hand through the sleeve (the channel, in French, la manche), and shake hands cordially with him. Alas! it is her sword that bellicose France wishes to put through the sleeve, if we are to believe the Nationalists, and slay perfidious Albion.
It is, perhaps, an exaggeration to describe barracks, as M. Urbain Gohier does, as "the school of all crapulous vices: idleness, lying, debauchery, drunkenness, obscenity, and moral cowardice." But there is much truth in his contrasting statement, that "the surprising vitality and progress in every way of the Anglo-Saxon races are due to the fact that these latter escape the corrupting and degrading influence of the barracks." In war men may herd together and be the better for it, since they suffer and bear privation together. But in peace it is impossible that general life of this comfortless kind can have any but a disastrous action upon character. The twenty-eight days of the reservists may be an excellent farce, if the discomforts and trials are borne with high spirits and a sense of fun. From this point of view it is easy enough to laugh at such amusing plays as Champignol Malgré Lui, and the coarse and witty comedies of Courteline, whose military studies are steeped in a good-humoured but terrible realism. You must laugh at that brutal but brilliant little piece, Lidoire, capitally acted at Antoine's, even while you are filled with an unutterable sense of
