poral punishment was quite lately stigmatised in Parliament 10 as an intolerable means of preserving discipline; and it is understood thatas in 1877 for instance, no less than 7,500 men could desert from the numerically insignificant army of the mother country-it is being taken into earnest consideration in England whether the branding of deserters by means of tattoo-marks should not be introduced afresh. Finally, up till quite lately, with a few exceptions applying to the scientific corps and the marines, promotion from the rank of lieutenant upwards was procurable by purchase. But it is obvious that at a time when every day opens up fresh vocations for talent and industry, new sources of activity, and opportunities for speedy success, all talent would throw itself into civil pursuits, and superior men would no more enter upon the military calling. Under these circumstances, it can cause no surprise that the military profession sank ever more and more in estimation, and even became despised; that the soldier was completely deprived of that national honour which he receives elsewhere; that the English people looked upon its army as something quite distinct from itself; and that the consciousness of the great function of the army in the State and its ethical importance in the nation is completely lost. The nineteenth century development of the nature of war has completely escaped not only the English people but also its most prominent intellects. Neither the one nor the other has in the least grasped the enormous alteration in the intrinsic nature of war, that has been accomplished in the great continental States-an alteration which, as was strikingly remarked by Lorenz von Stein, is perhaps the greatest fact of our century, far outweighing all others in its consequences. Yet Henry Thomas Buckle, undoubtedly one of the most remarkable spirits of later England, misconceives war as exclusively a brutal act of force, and places the military classes in formal contradistinction to the intelligent, saying that the contrast then between these and the military classes is clear: it is the contrast between thought and action, between the within and the without, between argument and force, between Persuasion and Bodily Strength, or, in a word, between men who live by the arts of peace and those who live by war.' The idea that war, in following out always its tendency towards that which is most without (die Tendenz zum Aeussersten), claims the highest services from thought as well as action, from the within as 10 On the 26th of March 1878, Mr. O'Connor Power, M.P., proposed the reduction of the highest measure of corporal punishment from 50 lashes to 15; his proposal, however, was rejected by 233 votes to 84. A second proposal to forbid the repetition of corporal punishment within a year was rejected by 251 votes to 39; a third, finally, that compulsory labour and corporal punishment should not be applied as punishment for misdemeanours, met with the same fate, and came to grief by 291 votes against 28. well as the without, from argument as well as force, from persuasion as well as bodily strength, seems never to have occurred to Buckle. This entire misconception of war as a military problem would have caused us less surprise than that an historian like Buckle should have so radically misunderstood war as an historical phenomenon. Buckle has no notion of the idea which Napoleon seized with the intuition of genius, of war as a necessity arising out of the struggle for existence, the nature of mankind and the conception of the State. That a great war (ein tüchtiger Krieg) every fifty years, acting as a kind of moral thunderstorm, is as indispensably necessary for mankind as in the natural world are hurricanes and tempests, hail and thunder and lightning: that without war mankind soon falls into that slough of sentiment, that sluggishness of life, that foul sewer of stinking egoism-in a word, into those conditions which are the precursors of the inner dissolution of a state, or an invitation to stronger peoples to come and overthrow those which have grown feeble and faint-hearted-this view of Napoleon, true, whatever a weaker generation may say against it, does it not speak to us in the accents of all past centuries? How can one succeed in making a people see clearly, where its most trusted leaders are struck with blindness? But it is not merely a moral preparation for military reform on modern principles that the English nation requires; the difficulties interposed by its social structure are enormous. The English constitution is essentially aristocratic. This fundamental principle is an obstacle in the way of equality of rights between all classes-how much more, then, in the way of equality of duties, one of which is universal liability to service! The wealthy classes with their monstrous privileges are far too much creatures of habit to be able to rise to the notion that their duties to the state should consist in anything beyond money payments. The introduction of universal liability to service would indeed justify this all-powerful aristocracy in crying, 'This is the true beginning of our end.' The middle-class townspeople are too much dominated by the supposed interests of industry and commerce, too much filled with the belief that universal service is prejudicial to their progress and success, to the continuance of their present life of financial prosperity, not to set their faces decidedly against it. A middle class of country people, such as in other nations forms the great bulk of the army, and provides the best soldiers, absolutely does not exist in England."1 "According to the census of 1871 there were in England and Wales, out of an entire population of 22,712,266 persons, only 22,964 who lived on their own ground and soil, and 1,657,038 engaged in agriculture. In France, on the other hand, in 1866, from an entire population of 38,147,523 persons, there were 3,226,705 independent proprietors who derived most of their subsistence from the produce of their own ground. VOL. IX.-No. 50. TT There remains then only the fourth, the non-propertied class: it is in England certainly far the most numerous. As late as 1865 there were counted in the United Kingdom no less than 18,000,000 persons who with difficulty supported themselves, and 1,500,000 paupers requiring maintenance. It is then this numerous and discontented class, both morally and physically the least developed of all, which must inspire itself with the idea that patriotism and the duty of service are identical! Truly, if we consider the social structure of the English people, we can understand that no party and no ministry can venture to undertake with earnestness the great question of military reform. The reform of the English military forces on the principle of universal liability to service corresponds so little with the aristocratic character of its institutions, with the traditions of the English people, and with the materialism of its view of life, that it is very improbable that it will be carried out before England has met with a catastrophe such as Prussia, France, and Austria have already exBut will the artificial edifice of the British Empire sur perienced. vive such a catastrophe ? We hope it may. We hope it may, as we are fully conscious of the high function of the British Empire in the political and intellectual organism of the globe. It is a bulwark of civilisation, that precious inheritance we have received from our forefathers. It is a mighty agent, a strong and keen fighter in the great struggle between mankind and all that is hostile to it on earth. ALEXANDER KIRCHHAMMER. Captain in the General Staff Imperial WORKING MEN AND THE POLITICAL WHAT do the working men of England think of the present political situation? What do they say of the Irish Land League, of coercion for Ireland, of obstruction in the House of Commons, of the way in which obstruction has been dealt with, of the general proceedings in Parliament in the first two months of the present session, and of the probable effect of these proceedings on the parliamentary institutions of the future? These questions, and others of a similar kind, have in varied phraseology been repeatedly put to me during the last few weeks. The questions, though apparently simple, are by no means easy to answer. Those who are generally classified as working men, namely, the manual labourers of the country, very much resemble other people who think at all; they often differ widely in their opinions on the great public questions of the day. It cannot, therefore, always be truthfully said that there exists a working-class opinion as distinguished from the opinions of the rest of the community. Moreover, no man has a right, unless specially authorised to do so, to speak for a body of men so large and so diversified in character and in opinions as are the working men of England. I certainly arrogate to myself no such right. What I may fairly claim, however, is to have had a long and close connection with large bodies of working men-to have had for many years, and to have still, good opportunities of knowing their thoughts and feelings on the leading social and political topics of the time. In the following pages I shall therefore profess to give only my own individual opinions, and the result of my own observation; though in doing so I have strong reason to believe that I shall at the same time express views which extensively prevail among working men in the North of England. I may have occasion to criticise the proceedings of Mr. Parnell and his followers, but I shall endeavour to perform that operation in no captious or offensive spirit. If I attack their policy, I shall take care neither to impugn their motives nor to asperse their character. I am personally acquainted with many of those gentlemen, and feel great respect for them. With many of their aims, if I rightly under stand them, I am entirely in sympathy. I have given some proof of this. An examination of the records of the House of Commons for the last few years will show that scarcely any English Member of Parliament has voted so often with them as I have done. While approving of many of their objects, however, I have felt an ever-increasing aversion to their methods. At the risk of apparent inconsistency, I have steadily voted against them whenever I considered their motions of a dilatory and an obstructive character. Some of the ablest and shrewdest of the Home Rule leaders in the House of Commons have frequently stated to me that their great hope of achieving anything good for their country was by enlisting the sympathies and securing the assistance of the Radicals and working men of Great Britain. They believed, and rightly believed, that the great majority of the English people had no interest in the misgovernment of Ireland, and no wish to maintain the union between the two countries otherwise than in a spirit of justice to the Irish people and on terms of perfect equality. No one can doubt that of late strenuous and persistent efforts have been put forth to secure such an alliance. Nor was the time altogether inopportune. There were, indeed, many circumstances, negative and positive, very favourable to its accomplishment. The old anti-Irish feeling which operated with such force, bitterness, and intensity among English workmen and artisans some years ago had happily disappeared, and no provocation seemed capable of reviving it. The great mass of Englishmen of every class and creed had become fully sensible of the wrongs inflicted upon Ireland by centuries of misgovernment, and there was at last a genuine desire to make amends for past errors and to do justice to the people of that country. The action of the Government, too, at the beginning of the session appeared to afford favourable opportunity for agitation among the great constituencies of England. Seldom has such combustible material been prepared and placed ready for fierce declamation and passionate appeals to popular sympathies. The case was put thus: There was in Ireland a wretched starving peasantry, in too many instances robbed by unjust laws of the fruits of their industry. The land laws were admittedly unjust, and other grievances called loudly for redress. But instead of reform there was a drastic measure of coercion. While resisting this measure, the Irish members were silenced, and afterwards expelled from the House of Commons. New rules were specially devised to push this hateful bill with all speed through Parliament. Mr. Davitt, one of the ablest leaders of the Land League, was arrested and sent to prison without any reason being assigned for his incarceration.' The Irish Members of Parliament had all this excellent material for agitation and declamation. They had in their ranks men capable of making the best possible use of it-able, eloquent speakers, ready at any personal sacrifice to address public meetings in every part of the United Kingdom. The artisans, labourers, and trades-unionists of |