They reminded me more than anything else--except that but few of them were beyond the best fighting age--of the finest class of our National Reserve.

There was certainly nothing of the mock soldier about them.

Led by keen, smart-looking officers, they marched past in quarter column with fine, swinging steps, as if they had been in training for years.

Officers who have had the teaching of them tell me that the rapidity with which they have become efficient is greater than has ever come within their experience in training recruits for either the Territorials or the Regular Service."[56] The 24th of September, it will be remembered, was the day when the formation of the Provisional Government and the Indemnity Fund (with the subscription of a quarter of a million sterling in two hours) was made public; on Saturday the 27th, the country parades of Volunteers of the preceding weeks reached a climax in a grand review in Belfast itself, when some 15,000 men were drawn up on the same ground where the Balmoral meeting had been held eighteen months before.

They were reviewed by Sir George Richardson, G.O.C., and it was on this occasion that Mr.F.E.
Smith became famous as "galloper" to the General.