and internal disorder, maintained the best army in Europe. The British army, though employed far differently, retained substantially the Peninsular system. 37. _European Armies 1815-1870._--The events of the period 1815-1859 showed afresh that such long-service armies were incomparably the best form of military machine for the purpose of giving expression to a hostile "view" (not "feeling"). Austrian armies triumphed in Italy, French armies in Spain, Belgium, Algeria, Italy and Russia, British in innumerable and exacting colonial wars. Only the Prussian forces retained the characteristics of the levies of 1813, and the enthusiasm which had carried these through Leipzig and the other great battles was hardly to be expected of their sons, ranged on the side of despotism in the troubled times of 1848-1850. But the principle was not permitted to die out. The Bronnzell-Olmutz incident of 1850 (see SEVEN WEEKS' WAR) showed that the organization of 1813 was defective, and this was altered in spite of the fiercest opposition of all classes. Soon afterwards, and before the new Prussian army proved itself on a great battlefield, the American Civil War, a fiercer struggle than any of those which followed it in Europe, illustrated the capabilities and the weaknesses of voluntary-service troops. Here the hostile "view" was replaced by a hostile "feeling," and the battles of the disciplined enthusiasts on either side were of a very different kind from those of contemporary Europe. But, if the experiences of 1861-1865 proved that armies voluntarily enlisted "for the war" were capable of unexcelled feats of endurance, they proved further that such armies, whose discipline and training in peace were relatively little, or indeed wholly absent, were incapable of forcing a swift decision. The European "nation in arms," whatever its other failings, certainly achieved its task, or failed decisively to do so, in the shortest possible time. Only the special characteristics of the American theatre of war gave the Union and Confederate volunteers the space and time necessary for the creation of armies, and so the great struggle in North America passed without affecting seriously the war ideas and preparations of Europe. The weakness of the staff work with which both sides were credited helped further to confirm the belief of the Prussians in their system, and in this instance they were justified by the immense superiority of their own general staff to that of any army in existence. It was in this particular that a corps of 1870 differed so essentially from a corps of Napoleon's time. The formal organization had not been altered save as the varying relative importance of the separate arms had dictated. The almost intangible spirit which animates the members of a general staff, causes them not merely to "think"--that was always in the quartermaster-general's department--but to "think alike," so that a few