Introduction

The Volunteer Force was the military expression of the spirit of self-help, Victorian capitalism in arms in the year of the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty. Originally envisaged as a military institution for the middle class, it had become largely working-class. Middle-class enrolment fell away as the working class joined the ranks. The club-like atmosphere of the early days, when officers were elected, was replaced by a stricter military discipline, and a closer identification with the Regular Army. Conscription won an increasing number of advocates as the answer to the nation's military needs. So great however was the entrenched power of the Volunteer officers in Parliament and in society that they were able to withstand not only the demand for conscription but also the reform of their own body. This book has been written from the belief that the Volunteers were a 'great fact' in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.