se small expeditions,
arbitrarily to call upon a fraction of a force maintained on the
principle of compulsion. Accordingly any system must provide a special
paid reserve for the purpose of furnishing the men required for such an
expedition.

An army able to strike a serious blow against a continental enemy in his
own territory would evidently be equally able to defeat an invading army
if the necessity should arise. Accordingly the military question for
Great Britain resolves itself into the provision of an army able to
carry on serious operations against a European enemy, together with the
maintenance of such professional forces as are indispensable for the
garrisons of India, Egypt, and the over-sea stations enumerated above
and for small wars.

XVI.

TWO SYSTEMS CONTRASTED

I proceed to describe a typical army of the national kind, and to show
how the system of such an army could be applied in the case of Great
Britain.

The system of universal service has been established longer in Germany
than in any other State, and can best be explained by an account of its
working in that country. In Germany every man becomes liable to military
service on his seventeenth birthday, and remains liable until he is
turned forty-five. The German army, therefore, theoretically includes
all German citizens between the ages of seventeen and forty-five, but
the liability is not enforced before the age of twenty nor after the age
of thirty-nine, except in case of some supreme emergency. Young men
under twenty, and men between thirty-nine and forty-five, belong to the
Landsturm. They are subjected to no training, and would not be called
upon to fight except in the last extremity. Every year all the young men
who have reached their twentieth birthday are mustered and classified.
Those who are not found strong enough for military service are divided
into three grades, of which one is dismissed as unfit; a second is
excused from training and enrolled in the Landsturm; while a third,
whose physical defects are minor and perhaps temporary, is told off to a
supplementary reserve, of which some members receive a short training.
Of those selected as fit for service a few thousand are told off to the
navy, the remainder pass into the army and join the colours.

The soldiers thus obtained serve in the ranks of the army for two years
if assigned to the infantry, field artillery, or engineers, and for
three years if assigned to the cav