This pretty good 43-minute Allied short (the copy of which I acquired bafflingly boasts no credits, despite the involvement of several notables!) about the training of civilians for active war duty would eventually be reworked and expanded into a full-length feature – the excellent THE WAY AHEAD (1944) – by the same director. Among the titular components (a veritable microcosm of British society of the time) are Raymond Huntley (a Ministerial executive who, through a bureaucratic mix-up, gets not only by-passed for the desk job he had requested but even drafted into the army!), John Laurie (as the quintessential big-hearted Scot), Bernard Miles (as a brick-layer, the epitome of the working-class man) and Peter Ustinov (as the youngest, he has the hardest time adjusting to the handling of weaponry and, by extension, the necessity for killing). A young Geoffrey Keen is the obligatory D.I. (though he predictably reveals a heart of gold underneath his tough-as-nails exterior), while Robert Donat basically does a spoof(!) "Guest Star" cameo (interestingly, he only appears – atypically – as a reckless gung-ho hero in a film the raw recruits take some time off to check out and promptly dismiss for lack of realism!). The climax sees the group being sent on a trial mission in which they manage to outsmart their superiors via some unorthodox but undeniably nifty sneak-attack tactics! Somewhat optimistically, the epilogue states that if the British soldier will prevail over the current enemy, it is going to be thanks to the country's unique policy of instilling a military discipline in their men prior to undertaking official service.