But what inducement is offered the American soldier? He is put in a camp of instruction as soon as he enlists, and sent to the border as soon as he is fit for service. The border is a delightful country, according to dime novels, but no sober man with his eyes open finds it anything but dull. It is a sparsely settled country, uninteresting to every one but the speculator and hunter. The soldier has nothing to speculate with, and is very seldom allowed to go hunting. He is kept within narrow bounds, sees almost no one but his own officers and comrades, has nothing but camp duty to do, except when on long scouts outside camp lines, or, still more unpleasant, when detailed for police, gardening, or other laborious duties within the camp. It naturally occurs to the American soldier that if he is to work eight hours a day in building houses or stables, or digging wells, or throwing up embankments, or ploughing the soil, or hoeing garden crops for the benefit of the post, that he might as well be doing the same sort of work in the States at a dollar and a half a day, and have his freedom between sunset and sunrise. Except that police precautions against the Indians are still necessary, the only excuse that any one, except the military officer, seems inclined to discover for the existence of our army at all, is that we should have a nucleus of a military establishment in case of necessity. But what is the nucleus worth? Two thousand officers, among whom undoubtedly are a number of the best educated soldiers in the world, constitute nearly all of our military force upon whom we could confidently rely in case of trouble. The enlisted man, taking him as an average character, is practically worthless at a time when the enlargement of the army may suddenly become necessary. In France or Germany officers may at any time be selected from the ranks. Of course the systems of the two countries differ greatly from ours. Conscription and the requirement that every adult man shall serve a portion of his time in the army, makes a soldier of every one. But is it not rather significant that the better class of men, to whom we would have to look for additional officers in case of the necessity of suddenly making a large army, are seldom found among our own regulars? Some of the reasons for this deplorable deficiency of valuable material have already been suggested. There is nothing to induce a man to enter military life, and the enlisted man is too frequently used as a common laborer.