You see, conscription is abolished.
-- Sir, you should say recruiting.
-- Ah, I forgot, I cannot help admiring the ease with which, in certain countries, the most unpopular things are perpetuated by giving them other names.
-- Like _consolidated duties_, which have become _indirect contributions_.
-- And the _gendarmes_, who have taken the name of _municipal guards_.
-- In short, trusting to Utopia, you disarm the country.
-- I said that I would muster out the army, not that I would disarm the country.

I intend, on the contrary, to give it invincible power.
-- How do you harmonize this mass of contradictions?
-- I call all the citizens to service.
-- Is it worth while to relieve a portion from service in order to call out everybody?
-- You did not make me Minister in order that I should leave things as they are.

Thus, on my advent to power, I shall say with Richelieu, "the State maxims are changed." My first maxim, the one which will serve as a basis for my administration, is this: Every citizen must know two things--How to earn his own living, and defend his country.
-- It seems to me, at the first glance, that there is a spark of good sense in this.
-- Consequently, I base the national defense on a law consisting of two sections.
Section First.

Every able-bodied citizen, without exception, shall be under arms for four years, from his twenty-first to his twenty-fifth year, in order to receive military instruction .-- -- This is pretty economy! You send home four hundred thousand soldiers and call out ten millions.
-- Listen to my second section: SEC.2._Unless_ he proves, at the age of twenty-one, that he knows the school of the soldier perfectly.
-- I did not expect this turn.

It is certain that to avoid four years' service, there will be a great emulation among our youth, to learn _by the right flank_ and _double quick, march_.