economic, moral, physical, and political, are added to the scale? Looking, indeed, at the mere pecuniary cost at which the French troops figure in the accounts of the State, it might be pronounced a cheap system. M. Jules Simon estimates the cost of an army of 400,000 men, for example, at 360,000,000 francs (£14,400,000), and the Count de Casabianca, in a later estimate, places the cost of nearly half a million of French troops at very little more; whereas we can hardly maintain more than quarter of the latter number of soldiers for such a sum. But the French ballot (while it lets the class of idle youth whom military service might utilise escape by substitution) falls indiscriminately on the whole mass whose means are unequal to purchase their ransom, and so hammers into mere soldiers a multitude which must include much of the highest industrial genius and intellectual power in the country. To the real cost of the French army we must add, then, not only every shilling above a soldier's pay which each actual soldier could have earned in a civil occupation, but also the lost value of all the indirect and distant results of invention and special productive capacity. Had Watt been forced to spend seven years as a soldier in barracks, what would the cost of that one soldier have been to his country, and to mankind? Nor does the cost of the French conscription stop when we have added to it the loss of all the men of superior industrial or intellectual power it spoils for their natural pursuits. It spoils, more or less, the greater number of the men it lays hold of. Taking every year from 60,000 to 100,000 of the flower of the youth of the population, it returns them at the end of six or seven years, if at all, unfitted for the occupation from which they were torn, with barrack habits of idleness and dissipation, and probably an impaired constitution. They may now at length marry; and 'old soldiers' of this sort, along with the part of the male civil population which was exempted from the ballot for infirmity or other physical defects-in other words, drunkenness and disease, along with debility and deformity—become in large measure the parents of the next generation. Put a young peasant or mechanic into the army, says General Trochu, for a short time, and he returns home a better man and a better

citizen, stronger, smarter, with more enthusiasm for his country, still in the suppleness of youth, and able to bend over the plough, or to resume the tools of the artisan. Keep him in the army for double the time, and he becomes both too rusty and too lazy for his old trade. General Lamoricière has pronounced, in an official report, a similar opinion with respect to the inaptitude for civil occupations resulting from a septennial military service, and its tendency to swell the population of the towns with an unproductive class, of whom many were born to be hardy and industrious peasants.* Curran translated in jest the saying, Nemo repente fuit turpissimus, into 'It takes seven years to make an attorney;' but a faithful paraphrase in earnest might be, 'It takes seven years to make a vicux soldat.' And the artificial concentration of the French population in towns is demonstrably traceable, in part, to this vice in the military system. When we add that the French army, while less efficient for defence than a truly national force, is far more easily employed in aggressive war, for which it is by its constitution disposed, we have, we believe, said enough to establish the urgent necessity in the interests of both Europe at large and France itself, of that change in its military system, which M. Jules Simon so strenuously invokes.

If a further example of the true character and objects of a vast standing army were needed, we have but to glance at the military system of Russia. The period of service for which the conscript is drawn there, twenty years, is the longest in Europe; and the army is thus more totally separated from the nation than any other in Europe. This military system, it is instructive to remember, was instituted as the principal machinery of a despotic usurpation, which not only deprived the nobles of their ancient independence, but reduced the bulk of the population to servitude, establishing at the same time the study of foreign aggrandizement as a permanent and principal element in the policy of the empire. Whoever,' says Adam Smith (probably in unconscious admiration of his own doctrine of the

L'Ouvrier de Huit Ans. Par Jules Simon, p. 53.

separation of occupations, which has however really no application to compulsory occupations), 'examines with attention the improvements which Peter the Great introduced into the Russian empire, will find that they almost all resolve themselves into the establishment of a well-regulated standing army. It is' (he very truly adds) 'this instrument which executes and maintains all his other regulations.' It is the instrument of a purely autocratic as opposed to national policy. No other country in Europe has a population so pacific, or a foreign policy so aggressive. In no other country is military service so detested; the peasantry regard it as penal servitude for life. And it is in perfect harmony with the fundamental principle of a system in which the soldier has in him nothing of the citizen, the army nothing national, that criminals under thirty years are condemned to the army, and wear its uniform as a badge of disgrace; while in Prussia the forfeiture of civil rights by crime entails the dishonour of exclusion from the military service due from the citizen.

Between France and Russia, with their vast standing armies, lies Prussia or North Germany, with a mixed military system, combining a standing army with a national militia. Under the present arrangements, every youth physically equal to the standard, with unimportant exceptions, is bound by law to enter the ranks of the regular or active army on attaining his twentieth year. For the mass of recruits the legal period of service is three years (in practice shortened to two and a half), but those who can pass an examination, or present sufficient academic certificates of education, are allowed to enter as volunteers, defraying all their own expenses (unless for arms and ammunition), and serving but for one year. With the qualifications just stated, every able-bodied Prussian serves in the ranks of the active army from his twentieth to his twenty-third year, then passing into the reserve for four years, liable to be called on to rejoin his regiment on emergency, or for a short period of annual exercise. From twenty-seven to thirty-two he belongs to the first ban of the Landwehr, in which he is still liable to foreign service in time of war, and to periodical exercises in peace; from thirty-two to thirty-eight his place is in the 2nd ban of Land

wehr, only called out when the country is in extreme danger. From thirty-eight to fifty he belongs to the Landsturm or levy en masse of the population in case of invasion. Thus of all military systems in Europe which have any standing army, the Prussian is that in which the period of service in the standing army is shortest-so short that the civil necessarily predominates in it over the military character, while the remainder of the able-bodied population forms a true citizen army. The extension of this system throughout North Germany contemporaneously with rapid progress in the arts of both industry and war, presents a remarkable contradiction to the doctrine of Adam Smith, that two causes, namely, the progress of manufactures and improvement in the art of war, combine, as society advances, to make the soldier's a separate trade. We believe that, even in the Prussian army, the original period of service is excessive; but it is at any rate long enough in the opinions of such authorities as Marshal Bugeaud and General Trochu, and the late war has established the character of the Prussian army as second to none, if not foremost in point of efficiency. Prior to its late victories, even those military authorities in France who thought most lightly of it as an engine of war, placed it in the first rank as regards the spirit that animates it. Colonel Reilly, in his memorandum on the Prussian army,* establishes by striking facts, it is true, that the Prussians overthrew a disaffected army.'t This circumstance, however, only adds important negative evidence of the military value of the patriotism of a national army, and of the weakness of a standing army without it.

An army composed of such materials as the Prussian certainly cannot be employed in war without immense loss and suffering both to the soldiers and the whole nation, the nature of which may be illustrated by reference to some actual instances within our knowledge. The chief cashier of a principal bank at Berlin was called out for active service in the late war, at the risk of losing his post, which must, indeed, have happened had the

* Report on the Medical and Sanitary Services of the Prussian Army during the Campaign in Bohemia, 1866. Published in the last volume of the Reports of the Army Medical Department.

The Austrian Army.

war been prolonged; in which event, moreover, the banker himself would probably have been ordered to join the army. From a town in Rhenish Prussia a young physician was called out, to find on his return that another physician, exempt on account of age or less vigorous constitution, had taken up his practice. A small shopkeeper, again, in Pomerania had his two assistants taken in the first instance, then a substitute he had managed to procure, and lastly was called out himself, to find on his return that a rival had taken up his business, or that it had gone into the hands of the pedlars. The losses arising in this way are sometimes of such magnitude that special exemptions are granted by the Government; but these very exemptions illustrate the losses that must be sustained in the cases where they are not granted, as of course they very rarely are. A manufacturer of locomotive engines at Berlin, who employs 3000 hands, and had just completed his 2000th engine, was required to join the army. 'I am quite ready to go,' was his response, but I manage all my business myself, having neither partner nor manager. If I go, my works must therefore be closed, and all the hands thrown out of employment.' In the foregoing case, and also in that of an eminent sculptor, much employed by the Government, exemption was granted. A late able critic of the Prussian system, foreseeing such results as have just been exemplified, has objected to it--A Prussian army may be assembled on the frontiers, but however brilliant, expert, and well-disciplined, it is so constituted that it is scarcely available as a political machine. The life, the property, the industry, the intelligence, the influence of the country are in its ranks. An army composed of such materials cannot be risked unless national existence is at stake."*

That an army composed of such materials can be risked when national existence or national objects are at stake, the Prussian army has given recent proof; but that it is scarcely available as a mere political machine in the hands of a Government is, we presume to assert, an advantage to Germany of the first order, more than compensating, even economically speaking, for the cost of such an army when contending for national exist

Notes of a Traveller. By Samuel Laing.