only, and consequently attains so much the more an efficient military standard. The training is arranged as far as possible with a view to the convenience of the men, who are only obliged to be absent from home during a short period spent in camp every year. Parades are held on holidays, Saturday afternoons, or in the evening. In some districts Sunday training has been advocated and has raised considerable opposition, but Brigadier-General J. G. Legge, C.M.G., commanding, at the time of writing, the Division of the Australian Forces in Egypt, in an article on Australian Defence,[A] reminds his readers that "not so many centuries ago it was the law of England that every able-bodied man should practise with the bow at the village butts on Sunday after church hours, and why not now on Sunday afternoons? This would get over the difficulty with employers quite well." Pay is given for attendance at parades in the Citizen Forces.
Under the universal training system all start as privates, and each rank competes for promotion to the one immediately above it. But it must be remembered that in Australia, as in other new countries, there are no sharply drawn class distinctions, there hardly exists an idle class, and to quote Brigadier-General Legge once more:
[Footnote A: "Army Review," Vol. IV., January, 1913.]
