of which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly failed. The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the Germans in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places, the antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself up; the crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting; and Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not look at Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided Rasgrad, Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as they were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think Suvaroff would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had got his way. The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. This granted, nor can it be denied, it logically follows that if this increased execution is not performed nations are entitled to regard it as a grievance that they do not get blood for their money, and this they certainly do not have; so that even in this sanguinary particular the warfare of to-day is a comparative failure. The topic, however, is rather a ghastly one and I refrain from citing evidence; which, however, is easily accessible to any one who cares to seek it. The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will be made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily be introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that smokeless powder will create any very important change, except in siege operations. On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into action out of sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within sight of the enemy its position can be almost invariably detected by the field-glass, irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness of its ammunition. Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.