366 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



company, and inspected them repeatedly. The amount of work was not 

 excessive for any but weaklings — soon weeded out and put to sedentary 

 work ; it was generally hard and prolonged enough to prevent habits of 

 laziness from being formed. On the whole, a very unpleasant experience 

 for any person of fastidious tastes and habits ; tolerable for healthy in- 

 dividuals of an adaptable type ; satisfactory for the great majority. 



From the moral point of view, the question is more complex. I no 

 longer hold, as I did in the fever of my Dreyfusism, that the army is the 

 school of all the vices. Such exaggerated statements would harm the 

 best cause. The indictment may have been true of the old professional 

 army, recruited exclusively from the lowest strata, and entirely sepa- 

 rated from the rest of the nation. Yet I have known veterans of the 

 second empire who were simple-minded, honest, kindly, delightful old 

 fellows. A regiment is not much worse than a big factory. Factory life 

 in Europe is bad enough; military service extends its evils to agricul- 

 tural laborers, and also to men who would otherwise have escaped these 

 lowering influences. As for traces of moral uplift in the army, I have 

 totally failed to notice any. War may be a stern school of virtue : bar- 

 rack life is not. Honor, duty, patriotism are feelings instilled at school ; 

 they do not develop, but often deteriorate, during the term of compul- 

 sory service. Daily drudgery deadens enthusiasm. That is probably 

 why so many French " Nationalistes " tried to dodge the law and shirk 

 their military duty, in order to retain their patriotic feelings intact. 



The first evil of military life is that young men are transplanted 

 away from home, and no provision made for sane, wholesome entertain- 

 ment. Military clubs have greatly developed of late. They are still 

 too few, and so " philanthropic " in character as to frighten most men 

 away. A soldier is free every evening after five. This would be danger- 

 ous for most young workmen, who do not know what to do with their 

 leisure hours. The absence of any home circle makes it much worse. 

 For a long time the principle was to send young recruits as far as pos- 

 sible from their place of residence. The idea was to break down local 

 differences, to prevent the army from siding with the population in case 

 of political or social conflict (the brief mutiny of a southern regiment at 

 the time of the wine-growers' riots in 1907 shows that this is a real 

 danger), and to foster the old spirit of exclusive loyalty to the flag. 

 Now, the contrary principle of local (regional) recruiting has been 

 adopted, with a view to more rapid " mobilization," and also under the 

 pressure of public opinion. Even then, it was impossible for most sol- 

 diers to go home oftener than once a month. Uneducated young men, 

 friendless and idle, turned loose in the evening in a big city, could do 

 little good. There were certainly temptations to drunkenness and de- 

 bauchery greater than those which would assail the regular working man. 

 And unfortunately the repressive measures were a farce. The non- 



