The license and brutality of the soldiery in reference to women, the distorted gallant attentions, the unhappy complicity of the commanders in breaches of morals, become incomprehensible if they are contrasted with the rigid discipline which sometimes punishes with death the least rebellion against a superior, and condemns to loss of rank, to long years of confinement, the theft of a pair of officer’s gloves. Just minds are expressing the opinion that France will only escape ruin by a more healthy recognition of social obligations, which may cause her, at length, to understand that the honour of the woman of the masses, the future of her children, the personal dignity of the man, should have more value in the eye of the military code than a pair of officer’s gloves, or than the demands of shop-keepers. In the face of promises violated, of prospects blighted, the garrison nevertheless goes away, insulting occasionally with a cruel irony, the tears of mothers, and the lamentations of families. The commanders, faithful to the laws of French honour, have caused the tobacco and drink supplied by too confiding hands to be respected. This kind of integrity satisfied, the bugle sounds, the trumpets re-echo, the drum beats, the ensign is unfurled, France marches to glory, advancing in her onward path over the bodies of children and women sacrificed by our soldiers. These profligate habits, hawked from town to town by our garrisons, appear especially lamentable in small localities. Uproarious orgies which, from morning to evening, sadden the passer by, issue from public-houses termed officers’ “cafés.” There, men who wish for nothing in life beyond sensual gratifications, spend their entire day, glass or billiard cue in hand, cigar in mouth, and make themselves conspicuous by the brutality of their manners. One understands that, with these notions of morals, our courts-martial sometimes treat rape as a pastime, hardly within the jurisdiction of the police-court, if they do not give it triumphant acquittal, and that their verdicts often condemn to a few days’ imprisonment, public outrages on modesty. To give an idea of the spirit of this legislation, I shall make reference to the case of Léandri.[47] That officer was brought before a military tribunal, under the law for preventing rape. A large body of soldiers escorted him with a defiant and threatening attitude that had the air of setting justice and morality at nought. Léandri’s counsel went so far as to make his frequenting the “quartier Bréda” meritorious in him: “_He has mistresses_,” said he, “_is not that the common practice?_”