In the case of the military spy, the French service affords more opportunities for the German agent than does the British. In the British service the officers of commissioned rank have many faults, but they are in nearly every case gentlemen, in the best sense of that much-abused word. In the citizen army of France, on the other hand, an officer may be anything--and in this is intended no disparagement on the brave Army of our present allies. The Republican system admits all to its ranks--perhaps it would be better to say that it compels all to enter its ranks--and the Republican ideal places a commission in the reach of all, without regard to birth or social standing. In many ways this is to the good, for it fosters the Republican spirit in the Army, and at the same time makes an efficient fighting machine; but it admits to the commissioned ranks, perhaps once in five hundred times, a man who is sufficiently unworthy of his country and its uniform to be guilty of acts which point to his openness to corruption. The case of Ullmo, though it concerns a naval officer, was one in point; it is not to be alleged that a British officer, enslaved by drugs and otherwise debased, would not have done as Ullmo did; but it is to be alleged that the debasing of Ullmo, which brought him down to the point at which subsequent corruption was not only possible but easy, is almost impossible in the British service--such a man would have been cashiered before he reached the point at which Ullmo fell to actual treachery and crime. The Republican system has its drawbacks, and a retention of the laws of caste to an extent which compels all commissioned officers to an acknowledgment of caste, is not altogether undesirable--except from the view-point of the spy. On the confession of a French writer on the subject, there are officers in the French service who form a "class of officers whose private life is no better regulated than their professional conduct." In such the spy finds comparatively easy prey; but their counterparts do not exist in the British services, for the caste laws of Army and Navy alike forbid ill-regulated lives, and officers of both services must be above suspicion when off parade. The universal service of France renders such a state of affairs almost impossible in the Republican Army. Where every man is a soldier, the staff of officers is so much greater that the presence of a few black sheep is practically unavoidable--and it must be said in common fairness that the French officer is more sternly supervised than his British confrere--yet lapses on the part of commissioned officers are more common than in the British services.