There is an immense amount of newspaper reading and letter-writing, the former taste predominating; but our own mailbags are ample enough to satisfy any one that the same preponderance which is maintained by London over New York in correspondence is to be found in the English army over the American. Many Irish and Germans here have no inducements to write letters, but there are few who are unable to read their newspapers. What is it, then, one may reasonably ask, which would satisfy the grumbler, who finds fault with the expenditure of standing armies, that he has got value for his money when he contrasts the British troops here with the battalions on the Potomac? It is the efficiency produced by obedience, which is the very life of discipline: the latter is obedience incorporated, and, in motion or at rest, acting by fixed rules, with something approaching to certainty in its results. The small army in Canada could be massed together, with its artillery and transport, in a very short time, and directed with precision to any one point, though it is a series of detachments on garrison duty rather than a _corps d’armée_, and it has neither cavalry nor baggage animals. With all the liberal (if not occasionally extravagant) outlay, and the cost of transporting it, the force in a few weeks would be far less expensive than an American corps of the same strength; and it is no disparagement to the latter to say they would be less efficient than the British. I do not speak of actual fighting; for our battle-fields in Canada tell how desperate may be the encounters between the armies. Our force would be under the orders of experienced officers. The staff would consist of men who have seen service in the Russian war, in Asia, in India, and in China, and who have witnessed the operations of great European armies. The United States is laboriously seeking to acquire experience, at a cost which may be ruinous to its national finances, and a delay which may be fatal to its cause; but it cannot galvanise the inert mass with the fire of military efficiency, though it burns, we are told, with hidden volcanic energies, and is pregnant with patriotic life. The use of an army in war is to fight, to be able to move to and after its enemy, to beat and to pursue him.