horrors, modifying the rigors of discipline,
specializing and restricting the military service--are available; the
last two, indeed, are directly at variance with the necessities of the
actual situation. For the acceptance thus rendered necessary of this
survival of the past, this persistence of war and all its consequences,
he finds that the intelligence may recognize the fact that to place
itself under the direction of those more competent is not necessarily to
abdicate, that an unprejudiced examination will demonstrate the
necessity of military obedience. For the soul, for the spiritual
qualities, he finds nothing in the progress of modern ideas "to aid in
the perfecting of the instruments and the apprenticeship of death." The
blind fanaticism of the Mohammedans, the unquestioning faith of the
early Christians, which faced extinction even with joy, have been
replaced among modern men by sceptical, questioning, and even material
philosophies which "offer us really nothing which is worthy a sincere
faith in a dream, in a survival eternal and heavenly." So true is this,
that, were he able, by enlightening him, to detach a Breton conscript
from his blind faith which enables him to die bravely for the honor of
the country, he would not do so, he would "prefer to betray philosophy."
"A ridiculous compromise, perhaps, but certainly less disastrous than a
defeat. This is one of the ironical inconsequences to which war condemns
us, and for which it alone is responsible. Whilst waiting for its
suppression, let us resign ourselves to submit to it, and let us
endeavor to make the best of its violences; it imposes upon us at least
the cultivation of the virile virtues, the esteem of a labor which does
not enrich, and which places us in a position to interrogate very
closely, willingly or unwillingly, the profundity of the tomb."

Another writer, who concerns himself more exclusively with military
matters, M. Abel Veuglaire, arrives at an equally depressing conclusion.
He, too, finds nothing to quite replace the old-time qualities which fed
the military spirit. The soldier of the last century, under the rod of
his corporal, did not rebel because he had been made an artificial
being, brutalized, deprived of all those sentiments which, if they could
excite enthusiasm, could also produce discouragement. In him, the desire
for wine and pillage, the eagerness for quarrel, the sentiment of a
point of honor, were carefully substituted fo