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another invasion; again the cry was raised, "À Berlin! Another military parade was to be made through the country, burning and destroying as before. The Rhine provinces were to be annexed, and peace was to be signed in Berlin. But in the meantime we had created an army; we had armed the nation, and were prepared for them. In a few weeks we made prisoners of the whole of their army; we took all their fortresses. The military parade was through France, not through Germany; instead of France annexing the Rhine provinces, we annexed Alsace and Lorraine; instead of peace being signed in Berlin, it was signed in Paris. You blame us for keeping Alsace and Lorraine, but, if you will allow me to say so, you do this through ignorance; you are talking of what you do not understand. Instead of blaming us for keeping Strasburg and Metz, you ought to be very much obliged to us for doing so. It is this, and this alone, that has preserved the peace of Europe for thirteen years. The present fury of the French against Germany is not caused by the annexation of provinces that once belonged to Germany, but because in the war of 1870 the German arms inflicted on their vanity a deadly wound. Their hatred to us, their craving for revenge would have been no less if we had left them Alsace and Lorraine, but their power of gratifying it would have been much greater. The cry for revenge would not then have been merely a cry, it would long ere this have become a reality, and our frontier lands would again have been swimming in blood. Germany does not desire war with France, and with Metz and Strasburg in her hands she has the power to prevent it. France does desire war with Germany, and with Metz and Strasburg in her hands she would have been in a position to attempt it. You take upon yourself to blame us for annexing provinces in order to strengthen our frontier and minimise the danger of invasion, but are you quite sure your own hands are clean in this matter? Did you not annex the Punjaub, Burmah, and Oude solely and

entirely for your own comfort and security? and had you one jot more right to them than we had to Alsace and Lorraine? Really, my dear Bull, you must permit me to tell you this is pure cant of the most unvarnished kind, suited, perhaps to the self-laudatory atmosphere in which it is your pleasure to dwell, but ridiculous in the eyes of all the world besides. Suppose we change places for a moment; suppose your beautiful country had been invaded fourteen or fifteen times during the last hundred years, its fields devastated, its towns pillaged, its lovely residences (perhaps you have one yourself) levelled with the ground, would you have liked it? Suppose you were threatened with another invasion, that in all probability would be more horrible than any that had preceded it, would you be very tolerant of the advice of some neighbour whose land had never yet been pressed by the foot of the invader? Would you listen to his advice to disband your army and trust to the benevolent instincts of mankind? Would you not rather think he was an impertinent ass, and tell him to mind his own business? Well, I am not so bad mannered as that; but I think, perhaps, if you were to mind your own business, and leave us to mind ours, the cause of peace would not suffer. I think I have shown you that we have some excuse for turning our land into a barrack as you say, and for maintaining a large army; and I think if you will give me a little more time I can show you that this army is not quite so injurious to the country as you assume. To quote one of your economic writers: "The system is not wholly a curse, because it gives the peasant habits of discipline, and the terms of service are quite sufficient to make him a soldier without unfitting him for the arts of peace." Our army is more like your militia; our soldiers have no foreign service, no tropical or unhealthy climates to contend with, no small, sometimes deadly, wars in all parts of the world. They serve their term of service, one year, or three years, in their own districts; the discipline is very strict; there is

scarcely any drunkenness, no desertion, no military crimes; the percentage of sickness is only two per 1,000; only four per cent. are unable to read and write; the men are drawn for military service at the age of twenty; after they have learnt a trade or occupation in one year, or three years, they return to their trade or occupation— often much better men-very seldom, if ever, the worse for their military service. We consider this system far more humane and sensible than your system of enlisting boys of seventeen before they have learnt a trade or occupation and dismissing them at twenty-three, when they are too old to learn one. When we look at the returns of crime in your army, of the percentage of deaths, of invalids, of deserters, of drunkenness, we are aghast; we hardly understand how your army can continue to do its work, and we can quite understand that you consider it a demoralising service. We consider it to be the duty of every man, gentle or simple, to fit himself to take a useful part in the protection of his native land. You, on the other hand, entrust the honour and safety of your country to the waifs and strays the dregs of the population, as you call them. With us the rank and file of the army have certain advantages over their fellow-citizens; with you they are considered scarcely fit to associate with their fellow-citizens at all. Our practice all through is completely antagonistic to yours. You may consider your plan the best, but we prefer ours. We would rather not be obliged to keep such an immense army on foot, but with France threatening us on one side and Russia on the other, and with some of your papers-and, indeed, some of your statesmencoquetting with Slav aspirations-"beating a drum in a sick man's room," as I once expressed it-we see no possibility of doing without it. We trust a European war will be avoided; but we are ready, we are on the watch, and if we see burglars combining to break into our house, it is very likely we shall shoot them down before they actually do so. But the fact is, my dear Bull, it is not

our army, it is not our occupation of Alsace and Lorraine, that so excites your bile against us; it is because we have not swallowed your favourite nostrum-free trade! That's where the shoe pinches. Well, we did try it some years ago, and we found it did not agree with us, that it interfered with the employment of our people; so we gave it up, and our industries have increased immensely ever since we did so. You say our industries are being ruined by our vast military organisation. We don't think so. We are not so rich as you are, naturally. Without a seaboard, we can never expect to have your trade and commerce. We are so to speak, industrial babies. Forty years ago we were in industrial swaddling clothes; we had nothing-literally nothing; we had everything to create; whilst you were in the full vigour of industrial manhood and had everything—a monopoly of all the manufacturing industries of the world's capital, iron, coal, machinery, cotton, woollen, &c. We have not overtaken you, certainly, but we are rapidly doing so. We already supply you with a great deal you used to supply yourselves, and, in spite of the drain of our military services, we expect very soon we shall show you our heels. Our old-world economy tells us that "the wealth of a nation is the value of what it produces; " your economy, on the other hand, teaches you to worship trades and commerce as the gods of national wealth. Apparently you think nothing of production, for you actually point to the startling decline in your agricultural production, to the extinction of many of your industries, as a proof of your prosperity. Your cereal products, we read, have fallen off twenty-five per cent. in ten years, and your cattle and sheep also. Our cereal products, on the other hand, have increased six hundred per cent. in forty years, and our sheep and cattle also. We now grow one-third of the potato crop of the world; our production of sugar has increased marvellously; many of your weak industries-silk, woollen-that have almost left your country are extending in ours with extraordinary

rapidity. We stand third on the list of cotton manufacturers; we have the greatest length of railway of any nation, with the exception of America; our public debt only amounts to 215,000,000l., which we could pay off tomorrow by the sale of the various State properties. Now, however much you may commiserate us and tell us that we are ruining ourselves, we don't think we are. We are satisfied we have made very satisfactory progress, and we hope, if peace is granted us, to make a great deal more. We have not so many rich men as you, but we have fewer poor men. The fortunes of our working classes are growing more rapidly than the fortunes of the rich, whilst with you, on the other hand, the accumulation of wealth into the hands of the few seems to be increasing every year. As regards your superior civilisation, we are not so much impressed with it as you imagine. When we read your statistics of crime; of the frightful prevalence of drunkenness and brutality; of the 200,000 able-bodied paupers who are supported by the State; of the numbers of your prisoners; of the cost of your police-when we see you closing every place of amusement on Sunday except the public house; when we read of 1,200 applications for the most degraded and disgraceful occupation a human being is capable of that of public hangman-we have come to the conclusion that in morality, humanity, sobriety, education, and true civilisation, we have not only nothing to learn from you, but a great deal to teach you. Adieu, my dear Bull, bon voyage!'

XIX.

PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE.

'WHAT are you going to be, my boy?' said a father to his son just leaving college. 'A lawyer, father.' 'A lawyer! Why, it is a hard apprenticeship; long study