armor clad monitors, 9 armored gunboats, 3 corvettes, 9 first-class and 5 second-class gunboats, 2 torpedo cruisers, 7 first-class and 9 second-class torpedo boats, 5 torpedo launches, and 12 school ships. The navy is manned by 267 officers and about 4,500 sailors, not including conscripts to the number of 8,500 men. The entire cost of the defence of Sweden exceeds ten million dollars a year. The movement for a reorganization of the defences has not been caused by any change in the policy of peace, which has faithfully been carried out by all the rulers of the Bernadotte dynasty. The ruler of Sweden and her people desire peace, but not as a gift of mercy from the great powers, but as a self-chosen right which can be effectively defended if necessary. The ever-increasing armament of the European powers has made a strengthening of the Swedish arms unavoidable, but the Swedish government was the first to announce its readiness to accept the invitation of Czar Nicholas II. of Russia to a conference for the discussion of a general reduction of the regular armies. Germany was made the pattern for the reorganization of the army and navy, the Swedish government having followed the German also in the treatment of the labor question, with schemes of accident and old-age insurance, accepted by the Riksdag. King Oscar, at his succession to the throne, gave evidence of his desire to meet the reasonable demands of his Norwegian subjects. He sanctioned, in 1873, the abolition of the office of a governor-general of Norway, the government at Christiania to be presided over by a Norwegian minister of state. To the later Norwegian demands for a separate flag, consular service and ministry of foreign affairs, King Oscar has been unyielding. The flag question is of subordinate importance. King Oscar, in 1899, has refused to sanction the resolution of the Storthing, three times passed, for a flag without the mark of Union, for the reason that the flag with that mark was offered to Norway by his father, Oscar I., and gratefully accepted when the country had no colors at all, except the Swedish. The Swedish people will carry their old flag with the mark of Union, irrespective of any changes made in the Norwegian colors. More serious are the questions of consular and diplomatic service. In 1893, the Swedish government offered to compromise by establishing a common ministry of foreign affairs whose head might be indifferently a Swede or a Norwegian. This was rejected by the Norwegian Storthing. The same offer was made in 1837, when the dispute first arose, provided that the Norwegian troops should share the duty of the common defence of both kingdoms. The Swedish Riksdag of 1893 passed a resolution, in compliance with which King Oscar for a second time refused to sanction the bill of Norwegian consulates.