More than 10% of soldiers in nominally Scottish regiments are not even British, according to recent media reports. Overseas recruits are becoming are bigger factor every year. Some continue to blame the amalgamation of the "traditional" Scottish regiments in the multi-battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland a decade ago. The critics argue that the loss of such names as the Royal Scots and King's Own Scottish Borderers has eroded the local links and backing that the old regiments enjoyed and a price is being paid in poor recruitment. But the truth is that several of the regiments folded into the Royal Regiment of Scotland never did draw a sizeable number of recruits from their supposed home territories. There were few real Argyll lads in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the majority of the Queen's Own Highlanders were not from north of the Highland Line. Scotland has seldom provided enough men to fill all the supposedly Scottish regiments of the British Army. For most of their histories the Scottish regiments always had a substantial number of non-Scots. Even the Highland regiments, which tended to attract more Scots than their Lowland cousins, often had large numbers of Irish and English men serving in their ranks. At the end of the Crimean War there were 734 non-Scots serving alongside 6,164 Scots in the Highland regiments. Nowadays in the Royal Regiment of Scotland the 10% shortfall is filled by Fijians, men from the Caribbean, and South Africa.  The Scots Guards has always had a large contingent of Englishmen in its ranks. But back to my main point; even the decision to cut the number of regular battalions in the RRoS from five to four, basically a 20% reduction, has failed to bring the quota of Scots serving in the ranks of the remaining nominally Scottish units up to even the old, surprisingly low, levels they once enjoyed.  The creation of the RRoS only acknowledged that the "traditional" Scottish regiments could, at most, only add a tinge of regional identity to units which were actually composed mainly of men from the post-industrial West of Scotland and often officered by Englishmen. But even that recruiting ground is slipping away. Perhaps the time has come to look at why the British Army is not an attractive career proposition for young Scots. Scotland has changed.  Maybe the Army should change a little to reflect modern Scottish values and aspirations. Otherwise it is probably doomed to be continually scouring faraway islands to fill its ranks with "Jocks" brought up to prefer kava to whisky: good soldiers though most of them are.  The real question is why equally promising young Scotsmen people don't want to take the Queen's Shilling these days.