“I may as well explain,” said the Boy, “that the Dove is our ‘swop’ officer. He’s an untamed Huskie from Nootka Sound when he’s at home. An I. G. Corps exchanges one officer every two years with a Canadian or Australian or African Guard Corps. We’ve had a year of our Dove, an’ we shall be sorry to lose him. He humbles our insular pride. Meantime, Morten, our ‘swop’ in Canada, keeps the ferocious Canuck humble. When Pij. goes we shall swop Kyd, who’s next on the roster, for a Cornstalk or a Maori. But about the education-drill. A boy can’t attend First Camp, as we call it, till he is a trained boy and holds his First Musketry certificate. The Education Code says he must be fourteen, and the boys usually go to First Camp at about that age. Of course, they’ve been to their little private camps and Boys’ Fresh Air Camps and public school picnics while they were at school, but First Camp is where the young drafts all meet—generally at Aldershot in this part of the world. First Camp lasts a week or ten days, and the boys are looked over for vaccination and worked lightly in brigades with lots of blank cartridge. Second Camp—that’s for the fifteen to eighteen-year-olds—lasts ten days or a fortnight, and that includes a final medical examination. Men don’t like to be chucked out on medical certificates much—nowadays. I assure you Second Camp, at Salisbury, say, is an experience for a young I. G. officer. We’re told off to ’em in rotation. A wilderness of monkeys isn’t in it. The kids are apt to think ’emselves soldiers, and we have to take the edge off ’em with lots of picquet-work and night attacks.” “And what happens after Second Camp?” “It’s hard to explain. Our system is so illogical. Theoretically, the boys needn’t show up for the next three or four years after Second Camp. They are supposed to be making their way in life. Actually, the young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a Volunteer battalion that sticks to the minimum of camp—ten days per annum. That gives him a holiday in the open air, and now that men have taken to endowing their Volunteer drill-halls with baths and libraries, he finds, if he can’t run to a club, that his own drill-hall is an efficient substitute. He meets men there who’ll be useful to him later, and he keeps himself in touch with what’s going on while he’s studying for his profession. The town-birds—such as the chemist’s assistant, clerk, plumber, mechanic, electrician, and so forth—generally put in for their town Volunteer corps as soon as they begin to walk out with the girls. They like takin’ their true-loves to our restaurants. Look yonder!” I followed his gaze, and saw across the room a man and a maid at a far table, forgetting in each other’s eyes the good food on their plates. “So it is,” said I. “Go ahead.”