café loungings, of little glasses, and martial vanity that his downward career is traced out almost on the page that introduces him, and the poor fellow goes to the dogs, not from inherent viciousness, but because the barracks has spoiled him for farm-work, for steady labour.
The lucky students destined for civil professions when they leave the Polytechnique, the École Centrale, the École Forestière, have only a year's service, and that under the most comfortable circumstances. They are officers at once, with £100 a year, a servant, and lodgings in town. This cannot be said to be much of a sacrifice upon the altar of patriotism compared with that the ordinary citizen makes in shouldering his gun and heavy knapsack, in undergoing all the weary and repugnant experiences of barrack-life. As Urbain Gohier says: "Under a Democratic Republic there is only one way of escaping from the terrible barracks—the wearing of the epaulette; there is only one means of not being a soldier—becoming an officer." You will find in France that it is precisely the people who benefit by these means of escaping the worst consequences of militarism, and women who know nothing at all about it and could never endure five minutes of the martyrdom, who are its most violent eulogists. It is difficult to explain military arrogance in France, for it certainly is not based on the fact that officers alone go to
