"I was not meaning that, I only want to alter them, to make them simpler, to reorganise the whole thing. To-day, when two lieutenants meet on duty in the morning, and one tells the other that yesterday he dined with such and such a man of wealth, the other asks, with deadly seriousness: 'Does he give one decent things to eat?' Then the first speaker, who is otherwise very proud of the fact that, owing to mental stupidity, he cannot learn anything by heart, rattles off the long _menu_, together with the names of the various wines! If an old staff-officer who knows how to judge good wine did this I should not object--the man has a right, I might almost say a sacred duty, to recognise with gratitude what the Almighty allows him to have in the shape of excellent wine--but when a lieutenant of twenty does this it is nothing but a vice to boast of. When people are young they ought not to think about what is put before them, they ought not indeed to know anything about it, but they are unfortunately being educated into _gourmands_ and _gourmets_. Whenever a lieutenant is invited to dinner the lady of the house wrings her hands and says: 'We must not give this and that, it's not good enough; and if we don't give these fine gentlemen good things to eat they won't come here again, they are so dreadfully spoiled nowadays.'" "It is, as you know, the universal custom to invite captains or staff-officers to dinner, lieutenants only to balls, but is the supper after a ball anything else but a dinner served later in the evening? There are caviare, lobster salads, pasties of goose-liver--I know the whole list--and one bottle of champagne follows the other, and that is the folly. No, not the folly, but the wickedness which Society commits against the young officers; you are so terribly spoiled that you become firmly convinced that a luxurious life is the only life; you see it everywhere, in every house you go into, and it is, therefore, not to be wondered at if you get false ideas." "But how do you propose to alter Society?" "In this way: In future it should not be simply a question of eating and drinking; the lieutenants should really have society; not only a huge supper. But, above all, in future the young lieutenant must be treated as a human being, not as a little god. He must understand that people do not stand on tremendous ceremony with him and involve themselves in expense on his behalf; he must be made to feel that he is nothing but a young man of good family.