'Dear Sir John Adye,--Amidst a great pressure and many interruptions, I have been able to gather very interesting information from your valuable pamphlet. For the last three years my attention to current public questions has been much relaxed, while the work of dilapidation incident to an unrefreshed memory has gone on. I do not now recollect as I ought, the precise terms of the present contract of the soldier with regard to the three years, which I have been accustomed to regard as the proper term of short service. To reaching that term for the British Army, I attach (ignorantly) a great value, with this idea among others, that it will very greatly popularise the service, besides its favourable bearing on the question of marriage. 'It will be a great pleasure as well as advantage to me, if I should have an opportunity of resuming the conversation which we began under Lord Sydney's hospitable roof. 'Believe me, faithfully yours, 'W.E. GLADSTONE.' FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 102: _Treatise on Construction of Ordnance_, 1877.] [Footnote 103: _Textbook on Rifled Ordnance_, 1872.] [Footnote 104: _Treatise on Construction of Ordnance_, 1877.] [Footnote 105: _Artillery, its Progress and Present Position_, 1893. By Commander Lloyd, R.N., and A.C. Hadcock, late R.A.] [Footnote 106: Clode's _Military Forces of the Crown_, ii. 214.] [Footnote 107: See Appendix to Fifth Report of Committee of House of Commons on Army and Navy Estimates, 1887, in which correspondence is quoted between the Treasury, War Office, and Admiralty, confirming the above views.] [Footnote 108: _The British Army in 1875: a Reply to Mr. John Holms, M.P._] CHAPTER XXVII CENTRAL ASIA AND THE AFGHAN WAR OF 1878-79