almost on the page that introduces him, and the poor fellow goes to the dogs, not from inherent viciousness, but because the barracks has spoiled him for farm-work, for steady labour. The lucky students destined for civil professions when they leave the Polytechnique, the École Centrale, the École Forestière, have only a year’s service, and that under the most comfortable circumstances. They are officers at once, with £100 a year, a servant, and lodgings in town. This cannot be said to be much of a sacrifice upon the altar of patriotism compared with that the ordinary citizen makes in shouldering his gun and heavy knapsack, in undergoing all the weary and repugnant experiences of barrack-life. As Urbain Gohier says: “Under a Democratic Republic there is only one way of escaping from the terrible barracks—the wearing of the epaulette; there is only one means of not being a soldier—becoming an officer.” You will find in France that it is precisely the people who benefit by these means of escaping the worst consequences of militarism, and women who know nothing at all about it and could never endure five minutes of the martyrdom, who are its most violent eulogists. It is difficult to explain military arrogance in France, for it certainly is not based on the fact that officers alone go to the wars. When the battle-cry rings over the land the whole nation arms itself and goes off to fight, as well as the officers, and when the nation stays at home, so do the officers. When I asked a friend of General de Gallifet the motives of his resignation, he replied haughtily: “How could you expect Gallifet to tolerate the interference in military affairs of a miserable pekin like Waldeck-Rousseau?” In vain did I point out that when an officer mixes himself up in politics and tries, in a mischievous and underhand fashion, to injure the Government, the Prime Minister has every right to interfere, since, in his quality of “miserable pekin,” politics is his business and not a general’s. And the man who was speaking to me was but a “pekin” himself, who, like the Prime Minister, had served in the army, and yet quite approved of martial contempt for all who do not wear a sabre or a plumed kepi. Watch these generals ride through the streets of Paris, beribboned and befrogged, and note the lofty, godlike way they gaze down upon the adoring multitude. Are they back from the wars? Do all these glorious and shining medals mean battles won? Where has Zurlinden fought with conspicuous glory? Where Mercier? Billot? Gonse? And yet they all look as proud and fatuous as the marshals of Bonaparte returning from their successful raids across Europe.