Although the “armed nation” has replaced in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Roumania, and Bulgaria the smaller professional armies of the eighteenth century, the popular belief that the numerical strength of field armies has enormously increased is not so completely well founded as at first sight might be supposed. It is true that each nation can put into the entire field of warfare larger numbers than that nation could put into the field a century ago. But it is still not beyond the bounds of possibility that in certain cases small armies may produce results as remarkable as those which attended British operations in the Peninsula in the early part of the nineteenth century, and, on the other hand, although there will, upon the whole, in future continental wars, be larger armies in the field, no one general is likely personally to handle or to place upon a field of battle a larger army than that with which Napoleon traversed Europe before he invaded Russia. The principles of pure military science as set forth in books have not been greatly changed during the nineteenth century. The Prussian Clausewitz only explained for us the doctrines of Bonaparte; and the latest writers—such as the Frenchmen Derrécagaix and Lewal—only continue Clausewitz. The theory of the armed nation has received extension, but, after all, the Prussian system in its essentials dates from Jena, and the steps by which it has produced the admirable existing armies of France, Austria, and Roumania have been but slow. The United States stand apart. Their resources are so fabulously great that they and they alone are able to wait for war before making war preparations. No power will attack the United States. All powers will submit to many things and yield many strong points rather than fight the United States. The only territorial neighbors of the republic are not only not in a position to enter into military rivalry with her on the American continent, but are not advancing their military establishments with the growth of their or of her population. They are of themselves not only unable to attack, but equally unable in the long run effectively to resist her. The whole question, then, unfortunately for us Europeans, is a European question, and I need make but little reference to happier lands across the greater seas.