possible comfort-in fact, he literally kills the fatted calf for his guest's entertainment. The allowance for an officer is 2s. 6d. per day. I know of a German diplomatist who for many years had been absent abroad as his country's representative in Eastern capitals. On one occasion, on arriving in Berlin, he was startled by his cabby turning round to greet him in loud and joyful tones: Guten Tag, Herr Leutnant! guten Tag. Wie geht's, Herr Leutnant!' Years before his Excellency had been the man's lieutenant, and the Berlin Jehu's memory and sense of military comradeship were as fresh as ever. Similar stories could be repeated by the thousand, and anecdotes of this kind are those that reflect the spirit prevailing amongst the people on the subject of the army.

It is a matter of common experience that weakly recruits grow strong through the daily training, the regular life, and the good and abundant food they enjoy with the regiment. This applies especially to those who come from the confined occupation of town life. The constant movement in the fresh air restores them to health and strength. Men, who could at first hardly ride for an hour, are able to sit in the saddle the whole day without being fatigued; those who at first were bad marchers and got sore feet improve so rapidly owing to the habits of cleanliness that they acquire that they no longer think anything of from thirty to forty kilometres (twenty to twentyfive miles) per day with their heavy knapsacks for marching order on their back; and recruits, who on joining as gunners could hardly raise a laffette with two hands, treat the same work before long as mere child's play. On the other hand really authentic cases of recruits suffering permanent physical injury from the effects of the regular work required of men in the army are so few as to be not worth mentioning.

Admitting to the full that compulsory service entails a certain amount of dislocation in industrial life, it is quite absurd to say that the manhood of the nation is paralysed in Germany, or that the activity of the whole people is arrested in its development during the time of service. If one goes into the question in an unprejudiced frame of mind, it will be found that, though the workers from the factories and the numerous trades and professions of the country are called upon to interrupt their life's work, every workman stands in this regard on an equality with his fellows. Further, although he is not earning wages for two years when with the colours, he is being kept well in every respect at the expense of the State, and is acknowledged to be acquiring qualities which render him afterwards a more acceptable worker, so that his capital value is substantially greater at the end of his time of service than it was when he joined as a raw recruit. In many cases this capital value becomes considerably enhanced.

Considering that Germany has made enormous industrial progress during the years when the greatest calls have been made upon.

her population for military service, and has even developed into Britain's chief European rival in the fields of manufacture, trade, and commerce, whilst Britain has persistently adhered to her voluntary system of service, it cannot be pretended that if compulsory military service be required of the male adult population of a country individual or national progress must be necessarily checked.

J. L. BASHFORD.

ARE REMARKABLE PEOPLE REMARK

ABLE-LOOKING?

(AN EXTRAVAGANZA)

A LITTLE while ago, when staying in a country-house, I happened to remark quite casually, in mixed company, and without thinking what might come of it, that I believed most remarkable people (people, I meant, who had unusually distinguished themselves in any particular walk of life) were remarkable likewise, as a rule, in their outward appearance. Not handsome, necessarily, or even always pleasing to the eye, but that there was generally something unusual, and distinguished, about them-something which seemed to compel those who fell in with them by accident to turn round and look at them a second time, and ask themselves who such a one, or such another, might possibly be; an assertion which met by no means with general approval. 'Name! name!' one of my fellow-guests (to whom I shall allude henceforward as the Scoffer ') called out derisively; but upon the spur of the moment I could only think of Prince Bismarck, the late Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes in support of my theory. This led the company to imagine wrongly that by the expression ' remarkable' I meant to imply something of heroic proportions and colossal build, men who towered a head and shoulders above their fellows, and I felt bound, therefore, to mention a few remarkablelooking small men, and cited Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Nelson, as many people might have done in my place, adding that I did not believe Julius Cæsar, or even Shakespeare, would have passed as tall men in the Britain of to-day.

This, they all said, was rather unfair. The three heroes in question, having achieved such world-wide renown, had come to be regarded less after the fashion of men than of demigods. Julius Cæsar's prestige was so enormous that it was absolutely essential to his dignity that he should be depicted in an idealised form. Shakespeare's bust at Stratford-upon-Avon had been a good deal tampered with, and it might be as well, perhaps, to leave the immortal bard out of the question altogether, lest we might provoke a discussion upon the Baconian theory, to which none of the party felt equal upon a particularly hot

day. The fact that Lord Nelson had lost both an arm and an eye was, they said, quite enough in itself to make him 'remarkable,' whilst as to the great Napoleon, like Julius Cæsar, he was by common consent treated almost conventionally, and depended for his effect very much upon his crossed arms and general's cocked hat.

'I do not believe,' said the Scoffer, 'that if we were to see him in plain clothes, carrying a small black handbag, and getting into an omnibus in the Strand, it would ever occur to us that he was remarkable-looking at all!'

They would prefer, they said, that I should only give modern. examples in proof of what I had advanced; people I had known personally, or that, without a formal introduction, I had conversed with, or had opportunities of studying quite close at hand.

In order to judge correctly as to whether a man is really remarkable or not,' said one, whom I will call the Seeker after Truth,' 'we must have come under his direct magnetic influence; vibrated at the touch of his hand, looked into the depths of his eyes, and dwelt upon the peculiar tones of his voice."

Whereupon I hastily mentioned Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley, Mr. James M'Neill Whistler, and his Holiness the late Pope, for 'Necessity,' as the proverb says, 'makes strange bedfellows,' although in the present case the necessity was not urgent; names that were grudgingly approved, though the company was all for stripping Lord Wolseley of his uniform, Mr. Whistler of his white lock and rimless eyeglass, and the late Pope of the gorgeous accessories connected with his sacred office, and subjecting one and all of them to the 'smallblack-handbag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand' test, from which I knew that the first two at any rate would emerge absolutely triumphant. About the late Pope, however, I had some misgivings. The Triple Crown is fraught with such imperishable associations, St. Peter's is an exceptionally impressive mise-en-scène, and the small-black-handbag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand' test is such a very severe one!

Then up and spake the irrelevant lady friend, who seems omnipresent, and related an anecdote.

A good many years ago now (for, alas! how Time flies!) she happened to get into a first-class railway carriage at Waterloo Station, bound for her country home, which was then situated a little way beyond Aldershot. Just as the train was starting, in jumped a dark slim young man, evidently a foreigner, and 'looking very like a waiter, only that he had such beautiful manners.' He asked her if she objected to smoking, to which she replied in the negative, and, the ice once broken, they thereupon engaged in most agreeable conversation,' which lasted until the train stopped at Farnborough. Here, impelled by she knew not what, she ventured to ask this most agreeable young gentleman his name. I am Alfonso!' he answered briskly, as he leapt lightly on to the platform, and lo! it was actually the late King

of Spain, father of the reigning monarch, studying then as a cadet at Sandhurst (so she had since been told), and she had had 'not the slightest idea of it, you know!' One might have knocked her down with a feather then and there!' &c.

We all admitted that the 'first-class railway carriage test' was also highly crucial, and that only a few choice spirits could hope to emerge from it with flying colours, and we assured her that she need not therefore reproach herself with undue obtuseness; and I reminded her of how, according to a well-known legend, King Henry the Eighth was in the habit of going about 'incog.' amongst his citizens, and of how upon one occasion he had partaken of supper at the house of a cobbler, who had entertained him without having had the slightest suspicion of the name and quality of his guest. A surprising circumstance, as I have always thought, for I feel myself that I should have been able to recognise bluff King Hal' anywhere—even in a firstclass railway carriage travelling from Waterloo Station to Farnborough !

'There is an Oriental proverb,' said the Seeker, 'which says that whenever God vouchsafes high office to one of His creatures, He gives him also the dignity and the ability wherewith to fill it becomingly, and, above all, to enable him to look the part. What is this, however, but our old enemy " Prestige" in Eastern garb? To be able to say truly whether a man is "remarkable" looking, we must see him deprived of everything but his master-mind, and the soul which may, or may not, be looking out at us from the eyes that are its windows.' 'In a word,' said the Scoffer, we must apply the "small-blackhandbag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand" test, and see if he will bear that "becomingly " before we record our final vote.'

'We will give you till luncheon-time to make out your case,' said the Seeker. And remember, no heroes of antiquity! All people of our own time, whether dead or alive, and with whom you have been more or less personally acquainted.'

As soon as I was alone I seated myself at a writing-table in the library, which was liberally provided with pens, ink, and paper. I knew that any endeavour I might make to justify my theory would be sure, in the first instance, to rise up before me like a kind of picture, as this is the way my mind always works, and that the remarkablelooking people, once they had appeared, would neither stand upon the order of their coming or of their going, nor follow any acknowledged laws of precedence. I knew that I should have no control over them whatever, but that they would 'gang their ain gait' whilst I looked on as an irresponsible spectator; and I thought that the best thing for me to do, therefore, would be merely to set down in writing a description of what they said and did when they presented themselves, and then let the company judge for themselves as to who had the best of the argument. And then I said to myself, 'Might not