company has in Gothenburg twenty-five public-houses now; it leases the
right of sale of spirits to eleven eating-houses and clubs; it has seven
spirit-shops and thirteen wholesale places of sale; so that it makes
ample provision for the satisfying of the thirsty throats of the Swedes.
Unquestionably, Gothenburg has still a larger amount of drunkenness than
is known in towns of equal size elsewhere, and a few minutes'
observation near one of these "model public-houses" shows that there is
a very great sale of drink; but it is also evident that much of the sale
on market-days is to country-people from districts where there are no
public-houses. Finally, the result of some time given to observation and
to the consideration of the question on the spot convinced us that the
stricter regulation and supervision of the sale of spirits in this
method has reduced the proportionate drunkenness so far as it is brought
before police notice; that the public-houses are improved in appearance
and in order; that the grosser evils are to some extent done away with,
and the community pecuniarily benefited; but that the working of this
"experiment" has not succeeded in lessening the exceedingly large local
demand for spirits.

J.W.S.

RUSSIAN RECRUITING.

It is a common observation in the mouths of men who are estimating
Russia's military strength that, although short of money, she has at
least a boundless supply of men; but this idea, though plausible at
first sight, is utterly erroneous. A few years ago the confidence of
the Russian optimists in their "inexhaustible numbers" was rudely shaken
by the discovery that in a single year, out of eighty-four thousand
conscripts sent up to the various recruiting centres, no fewer than
forty-four thousand were rejected as unfitted for service by disease or
other physical defects, _not_ inclusive of short stature. The government
took the alarm, and gave orders for the immediate formation of a medical
commission and the thorough investigation of the sanitary condition of
the population at large. This was promptly done, and the result startled
all Russia with the announcement that her strength was barely one-half
what it had previously been supposed to be.

Nor is this by any means an over-statement of the case. In European
Russia the weakness in productive ages is such that whereas in Great
Britain the proportion of persons alive between the ages of fifteen and
sixty is 548 in the thou