like those of Chobham and Helfaut are
nothing but the rose and blossom of war.
We see nothing of the hidden root and
origin—mostly the pernicious ambition of
individuals; nothing of the thorns and
branches; private sorrows and international
bitternesses; nothing of the fruit and
produce; ignorance, impoverishment, and
debt.

As I lay on my back upon the heather of
Helfaut, imbibing the sunshine, and listening
to the military band which was dashing off a
polka with almost superhuman precision; in
spite of the luxury of the scene, my thoughts
could not help wandering. It was not that,
at a distance, to the right and the left, other
bands were triumphantly attracting other
groups of listeners; it was not the curious
intermittances of rhythm and melody produced
by a bar of a waltz crossing a bar of a
march, on its passage over the breezy plain;
nor was it recollections of the silent and half-dead
Trappist convents just visible on the
cloud-like hills of the Monts des Cats and
Trinité. It struck me that something was
wanting here. The camp was far too one-sided
a specimen. To give the people a
correct idea of war, other details were
requisite.

Years ago, in Belgium, I had visited the
citadel of Antwerp, a few months after the
siege was raised. The remembrance of that
place of horrors often haunts me to this very
day; and yet it was not worse, nor so bad as
many other places of the kind. The den in
which the wounded were deposited, to die, be
amputated, or take their chance of surgical
aid, was the thing I wished to bring to
Helfaut, and myself exhibit to the holiday
crowd. Of course, a faithful duplicate would
also have to be sent to England. It was a
low gloomy shelter, in which you could not
stand upright—four or five feet high, perhaps.
To form a correct appreciation of the whole
scene, one sense only was necessary. I should
like to read a description of that dismal den,
dictated by some blind traveller. Remember
it was now several months after the siege,
and the stench was still insufferable. This—
a necessary appendage of war; as necessary
as the glittering camp—this was the refuge to
which human beings were brought, that their
souls might depart from their bodies—in
peace! A monstrous abomination! Jackals
and wolves, with the slightest practice, would
scent it at the distance of a league or two.
But who, I ask, will venture to say that, with
no hint or specimen of a state of siege, the
display at the camp suggested the whole
truth? Such as this, and not Chelsea Hospital
nor the Invalides, is the fate of the
majority of wounded soldiers.

Another embellishment was wanting, too.
We gazed upon hundreds of young, strong,
healthy conscripts; but we saw nothing of
the relations they had left behind them. I
would have had, within easy reach, a select
encampment of weeping mothers, with hearts
tortured by the thought of the Algerian
horrors their sons were any day liable to
suffer; of girls, whom the forced absence of
their not faithless sweethearts hindered from
marrying; of fathers, though worn out with
toil, struggling still to toil for seven years
longer, till the blessed end of the term of
service should give back again, to their own
little bit of land, the much-needed help of a
pair of willing and vigorous arms. With no
domestic groups like these, with nothing but
music, glitter, and show, of what value is the
teaching of the camp to him who desires to
look to the bottom of things? Nor would I
allow to be omitted a choice hospital-museum
collection of remarkable gun-shot wounds and
fractures.

By a curious but true coincidence, I had
in one pocket an English newspaper, giving
a charming account of the merry pranks
which our soldiers played on and in
Virginia Water. Ducks and drakes; soft
water bath, so delightful in August. Who
would not learn to swim, if he might but
take part in such pretty sports as these?
Warfare, really, after all, must be a most
entertaining profession. My other pocket,
however, contained a pendant to this
amusing picture. It was simply a number
of Household Words. Another camp was
the scene of the episode, where they also
played at soldiers, though sometimes in
a regular style. Napoleon, while practising
his flat-bottomed boats at Boulogne, did
not scruple to drown a couple of hundred
men.

And what is the end of all this camping?
—the lesson which it leaves most firmly impressed
upon the mind? The General of
Division, Aide de Camp to the Emperor,
Superior Commandant of the camp at Helfaut,
tells us what it lefl upon his. He thus
takes leave of his dispersing comrades:—
"When one has had the honour of commanding
such soldiers as you are, the most ardent
wish one can entertain is to be called to lead
them to the enemy." But what enemy, in an
empire of peace? Suppose that there exists
no enemy? Never mind we will try and
find one. What is the use of a carving-knife,
when there is no mutton to cut up
with it?

The camp at Helfaut with its cumbrous
machinery is stopped until next summer.
But Monsieur Dambricourt's paper mill works
all the year round. Huzza for Dambricourt!
If we only bestowed on the organisation of
peace one quarter of the time and trouble,
and one-sixteenth portion of the treasure,
which we squander on the trappings and tools
of glorious war, how much wiser and happier
we should be? But restless spirits abroad
will not allow us to be wise and happy. We
are obliged to keep up a warlike defence
against them. Would that the Czar and the
Sultan when dull, and in want of a little