The new Bill for the reorganization of the French Army
has at length been prepared. It is a stupendous measure. The Emperor cannot be frightened from his fixed idea that all France should be armed, and has only consented to reduce the term of regular ser- vice. For the rest, 160,000 youths, of the age of twenty, are to be drafted every year, a number which a within a few hundreds of all the fit conscripts who present themselves for the ballot. Half of them will serve for five years in the regular Army, and then for four years more in the Reserve. The other half will serve five years in the Reserve and four years in the mobile National Guard. Under this arrangement France will next year have 160,000 men in addition to her present 600,000, and in nine years will have an Army of 1,450,000, while by 1900 every man in France will have been drilled, have borne arms, and have learnt to understand practical soldiering. Yet the big cucumber frame, opened in 1851 with such hymns to the nineteenth century, was to "inaugurate a cycle of universal peace."
