There was, of course, an obvious difference between the case of these boys and the armies of volunteers which Lord Kitchener was at that time recruiting in England. This was compulsory service in being, the so-called conscription which then and for many a long day after so seriously agitated the tender bosoms of English agitators and champions of personal liberty. These young Frenchmen had got to be soldiers whether they liked it or not. But compulsory service, whatever its uninformed opponents may say, is service and not slavery. That is precisely why in France, in peace as well as in war-time, the inspections are presided over by the civil and not the military authorities. The Prefect, or his deputy, in conducting them, is fulfilling one of his chief functions, which is to represent the people as their official champion, and check any tendency to the possible evils of militarism. It is his bounden duty to see that no man is taken for service in the army who on account of physical incapacity or for any other reason ought and has the right to remain a civilian. There was, however, little need for this kind of paternal _surveillance_ in the extra _Conseils de Révision_ which were held during the war, except possibly in the way of restraining some whose capacity to bear arms was not so certain as their enthusiasm. There was not a suspicion of reluctance. One and all they were itching to be up and at them. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville a crowd of between three and four hundred of them were waiting outside in the street, talking to their friends and relations, who looked just as proud as the boys themselves that they had been called up, and just as eager that they should be passed as fit—if not _bons pour service_ in the Army, at all events for some kind of auxiliary service. It was impossible to look at them and not to think of the hundreds of thousands of boys in England who, in spite of all that could be done to coax and wheedle and bribe them into the army, in spite of every kind of ignoble coercion short of compulsion, were at that time still hanging back from the honour and glory of serving their country in arms. Not even the thought of those other still more numerous hundreds of thousands who had gladly volunteered and given up everything else at the one supreme call could quite take the taste of the contrast out of my mouth.