to say that a certain number of soldiers—sixty, I believe—could visit the exhibition free every day. In the beginning it was all right. The soldiers had as lief go to the exhibition as do exercise. They understood nothing; they were watched by a corporal, and could not go away before the regulated hour. After two weeks there were not sixty volunteers to be found, and after a month not twenty; after six weeks not even five. The colonel's order was that each day sixty soldiers could go to the exhibition, but the corporal understood must go, and so every day sixty unfortunates were bidden to dress themselves in their best and go and be bored for two mortal hours between pictures and ploughshares, so that in the end the visit to the exhibition was used as a punishment. This surely was not the intention of the kind-hearted director."
Something must be said of how conscription is worked in France. Military life begins at twenty-one and ends at forty-five, which means that every Frenchman is subject to the military authorities during twenty-five years, three in the Armée Active, ten in the Réserve, six in the Territoriale, and six in the Réserve de la Territoriale. A youth, when he reaches twenty-one, draws a lot in February; he enters the barracks in November and remains there until September three years later, and is then
