Three million men--the élite of Europe--perished in the Napoleonic wars. It is said that after those wars the height standard of the French adult population fell abruptly 1 inch. However that may be, it is quite certain that the physical fitness of the French people was immensely worsened by the drain of the Napoleonic wars, since, as the result of a century of militarism, France is compelled every few years to reduce the standard of physical fitness in order to keep up her military strength, so that now even three-feet dwarfs are impressed. [75] I think one may say fairly that it _was_ Sydney Smith's wit rather than Bacon's or Bentham's wisdom which killed this curious illusion. [76] See the distinction established at the beginning of the next chapter. [77] M. Pierre Loti, who happened to be at Madrid when the troops were leaving to fight the Americans, wrote: "They are, indeed, still the solid and splendid Spanish troops, heroic in every epoch; one needs only to look at them to divine the woe that awaits the American shopkeepers when brought face to face with such soldiers." He prophesied _des surprises sanglantes_. M. Loti is a member of the French Academy. [78] See also letter quoted, pp. 230-231. [79] "Patriotism and Empire." Grant Richards. [80] "For permanent work the soldier is worse than useless; his whole training tends to make him a weakling. He has the easiest of lives; he has no freedom and no responsibility. He is, politically and socially, a child, with rations instead of rights--treated like a child, punished like a child, dressed prettily and washed and combed like a child, excused for outbreaks of naughtiness like a child, forbidden to marry like a child, and called "Tommy" like a child. He has no real work to keep him from going mad except housemaid's work" ("John Bull's Other Island"). All those familiar with the large body of French literature, dealing with the evils of barrack-life, know how strongly that criticism confirms Mr. Bernard Shaw's generalization. [81] September 11, 1899. [82] Things must have reached a pretty pass in England when the owner of the _Daily Mail_ and the patron of Mr. Blatchford can devote a column and a half over his own signature to reproaching in vigorous terms the hysteria and sensationalism, of his own readers.