I have heard in France a great deal of fine talk, which would be admirable and noble if it were true, about the soldier’s abnegation, his lack of ambition, his disinterestedness, and modest pay. A Frenchman who had just returned from a tour through America once said to me: “It is our army which maintains our superiority; through it we keep intact a high ideal. I was struck by this fact in America, where there is no army and consequently no ideal. There must be a generous part of the nation kept aside for disinterested work.” We need only glance through the military history of the world to recognise the utter bombast and falseness of this view. Officers are no more disinterested than other men, and there are, in fact, no men so splendidly paid for their services in all lands. The general who wins a battle is a hero for ever, though no better brains, no finer qualities may go to the winning of that battle than go to the making of a useful law, the winning of an election, and less than goes to a scientific discovery or the writing of a great book. He has, as well as his pay, his prestige, his popularity; probably a title and an estate. Jove himself could scarcely ask for more. Take, then, the ordinary officer. What does he work for if it is not for military advancement? Is not the title of captain, of major, of colonel, of general, dearer to him far than the millions of the millionaire? And surely our payment is measured by the price we put upon it! The man who prefers millions nowadays does not become a soldier, though in Napoleon’s days, with the sacking of all Europe in view, it was perhaps the swiftest road to fortune. But he is paid for his services in the coin he loves best; and what more can he require? Why pose as the victim of his own virtues, and prate of his disinterestedness? I was very much struck by a tragic military novel written recently by two French officers: _Au Tableau_, a tale of army deceptions and bitternesses in preferment. Here is the truth put nakedly, and here is a revelation of military want of judgment, of justice. The general is a dense brute and a snob, who chooses his officers by their rank and fortune, and not by their merit. The hero, of Irish extraction, is a man of culture, of delicate sentiment, of intensely active conscience and brains. He is sacrificed all along the line to the base intrigues of inferior men, comrades who spy and tittle-tattle, idiot aristocrats who look down on their untitled brother officers, and dazzle by their expensive hospitality. Defeated and discouraged, he leaves the army to find himself an outcast, a _déclassé_, with nothing before him but suicide. The moral of the tale, of course, is, that even in the army it is better to stay there, however hard things may go with an officer; for outside there is nothing for him but suspicion, averted glances, ill-will, and slander. But the picture it draws of the army from within is one of unspeakable sadness. This vaunted