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 96 with the proclamation of the "freedom of the back." Yet, bad treatment, brutal insults, beatings and all kinds of cruel maltreatment belong also to the stock-in-trade of our present system of military education.

The attitude of military circles toward the maltreatment of soldiers is naturally not determined by considerations of ethics, civilization, humanity, justice, Christianity and other fine things, but purely by jesuitical expedients. The hidden danger which that maltreatment constitutes for the discipline and the "spirit" of the army itself has not even to-day been generally recognized. The ragging of new recruits and recalcitrants by the older men, the brutal barracks jokes and vulgar