Never mind how little a colonel or a general knows of his work, let him commence at once to teach those under him. The first year he will make terrible blunders, but this will not injure him in the eyes of his subordinates, who will, on the contrary, feel the deeper respect for a commander whom they see is doing all he can for their benefit. The second year the old pitfalls will be avoided, and the third year he will be completely master of the situation. The head-quarter staff should give a programme of training for the generals commanding districts; these should give similar programmes for the brigadiers, and the latter for the officers commanding troops under them. This training must be systematically arranged, and be made compulsory on all who are to be trained. It must no longer be left to the option of the senior officers to train or not to train. And from this process of self-training, if it be carried out on a proper system, another advantage will be derived, namely, that the very highest authority in the army will be able, if not to detect capacity, at all events to discover incapacity and ignorance among the senior officers.

Of the detailed working of a system which ensures this result I was told at Metz by the officers to whom it was applied; and the following illustration, given me by word of mouth, will show its efficiency, and also how thoroughly in the German service neither rank nor position is allowed to act as a screen to idleness or incapacity. One of my informants was a squadron leader who had been through two, if not three, campaigns, had gained the distinction of the Iron Cross, and was himself a Serene Highness: 'I go out to-morrow morning,' said the prince, 'with orders to prepare a scheme for the occupation by a small force of some ground at a village near the fortress; having done this I am to ride to another place where I have to open a sealed envelope, which will oblige me to alter the arrangements I had at first adopted; I shall then return home, write my report, and send it in.' This was the task set to a veteran soldier of some twenty years' service. But now attention must be directed to the way in which this report is subsequently dealt with. It goes either to the major or the colonel, who writes on it his criticisms and views, and then transmits it to the brigadier, who having now before him the criticisms and views of two or three officers of different grades below him, adds to them his own, and transmits the document thus minuted to the general commanding the division, from whom they are similarly passed to the officer who in the German service is the head centre of responsibility for efficiency, the corps commander. The hold which each rank has on that below him is evident. But if such a system were adopted in the English army care must be taken, as before observed, to ensure that the criticisms are bonâ fide the criticisms of the generals and the colonels themselves, and not those of their staff officers and adjutants, otherwise they will be worthless and misleading.

The possibility of a general officer becoming an instructor, and

the beneficial results arising from it, I also saw illustrated in one of my visits to Metz. In the course of conversation with the adjutant of a dragoon regiment stationed at that fortress, I learnt that he, in company with some nine or ten brother officers, had been out on a ten days' reconnaissance, under the general commanding the cavalry division. The expenses of the trip came partially if not wholly out of the officers' pockets. My friend spoke of the tour with the greatest enthusiasm, and I went to the general to obtain from him the details of the system followed. Now, the general in question, Von Wright, an Englishman, whose memory is dear to all of us officers who made his acquaintance, was one of the most distinguished cavalry officers in the German army. From major in a Cuirassier regiment he was selected by Von Moltke, although personally unknown to him, and on professional recommendations only, as his military secretary in 1866; as commander of a cavalry regiment be led the Third Army into Châlons; subsequently during the campaign he held important staff appointments, including that of quartermaster-general to Prince Frederick Charles during the trying Le Mans campaign. At the time of this particular visit to Metz he was H.E. the Lieutenant-General commanding the Fifteenth or Frontier Cavalry Division. The general was always pleased to talk about his profession and to give any information to those who asked for it. The following was his account of the reconnaissance. The evening before we started I thought out a scheme. At 7 A.M. the following morning I met the officers, and to each I gave his day's work, which he returned to me completed at 2 P.M. During the afternoon and the evening I examined the work, and I delivered my criticisms on it when the officers assembled next morning.' The fact that I have been brought up in the English army must be accepted as an excuse for the blundering question I next addressed to him: But, general, how many staff officers, A.D.C.'s, A.A. and A.Q.M.-Generals had you to do the details?' 'None,' was the reply, 'I did all the work myself.' Here was a general of the highest professional standing and reputation—a man who has won his position by the hardest of work in European warfare, and at one time at peace manœuvres commanded some four to five thousand sabres-deliberately employing his spare time in giving to some dozen regimental officers instruction which might fall in our army to a garrison instructor. It seems impossible to overestimate not merely the value of such instruction, but the impetus given to professional study among the officers by generals in Von Wright's position not considering it beneath them to become instructors.

6

Doubtless, General von Wright, when his division marched past him, did not fail to express his opinion strongly on any officer who saluted slackly, or whose squadron did not keep its dressing; but if the defaulter had shown to the general on some reconnaissance that

MORPHINOMANIA.

FROM time to time the English language has been enriched by the addition of words representing varieties of vice, or morbid tendencies. We are by this time painfully familiar with the meaning of dipsomania, and even with that of kleptomania. Irresistible tendencies to drink and to steal are what we wish to express by these terms, and the victims of them we call dipsomaniacs and kleptomaniacs. We now find ourselves face to face with a new vice, which some French writers have termed morphinomanie,' and which the Germans call 'Morphiumsucht.' These words have been introduced to indicate an uncontrollable craving for morphia, which is said to be demoralising an ever-increasing number of people in this and in other countries.

It has long been known that opium-eating is not confined to China and other Eastern countries in which it is so rampant an evil. Almost every country in Europe, our own included, has been invaded by the pernicious habit, though, happily for us, opium-smoking has never taken root here. For years past morphia, one of the many substances extracted from opium, has been largely used in medicine in preference to opium, being much more rapid in its action, more efficacious, and unattended with certain inconveniences which are connected with the use of the earlier known narcotic. When administered with prudence morphia is a great boon to many sufferers; but in careless or ignorant hands it may prove a curse. It is usually given by the mouth or injected beneath the skin, the latter method being followed by more speedy relief of pain and other troubles than the former, and being accompanied by less unpleasant consequences.

But the drug is only safe in the hands of medical men who appreciate its dangers: abuse almost certainly follows if its administration be left to the patients themselves. The terrible consequences which often ensue will be referred to again presently, as well as the fatal ease with which the drug may be procured.

But the reader will ask, Who are these morphinomaniacs? and the answer given must be that which De Quincey gives with reference to the opium-eaters of his day- Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed.' That they are very numerous in this

country I do not assert, and the object of this article is to try and prevent their being so. That they are very far from few my own personal experience, as well as that of others, forces me to believe; and, if we may accept what foreign writers have said on the subject, this vice has taken very firm hold of society in other countries. In a lecture delivered in 1885, and entitled Deux Poisons à la Mode, la Morphine et l'Éther,' Professor Paul Regnard quotes the following passage from L'Evangéliste,' one of M. Daudet's novels:

Poor De Lestande . . . yet another unhappy one. . . . You heard about the death of her husband, that fall from his horse at the great review. . . . She has been inconsolable . . . but, to lull her to forgetfulness, she has her injections. Yes, she has become . . . what do they call it? . . . a morphinomaniac. A whole society of such ladies exists. . . When they have their meetings each one brings her little silver case with the needle and the poison . . . and then in it goes in a moment into arm or leg. It does not make them drowsy, but comfortable. Unfortunately the effect gets less and less, and the dose has to be increased.

In the same lecture Professor Regnard writes as follows:

Thus morphinomania does not always owe its origin to pain or sorrow. Many people take morphia in the same way that others smoke, drink, or play music . . . to kill time, to divert themselves, to fill with vague musings the void which idleness leaves in useless lives. It is thus that at the very moment I am speaking to you the pink of society in Paris, and probably in London and Berlin too, is peacefully poisoning itself.

Such extracts tend to prove that the habit of injecting morphia has been established in Parisian society, and the professor more than suspects that it has found as favourable a reception in London. That his opinions are in part true I know, but I believe that he exaggerates the prevalence of the vice among us. What he says in another portion of his lecture shows that we cannot unhesitatingly accept everything which he asserts. Thus, speaking of the abuse of ether as a stimulant, he says:

In London, where ethermania is much more common than with us, the keepers of the squares and parks often find among the clumps of trees empty bottles, invariably labelled 'Sulphuric ether.' They have been thrown there by the victims of this mania, who have fled from their homes to devote themselves to their favourite passion in the open air. Monalte tells us that after the Epsom races many phials of ether are to be found amongst the empty champagne-bottles left on the racecourse.

Most people will be startled to hear from the other side of the Channel that London society resorts freely to the use of morphia injections for the purpose of killing time or of producing certain vague and pleasurable sensations similar to those which are derived from tobacco-smoking, music, etc. Nor will they be ready to credit, without further inquiry, the assertion that their friends seek the more solitary nooks of our squares and parks to narcotise themselves