The new army means an increase not in numbers alone, for we may accept as a principle that the best will rule in a mass composed of all sorts from best to worst--that is, if we grant relative equality in the numbers of best and worst, and of each intervening grade. Periods of commercial prosperity have left the Army dependent mainly on the unemployed for its recruits, with a corresponding loss in education and moral tone, but the new army is composed of men of all grades, actuated for the most part by the highest possible impulses, and asking only to be allowed to give of their best. Enlisting in this spirit, it is inevitable that these men should look upward, and thus the best will rule. For purposes of rule the Army needs the very best, for its own sake and that of the future of the nation’s manhood. In gaining the best and their influence, the Army will increase in social standing and moral tone as well as in numbers. No man comes out from the Army as he went in; there are many types, and with the enormous increase in numbers at the present time, the number of types will increase as well as the number of representatives of each type. Country youths, town dwellers, agricultural labourers--who often make the best and keenest soldiers--men who know nothing of what labour is like, skilled artisans, and men from the office--all come to the ranks of the Army, which, shaping them to compliance with discipline, still leaves the stamp of individuality. The soldiers of the new army will come back to their ordinary avocations bearing the stamp of military training, stronger physically, and different in many ways--mainly improved ways. But the metal on which the stamp of the Army is impressed will remain the same, for one is first a man and then a soldier. The instances of Prussian brutality evident to-day, and an eternal disgrace to the German nation, do not prove anything against the Prussian military system, but afford evidence that brutality is ingrained in the Prussian before he goes up as a conscript to begin his training. So, whatever the characteristics of a man may be, the Army cannot make a brave soldier out of a cowardly civilian, and it cannot make a good man into a bad one; it accentuates certain traits of character and drives others into the background, but it neither destroys nor creates. It is a training school which, taken in the right way, brings out all that is best in a man, stiffens him to face the battle of life as well as the battles of military service, and strengthens self-confidence and self-respect. The men who are seen to have suffered in character during their military training are by no means examples from which one can cite the result of discipline and army work, for it is not the training that is at fault, but the inherent weakness of the men themselves. The social standing of the majority of recruits joining the new army renders it ten times more true of the Army of to-day than of the Army of yesterday, that military