The cost of the system of a modern army is very much less than that of the old-fashioned armies. The United Kingdom spent till lately (including loan money) about eighteen million pounds sterling upon her army, India rarely less than fourteen million pounds sterling and an average of fifteen million pounds, and the British Empire, outside the United Kingdom and India, two million pounds, or an average of thirty-five million pounds sterling in all upon land forces. The expenditure of the United Kingdom upon land forces has been permanently increased to an enormous extent by the South African war and cannot now be estimated. The expenditure of France and Germany upon land forces is greatly less; and of Russia, large as is her peace army, less again. But France and Germany in the event of war can immediately each of them place millions of armed men in the field in proper army formation and with adequate command, whereas the United Kingdom can place a doubtful three corps in the field in India with great difficulty, and, in the true sense of the word, no organized force at all at home without an incredible amount of reorganization and waste of time after the declaration of war. It is contended by the authorities responsible for the British army that two army corps could be placed in the field at home, and elaborate paper arrangements exist for this purpose; but the facts are as I state them, and not as they are professed to be. It is pretended that three corps of regulars were despatched to South Africa. But the cavalry and artillery were, in fact, created by lavish expenditure a long time after the war had begun and after disasters caused by their non-existence. Centralized as is the administrative system of France and Germany in everything except war, the necessities of modern warfare have forced upon the governments of those countries a large amount of decentralization as concerns military matters, and the less efficient military machines of the United Kingdom and of Russia are far more centralized than are the more efficient machines of Germany and of France. The army corps districts have in the latter countries so much autonomy as to recall to the political student the federal organization of the United States rather than the government of a highly centralized modern power. As soon, however, as war breaks out, the military states of time of peace would be grouped, and the four or five groups known as “armies,” also, of course, theoretically, brought together under the directing eye of the generalissimo. In the case, at all events, of Germany, unity of direction is perfectly combined with decentralization and individual initiative.