a national over a mere professional army. In this he has the testimony of almost every good historian on his side; and so opposite is his theory to that of Adam Smith, who attributed the victories of Hannibal to long discipline in the school of actual war, that he ventures the maxim, that it is peace, properly turned to account, that makes good armies; it is war, especially prolonged war, that disorganizes them.'

M. Cochut adds, to a similar notion on his own part, the evidence of Colonel Guérin as to other evils resulting from the prolongation of military service beyond the period requisite to master the exercises of the soldier ::

'Ce qui vieillit le soldat, trop rapidement peut-être, c'est la guerre. "Nous sommes convaincus," a dit le Colonel Guérin, dans son mémorable rapport, "que quand on a passé sous les drapeaux le temps nécessaire pour se former aux armes, on a plus à perdre qu'à gagner en continuant plus longtemps la vie de garnison, vie de sujétion, mais peu laborieux, qui fait plutôt naître des gôuts d'oisiveté, qu'elle ne prépare aux fatigues et aux privations de la guerre. On n'est plus vieux soldat après sept ans de garnison plutôt qu'avec trois." C'est un vieux et brave soldat qui parlait ainsi."

But if on the mere ground of military efficiency, the long service in the French army is open to such question, what is the judgment we must pronounce when its consequences, 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 1 Revue des Deux Mondes, February 1, 1867.

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:-'S'il abandonne l'armée, il va grossir dans les grandes villes le groupe des déclassées; s'il entre dans la vétérance, il s'y achève; s'il est admis aux Invalides, je ne le suivrai pas jusque-là.' 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.1 Curran translated in jest the saying, Nemo repentè 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 vieux soldat;' that is to say, in the popular sense of an old soldier, not in General Trochu's. And the artificial and unhealthy concentration of the French population in towns is demonstrably traceable, in great measure, 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

Precisely because we are keenly alive to the necessity of reducing 1 L'Ouvrier de Huit Ans. Par Jules Simon, p. 53.

2 Ibid.

standing armies, we invoke every measure calculated to make an inexpugnable defence of the National Guard. Such a force, incapable of aggression, invincible if attacked, is the symbol of peace, while a standing army, the symbol and incarnation of war, is a menace even to the very people which exhausts and ruins itself in maintaining it.'

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.1 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 admirable doctrine of the 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. In spite of the difficulties in the present internal condition of the Russian empire, which we are told to regard as a guarantee of peace, nothing is more certain than that the greatest military activity on the part of the Government now exists; the percentage of conscription has been raised; improved methods of military education have been

1 The greater part of the Russian population are subject to the regular conscription laws. The Cossacks of the Don furnish contingents under distinct regulations. The army is also recruited to a small extent by voluntary enlistment, and by military colonies. But these additional elements do not alter the character or the objects of the Russian military system.

introduced, and the whole of the active army will be armed with breech-loaders by the middle of next year. The nominal army will then exceed 1,400,000 men, capable, according to Russian authorities, of increase to 1,700,000. We do not, indeed, believe that one-fourth of the latter number of soldiers could be employed at one time for aggressive war in the present situation of the empire; but even now it has a most formidable army at its disposal-formidable for aggressive war, however, not for its mere number, great as that is, but because it is an imperial standing army, not a national one.1

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 twentythird 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 thirtytwo, he belongs to the 1st 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 2d ban of Landwehr, 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

1 Count Bismarck lately made some observations to the correspondent of an English journal respecting the situation and policy of Russia, which amount merely to the consolation that she will not enter upon a war for territorial aggrandizement until she is quite ready. It is a favourite maxim of Russian politicians, Le monde appartient à qui sait attendre.

VOL. XLVII.-NO. XCIV.

2 D

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 hope to show 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. After quoting evidence on this point,1 General Trochu adds that all military authorities, capable of impartiality, now acknowledge that the Prussian army has given proof at once of solidity and extraordinary celerity of movement.' Surgeon-Major Bostock, Scots Fusilier Guards, in his instructive report on the war in Bohemia, referring to the qualities displayed by the Prussian troops, observes:

'To what is the excellent marching and power of endurance in an active army to be attributed? I believe that it is entirely owing to the superior physique and suitable age and condition of every man composing the army. . . I never saw a more thoroughly efficient body of men; there was not a weedy young recruit, or a decrepit old man among them. A moment's consideration will show that this high state of efficiency, which was so tested in the late campaign, is due to the system of recruiting adopted in Prussia. The basis of it is to be found in the acknowledged principle, that it is the duty of every man to defend his country. No man enters the army as a trade, but at the age of twenty, when his frame is fully developed, every individual becomes liable to serve in the ranks. Here he learns his duty, and becomes in habit and feeling a disciplined soldier,' etc.2

Colonel Reilly, in his memorandum on the Prussian army, establishes by striking facts, it is true, that the Prussians overthrew a disaffected army.' 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. Colonel Reilly, moreover, observes with respect to the Prussian service :

'The position of the soldier is made an honourable one; he is well instructed in the military school; his physical powers are developed

1 'Le niveau moral est peut-être plus élevé dans l'armée prussienne que dans toutes les autres armées de l'Europe. Par sa composition, l'armée en Prusse est l'image fidèle de la nation.'-Cours d'art Militaire (1864) à l'Ecole d'application de l'Artillerie et du Génie, à Metz.

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