fifty-two miles off. It was terribly hard work. For twenty odd miles our route was across a desert, in which not a drop of water was to be found. We halted every hour, and twice during the night stopped long enough to make some coffee for the men. The result of the precaution taken by our commanding officer was that in a battalion eight hundred strong, there were only eleven men who had to fall out during the whole march; and of these it was discovered that four had only been out of hospital a very few days, but had managed to join their companies before the regiment marched. Could such a feat be performed by any of the battalions filled with mere lads, as all our regiments have been since the Limited Enlistment Act came into full operation? To this question there can be but one answer.

In a country like England, where industrial enterprises are so numerous, and where there is a constant demand for steady middle-aged men to fill various situations of trust-situations in which education of a high standard is not essential—it would not be difficult to provide for our discharged soldiers. The London Corps of Commissionaires is a proof of this. And it is a standing shame to our Government that something of the kind has never yet been taken in hand by the War Office. Moreover, veterans

who have done their work ought not to be left without a pension which would provide them with every reasonable comfort when they get old.

Another anomaly-or, to speak more plainly, a great national disgrace, and a decided hindrance towards our ever recruiting the quantity and the quality of men which we might otherwise enlist for the service is the way in which our soldiers' wives, and, still worse, their widows, are treated. It is acknowledged that the best soldiers we have are the married men; or at least such used to be the case before the present system of enlisting mere boys and sending them away before they become men came into force. We used to, and we do still for that matter, allow a certain number of the men to marry. But when these had to be ordered abroad with their regiments, their wives and children were left to the mercy of the charitable, or to the care of those who liked to look after them. To their credit be it said, the present Government has intimated that a provision for soldiers' wives and children will be included in the army estimates for the present year; a measure that has certainly not been determined upon before time. Had this been done twenty or thirty years ago a vast deal of money that has been lost through desertions, and the punishments brought about by that offence, would have been saved to the country. Even as it is there is no certain provision of any kind for the widows and orphans of soldiers who die in the service; but it is to be hoped that, if the mania for Germanizing

the service comes to an end, and common sense prevails, we shall see these poor women and children saved from having to go on the parish when their husbands and fathers die, or are killed, in the service of their country.

If we may put any faith in the old adage, that "what everybody says must be true," no man in England is more opposed to the reorganization of the service on the German system than the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief of the British army. And it must be admitted that, wherever and whenever the Duke has had an opportunity during the last few years, he has given utterance to words which, when one reads between the lines, fully corroborate what the world believes his views to be. One thing His Royal Highness has several times-and once, in particular, at a dinner given at the Mansion House about eighteen months ago insisted upon. It is, as I said before, that our army is not like that of any other European nation. The army corps, divisions, brigades, and regiments of other nations, to say nothing of their system of conscription and the men they have on reserve, are formed for the purpose of defending their own frontiers from the invasion of their neighbours. Our regiments, on the other hand, are almost entirely kept up for the purpose of maintaining our colonies, and preserving the latter in our possession, free from internal as well as external foes. Our forces at home are recruiting depôts, from which our troops in India and the other parts of the Empire are, so to speak, to be fed. When a regiment comes home it remains in the United Kingdom a certain number of years for the purpose of regaining its strength and numbers, and qualifying for service abroad. Nothing is more improbable I might almost say impossible-than an invasion of this country by any foreign Power. But, supposing for an instant that such an event did happen, it is not only upon our regular troops that we should depend. To begin with, the enemy would find a very awkward adversary to contend with in the fleet. But should the invader land on our shores, what would be the result? This same question, almost in these very words, was put to me by a German officer the day after the taking of Sedan, when he and so many of his fellow-countrymen were drunk with the insolence of victory. And what I said to that individual-who was polite enough to tell me that before many years were over these Islands would have to submit to the German legions as France had been forced to do—I repeat here, viz., that thousands might invade this country, but barely units would ever return alive. To say nothing of a militia, volunteers, and the regulars we have at home, the nation would rise as one man, and those we could not kill in battle, our very women and children

would poison in the food they eat and the water they drank. When talking of the defence of our country, we should not forget that the volunteers form a body of men most admirably adapted for this work. It is all very well for a certain school of military Germanizers-men who believe that every soldierlike ordinance in this world comes forth from Germany-to despise and sneer at a force of men who give up so much of their time to learn the art of soldiery and the means of using their rifles. But from what I have seen of the much-be-praised soldiers who invaded France with such success, I would rather have fifty average English or Scotch volunteers behind me in the event of a deadly struggle, than twice that number of Prussians, Bavarians, or Saxons. There is no institution, military or civil, that foreigners wonder at, and admire so much, as our volunteers; and yet there is no body of men kept so much in the background. The authorities seem never tired of washing our dirty linen in the shape of battalions only two or three hundred strong before the whole world, but they appear to shun showing strangers a body of men who, when the conditions under which they engage, their numbers, and their proficiency in their work, are taken into consideration, must certainly be regarded as the finest and most patriotic body of men that any country has ever seen. Of these, as indeed of all our forces, whether regular, militia, or volunteers, may we truly apply the words of Marshal (General) Soult to a relative of mine, who was taken prisoner by the French on the retreat to Corunna. "Your men," said the marshal, speaking of the English troops, "have one quality which will always make them good soldiers under all circumstances they invariably obey their officers."

A

That a certain amount of reorganization was, and is still, required in our army there can be no doubt whatever. Every human institution must from time to time be more or less changed or reformed. But in England we have made the great mistake of taking as what we should imitate military institutions, with which our own have little, if anything, in common. German and an English soldier are no more like each other than an English farm labourer is like an Italian vine-dresser. On this part alone of my subject a volume of considerable size might be written. Take a single instance of the discipline in the two armies. I remember seeing, a few hours after the battle of Wörth was over, a party of German infantry paraded for guard duty. One of the men had his belts dirty, or his accoutrements in bad order, upon which the officer inspecting the detachment very coolly slapped the offender's face. Would such a thing be possible in our own service? And yet there has been introduced into our military system during the last ten years anomalies which, to an

66

English military man, are nearly as outrageous as this. Take, for instance, certain pages which have been officially inserted in our "Army List" for the last few years, headed "Mobilization of the Forces at Home." Let no Englishman, on any account, who has a spark of patriotism in him, allow any foreign friend who understands English to see this extraordinary document, which reads like a bad joke, or an untimely squib on the army. In it will be found a very pretty distribution of no less than eight-purely imaginary- Army Corps;" but with this trifling shortcoming, namely, that these Corps have imaginary divisions, which have also imaginary-brigades; and the latter are chiefly composed of regiments stationed anywhere in the kingdom. One example of this will be enough. I have before me a list of "The First Army Corps," of which the head-quarters are at Colchester. In the first brigade of the First Division, the three battalions which compose the brigade are certainly stationed at Colchester. But as regards the second brigade of the same Division, the three battalions are stationed at Fermoy, Castlebar, and at Buttevant! Again, the first brigade of the Second Division of the same corps has its head-quarters at Chelmsford; but the three battalions composing that brigade are at the Curragh, at Tipperary, and at Birr. And this is called the "Mobilization of the Forces at Home." Let us hope that when the scheme of the new territorial army is matured it will be found free from such follies and absurdities as what I have here pointed out.

Want of space prevents me from even giving an outline of what has been, and what ought to be, done with regard to the reorganization of our Indian army. It was my lot, after an absence of twenty years from the East, to revisit that country in 1875-76, as one of the Special Correspondents with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. What I saw of our army there as it is, and as compared with what it was in former days, I will, with the permission of the Editor, give an account of in a future Number of this Review. For the present I can only hope to have made it pretty clear that the reorganization of our Home Forces, so far, and in the direction it has been carried out up to the present time, is, to say the least of it, in every way simply a series of military blunders.

M. LAING MEASON.

See Hart's "Army List," January, 1881, p. 66.

ART. IV.--RECENT WORKS ON THE STATE OF

GERMANY

IN THE FIFTEENTH AND BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, BY GERMAN AUTHORS.

HIS

ISTORICAL literature in Germany has for some time past been stamped with a certain hostile exasperation against the Catholic Church, which will remain for some years a blot on the profound erudition of a country we are accustomed to look upon as a centre of learning. The unity of Germany effected since the war of 1870-1871 cannot be considered the direct cause of certain erroneous exaggerations in matters of history: yet the two facts are really connected.

It is no secret that at the proclamation of the Empire on the victorious conclusion of the war, Pius IX. made the first advances towards friendly relations with the new Imperial throne; it is also known that these advances were received with coldness, not to say contempt, at the Court of Berlin, and that the German Government lent all its power to protect and foster a schism in the Catholic Church by at once granting a pension of several thousand thalers to Dr. Reinkens, elected bishop by a few hundred Catholics who protested against the dogma of the Infallibility.

Several writers, following in Dr. Reinken's footsteps, have devoted their energies to seeking proofs that a protestation against the Church, which might appropriately be styled "Old Catholicism," existed a hundred years ago, and continued through all the Middle Ages; and that, beginning at Claudius of Turin and Hincmar of Rheims, the line of "Old Catholic" bishops has never been interrupted. Truly these historians see "Old Catholicism" everywhere-in the antagonists of Gregory VII. as well as in those of Boniface VIII.

During the last three years we have been gaining ground. The troubled waters are settling into calm, and from the still deep have risen a series of writers who, lifting their voice, have proclaimed certain historical facts too long hidden, and certain details relating to the Church and to civilization never known. till to-day.

Their works, far from being controversial, are but a simple exposition of facts, related with the truthfulness of a conscientious historian, and grouped with the eye and appreciation of an artist. They acknowledge frankly the faults of eminent men, regardless of their rank in history. They describe, they paint, they delineate with photographic minuteness even, but they do not