The Spectator at war: Lord Kitchener’s campaign

The Spectator, 22 August 1914:

Recruiting for Lord Kitchener’s first hundred thousand men appears to have brought in seventy thousand. That is good, though, we confess, not so rapid as we should like to see it. This comparative slowness is, no doubt, very largely ‘due to the fact that even now there are not enough recruiting centres open. Here, however, the military authorities must not be blamed, for the public must remember that almost the whole of the recruiting staff was swept off into the Expeditionary Force, and that the General Officers responsible for recruiting in the various districts have literally had to improvise a recruiting staff out of men unaccustomed to the work, in order to cope with the greatest effort at recruiting ever known in England. The great thing is to bring the recruiting agencies to the men’s doors, and not to force them to tramp miles to give in their names.