But the tax-payer will be justified in insisting that he shall get a return for the money contributed to the war budgets in the increased value given to the individual citizen by his term of military or naval service. One may go further. It seems likely that something more than a mere general education of character will be required. We recur for a moment to the paradox noticed above-the phenomenon of incessant preparation for a war which is very unlikely to break out. Neither the statesmen nor the electors, if they are rightly directed, of the Twentieth Century will agree with M. de Bloch that this furnishes a reason for abandoning the armaments. A prudent man will insure against railway accidents all his life, though he knows that the chance of his being killed in a collision is infinitesimally slight. But in the case of nations the war-premium is so heavy that an economical people will want it laid out to the best possible advantage. It will occur to them that to teach men to fight is not providing for the whole of the national defence or the national supremacy. It is also necessary to teach them to work. It is a truism to say that wars are not conducted on the field of battle alone. The army, with all its battalions, and all its men, guns, horses, and waggons, is only half the effective force of the country. The other half is in its banks, its warehouses, its factories, and its fields. The most efficient War Office in the world cannot win if it has not behind it the resources of a wealthy and prosperous nation. The long purse continues to be just as potent a weapon as the long sword. And while the martial conflict only comes once in many years, and may not come at all, the industrial struggle goes on without intermission. Therefore a real and complete national system of training will prepare for the one as well as the other; and common sense seems to suggest that the preparation for both should go on simultaneously. The army will become not only a school, but a technical school. The conscript will be dismissed, not merely with some mastery of those weapons he may never be called upon to use, but also with a knowledge of those other crafts and appliances with which his hand will be familiar all the days of his life. He will have learnt many things which will render him more capable as a clerk, artisan, labourer, or tiller of the soil, according to his vocation. He will have the opportunity of keeping up the rudiments of any trade he have learnt before joining the ranks, and of acquiring greater proficiency in it. The socialist ideal of ateliers nationaux may be in part, at least, realised. "The State' will undertake the industrial training of the young workman; but the studio will be annexed to the barracks, and the technical teacher will have his lien on the conscript's time as well as the drill-instructor.

may

The latter functionary is not likely to welcome the change. He will probably say that the recruit has quite enough to do already in attending to his particular department without being burdened by

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other preoccupations. And as a matter of fact it is the constant complaint of the General Staffs that the period of compulsory service barely allows time to teach the conscript his necessary military duties. There is a great deal to learn, and a loutish lad from the country does not learn quickly. The difficulty of combining civil with military instruction is no doubt considerable; but it will not be found insuperable. It may be met by a reaction against the present tendency to compress the military service into as short a space as possible. This has been carried so far that in Germany a large number of the men serve little more than two years, while in France official figures show that no less than 38 per cent. of the conscripts enrolled enter only for one year. Indeed, General Billot, the ex-French War Minister, has stated that the actual, as distinguished from the nominal, term of service of 50 per cent. of the contingent is limited to a single twelvemonth. The object, of course, is to pass men into the reserve rapidly, so as to have a larger force of so called trained soldiers available in case of mobilisation. But the most thoughtful of Continental officers are beginning to see that the process has been overdone, and they are asking whether the reservist, whose entire military instruction has been squeezed into a few months, would be of much more real use than an 'untrained' civilian. Cramming, in any case, is not education, and numbers are not everything. The German, as well as the French military writers, are seriously considering whether they ought not to keep the majority of their conscripts longer, even at the risk of increasing the reserve more slowly. It may be found that, if the entire contingent were compelled to serve for a full term of three or even four years, there would be plenty of time both to teach them all they need know of their military duties and to attend to their general and technical education. They will be enlisted young-perhaps at sixteen or seventeen; treated like schoolboys, as our nascent bluejackets and marines are; and expected to occupy most of their leisure, not in lounging about the barracks or the streets, but in the schoolroom, the gymnasium, or the playingfields. Loafing' is not good for growing lads, and this sedulous, varied, and well directed activity would have excellent effects on their minds and bodies. In fact the Army would be a sort of University or finishing-college for the poor man's son, and, as such, it may be supposed that it would become a great deal more popular than it is at present. No intelligent young man could grudge the State his compulsory Militärdienst if in the course of it he obtained a firstrate education and a free apprenticeship to some useful trade or civil avocation.

All this, no doubt, applies mainly to the countries in which conscription prevails. But one cannot help thinking that, in a modified degree, the system will also have to be adopted in Great Britain. High as the military spirit runs in this country, and substantial as

have been the recent improvements in the position of the soldier, the difficulty of obtaining an adequate supply of recruits has not been appreciably lessened. It will not disappear till we have made the Army a profession, which a respectable man can select without damaging all his future prospects. It is hard to believe that the country will much longer tolerate the wasteful system under which we spend enormous sums to produce so expensive an article as the British cavalry trooper or artilleryman, and then, when we have brought him to perfection, turn him adrift without a career or a calling, to swell the ranks of unskilled labour. We, too, may have to make the Army a School, and render it, not a costly burden on industrial production, but its most efficient feeder and ally.

SIDNEY LOW.

A VISIT TO THE CRAIG BROOK

SALMON HATCHERY

IN the British Isles to-day we are threatened with the extermination of the Atlantic Salmon. And the disaster is the more deplorable because it synchronises with a growing demand on the part of wealthy sportsmen for salmon rivers, a demand which, could it be supplied, would involve, and especially for Ireland, the profitable leasing of her country houses, and that valuable economic drain inward which would be some equivalent for the outward drain by absent landlords and by mortgagees. It is, then, a double misfortune that, at the very time when fashion has set her seal upon the gentle art,' salmon rivers can with difficulty be obtained anywhere, or at any price.

In the Atlantic States of America, in Canada, and, though to a lesser extent, in Norway and Sweden the extirpation of the salmon has necessarily gone forward side by side with the destruction of the forests. The saw-mill must always be erected upon the river's bank, both to easily get rid of the saw-dust and also because the only way to convey the trees cheaply to the saw-mill is by floating them down stream. So that, as the conversion of forests into lumber proceeds, both the rivers and their finny denizens are more and more choked with saw-dust, which, settling upon the river bottoms, is perpetually stirred up anew by the propellers of the steamers. The supply of fish food, whether vegetable or crustacean, is also entirely destroyed. In the case then of Canada, and of such States as Maine and Vermont, the protection and propagation of salmon is becoming impossible, and I think upon the Atlantic seaboard of America, notwithstanding the efforts of the Governments at Ottawa and Washington, the days of the Restigouche and Cascapedia, of the Penobscot and Kennebec, as salmon rivers are numbered. But in Scotland and Ireland the situation is entirely different, and at least in the South of Ireland, where pollution by mill refuse is quite inconsiderable, the economic argument for the protection and cultivation of the salmon appeals to every class of the community. There is no apparent reason why salmon should not swarm in Ireland. In the rivers of the Pacific coast the quinnat salmon are in such abundance

that the proprietors of the salmon canning stations, who equip the Indians with boats and nets, pay only 24d. per fish, and the average weight of these Pacific fish is nearly twenty pounds. The theory is quite exploded that because the rivers of Ireland are small they will therefore only pasture a limited number of salmon. It is now known that salmon, and probably also other anadromous fish, feed only in the vast grazing grounds of the ocean, and that when they have returned to fresh water, for the purposes of spawning, their digestive organs are completely functionless. Thus the only limitation of the number of salmon a river can carry is in the amount and quality of the food supply, not of the river, but of the ocean hinterland. Under these circumstances the consumer is of all people most concerned to secure that the sea shall return to fresh water this splendid food fish in the greatest abundance. If salmon are selling in our markets at 28. a pound, and in the markets of Oregon for 2d. a pound, is this great price inequality unavoidable? I think not, and it seems to me that the results of scientific pisciculture by the United States Government require careful consideration and adoption at the hands of the State. There are a number of reasons, to which I shall presently draw attention, why the protection and propagation of anadromous fish-fish that ascend our rivers for the purpose of spawning-cannot be safely left to private enterprise, but is properly a function of the State.

To the late Mr. Seth Green is probably owing the existence to-day of the Department of Fish and Fisheries at Washington. In the early seventies' that splendid river-herring the shad (Clupea sapidissima), which, in the beginning of the century, brought a most welcome sea-harvest annually into the rivers of New England-this fish from over-netting and other causes could only be procured at a famine price. Thus it happened that for any shad which came to market there was a standing order from the leading hotels and clubs to purchase at a dollar each. It was under such conditions, and when confronted with what seemed to be the inevitable extinction of the shad, that Mr. Seth Green, having secured the spawn of a few 'ripe' fish, entered upon a series of experiments which resulted successfully in the hatching of shad ova in glass jars. The shad is

'The first purchase of shad to be found in any record was made by Joseph Hawley, of Northampton (Conn.), in 1773; he gave for thirty shad a penny each. In 1774 Ebenezer Hunt gave twopence each for 'good fat shad.' In 1800, though hauls of 3,000 shad at a time were not uncommon, the price of shad was 4d. In 1773 the price of salmon in the Connecticut River was twopence per pound. In 1795, the river being dammed at Hadley and Montague, salmon ceased entirely to ascend the river. Very few salmon were taken after 1800.-U.S. Fishery Industries, vol. i. p. 660. 2 Mr. Livingstone Stone writes of Mr. Seth Green's innumerable disappointments and final triumph in hatching shad ova in glass jars :

'It was a pleasant thing to see the change in Green's spirits that came with his first success in hatching shad. It seemed a little thing-nothing but some little delicate living embryos appearing in the frail eggs that he was working over. Little