to the large majority of his intelligent compatriots, still less to the working classes, and so they pin their faith to the military dictator. The popularity of the French army to-day, the outcome, be it said, of a well-worked political campaign, in which credulous French officers have been shamelessly used as mere tools, is hard for us to understand, if it were for nothing else but the heavy mortgage on man’s freshest and most ardent years which it implies. How, one asks one’s self, can independent citizens accept such a tax when combined resistance to it ought to be so easy? For, after all, in a democracy it should be the voice of the people that rules, and not the law of a dead tyrant. Militarism to the outsider appears to be not only a demoralising force, but a monstrous expense; and it passes imagination how so thrifty a race as the French can go on complacently squandering millions on the support of an army that has stood still for thirty years and may not move for thirty more. It would be compensation enough if one could only believe what, in the face of facts, experience teaches us to be false, that military life hardens and solidifies a man and gives him an ideal of honour higher than any he would learn in any trade or profession that might assist him to a fortune. The proof that it does not solidify the citizen may be accepted when we remember the coarsening influences of the barracks. How general is the complaint that the three years spent in the army have unfitted a country lad for farm service, a town youth for the shop; and when you dwell on the rapid downward careers of retired officers, of men dismissed from service, of their inability, once out of regiment lines, to stand alone and cope with the difficulties of individual strife, it is impossible to agree to the theory that intelligence and force of character are acquired in the army. I once heard that _bête comme un militaire_ is an accepted conclusion in diplomatic circles; and I think the conclusion a just one. An intelligent soldier over thirty is very rare to find, however bright and pleasant young officers may sometimes be. As for the military ideal of honour, that is hardly a thing to speak of with patience.