A very common mistake is made in confusing the disciplinary battalions of the Algerian frontier with the world-famous Foreign Legion of the French Army, and consequently the Foreign Legion has gained an undeserved reputation for iron discipline and unduly harsh treatment of its men. The chief disabilities attendant on service in the Foreign Legion consist in periods of service in some of the peculiarly unhealthy localities included in French colonial possessions. The Foreign Legion suffered more than any other unit of the French service during its period of active service in French Cochin-China, while inland in Algeria its members are subjected to a peculiarly trying climate, and in other parts of French Africa the Foreign Legion does duty in company with a considerable amount of epidemic disease. Service in the Foreign Legion is, of course, a voluntary matter, and the fact that the Legion is always up to strength is sufficient evidence of methods adopted with regard to the discipline of the men and the treatment accorded to them. For, although the Legion itself is famous, its individual members are not, and it cannot be said to offer any conspicuous attractions to intending candidates for admission. It is probably the most cosmopolitan body of men in any part of the world, and the formation of such a body, in which the distinctions of nationality are abolished, is peculiar to the French nation. The Legion includes natives of every country populated by the Caucasian races, and especially of Italian, German, English, and French citizens. It is an agglomeration of adventurers, of whom the largest proportion desire only obscurity; it may be said that the Legion is made up of the bad bargains of half a world, but it is good fighting material, for all that. Ouida has drawn a highly coloured picture of service in the Foreign Legion in the book "Under Two Flags," but this picture consists mainly of romance with the soldiering left out, while actual service with the Legion involves soldiering with the romance left out. Hard soldiering, in various climates and under many conditions; in company with various kinds of men, of whom one never asks details of past history; one is accepted in the Legion for present soldierly qualities, and by tacit agreement the past is given the place allotted to most sleeping dogs. The period of service in the Legion has the merit of being intensely interesting to any man who, consciously or unconsciously, is a student of the psychology of his fellows. The Legion itself affords instances of devotion and self-denial as heroic as any that Ouida has penned, but it may be said here with regard not only to the Foreign Legion, but to all the armies of all the world, that such systematic persecution on the part of an individual officer toward any individual man as Ouida has pictured in "Under Two Flags" is a rank impossibility. The system of decentralisation of command, of