To these rehearsals of warlike business I attribute it that many otherwise clever and sensible men have allowed themselves to believe that this sham soldiery of the little States, is in fact a real soldiery; they must otherwise have seen in a moment that with so small a force neither could a small territory be defended, nor a large one attacked; neither is there indeed any need for even this small force, since in Germany the question of relative strength is merged in that of equality of religion. Hunger, cold, nakedness, and privation are the benefits which Vuillaume considers the soldier-game to hold out to his scholars, as lessons in patient endurance and fortitude; now these are the very advantages which the State schools above referred to confer upon the young men of the country--and that much more thoroughly and efficaciously than Vuillaume does--which, of course, is the entire object of the institution. I am quite aware that there are not infrequent cases in which perhaps a third part of the population escapes being made into soldiery, and consequently gets none of the valuable practice in question; at the same time there can be no doubt that if we even get the length of having two-thirds of the population with rifles on their shoulders in the place of scythes, the remaining third (inasmuch as it has considerably less to mow, to thresh, and to subsist upon) obtains the before-mentioned benefits (of cold, hunger, nakedness, &c.), almost gratis, and without having to fire so much as a single shot. Let but barracks be multiplied in a sufficient ratio in a country, in a province, parish, town, village (as the case may be), and the remainder of the houses will of themselves settle down, into suburbs, and accessory and out-buildings to the barracks, nay, become absolute conventual establishments, in which the three monastic vows (the Prince alone being _père provincial_) are, whether _taken_ or _not_, at all events most religiously _kept_.