Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/300

 most more urgent still, it must be made comprehensible to uneducated intelligences: it must indicate with explicitness and lucidity the duties which it imposes.

And when the law shall have been redrafted—when it shall be rendered absolutely clear — it must be brought to the distinct knowledge of those who may have to execute it. On this point the military authorities have at their disposal a means of action of extreme simplicity, and of indisputable efficacy. Why do they not use the civil institutions for the purpose?

In France, as elsewhere, men occupy themselves more willingly about laws which assign rights to them than about those which impose duties on them. Every Frenchman knows, understands, and applies in his own person, the requirements of the electoral law. Why, then, should not that law and the mobilization law be made identical, so far as their prescriptions fit together, in all that concerns domicile and residence, for instance? Why not teach military duties by the very document which confers civil rights? The municipal, law, also, might be utilized for the same end; for the mayors have now to play a part in the matter, and are destined to act as agents of the state in certain details of mobilization. Yet when that interminable discussion about municipalities took place in the Chamber, not one single word was said on this point — not one line was introduced into the law with the object of drawing the attention of the mayors to the fact that new duties devolve upon them in consequence of the new military organization of the country.

It cannot be doubted that, under such defective conditions as these, with everything new, undeveloped, and unpractised, there would be many hitches and some disorder in a mobilization.

And now that we have got a rough idea of the conditions and the imperfections of the law, let us go on to the practical working out of the process itself.

The walls are covered all over France with placards calling up the men; the mayors and the other civil authorities are spreading in their villages the news of the order of mobilization; the gendarmerie and the employés of the military offices of each district (the bureaux de recrutement) are looking after the men to the best of their power, and are serving notices and feuilles de route on all the laggards they can find. The men get ready as fast as they can; short time is allowed to them; both the placards and the feuilles de route specify the day on which they are to reach their depot. How are they to travel to it? singly or in groups? Both plans have been tried during the partial callings-up of the reserves for the autumn manoeuvres in 1875 and 1876. For short distances the men have been grouped; for long distances they have generally been allowed to go singly. Grouping necessitates a muster at the office of one of the districts into which France is now divided, and this means loss of time; but it produces order, and it facilitates the payment of travelling expenses to the men, an operation which becomes extremely difficult when they travel separately. The question varies in importance for the different branches of the service. Infantry reservists have rarely to migrate very far to join, for (with the exception mentioned hereafter of the men from Paris and Lyons) they almost always belong to regiments which are quartered in their own immediate neighborhood. But for reservists of the special arms the case is often different; it has been found impossible to attach them all to regiments in their districts, and they (as well as the men on leave of absence from the infantry) may have to cross half France to reach their corps. For such of them as have money no real difficulty would however, arise from this; but the greater part of them would probably be either unable or unwilling to advance their railway fare, and in all such cases time would be lost by going to the district office for money, or for one of the railway passes which the military authorities are now empowered by the minister to issue. But the sole object of this new plan of mobilization by proclamation is to obtain speed and to economize not only days but hours. Why, then, should it not be enacted that travelling expenses may be advanced to mobilized soldiers (as in Germany) by the municipal treasurers or by the local tax-receivers? It is true that this could only be done on the production of a feuille de route specifying the sum receivable by each man, and that waiting for the feuille might involve a delay of a day or two; but, after all, that delay would not arise in every case, and furthermore, it would only represent the time necessary for the delivery of the feuille by the gendarmerie, and not the additional time required for a journey to the district office to fetch money. By this plan each man would find at once, even in the 