But it is exceedingly rare that a candidate is refused three times, as it is considered disgraceful not to serve as a soldier, though you should die in barracks or always be ailing. Men are passed even in advanced stages of heart disease or consumption, too weak almost to hold a gun. The chiefs argue that military service will strengthen the weak, and be very good for the strong. My scientific correspondent ironically adds: “It is, above all, very good for those who die in the middle of their three years, for, indeed, they were not hardened enough for such a difficult thing as life.” But there are so many ways of escaping from the three years’ servitude, the wonder is all do not profit by the opportunities offered. These are the lucky ones: the eldest son of seven brothers, the eldest son of a widow, of an invalid father, or of one blind or over seventy; those who have a brother “under the flag,” or students of all sorts. To quote my correspondent again: “There are, I believe, at least a hundred kinds of students, coming from you could never imagine where. I had a comrade who was a _clerc de contentieux_. I have never known, nor has anybody I have asked known, what on earth was a _clerc de contentieux_. He himself did not know, and when questioned about it he would answer, ‘Something in the way of law.’ He knew nothing more about his own profession. I am sure that he had none, but those magic words saved him two years’ service.” One of the worst consequences of militarism has of late years been witnessed in France for the stupefaction and edification of Europe—the terrorising of all classes. In 1898, we saw how the army comported itself in the Palace of Justice, which it may be said to have carried by assault. The whole place was packed with officers in uniform and in mufti, spurred and sabred menace going through the hall. The law was laughed at with amazing cynicism by these booted warriors. They refused to reply to the questions put to them, and threatened the civilians who presumed to differ from them with the horror of “a butchery.” They held the field with unexampled effrontery, and the terrorised jury spoke at their bidding. You must go far back in the Middle Ages to find another such tale of wholesale assassinations, perjuries, forgeries, cynical traffic with justice, insolent manipulation of documents, suppressed correspondence, distorted telegrams, bribed evidence, strident vituperation and manifestation of despotism, the more extraordinary by the multiplicity of despots; and so delighted was the befooled populace by this parade of rabid defiance and booted revolt against national tribunals (had the magistrates been honest and the jury courageous, and both held out in the performance of their duty, the suffrages of the people would just as likely have been on their side, since the successfulness of success is proverbial) that _Vive l’armée_ came to mean everything on earth, from the servant-maid’s traditional love of