call it so) is backed by a civil organisation which renders desertion within the frontiers almost an impossibility. What is the loss by desertion under the other system? How many double bounties and free kits are swindled from the country? What are the comparative expenses of the two armies for the apprehension of deserters, and for their detention after conviction?

As far as regards the expenses charged to Army estimates for recruiting and for the apprehension of deserters, I refer to the last available estimates of both countries at my disposal, those namely of 1876.

Of the 401,659 men comprising the German armies on the peace establishment, 311,423 were under Prussian administration. The annual quota of recruits for the whole army is about 130,000; the proportion for the troops under Prussian administration as nearly as possible 100,000. No special vote for recruiting was taken in their Army estimates, while that for the apprehension and conveyance of deserters, and of military prisoners while on the march amounted in the year above-mentioned to 4457. 10s.

Putting aside the question of providing the raw material under the two systems, one based on the general liability to military service and the other on voluntary enlistment, let us now compare the four main outlets of disbursement under the two systems as far as the private soldier is concerned-pay, clothing, feeding, pensioning and we shall at once see how Prussia, with a far less apparent expenditure, is able to provide an army so far superior in numbers to that for which Great Britain pays annually a much larger sum.

In the Army Estimates for 1875-6 the numbers on the British establishment were 129,281; the pay of the same amounted to 4,181,2617.

In the War Budget for 1875-6 the numbers on the Prussian establishment were 311,423, and the charge for regimental pay, not including the

officers of the Engineer Corps, amounted to 79,998,588 mark (three to a thaler), or, in round numbers, 3,999,9297. 88. sterling.

The clothing of the army on the British establishment cost 758,1027. ; that of the Prussian, 18,769,229 mark, or 998,4617. 9s. sterling.

For the feeding of the British army, not including reserve forces, a sum of 1,354,5287. was required. This sum did not include the cost of administration, but was solely for provisions. For the feeding of the Prussian army, also excluding administration, the sum of 37,522,108 mark, or 1,876,1057. 8s. sterling was required.

The demand for pensions made on the British Parliament amounted to 2,206,2567.; that on the Prussian Landtag to 984,2207. This does not include the pensions granted to men subsequently to, and in consequence of, the War of 1870-1. These are provided by a funded capital taken from the French indemnity, and do not therefore appear in the War Budget; nor indeed do the ordinary pensions, which are provided by a separate vote.

For the purpose of comparative analysis, I may mention that in Prussia 31,800 out-pensioners received annually 5,442,000 mark, or 272,100. sterling; while the charge for 63,234 out-pensioners on the British establishment amounted to 1,193,6007., distributed in sums varying from 1d. to 3s. 10d. per diem; the relative proportion being that the Prussian pension-list represents a little over 81. and the British army 197. sterling annually per individual man.

Looking at these figures I feel justified in contending that conscription lends to Prussian organisation that appearance of cheapness which permits a comparison so disadvantageous to our organisation.

Conscription, or, as I prefer to call it, the general liability to military service, in Germany, furnishes at a cost which does not appear in the War Budget a boundless supply of the

best recruiting material which can be imagined, and the civil organisation of the country nullifies desertion, except that before enlistment, a drain of the best youth of the country which has for some years excited very serious apprehension.

And now let us look at some details of figures connected with the heads above-mentioned, and let us ask the simple question-If our recruits had as hard and self-denying a life to look to as their Prussian comrades, how many recruits annually should we succeed in enticing to the standards? We will begin with the daily pay. The Prussian soldier (there is no difference between infantry and cavalry or artillery) has three and a half thaler as monthly pay, exactly 108. 6d.; therefore, reckoning the month at thirty days, 41d. per diem. From this he is subject to a daily deduction of one groschen three pfennige, or 1d., a day, for messing; he has to keep his underclothing in repair, and to find cleaning materials for his arms and accoutrements.

that the daily portion of meat contemplated amounts to something under a third of a pound.

No evening meal is provided. The soldier therefore must either stay his appetite between midday of one day and morning of the next with what remains over of his daily bread ration, or expend his remaining pittance of pay on his supper -I should be inclined to infer that he has not much over for tobacco, or for amusement.

The clothing is furnished in the same spirit of careful economy, and never becomes the property of the soldier. The period during which the clothing must last is not calculated for the individual benefit of the soldier, but of the government; the grants of money are administered by the captains under the superintendence of the superior regimental officers, and the time of wear is protracted as long as the clothing will hold together.

The daily ration consists of one and a half pounds of bread; the remainder of the messing is provided out of the daily deduction of one groschen three pfennige, a standing allowance from Government of three pfennige a day for all stations alike, and a sliding allowance, calculated quarterly, on the market prices of the various garrisons.

The three pfennige, somewhat over a farthing English, are intended for the provision of a breakfast, which consists generally of a cup of coffee or a bowl of meal-soup. The cost of the mid-day meal is defrayed from the surplus of the messing money. The sliding allowance is calculated on the market value of 150 grammes of meat, uncooked; 92 grammes of rice, or 118 grammes of ordinary groats or meal; 733 grammes of peas, beans, or lentils, or 1.7 litre of potatoes, and 8 grammes of salt. As there are 500 grammes to the Prussian pound, it will be seen

To the comparative rates of pension of the two armies I have already adverted. Under ordinary circumstances the highest rate of pension which can be drawn by a company or squadron serjeant-major (Wachtmeister or Feldwebel) amounts to fourteen thaler, 42 mark, or 21. 28. Od. monthly. This, after a service of thirty-six years; or, combined with total incapacity for further service, after twenty-five years; or, in consequence of injury received on duty which renders the man totally unable to earn his bread.

There is another factor which we must not leave out of sight. I am not writing for controversy but for information. A very considerable part of the pension for soldiers entitled to pension is furnished by their employment in civil situations. private soldier holding a civil appointment of the value of 197. 10s. Od. yearly is considered as receiving an

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equivalent for his pension, which, during the tenure of his appointment is therefore discontinued.

On turning over the notes on which I have framed the first part of this paper, I find that I calculated, certainly without reliable data, the loss to the country caused by the withdrawal of industrial labour, and by the burthens otherwise imposed as a consequence of the general liability to service in Prussia alone, as amounting when added to the actual result which I have obtained above, at something like five millions sterling. This sum does not include the expense of recruiting, so large a portion of which is thrown on the civil estimates, nor the amount of relief afforded to the military estimates by the provision of civil employment for discharged soldiers. How large this is may be judged from the fact that twelve year's service in the ranks (nine of which as non-commissioned officers) entitles the soldier to be inscribed as a candidate for civil employment, and, as we gather from evidence recently given before a Parlimentary Committee by the German Military Attaché in London, there are about 122,000 old soldiers so employed. It must further be remembered that general liability to military service affects all classes. In England, least of all European countries, could you apply this principle to the poor and not to the rich. Considering the nature of our service, the constant change of quarters, the fact that our two principal universities are not garrison towns (nearly all the German towns are, and in these, garrison students, who are liable to service, are allowed to serve their time), the unpopularity which among a certain particular school in England attaches to the profession of arms, the large proportion of young men belonging to the class from whence officers are necessarily taken who are employed in commercial pursuits, considering also that the number of young men employed in our public offices, is infinite

simally small when compared to those who devote themselves to free pursuits, that there is a large number of wealthy young men who do not see the necessity of adopting any profession whatever, that a third of our whole army serves in India, and a further fraction in the colonies, taking, I say, all these facts into consideration, I think it will be agreed that compulsory service would produce a disturbance of our social relations to which the country would never submit except under the pressure of a misfortune such as fell on Prussia in 1806; and which may God avert!

Further than this, how unequally would the burthen press in this country!

With a population of about fortytwo millions, Germany keeps up a peace army of 401,659 men, more than double the strength of ours, inclusive of the Imperial force serving in India. In Germany about 440,000 young men yearly attain the age of liability, and (under the three years' system) about 130,000 are annually called up to the ranks. There are six causes for exemption, besides physical and moral disability, and the lists are weeded until none but the most efficient, the very thews and sinews of the Fatherland, are called up to the ranks.

Take the case of Great Britain and Ireland. Our joint population amounts to thirty-three millions, the requirements of our army to about 180,000 men. The proportion therefore of young men actually required for the ranks would be very much smaller than is the case in Germany. To what scheming, shuffling, favouritism, and jobbing, would this give rise? and with what feeling would the selected few find themselves dragged into a profession which they had not chosen? Why, because I stand 5 ft. 10 in. in height, and have not a defect in my frame, should I be compelled to serve three years under the musket or in the saddle, while my neighbour, who has picked up a cough, or has some other physical defect, is allowed a three years'

start of me in the race of life, which may make the difference of success or failure? Why am I to be mulcted for the benefit of the country, while my neighbour goes scot free? Compulsory military service not only imposes an amount of burthen on the country which is only less felt than a liberal military budget because its channels are for the most part unseen, but it is grossly unfair to individuals, and is one of the greatest hindrances to the material prosperity of an industrial country.

In

I now draw my conclusions. doing so, I must not be suspected even of desiring to reflect in any way on the Prussian army, or on the thrifty and economical organisation which pares every cheese down to the very rind, or on what would appear to us as a disregard of the welfare of the individual.

The system arose out of a grave necessity, no less than the total subjection of the Fatherland to that military dictatorship which cursed the beginning of the century, and from which we alone were exempt. The system then inaugurated by Stein and worked out by Scharnhorst has been perfected by the experiences of subsequent years, and, though as a freethinking Englishman I cannot allow it to be perfection, it is the most admirable, the most perfect military organisation which I have ever studied.

After this exordium, let me draw my conclusions. It is a fact that with our present (as compared with other countries) most liberal provision for the pay, feeding, clothing, and other LONDON, August 31, 1878.

material advantages of the soldier while serving, and for his pension on discharge, we cannot get the men in sufficient numbers for our requirement; that the class we attract is inferior both from a physical and a moral point of view, and that the advantages while serving do not suffice to prevent our soldiers from deserting in numbers which bring military administrators to desperation. Does any one think seriously that if the British War Minister could obtain his recruits for nothing, could ensure the impossibility of their evading their engagements by desertion, could compel them to serve on a surplus pay of something like 1 d. a day, out of which they would have to provide their evening meal as a sequence to a very moderate meatdinner, represented by one-third of a pound of uncooked meat daily, while at the conclusion of their service he could transfer their pensions to the budget of some civil department of the State, does any one suppose that he could burthen our country with the present army estimates ?

I think not, but I think also that I have not unfairly argued out the conclusions at which I have arrived. I hold that the apparent relative cheapness of the German organisation is due to the system of general liability to military service, in other words, to conscription; and that conscription, indirectly if not directly, is as costly to the country which adopts it as is the raising an army by voluntary enlistment and all its attendant expenses.

A FEW years ago, a literary man of some eminence, since prematurely gone from us, came to a publisher in a state of great excitement. "I have just picked up the most wonderful thing at a bookstall," he said. "Did you ever hear of an African explorer of the name of Singleton? Can you tell me anything about this book of his? It It contains the most extraordinary anticipations of the discoveries of Speke, Burton, and Livingstone in Central Africa. Here is a man-Captain Singleton, the name is, there is no date on the book-who professes to have travelled across Africa from Zanzibar to the Gold Coast, and who tells you what he and his party saw on each day's march, what wild beasts they met, how they were treated by the natives, where they halted, and how far they walked at a stretch. They had nothing but a chart and a pocketcompass, and yet they crossed the whole continent. But the extraordinary part of it is that he came across the sources of the Nile, and saw it flowing from a lake exactly as Speke describes. This man really ought to get the credit of the discovery. He must have been there, for he gives the particulars of each day's march in the most minute way, and besides, you see, he has been confirmed. I can't understand how I never heard of him before. I don't think his name has turned up in any of these discussions at the Geographical Society. Can you tell me anything about him? When did he live? "Captain Singleton! Captain Singleton!" said the publisher; "that is surely the name of the hero of one of Defoe's stories ;" and turning to the list of Defoe's works, he found that his memory had not deceived him.

The Adventures of Captain Singleton, and his account of the customs and

manners of Central Africa, are the creation of the author of Robinson Crusoe; but this pushes the surprise at his anticipations of recent discovery only a step farther back. I must admit for my own part, that till I thought of following the Captain's itinerary on a modern map, I had supposed from his general appearance of accuracy, that our ancestors had information about Central Africa which had somehow been allowed to drop out of knowledge. It is always the case in supposed anticipations of modern discoveries, that the bygone investigator or speculator, has hit upon the most startling feature, the most blazing promontory, in an unexplored country, or unobserved fact, or unthought-of contrivance. He has announced, in short, by some happy intuition, all that the mass of us ever come to know, and we are consequently ready to give him as much credit as the patient discoverer or inventor who has brought certitude or practical value to his random guesses. Captain Singleton appeared to be a worthy predecessor and anticipator of Livingstone and Speke, because at the beginning of the seventeenth century, he narrated how in the interior of Africa, which the mapmakers of the time represented as an unexplored blank, he had seen vast lakes, and a river issuing from one of them which he believed to be the Nile. The one fact in the discoveries of African travellers before Stanley that had laid hold of popular interest was that the Nile had its source in a huge lake, and not, as had previously been the common belief, in the Mountains of the Moon. Captain Singleton was apparently aware of this, and therefore it seemed that his merits as an explorer had been unfairly allowed to die out of the memories of

men.