For--and this is another effect of the war which may be noticed in this connection--for many years to come we shall be a military nation. The necessity of guarding against a similar outbreak in the future will prompt the increase of our standing army; while the same cause, as well as the taste for military pursuits which our people will have acquired during this war, will keep the great mass of the people prepared to respond to the first call in the hour of danger. The militia laws will be revived, revised, and established on a firmer basis than ever before, and the antiquated militia musters and 'June trainings' will again become our most cherished holidays. Independent military organizations will spring up and flourish all over the land, and he who aforetime wore his gorgeous uniform at the heavy cost of running the gauntlet of his neighbors' sneers and gibes as a holiday soldier, will now be honored in enrolling his name among the 'Independent Rifles' of his native village. The youth will labor to acquire the elements of military knowledge and reduce them to practice, not with a view to holiday parades, but with an eye to the possible exigencies of the future, knowing that when the hour of trial shall come, the post of honor and of fame will be open to all, and that he who has most cultivated the military art in time of peace will bid fair to win in the race for preferment. Military schools will derive a new importance in our country; they will be patronized by high and low, and most of our institutions of learning will, ere many years, have a military as well as a scientific and classical department. And thus will the knowledge of the art of war become so universally diffused among the people, that in the event of another great struggle, we shall not be left, as heretofore, to depend upon raw and undisciplined volunteers, but an army of well-trained troops will spring like magic to the field, ready to march at once to victory, without the necessity of 'camps of instruction' and twelve months' delays. And when that day does come, woe to that potentate who shall have the temerity to provoke a war with our race of soldiers: his legions will be swept away like chaff before the whirlwind, and only defeat and disgrace will settle upon his banners.