uct all the field combatants in
Saint-Cyr, and the officers for the fortresses at the Ecole
Polytechnique.

These military critics are very positive in their statements. The _Revue
hebdomadaire_, M. Veuglaire in the _Revue encyclopedique_, Captain
Gilbert (G. G.) in the _Nouvelle Revue_, support each other in these
statements. The former, in an article on the instruction of the
officers, says that this instruction is very badly conducted; the
special editor of the _Nouvelle Revue_, after having demonstrated that
the competitions, the methods, the programmes, considered individually,
are characterized by grave defects, proceeds to show that, taken
together, there is a complete absence of co-ordination. "No general
view," he exclaims, "no common impulse, presides over the functioning of
our establishments of military education. Saint-Cyr, the Ecole
Polytechnique, the Ecole d'application, the Ecole de guerre, are so many
entities absolutely independent; have distinct inspections, comites de
surveillance having no relations with each other; admitting only one
common attachment,--the Minister of War. Now, our ministers have a too
precarious and too brief existence to exercise any regulating influence
upon the schools." The administration varies according to the personal
qualities of the successive directors; sometimes it is the physical
exercises which are cultivated at the expense of the intellectual, and
sometimes the reverse. The general commanding at Saint-Cyr two or three
years ago, a former colonel of Zouaves, was, above all, a man of action,
and that which he exercised upon the school "was bad;" he was succeeded
by one of the most brilliant professors of tactics at the Ecole de
guerre, who gave to the oral instruction an importance which it had
never had before, the evolutions, the perfectioning of the manual of
arms, the manoeuvring in the field, the blacking of the shoes, and the
proper alignment of the beds in the caserne.

"At the Ecole de Versailles, where are formed the future officers of
artillery and of engineers, there is to be found the same incoherence.
The changes brought about each year in the '_coefficients de
majoration_' demonstrate with how little spirit of consecutiveness these
affairs are managed. Having attributed more importance to the general
information than to the qualities of manoeuvring, you are quite stupefied
to see admitted novices, bachelors who have failed, more or less, and
very medio