One of the greatest difficulties in an army raised by
Conscription is to find regiments for colonial service, and especially semi-tropical colonial service. The men detest the life, and have none of the feeling that they are defending the country. The Dutch have long since been compelled to recog- nise this truth, and now the French are recognising it. They are about to raise a considerable African Army, of twenty-two. battalions, filled with volunteers from the Line, who, after serving their term, will be attracted by high pay, bounties at intervals of five years, and pensions after fifteen years' service. If this scheme succeeds, Cochin China and the colonies will be garrisoned in the same way, and France will have a Foreign- service Army of some 40,000 men, to which those men will crowd who need pay, and desire to make soldiering the business of their lives. That is a fairly good plan, and should be noticed, because it is the one which must be adopted, if ever the Indian Army is again separated—as so many experienced soldiers desire —from the Regular forces. Its merit is that it secures seasoned men for the tropical work, and exempts the regular army from fatigue duty ; its demerit is, that it makes two services which never heartily work together. The popular notion, that it also spoils the regulars by depriviug them of experience, is probably erroneous. No Prussian soldier, and scarcely any Prussian officer, had ever seen a shot fired when the Prussian Army began its career of victory. It had not fought for forty- nine years.
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