Perhaps the best system of preparing the youth and young men of a country for military service is that practised in Switzerland. Switzerland is a typical democracy, and yet no country in the world has a more universal and efficient system of military training for its youth and young men. After the conclusion of the war of 1870, Germany, guided by the iron will of Bismarck, divulged to Switzerland that the mailed fist had an itching palm for Swiss territory. Immediately an army of a hundred thousand Swiss mobilized on the frontier. They were the best-armed, the best-trained, and altogether the most efficient soldiers in Europe. Every man of them could shoot to kill. They were the flower of the mountains. Bismarck concluded that the game was not worth the candle. If Switzerland had not been armed to the teeth and ready, that country to-day would be a part of Germany. The Swiss have not the remotest idea of making an aggressive move on any neighboring country, but they hold themselves in perfect readiness to see to it that no other nation can find it profitable to make an aggressive move on Switzerland. Switzerland makes her military training a part of her school system. The chubby, rosy-cheeked little Swiss boys are taught to play soldier with wooden imitation guns, and as they grow, the training later becomes more comprehensive, more exacting, more scientific, until, finally, the young men find real guns in their hands, find themselves commanded by, and receiving instructions from, real officers, and they are taught to shoot. When their school training is over, their military training and term of military service also are over. They are ready for civil life, but, too, they are ready at any moment for the call of their country from civil life to shoulder rifle and knapsack and go to the front. This is the system that we should adopt in our country. It places no burden upon the schoolboy or the young man; on the contrary, it is a source of keen enjoyment, like any other manly game. The beneficial psychological effect is simple: The youth is taught obedience, his powers of perception are quickened, his alertness increased, his physique greatly strengthened, his health benefited, and his personal habits governed by laws of temperance and hygiene, with the result that his efficiency for usefulness in all the business and affairs of civil life afterward is greatly enhanced. Thus, in Switzerland, the earning power of the population is increased out of all proportion to the cost for the training and maintenance of the entire army. Mr. Richard Stockton, Jr., in his book, "Peace Insurance," ably expresses the value of military training, as follows: * * * * *