sadness in contemplation of the futile suffering of barrack-life. Why should grown men, under pretext that their country may some day be attacked, be submitted to the disennobling trials of the general dormitory, to the annihilating process of inflexible and petty discipline, at the mercy of the temper and caprices of superiors? The audience at Antoine's shout with laughter when the sober fellow is brutalised for his drunken comrade, whom he is trying to shield, but the thinking spectator is saddened by the realistic travesty of justice so peculiar to-*day in militarist France. One applauds the more the magnificent outburst against the army in that remarkable play of MM. Donnay and Descaves, La Clairière, where the tortured workman shouts, "There is no such thing as an intelligent bayonet." Think, then, what it must mean for the young fellow dragged reluctantly from his chosen work, to waste three years fretting in servitude that does his country no good, to share the common life of men more often than not repulsive to him. In the case of the poor it is far worse, for they have no means of avoiding the obligatory three years' service; and if you would have some idea of the corrupting influence of this experience on a farmer's son, read M. René Bazin's charming story, La Terre qui Meurt, where the young soldier back from Africa has acquired such habits of idleness, of
