done to a body of men having as much right to expect justice as any other class among Englishmen.

2. Short service, which has left our army in a state of disintegration-with a deficiency of 8500 men at home, of 4941 in India, of 20,000 men in the militia, and a militia reserve 20 per cent under its strength; while the head of the army tells us that it is all nonsense going in for "short service," unless we adopt conscription also.

3. The limitation of officers' age; necessitating the creation of a nondescript rank to prevent the total extinction of another.

4. The territorial titles; creating confusion, and so practically ignored when work has to be done, without the promised advantage of attracting recruits.

5. Abolition of flogging; with the meaningless threat of "death or nothing" which has supplanted a wholesome measure.

6. The "double battalion" system; which has nearly extinguished esprit de corps.

7. The allegation of inefficiency against regimental officers; allowed now to have been a mistake.

8. The failure to create a reserve at all equal in numbers to that calculated upon.

9. The incessant changes in the terms offered to intending recruits rendered necessary by the adoption of untried theories, inducing distrust, and consequent deficiency.

10. The distaste for amalgamating the militia with the line, as attested by a marked diminution in the strength of militia regiments.

11. The breakdown in the Medical Department, and the consequent suffering entailed on our soldiers.

Now, as we said first of all, the effort of army reformers has been to provide a "professional army," and before entering into the question of

VOL. CXXXIV.-NO. DCCCXIII.

whether the result has been found

equal to expectation, it may be well to inquire into what is meant when we talk about a "professional army."

We can understand that in other professions the term means that the members of them know their work. In the army it is held to mean that every one knows everybody's work as well as his own.

In the law it is considered sufficient if the men who have adopted a particular branch of the subject make themselves masters of its ramifications: the equity man knowing how to weigh the evidence put forth in affidavits; the commonlaw barrister wielding the terrors of cross-examination. In medicine, the surgeon who can take up an artery skilfully is not thought wanting if he leaves the niceties of the medicine-bottle to the physician. But in the army the man, to be professional, must be everything: he must have a smattering of bridgebuilding, and of the construction of "splinter-proofs "; he must know about initial velocity, and the impact of moving bodies; he must be able to estimate to a man the numbers composing a mixed force which he sees pass a keyhole in a given number of minutes; he must be able to construct a pentagon or a blockhouse at call; he must have studied the tactics of Napoleon, and be able to dig a "broad-arrow" cooking-trench, we allude now to cavalry and infantry as the two branches of the service most rattled about in this new craze after a "professional army." Yet both branches have their specialty: the cavalry their horses, and the duties required from men on horseback; the infantry their men, and--nothing more. We educate men to dig trenches and make powdermagazines; others to fire our guns and watch the effect of their shots:

F

why can't we see that it is of just as much importance to educate others to know their men and to be known by them?

Of course we are told that a man should be ready to meet any emergency; but a man who has been educated to lead his own men, will not make a worse powdermagazine on a pinch than will the same man who has passed a qualifying examination in fortification, while he will lead his men to defend it a great deal better. Surely men are as important a factor in armed science as are "bombproofs " or "banquettes"!

Our reformers say that the study of these branches of the art insensibly educates the officer to command his men: but we say, No! they abstract him from intercourse with his fellows; and association, which begets the greatest power an officer has over his men, is lost.

When the day comes to lead men against the parapets of a future Tel-el-Kebir, whom will the men follow best the officer who has been with them at daily parade ever since they joined the regiment; who has played cricket with them in summer, and football in winter; who has done "hare" to their "hounds" in paper-chases, and helped them in their evening entertainments, or the one who comes among them on occasional parades, looking pale, and complaining that it is the study of of Jomini or Hamley which occasions his debility? It is right enough that men should read up the subjects connected with their profession, and many men do so, and qualify highly in all, while they find time for their ordinary duties. But to attempt to educate up the whole to the same level, is to lower the whole. And, above all else, it abstracts from the duties which they owe to their men the very

officers who are the best fitted to attract the men to themselves. What such men want in one way they have in another-possessing the very qualities which are wanting in their fellows who are more adapted to study.

It was said at the time that the reason why the Life Guards were sent to Egypt was to show how unfitted such a corps was to the present conditions of warfare, and so to pave the way for their removal. Yet we are told that in no corps at the "front" was discipline so well kept up, horses better cared for, or men so well fed and bedded, as with the Life-Guardsa fact attributable to the knowledge picked up by their officers during their continual travels in search of sport or novelty, a life which doubtless does more to educate a man into making the best of everything under any circumstances than does the greatest amount of reading up at home.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that our reformers have succeeded in educating up the whole army to one standard, and that it has become professional. What ensues? A professional man expects to earn sufficient to live upon at the very least, if he sticks to his work: as a rule, he can make a great deal more, and is able to lay up for old age. Let us see how our reformers treat the men who have done what they wished, and become thoroughly professional. Why, they get no more than they did in the old days of cricket and paper-chases, while they have lost all that pleasant social standing which their predecessors enjoyed, and which they looked upon as so much addition to their pay.

The officers have met the reformers half-way. They have studied Jomini and Hamley; they can construct a "spar-bridge" or a "cooking-trench "with equal facility;

they can execute a sketch of the road the men marched this morning, and fill in the distances in miles and furlongs; they can pay the men themselves, fit on their tunics, teach them to shoot, and all the time keep down their own mess-bills to four shillings a-day: they have become professional to a man, and are starving.

"But," say the reformers, "you did not starve in the days when you had the same pay as you get now, and knew nothing." "We did not starve then," reply the officers, "because there were inducements for men who had money of their own to pass through the army: these inducements you have removed, and none but poor men, without a penny beyond their pay, care to grind at the army mill which you have set up. You abolished purchase, because you said the army belonged to the officers, and not to Mr Cardwell; you tell us plainly that rich men are not wanted nowthey are too independent; and the multitude applaud the sentiment, as is meant that they should; when we know that, with the tinsel stripped off, it is your way of saying, What we want is a set of poor, under-paid drudges, who will do anything they are told, because they must.'

We

Let us jot down such an account of his income as an officer of the past would have put it, by way of an answer to the remark that his pay is the same now as ever. will take a captain for our informant, as a man in that rank may be considered to have learned sufficient of his profession to enable him to live.

also regulation), Band subscriptions (12 days, also regulation), . Regulation servant, at 10s. per month, His wife, washing for me, at 15s. per month,. Rent of 2 barrack rooms, &c., Income-tax, at 8d. in the £, 7 1 1 glass of beer after a walk (say 2d. for 365 walks apiece),

Rent of 2 barrack rooms,

2 chairs, and 1 table, 5s. a week,.

Invitations in the country, say 50, at 1 guinea per diem,

13 0 0

52 10 0

once, when feeling low), 1 cigar (which I offered to a mess guest, and had to pay for),

Total,

13 0 0

3 0 10

0 10 0

0 0 3

£127 3 9

truth about the bands has disappeared, but the method by which they have to be paid for occupies the identical place it always did. Our reformers omit the reason for the necessity of a band as inconvenient to their argument, but retain the clause which orders the officers to pay for it.

An attempt, which has failed, was recently made to order officers to appear in uniform in all places; and many officers would have been pleased enough to comply, were it not for the increased expense. Their present uniform is far more costly, and requires more frequent renewal, than do "plain clothes," to say nothing of its discomfort. And yet the order was put forth with much flourish as another aid to the officer living upon his pay.

This question of dress in the Army is one that cries aloud for reform. We have seen what a multiplicity of costumes the officer has to carry about, with the variations of riding apparel, and much extra lace for extra occasions; and yet no sooner is he ordered abroad to Egypt or Zululand, to do what he is paid for, than he must leave the whole paraphernalia behind him, and purchase an entirely new "kit," to find the things he has left behind him on his return moth-eaten or out of date. Surely it is common-sense to dress our officers in a working-dress, and not parade them before "blank - cartridge" in scarlet and gold lace.

And indeed, the absurdity of this constant parading in fine clothes has struck somebody at last, for Lord Hartington told us, in his speech introducing the Army estimates, that a Committee had reported on the advantage of giving officers a working-dress of serge dyed mud-colour, as worn in India, and that our soldiers, already nearly invisible, will become entirely

so. Here again reform is red-hot. It was granted that soldiers needed a working-dress; and so off trots a Committee of War Office spectacles to Plumstead Marshes to have a dozen squares of coloured cloth waved before them, and the thing is done: mud-colour wins the day, and the Committee return to Pall Mall to receive the congratulations of their friends, and to publish just one more circular.

Napoleon once expressed an opinion that in war the moral is to the physical as is three to one. But War Office Committees think their own concentrated wisdom as good or better than his; and so, in place of the "thin red line which, before it had been reformed away, did at least stand up and show the enemy that it meant fighting, our soldiers are to sneak upon the foe like rabbits through a furze bush. Will it be much wonder if, when they have imitated its habits successfully so far, they continue to follow the inclinations of the timid animal?

Officers have been before now caught by suchlike plausible statements, and fear greatly that the proposed "working-dress" will be but just one more suit of military millinery added to their wardrobes, with the inevitable tailor's bill six months afterwards. And when once fixed on, cannot the dress be left alone. The continual changes which are made in our officers' uniforms are a serious drain on their purses, and do not assist the professional ones to live on their pay. Within the last two years they have had to find the money for two sweeping changes: the reconstruction of their regimental finery into that of the "territorial battalion ;" and the "fad" of sticking a man's rank on his shoulder instead of on his collar.

Among other illegitimate measures which our reformers have in