hat, well jammed back on his head, | ships and necessarily consorting with showing two bullet-holes in it. the lowest of a low community, you When he had recovered sufficiently will gather some idea of its nature. he rose and explained, in a most shame- He is generally underpaid, may somefaced manner, the reason of his being times be well spoken of, though much in such condition. His name, he said, more often abused; nevertheless, rewas Augustus Randell, and he had gardless of all, he works, fights, aud only been three months out from home. struggles on with no present thought He occupied the position of curate to of himself, laboring only for the reward the vicar of Mulga Flat, from whence, his belief promises him hereafter. that morning, he had started on a visit There are exceptions, of course, as to the surrounding stations. He was there always must be, but I am conthe bearer of a letter of introduction to vinced that the majority are such men myself, and was on his way to deliver as I describe. it when his trouble happened. Passing the entrance to a gully in the ranges a number of men had rushed out, bailed him up, and taken everything he possessed. Then, crowning indignity of all, they had forced him to dance a saraband in his shirt. He blushed painfully as he narrated the last circumstance, and almost forgot to mention that, when they permitted him to depart, a volley was fired and two bullets pierced his hat.

"Never mind, padre," said Cavesson, hugely pleased, as we escorted the victim into the house; 66 they were mad when they let you get away to give the alarm. But we'll have rare vengeance to-morrow. We'll hew Agag in pieces, take my word for it!"

"But surely you'll never be able to cope with such a band of desperate men. They're most determined, I assure you."

They'll have to be if they want to get away this time. They're between the devil and the deep sea, parson, and must fight or go under."

I took his Reverence to a room, and when later he re-appeared, washed and brushed up, he was by no means a bad-looking little fellow. The effects of his awful fright still lingered in his eyes, and, though he tried hard not to let us see it, he was very averse to being left alone even for a minute.

The life of a bush-parson is strange and hard. And when you reflect that he is constantly travelling from place to place in the back blocks through the roughest country, living like a black fellow, enduring superhuman hard

Before dinner Cavesson and myself were closeted together, busily arranging our plan of action for the morrow. While we were thus engaged, Randell went out among the men, and, on his return, informed us that he intended holding a short service at nine o'clock. Out of respect for the cloth, if for no other reason, my entire household attended, and his influence among the men must have been extraordinary, for not one of them was absent. I have reason to remember that service, and, as long as Cavesson continues to abuse me, I shall go on doing so. Even now I can see the little crowd of faces turned towards the preacher, and can hear the soft tones of his voice just raised above the murmur of the wind outside. His address was to the point, but, as I thought, unduly protracted. When it was over we returned to the house, and, in view of our early start on the morrow, were soon all in bed and asleep.

Long before daylight we were about, and, while eating our breakfast, I sent one of my men to run up the horses. The parson surprised us by announcing his intention of returning to the township, and, so soon as the meal was over, secured his horse, which for safety he had left in the yard all night, and rode away.

We waited for the appearance of our nags till Cavesson began to grumble at the delay. Half an hour went by, an hour, two hours; by this time half the station was out looking for them, but the animals were nowhere to be found. Then I decided that all available hands

should be sent to run in some spare | gulden, lei and dinars, drachmai aud horses from a distant paddock. Before kroner, milreis aud pesetas, in which it this was completed dusk was falling, keeps its accounts, it appears that the and the inspector's wrath was inde- Continent, including European Russia, scribable. He told me he was ruined, but excluding Turkey, spends £146,that he would be accused of conniving 000,000 a year on what it is pleased to at the gang's escape, that it was all my term "“ purposes of defence." For this fault, and so on, and so on. it keeps three millions of men constantly under arms, with the power of increasing their numbers to six times as many at the word "mobilize."

While we were at dinner the mail arrived, and brought, among other things, a large brown paper parcel to which was pinned a letter. It was written in a neat, clerical hand, and was to the following purport:

"DEAR SIR, I cannot thank you enough for the hospitality which last evening you so kindly showed to my unworthy self. It will, I hope, live in my memory for many days to come. For reasons which will now be obvious

I was compelled to assume, for the time, a profession that, as Inspector Cavesson will agree, is widely different from my own.

There are two sides to this question: let us take the least obvious first. The countries that spend this £146,000,000 contain three hundred million inhabitants. On a peace footing the warpopulation; on a war footing they repriors represent just one per cent. of the resent just six per cent. In 1811, when we were in the thick of the struggle battle of Lissa, Schomberg capturing with the French Hoste fighting the Madagascar, Wellington winning Albu

and so on—we took a census. We were then spending forty-three millions a year on our defence, out of a gross expenditure of ninety and one-half millions; the population of Great Britain was 11,911,644; and there were 640,500 men employed in our navy and army, etc. Our 66 five and three-eighths per cent. of the war footing" was thus population; the present "war footing" of the Continent as a whole is only five-eighths per cent. higher.

era, It may interest you to know that, while your little community were attending my impromptu service my own men were removing your horses to the Waterfall Gully in the ranges, where I have no doubt you will find them if you have not done so already. This was the only plan I could think of to prevent my being forced to burden the government with my society. And if, as you so ably put it last evening, all is fair in love and war, why not in bush-ranging?

"With kind remembrances to Mr. Inspector Cavesson, I will ask you to believe me to be, very gratefully yours, the CENTIPEDE.

"P.S. Might I beg you to forward the accompanying parcel to my obliging friend Mr. Randell, whom you will find tied to a leopard-tree on the eastern slope of the Punch Bowl Gully?"

From The Leisure Hour.
THE WAR TAX OF EUROPE.

If

There is a tendency with us to make more of the seen than the unseen. for an hour, the newspapers tell us that a crowd of people pass along Piccadilly all London" went to demonstrate in the Park. "All London "" goes to the

Jubilee, "all London" is on Epsom Downs on the Derby day, etc., etc. A little arithmetic would save us from such absurdities. For every man in the Continental armies at the present moment, there are ninety-nine men, women, and children to form the crowd to look at him, and if the armies were ou a war footing there would be ninetyfour instead of ninety-nine.

THE war tax lies heavy on Europe, Let us take this in another way. In and loud is the outcry at its load. Val- the county of London there are four uing out the myriads of francs and hundred people to every policeman; marks, florins and lire, roubles and on the Continent there are at present

just four times as many soldiers pro- | coach. With them the outcry is loud portionately as we have police. The and general. Everything taxable is police are, however, of a retiring dis- being taxed, and yet expenditure exposition; the soldier, on the contrary, ceeds income. Every one of them has is painfully conspicuous, and has an its balance on the wrong side: Italy is unfortunate habit of making the most confessedly "in difficulties;" the Gerof himself. The illustration is there- man emperor seems desirous of negofore not a happy one; let us try an- tiating a disarmament; and Jules other. Simon, on the French side, is advocating a year's training instead of three, so as to halve the military expenditure. The State, like a large family, cannot afford to keep its boys too long without their earning anything; the sacrifice in according them their schooltime was great, but this further course of calisthenics, with a possibly tragic termination, is proving too expensive to be borne. The country lads leave the fields never to return thither, but stay in the towns to swell the ranks of the disaffected. It is also to be feared that this military mania is a continual menace. Lessons in self-defence cannot be taken for very long without a desire to put them to practical use - in other words, these excessive armaments may lead to the war which all are so anxious to postpone; but as the French are the nation most likely to be affected with this exuberance, it is obvious that this danger could be avoided at once by their disbanding the army which has brought the burden upon themselves and the rest of Europe.

A third-class railway coach has five compartments, cach holding ten passengers. Every coach thus carries fifty persons. On the present Continental system there is one man in peace time to defend two coach loads; in war time there would be three soldiers in each coach. Looked at in this way, the numbers are not large. And when we consider that it is only within the last century or two that men have ceased to go about armed; when we think of the Pilgrim Fathers going to church, every man with his gun and sword; when we think of every man with his bow or spear; and when we go farther back still with every man constantly on the alert against a possible enemy the conclusion is forced on us that matters have improved considerably, and that the war tax, bad as it is, was in former times much worse.

Another point on the credit side is that the Continental armies on the peace footing consist of young men between the ages of twenty and twentythree, taken at the critical period of life, when drill and discipline are likely to do their best in the formation of character and development of the bodily frame. If to this we add that, notwithstanding the the drain on the population, the productions of the Continent continually increase, and the amount of goods exported is greater every year, we shall have said nearly all we can say on the optimist side.

On the other side it must be pointed out that to take the Continent as a whole is misleading, and that attention should be concentrated on the five great powers whose peace footing is not one per cent. of the population but ten; and among whom, instead of there being one soldier to every two railway coaches, there are five in each

What the burden amounts to is not easy to say; but if we accept the estimate that the community loses £40 a year for every man under arms, we have a further sum of £120,000,000 to add to the expenditure of £146,000,000; and this would mean that it costs the whole of Europe about three-quarters of a million a day to keep itself ready for war.

Austria, which does its work more cheaply than the more westerly powers, spends over ten millions a year on its army, and a million on its navy, and every year takes away from their trades and professions about one hundred and twenty thousand young men, to keep them for three years in the active army, and then transfer them to

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the landwehr for ten years, whence the Ersatz he has to serve twelve years they are transferred to the landsturm there before being transferred to the for another ten years. But this is not laudsturm; and no German is free of all. Service is universal; all must the landsturm until he is forty-five. serve; there is no such thing as a bal- | The army numbers 486,983 men withlot with lucky numbers, and so on; no out counting its officers; and in case great power can afford to do that now- of invasion would have three millious adays. Those who do not join the under arms. In peace time its warriors army must join the reserve, so that form ten per cent. of the population. every man from his nineteenth to his forty-second year must be in the army, the navy, the reserve, the landwehr, or the landsturm. In war time the regular army is expected to number 1,753,000 men, and the landsturm four millions. In peace time the warriors form eight and a half per cent. of the population.

Italy spends over thirteen millions a year on its army and navy, of which nearly four millions are devoted to its navy. Italy also claims all its menu, who have to serve their country in some way from their twentieth to their thirty-ninth year; but how they serve it is decided by lot. Nearly one hundred thousand of them are required for the regular army, the rest join either the mobile militia or the permanent militia. The "recruit crop " amounts to over three hundred and twenty thousand young men a year, and the army on a peace footing numbered last May two hundred and seventy-eight thousand, with over half a million in the mobile militia, and 1,651,000 in the territorial militia. Its war strength in peace time is nine per cent. of its population.

Next to Germany in its war budget, spending some ten millions more, is Great Britain; but as we have kept ourselves out of these calculations, we can pass on to France, which has a war expenditure of something like thirtyfour and a half millions, of which about a third is devoted to a navy which exceeds in tonnage as in horse-power the whole of that of its mercantile marine. Here, again, service is universal. From twenty to forty-five every Frenchman must be enrolled in the active army or the reserves. In the army he serves three years, in the reserve of the active army he serves ten years, in the territorial army he serves six years, in the territorial reserve another six. In peace France has an army of five hundred and sixty-four thousand men, and even its horses number one hundred and forty-one thousand. If to this we add the reserve, we find an army of 2,350,000, behind which is a territorial army of nine hundred thousand, and a territorial reserve of over a million. At a moderate estimate France could raise an army of two and a half millions of men within a fortnight of the declaration of war. In peace time the men Between Italy and Germany there is in its army form fourteen and threea wide interval in expenditure. Ger-fourths per cent. of its population. many spends over twenty-one millions Russia spends about forty-five milon its army, and about two and a half millions on its navy. Here, again, all must serve, and the numbers taken for the regular army depend on the state of the finances, the men not chosen as regulars being assigned to the Ersatz, so as to be ready when called upon. The German is liable for service in the army or navy when he is seventeen, but he is not called up until he is twenty. If he is chosen for the army he serves three years with the army and four in the reserve; if he goes to the rest going to the reserves. They

lions on its army and navy. Its European army on a peace footing numbers 750,900 men, and on a war footing over two and a half millions, its first line amounting to 1,355,000. Service is universal, every man of the age of twenty-one being liable unless he is a cleric, a doctor, or a teacher. Every year Russia has eight hundred and seventy thousand young men to choose from, and of these two hundred and sixty thousand are taken for the army,

serve five years nominally, and are thousand, with a war strength of one

then transferred to the reserve, from which after thirteen years they are transferred to another reserve in which they serve another five years. In peace time these "defenders " form seven and one-half per cent. of the population. These are the five great powers of Europe, and among them in the time of peace they keep guard with two million four hundred thousand soldiers, and close on half a million horses- the men under arms being nearly ten per cent. of the population.

hundred and fifteen thousand; Sweden and Norway have an army of fifty-six thousand, with a war strength of perhaps five times as much; and Switzerland has an army of one hundred and thirty-one thousand, with eighty-one thousand in the landwehr and two hundred and seventy-three thousand in the landsturm, every Swiss who does not care to serve having to pay a special tax, which only yields the State average income of about £55,000 a year.

an

But these are not all. Belgium has Adding these together, we find, as an army of nearly fifty thousand men, we said at the outset, that Europe has with a war strength of three times as three millions of men under arms durmany; Denmark has an army of forty- ing peace; and the labor of these durone thousand, with a war strength of ing the three years they are on the fifty-eight thousand; Greece has an average under training represents an army of twenty-four thousand, with a indirect loss to the community of £360,war strength of one hundred thousand; | 000,000. The £146,000,000 a year paid Holland has an army of twenty thou- for their training and equipment is sand, with a war strength of sixty-nine only a loss in so far as it might have thousand; Portugal has an army of been spent or employed productively. thirty-four thousand, with a war Enormous as it is, the state of things is strength of one hundred and fifty thou- cheaper than actual war. In the war sand; Roumania has an army of forty- of 1870, France alone lost £700,000,000, eight thousand, with a war strength of directly or indirectly, and that was £19 one hundred and thirty thousand; Ser- per head of her population; she is now via has an army of twenty thousand, paying, directly or indirectly, about with a war strength of one hundred thirty shillings per head per year. thousand; Spain has an army of ninety

W. J. GORDON

THE IGNORANCE OF CIVILIZATION. Civilization supplies us with some queer facts. Professor Stanley Hall (says the Pall Mall) has discovered that of the sixyear old school children in Boston, Massachusetts, sixty per cent. have never seen a robin, growing corn, blackberries, or potatoes, and eighteen per cent. have never seen a cow. Some of these last even imagined that the cows in the picture-books were drawn life-sized, making it feasible to tread on a cow inadvertently, as one might on a frog. What does Dame Nature think of such unnatural ignorance? Yet this glimpse into the crowded city life of America could without doubt be easily capped in our own country. The exceeding great joy and wonder of our little London street arabs when they see the green fields or the sea for the first time has often been the subject of sympathetic description. Of all

the charities established in this land of ours, it would be difficult to name any more deserving of good-will and support than those which enable the children of the poor of our great cities to escape for a little from man's town to catch perhaps their first glimpse of God's country. Our contemporary jokingly suggests that there are in the country many children of six who have not seen the wonders of a great city, and suggests that ". a hansom cab is a much more sublime and wonderful piece of the world's furniture than a cow." Jesting apart, most people will think that those children who never have occasion to leave the country are the best off. The Garden of Eden was still a Paradise, though it possessed no metropolis. Nowadays we have many and great capitals, but no paradise.

Sheffield Independent.