This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment, and where the relations between officers and men are fairly sympathetic and cordial, there would seem to be fewer reasons for unhappiness and suffering than in the military service of Italy, Austria, or Russia. The American soldier is generally well taken care of and well treated; and while his life, in time of peace, is not exciting, it is easier and less monotonous than that of a factory operative, and it is hard to understand why he should be abnormally disposed to self-destruction. His suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil population is, and for the same reasons. _Professional Classes Furnish Most Suicides_ Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners, bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half to three times as great as that of the population generally.