just four times as many soldiers pro- | coach. With them the outcry is loud portionately as we have police. The and general. Everything taxable is police are, however, of a retiring disposition; the soldier, on the contrary, is painfully conspicuous, and has an unfortunate habit of making the most of himself. The illustration is therefore not a happy one; let us try another.

the landwehr for ten years, whence the Ersatz he has to serve twelve years they are transferred to the landsturm there before being transferred to the for another ten years. But this is not landsturm; and no German is free of all. Service is universal; all must the landsturm until he is forty-five. serve; there is no such thing as a bal- The army numbers 486,983 men withlot with lucky numbers, and so on; no out counting its officers; and in case great power can afford to do that now- of invasion would have three millions adays. Those who do not join the under arms. In peace time its warriors army must join the reserve, so that form ten per cent. of the population. every man from his nineteenth to his forty-second year must be in the army, the navy, the reserve, the landwehr, or the landsturm. In war time the regular army is expected to number 1,753,000 men, and the landsturm four millions. In peace time the warriors form eight and a half per cent. of the population.

Italy spends over thirteen millions a year on its army and navy, of which nearly four millions are devoted to its navy. Italy also claims all its men, who have to serve their country in some way from their twentieth to their thirty-ninth year; but how they serve it is decided by lot. Nearly one hundred thousand of them are required for the regular army, the rest join either the mobile militia or the permanent militia. The "recruit crop " amounts to over three hundred and twenty thousand young men a year, and the army on a peace footing numbered last May two hundred and seventy-eight thousand, with over half a million in the mobile militia, and 1,651,000 in the territorial militia. Its war strength in peace time is nine per cent. of its population.

Next to Germany in its war budget, spending some ten millions more, is Great Britain; but as we have kept ourselves out of these calculations, we can pass on to France, which has a war expenditure of something like thirtyfour and a half millions, of which about a third is devoted to a navy which exceeds in tonnage as in horse-power the whole of that of its mercantile marine. Here, again, service is universal. From twenty to forty-five every Frenchman. must be enrolled in the active army or the reserves. In the army he serves three years, in the reserve of the active army he serves ten years, in the territorial army he serves six years, in the territorial reserve another six. In peace France has an army of five hundred and sixty-four thousand men, and even its horses number one hundred and forty-one thousand. If to this we add the reserve, we find an army of 2,350,000, behind which is a territorial army of nine hundred thousand, and a territorial reserve of over a million. At a moderate estimate France could raise an army of two and a half millions of men within a fortnight of the declaration of war. In peace time the men in its army form fourteen and threefourths per cent. of its population.

Between Italy and Germany there is a wide interval in expenditure. Germany spends over twenty-one millions Russia spends about forty-five milon its army, and about two and a half lions on its army and navy. Its Euromillions on its navy. Here, again, all pean army on a peace footing numbers must serve, and the numbers taken for 750,900 men, and on a war footing over the regular army depend on the state two and a half millions, its first line of the finances, the men not chosen as amounting to 1,355,000. Service is regulars being assigned to the Ersatz, universal, every man of the age of so as to be ready when called upon. twenty-one being liable unless he is a The German is liable for service in the cleric, a doctor, or a teacher. Every army or navy when he is seventeen, year Russia has eight hundred and but he is not called up until he is seventy thousand young men to choose twenty. If he is chosen for the army from, and of these two hundred and he serves three years with the army sixty thousand are taken for the army, and four in the reserve; if he goes to the rest going to the reserves. They

serve five years nominally, and are then transferred to the reserve, from which after thirteen years they are transferred to another reserve in which they serve another five years. In peace time these "defenders" form seven and one-half per cent. of the population. These are the five great powers of Europe, and among them in the time of peace they keep guard with two million four hundred thousand soldiers, and close on half a million horses the men under arms being nearly ten per cent. of the population.

thousand, with a war strength of one hundred and fifteen thousand; Sweden and Norway have an army of fifty-six thousand, with a war strength of perhaps five times as much; and Switzerland has an army of one hundred and thirty-one thousand, with eighty-one thousand in the landwehr and two hundred and seventy-three thousand in the landsturm, every Swiss who does not care to serve having to pay a special tax, which only yields the State an average income of about £55,000 a year.

But these are not all. Belgium has Adding these together, we find, as an army of nearly fifty thousand men, we said at the outset, that Europe has with a war strength of three times as three millions of men under arms durmany; Denmark has an army of forty-ing peace; and the labor of these durone thousand, with a war strength of ing the three years they are on the fifty-eight thousand; Greece has an average under training represents an army of twenty-four thousand, with a indirect loss to the community of £360,war strength of one hundred thousand; 000,000. The £146,000,000 a year paid Holland has an army of twenty thou- for their training and equipment is sand, with a war strength of sixty-nine only a loss in so far as it might have thousand; Portugal has an army of been spent or employed productively. thirty-four thousand, with a war Enormous as it is, the state of things is strength of one hundred and fifty thousand; Roumania has an army of fortyeight thousand, with a war strength of one hundred and thirty thousand; Servia has an army of twenty thousand, with a war strength of one hundred thousand; Spain has an army of ninety

cheaper than actual war. In the war of 1870, France alone lost £700,000,000, directly or indirectly, and that was £19 per head of her population; she is now paying, directly or indirectly, about thirty shillings per head per year.

W. J. GORDON

THE IGNORANCE OF CIVILIZATION. Civilization supplies us with some queer facts. Professor Stanley Hall (says the Pall Mall) has discovered that of the sixyear old school children in Boston, Massachusetts, sixty per cent. have never seen a robin, growing corn, blackberries, or potatoes, and eighteen per cent. have never seen a cow. Some of these last even imagined that the cows in the picture-books were drawn life-sized, making it feasible to tread on a cow inadvertently, as one might on a frog. What does Dame Nature think of such unnatural ignorance? Yet this glimpse into the crowded city life of America could without doubt be easily capped in our own country. The exceeding great joy and wonder of our little London street arabs when they see the green fields or the sea for the first time has often been the subject of sympathetic description. Of all

the charities established in this land of ours, it would be difficult to name any more deserving of good-will and support than those which enable the children of the poor of our great cities to escape for a little from man's town to catch perhaps their first glimpse of God's country. Our contemporary jokingly suggests that there are in the country many children of six who have not seen the wonders of a great city, and suggests that "a hansom cab is a much more sublime and wonderful piece of the world's furniture than a cow. Jesting apart, most people will think that those children who never have occasion to leave the country are the best off. The Garden of Eden was still a Paradise, though it possessed no metropolis. Nowadays we have many and great capitals, but no paradise.

Sheffield Independent.

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