ence. Giving, on the one hand, to every valid citizen the training and spirit of a true soldier, it is a pure national gain that, on the other hand, this system makes aggressive war unpopular with the bulk of both army and nation, and goes far to make it impossible. War,' in the words of M. de Laveleye, 'unless undertaken in the defence of German soil, will never be popular in Prussia, because it affects every family; and the soldier who merely passes through a period of regimental duty does not make a trade or career of the service. Even after the astounding successes of last year, people said to me, "We don't like war; look at our cities all in mourning." In France, on the contrary, the sad consequences of battle scarcely affect any class, save one whose sorrow passes unseen.'

We have, however, to consider whether the advantages of the Prussian system are not attained at excessive cost; and whether, by establishing a more purely national force, such as the Swiss, an army might not be constituted at much less expense, equally efficient for national defence, while even less available for aggressive war in the interests of a dynasty or a government than the Prussian. Estimated in the figures of a budget, the cost of the Prussian or German system doubtless appears very low. Colonel Reilly, in a table compiled from authentic sources, puts the cost of the active army of 212,172 Prussian soldiers, in 1866, at £6,545,944. Under the new federal budget, a regular army of 360,000 in time of peace (raisable to at least 900,000 in case of war), is estimated at a cost of less than £10,000,000. And against the loss incurred by the three years' military service of the strength and skill of the industrial population, must be set off the benefit of increased strength and expertness which the men undoubtedly derive from many occupations. The young peasant, the servant, the hotel waiter, the future railway employé, the artisan, comes out of the ranks a smarter, more orderly, stronger, and in many other respects, better workman. But the military service postpones to a relatively very late period the productive use of the productive power of the country. The professional and wealthier classes, who can afford to serve as volunteers, are, indeed, we fully believe, all the better and nothing the worse of a year's service

as soldiers; the more so, as they can generally secure being quartered during it in a town where they can pursue their studies to advantage. But the waste of skilled labour in the case of the classes below them is enormous. The future artisan or mechanic has not learned his business when he enters the army in his twentieth year, nor (unless in the case of a very few trades, such as shoemakers and tailors, who can work for the army), can he practise it until he leaves the regiment for the reserve; he has then still almost everything to learn, and the consequence is that he seldom actually begins business before twenty-five. But twenty-five years, or half the lifetime of the flower of the population, is thus unproductively pent. Even in the case of unskilled labourers and peasants, who can go to work from the day they leave barracks, a considerable loss is sustained. The withdrawal of the male peasantry forces women to labour in the fields; and it not unfrequently happens in various localities that the harvest is ill saved for want of hands. If all this cost must unavoidably be incurred to secure both a citizen army and national preservation, no more could be said than that no loss is too great to incur for such objects. But the truth is, that the army might be made much more national at much less cost, while retaining all its efficiency for the defence of the country.

Does it, in fact, take three years' drill to teach a man the art of a soldier? That one year is found enough for the volunteers in Prussia, is a practical admission on the part of the Government that so much time is not required to train educated men. But is even one year necessary to discipline even an ordinary man? Speaking of British recruits, so experienced a General as Lord Hardinge declared,The thoughtless boy enlists, the grown-up man will not. Give us a good stout man, and let us have him for sixty days to train, and he will be as good a soldier as you can have.' The length of the soldier's service in the army in Prussia is not, in fact, determined solely by considerations of military efficiency.

The examples and traditions of long military service in the armies of the two great monarchies lying on the borders of the young kingdom, had their natural effect upon the mind of General

Scharnhorst, when designing the present military system of his country, after its humiliation by Napoleon, and the limitation of the numbers of its army by that insolent conqueror to 40,000 soldiers; but Scharnhorst's main reason for fixing upon the period of three years for the military training of all the ablebodied youths was to cnable the Government to have a large and unexpected army ready at a moment's notice against a future invader. The same motive has necessarily remained in the mind of the Government ever since, in the presence of the standing armies of Austria, Russia, and France, but the Prussian Government has also another motive. As already said, the Prussian army is not purely a national one; it represents in its constitution the conflicting elements in the political constitution of monarchy on one hand, and political liberty or national selfgovernment on the other. It is no part of a monarch's policy that his soldiers should be available only for the accomplishment of national objects; it is, on the contrary, expedient for him to have always at command, at whatever cost to the nation, a mass of soldiers who have nothing else to do but to obey military orders. The danger to national liberty and peace created by a great standing army is, indeed, such that M. de Tocqueville, after demonstrating that popular institutions necessarily incline a nation to peace, observes that in the army there must always remain an element of despotism and aggression, against which he despairs of guarding.

Yet against this danger, at least, the Swiss military system makes ample provision, while it saves the huge cost of a long deduction from the productive life of the manhood of the country in barracks. Every male citizen of Switzerland is bound to serve in the army in defence of his country, from the age of nineteen to forty-four. But the actual service in time of peace, during the recruit's first year, is but twenty-eight days for the infantry, and forty-two for the cavalry and artillery. During the subsequent period of military obligation, three days a year (or six days in each alternate year) of military exercises, with one day's rifle-shooting annually, and a few days in camp at some part of the whole period, from nineteen to forty-four, make up the entire deduction from peaceful pursuits for military

purposes of the army of Switzerland. The infantry soldier's whole service makes from 100 to 110 days, the cavalry soldier's about 170.

We have already quoted the statement of Lord Hardinge, that sixty days' drill will make of a good stout man as good soldier for a regular army as can be had; but the Swiss system demands only twenty-eight days in the first year, and subsequently the small number mentioned. Lord Hardinge

doubtless meant to keep his nine weeks' soldier,-not to let him go back to civil business as soon as he had learned the business of a soldier. But the Swiss system, in the first place, is only intended to produce a defensive militia for a small territory; and, in the second, it has for its base a preliminary military training at school, which, if carried out in the manner Mr. Chadwick proposes for Great Britain, throws back from the productive to the unproductive period of life the acquisition of military discipline and art, and at the same time affords the amplest time, even if years instead of months be requisite to acquire them.

For the defence of a vast empire, such as that of Great Britain, a standing army, in addition to a national militia, is an obvious necessity, and, moreover, a standing army recruited by voluntary enlistment. The immense distance of several of the regions the British soldier must serve in, and the bare cost of moving troops backwards and forwards, render the service necessarily both one of some length, and one which the citizens of a free country could not be compelled to perform. A sufficient army indeed for any great country, even if its territory lay together and compact, in place of being dispersed over both hemispheres, would require a permanent nucleus and support. Nevertheless, Adam Smith (his conviction of the superiority of a standing army over a militia notwithstanding) considered national training in military exercises not only an important part of national education, which it is the duty of the State to supervise and enforce, but also an important addition to the means of national defence. 'Even,' he argued, though the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity,

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and wretchedness which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading through the great body of the people, would still deserve the most serious attention of Government. . . But

the security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the martial spirit of the people. In the present times, indeed, that martial spirit, alone and unsupported by a welldisciplined standing army, could not perhaps be sufficient for the defence and security of any society. But where every

citizen had the spirit of a soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite.' It is as constituting in itself the materials of a powerful national force for the defence of the country, auxiliary to the standing army, and lightening the demands on it, and again, as elevating and strengthening the nation itself, that we think a general military training desirable. Mr. Chadwick has the great merit of having proposed a system by which this general training may be begun and carried to a considerable extent, in the simplest manner, almost without cost, and free from the practical difficulties that might seem to oppose the introduction of compulsory military discipline and duties into a country with a migratory population, unaccustomed to Government interference in the disposal of their time. The principle,' he says, 'of the chief measure which I have to propose is an old one, involved in the old practice of the kingdom, when every local community, every parish and burgh, was required to exercise the whole male population, beginning with the very young, in military exercises and the use of the bow. I propose to change the commencement of military exercises from the productive adult to the non-productive juvenile, or to the earliest of the school stages; and to provide that in all elementary schools throughout the kingdom aided by the State, the boys shall be trained in the military exercises and appropriate gymnastics.'

We are confident that every member of the present Volunteer force can attest the truth of all that Mr. Chadwick advances with respect to the tendency of military exercise in the company of numbers, and under command, to correct peculiar physical, intellectual, and moral defects of individuals, to communicate readiness, sharpness, presence of mind, temper, public spirit,