ioned officers are men
who have not yet reached a firm and lofty post at which they may pause
and breathe more freely, ere they can attain further promotion. By
the very nature of his duties, which is invariable, a non-commissioned
officer is doomed to lead an obscure, confined, comfortless, and
precarious existence; as yet he sees nothing of military life but its
dangers; he knows nothing but its privations and its discipline--more
difficult to support than dangers: he suffers the more from his present
miseries, from knowing that the constitution of society and of the army
allow him to rise above them; he may, indeed, at any time obtain his
commission, and enter at once upon command, honors, independence,
rights, and enjoyments. Not only does this object of his hopes appear to
him of immense importance, but he is never sure of reaching it till it
is actually his own; the grade he fills is by no means irrevocable; he
is always entirely abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of his
commanding officer, for this is imperiously required by the necessity of
discipline: a slight fault, a whim, may always deprive him in an instant
of the fruits of many years of toil and endeavor; until he has reached
the grade to which he aspires he has accomplished nothing; not till he
reaches that grade does his career seem to begin. A desperate ambition
cannot fail to be kindled in a man thus incessantly goaded on by his
youth, his wants, his passions, the spirit of his age, his hopes,
and his age, his hopes, and his fears. Non-commissioned officers are
therefore bent on war--on war always, and at any cost; but if war be
denied them, then they desire revolutions to suspend the authority
of established regulations, and to enable them, aided by the general
confusion and the political passions of the time, to get rid of their
superior officers and to take their places. Nor is it impossible for
them to bring about such a crisis, because their common origin and
habits give them much influence over the soldiers, however different may
be their passions and their desires.

It would be an error to suppose that these various characteristics of
officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, belong to any particular
time or country; they will always occur at all times, and amongst
all democratic nations. In every democratic army the non-commissioned
officers will be the worst representatives of the pacific and orderly
spirit of the country, and the private