The citizen is still expected to give twenty-five years of service to his country; of these, two--or rather three, under the law passed by the action of the war ministry of M. Viviani just before the outbreak of the present continental war--years are expected to be spent in the active Army, and another eleven in the reserve of the active Army. During this second period of eleven years men are recalled to the colours--that is, to service with the active Army--for periods of a month at a time. At the conclusion of this first thirteen years of service, men pass automatically to the Territorial Army, which is supposed to serve for the purposes of home defence only. Service in the Territorial Army lasts six years, after which the soldier passes to six years in the reserve of the Territorial Army. After this the French citizen is exempt from any further military obligation. Registered at the age of twenty, the French citizen is called to the colours on the first of October following his registration, and passes from the active Army two years later on September 30th. In old days, when the period of service in the active Army was for five years, the French Army was an unpopular institution, but the shortening of service together with the knowledge, possessed by the nation as a whole, that the need for every citizen soldier would eventually rise through the action of Germany, have combined to render the Army not only an important item in national life, but a popular one. There used to be grousers and bad characters by the score, but now they are rarely found. In time of peace the active Army of France is so organised as to form the skeleton on which to build the war forces of the Republic. The system is one of twenty permanent Army Corps based as follows: the first at Lille, the second at Amiens, the third at Rouen, the fourth at Le Mans, the fifth at Orleans, the sixth at Châlons-sur-Marne, the seventh at Besançon, the eighth at Bourges, the ninth at Tours, the tenth at Rennes, the eleventh at Nantes, the twelfth at Limoges, the thirteenth at Clermont-Ferrand, the fourteenth at Lyons, the fifteenth at Marseilles, the sixteenth at Montpellier, the seventeenth at Toulouse, the eighteenth at Bordeaux, the nineteenth at Algiers, and the twentieth at Nancy. The strength of an Army Corps is made up of two divisions of infantry, a brigade of cavalry, a brigade of horse and field artillery, and one "squadron of train," the last named including the non-combatants of the Army Corps. Exceptions are the Sixth Army Corps with head-quarters at Châlons, the seventh at Besançon, and the nineteenth at Algiers; of these the first mentioned two contain three divisions of infantry instead of two, while the Algerian Corps has four divisions, one of which is detached for duty in Tunis.