground, is always strong and instantly fit for a soldier's work. The Homecrofter lives under conditions where he is not a cog in a wheel--not a part of any complicated industrial machine from which no part can be withdrawn without derangement of the whole. He is an independent unit in industry, self-sustaining, dependent on no one and no one dependent on him but his own family. If he is called away for military service, the family is able to conduct and cultivate the Homecroft, and gets its living therefrom. No one is left in need, as would so often happen in other cases, especially when State Militia might be called into real service. The Homecrofter earns his living in a way that makes it practicable for him to leave his accustomed vocation for a month or two every year for a period of military training without any prejudice or loss to him in that vocation. The more these advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System are studied from a military point of view, the more their value will be appreciated. A rural nation like Servia or Montenegro can be practically a nation of soldiers. Every man of military age is always ready for service. The Russian Cossack System accomplishes the same result. A nation of shopkeepers, commercial clerks, and factory employees cannot be utilized in that way for military service. The farming and rural population of the United States furnishes a better hope for a Citizen Soldiery in case of war than our city population, but in these days a farm has come to be really a factory, with complicated machinery, requiring training to operate it, and a chronic shortage of labor in busy seasons. Furthermore, rural population is as a rule so scattered that it would not be possible in time of peace to perfect the organization and give the Reservists the training necessary to prepare them for service in time of war and have them always ready for immediate action. In the Homecroft Communities a million men may be almost as close together all the time as though they were in a Concentration Camp in time of war. The organization of every company and regiment would be complete, officers and all, constantly in touch and working together to promote peace and do the work of peace but ready to do the work of war at any time if need be. Officers in the Homecroft Reserve should be Homecrofters, trained in all the military knowledge necessary, but also trained as Homecrofters and getting their living that way.