and
among nations of European descent. In the Grecian and Roman military
history the change was steadily from a citizen army to an army of
mercenaries. In the days of the early greatness of Athens, Thebes,
and Sparta, in the days when the Roman Republic conquered what world
it knew, the armies were filled with citizen soldiers. But gradually
the citizens refused to serve in the armies, or became unable to
render good service. The Greek states described by Polybius, with but
few exceptions, hired others to do their fighting for them. The Romans
of the days of Augustus had utterly ceased to furnish any cavalry, and
were rapidly ceasing to furnish any infantry, to the legions and
cohorts. When the civilization came to an end, there were no longer
citizens in the ranks of the soldiers. The change from the citizen
army to the army of mercenaries had been completed.

Now, the exact reverse has been the case with us in modern times. A
few centuries ago the mercenary soldier was the principal figure in
most armies, and in great numbers of cases the mercenary soldier was
an alien. In the wars of religion in France, in the Thirty Years' War
in Germany, in the wars that immediately thereafter marked the
beginning of the break-up of the great Polish Kingdom, the regiments
and brigades of foreign soldiers formed a striking and leading feature
in every army. Too often the men of the country in which the fighting
took place played merely the ignoble part of victims, the burghers and
peasants appearing in but limited numbers in the mercenary armies by
which they were plundered. Gradually this has all changed, until now
practically every army is a citizen army, and the mercenary has almost
disappeared, while the army exists on a vaster scale than ever before
in history. This is so among the military monarchies of Europe. In our
own Civil War of the United States the same thing occurred, peaceful
people as we are. At that time more than two generations had passed
since the War of Independence. During the whole of that period the
people had been engaged in no life-and-death struggle; and yet, when
the Civil War broke out, and after some costly and bitter lessons at
the beginning, the fighting spirit of the people was shown to better
advantage than ever before. The war was peculiarly a war for a
principle, a war waged by each side for an ideal, and while faults and
shortcomings were plentiful among the combatants, there was
comparatively