in the field, and the desire to see the tricolor restored to its former position in the world, have been similarly translated into those trying personal sacrifices which can alone yield the result pointed at by the patriotic enthusiasm of the nation which is now celebrating the centenary of the first outburst of its revolutionary fire.

The military legacy bequeathed by the first French Revolution to all the great nations of Europe, is the present system of universal service. Its drawbacks are well known. They are the frequent subject of schoolboys' themes, the topics of debating societies, and the delight of the after-dinner orator. It is easy to persuade ourselves that anything which can cause us inconvenience, or that may tend to retard our acquisition of wealth, is not only wrong, but foolish. In dwelling upon its personal inconveniences we are apt to ignore the benefits it confers upon the nation. What does it do for the working man and the laborer? That is a question of more importance to the nation than its effects upon the merchant or the professional man. It must be admitted that it supplies to the men of a nation a perfect system of physical training. It brings with it a love of order, cleanliness, and neatness, as well as physical health. By the obedience and the discipline it enforces, and the self-reliance it inculcates, it affords a splendid moral education that could with difficulty be furnished, nationally, in any other way. Furthermore, the army of Germany, for example, is, as it were, the skeleton of German social life, where every class is represented, duly labelled, and its function ticketed. The highest classes are largely represented in the army, as all its officers are drawn from them. In this way, the rude peasant and ignorant shop-boy carry with them from the army into civil life an appreciation of the purpose and value of a hierarchy. They see the highest in the land working hard in barracks for a pittance that many tradesmen would despise, and so they come to understand that position has its onerous duties as well as its advantages. They learn the worth of wise direction and the necessity of subordination; they see that the work is to the doer, and that honor and position are the rewards of merit. Standing in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with the " one-year volunteer," they perceive that the privilege he enjoys means extra hard work. They see how this volunteer of superior education learns in twelve months what the ordinary soldier takes about thirty to acquire, and

they cannot fail to be struck with the earnestness with which the man of superior social position sets about his task. Each grade in this great military machine has its allotted functions, and every individual in it is taught subordination to, and respect for, those above him. There are no mouthings about that "equality" which ruined the early armies of the French Revolution. In Germany the recruit learns respect for others, and also those sound moral principles upon which alone a healthy discipline can be built up, and thus it is that the German army becomes the surest bulwark of defence against the communistic leanings of the German artisan. Is it not true that this army, constructed for war purposes, is after all the most efficacious of national schools that has ever been possessed by any people? How different must be the views and aims of life, the pride of nation and love of country in a people so educated, from the feelings entertained in those countries where the moral and physical education of the masses is neglected or left to chance!

The French Revolution had a great and immediate influence upon the conduct of war. The old stiff and out-of-date ma noeuvres gave place to rapidity of movement. It proved that armies of mercenaries, no matter how well drilled, were feeble instruments when compared with national armies, imbued with all the fire and enthusiasm which love of country and pride of race can alone supply. It taught the world that if an army is to be strong and healthy, promotion and command must be the reward of merit and ability. It imparted many useful lessons to nations as well as to despots. But in this year of grace, the outcome of all it taught is, that whilst republicanism is at a discount in Europe, the army and the nation have come to be synonymous terms in all the great European States. As in the first efforts of the National Convention to make war, so now it is the nation, and not some mere standing army, that marches to the front. Then, the French masses which flocked to the frontiers in arms were undrilled in their use, ignorant of what discipline meant, and, as a people, wholly uneducated. Now, when the European nation embarks in war, its whole manhood falls into the ranks, each individual in his allotted place, and well acquainted with the particular duty he has to perform. It is essentially the people's army; a great democracy, in each unit of which you will find every social class and every gradation of intellect represented in

five men sit round a rough table, playing cards by the light of the pine logs, and smoking short wooden pipes. They are, all of them, of middle age, between forty and fifty, browned with the sun and the wind. Their beardless faces are covered with wrinkles, and their bristling hair is cut short. They wear roughly knitted, home-made jerseys, and are bare-footed.

In a corner of the room, a woman sits on a wide bed, rocking with her foot a cradle in which a baby is asleep. Two bigger children sleep on the bed behind her. The woman has a rosary in her hands and is telling her beads. The men do not speak, except when the game requires it. They are playing for marks only, which they make with a piece of chalk upon the table. The monotonous amusement lasts an hour or two. Meanwhile the woman has laid herself down on the bed, and gone to sleep.

At length the old, smoke-stained wooden clock strikes eleven with a dull sound, resembling that of a cracked glass. As if at a word of command, the men rise at once from the bench, and shuffle softly from the room.

The last of them, a man of middle height, who limps on one foot, carefully puts out the fire. This is the owner of the cottage, Skokan.

Outside, his companions waited in the yard. One of them had in his hands four rods, each about three yards long, bent in the form of a bow, and a pole. All wore something fastened at their sides, which looked like a bag. When Skokan had taken from under the eaves a little, roundish bundle of rods, and another long pole, he also fastened a bag at his side. That done, he whistled to a small dog to come out of his kennel, and then they all left the yard together, Skokan closing the gate carefully, so that the dog should not get out.

Leaving the road at once, they entered under the dark vault of the branches of the great pine-trees. Not a word was spoken amongst them. For half an hour they passed on, following Skokan, sometimes through the thick woods, sometimes through new plantations, where the branches of the young trees beat roughly against their faces. At last they came to a little brook that wound its way through the thickets. There Skokan stopped.

"Mates," he said in a low voice, "we will stop here and rest, so that we shall not go heated into the water."

They all sat down on the spongy moss, unable to see one another in the dark.

"Listen, mates," went on Skokan, "I have heard a report. You know, mates, that we have worked together these twelve years, and up to now they have never caught any of us. But yesterday evening I heard something."

"What then?" asked two voices. The third man was silent.

"You know Frantishka, who was my wife's friend, is in service with the bailiff."

"Ay, what then?" assented again the two voices.

'Yesterday my wife went with her to vespers, and Frantishka told her that they say we ought to keep an eye on you, Zinka. They say that yesterday morning you were talking for a long time with the bailiff and the forester at the office."

The man who had hitherto kept silence, answered quickly, "I went to the office to pay the rent."

"But Frantishka says that you were there a long time."

"Skokan, you are not fooled by a wom an's chatter," answered the man who was addressed. "All these years we have worked together you have never doubted me. The forester was there only by chance."

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Well, mate, I did think it was just woman's chatter," agreed Skokan. "I don't believe it." "Nor I," said the other two.

"I have only told you, mates, that there was something said," replied Skokan easily. "Now we are cool let us go down to the mere. We can jump the stream easily just below here.'

The men were poachers, and to-night were going to catch carp in one of the count's meres. They had been thither often enough before, they and the other villagers too. For they all poached — in winter game, and in the summer carp; stealing out at night, when the moon rose late, from their quiet cottages in the lonely woods; to return at dawn, soaking wet, and numbed with cold; bent sometimes with the weight of the carp in the bags on their backs, and sometimes with the pain of a gunshot; and sometimes leaving behind them on the forest paths drops of blood to mark their steps. Now and again a man never came home at all.

Of

Many of them had no occasion to poach. They could live well enough on the prod uce of their fields and meadows. But the poaching was a passion with them. them all, the most daring and the most experienced was the limping Skokan. What a number of carp that man had taken

home from the count's fishponds for his children to eat! His wife also secretly took the fish round for sale. The neighboring country priests bought them for Fridays, the schoolmasters, and sometimes the gentlefolks in the neighboring towns. By means of this trade with the count's carp, Skokan and his companions were piling up a nice little heap of florins. The highest ambition of the count's gamekeepers was to catch Skokan in the act. But all their ingenuity had been hitherto in vain. He always got away.

off. You will not see him, Zinka, for fourteen years- perhaps never again."

The bailiff's threat struck Zinka dumb. "Now, if you will tell us," continued the bailiff, "when and where that old rogue goes poaching, and we catch him, I will get your son off from the conscription forever."

Zinka and his wife had no child except Tomash. Dearly they loved him, and often they talked to each other how they would give him a cottage, and marry him, and reckoned up whether they had put by money enough. Already they had their eyes on several peasants' smart young daughters who would do for him. But the conscription! Fourteen years in the army!

"I jumped on the stump of a tree, and have hurt my foot."

In fact, he had jumped barefooted on the stump of a young pine, which had been sawn half through, and broken off. A sharp splinter stood up like a finger, and had pierced the sole of his foot.

"It pains me fearfully," moaned Zinka. One of the poachers tore off a strip, about four inches wide, from the edge of his bag, and gave it to Zinka, who bound his wound with it, and, having picked up his rods, limped after his mates.

"My wound will get washed in the water, and after a few days it will be quite well," he comforted himself, bearing the keen pain with the quiet philosophy of a rough nature, not a little assisted by the fact that he had something heavier than the pain weighing upon his mind. Already he had set down his wound as a judgment come upon him for the treachery of which he had been guilty against his mates. For he was leading his friends, with whom he had poached ever since he was a lad, and more particularly his old, faithful, true mate Skokan, into a trap which the count's gamekeepers had set.

Only the day before, the count's bailiff had sent for him to come to the office, and there had said to him dryly and shortly, "Zinka, all the world knows that you poach with Skokan. Now, if you will not tell us when and where Skokan goes for the fish, so that we can take him in the act, understand this-the time is coming round for the conscription. Your only son will have to stand, and we will have him enlisted, without any chance of his getting

Zinka knew very well that he had been for some time in evil odor with the bailiff for his poaching, and that it was out of

enlisted. Well, he could save Tomash. But he must betray his old and faithful mate. To steal carp out of the count's mere -in that Zinka saw no harm at all. But to betray his mate, who helped him to steal the carp, that seemed to Zinka the vilest baseness and degradation.

The conflict in the poacher's soul was fierce. Against his friendship for Skokan, his instincts of a father battled hard, telling him that his first duty was to his own flesh and blood. But for all that he hesitated. The bailiff saw it, and began to describe to him the hardships and miseries of the fourteen years' military ser vice. "For the smallest neglect," said the bailiff, "a soldier has to run the gauntlet, to be wounded with swords in the sides and the back, until his steps are printed in blood!" And of course the soldier might come home a cripple, with only one foot, or without a hand.

"Your honor," broke in the voice of poor, terrified Zinka, "the Lord's will must be done! This is a mean, shameful deed. I know it. But I will do this to save my son. It would be the death of his mother, if they took him away.'

The bailiff smiled quietly, patted the poacher on the shoulder, and said, "You are a good and worthy tenant of his lordship's to give information against those people who rob him. Now, tell me, when and where will Skokan be going for the fish?"

"Your honor, to-morrow at midnight we are going down to the big mere," replied the poacher in a trembling voice.

He felt as if, at that moment, his heart was being crushed in a vice.