No allusion has been made in the Introduction to the pay of officers, nor to the actual cost of the keep of troopers. Being unable to find any documents on which to base my calculations, I appealed to M. Urbain Gohier, the French writer whose authority on this subject is the greatest, and I append the reply which he very kindly sent me:

Dear Sir,

Subjoined are the chief items of the budget for pay—which is the same in all branches of the service so far as officers are concerned.

As to the average cost of the soldier for maintenance, food, &c., it is impossible to arrive at it.

Figures have been given from time to time, but they are purely imaginary.

Expenses of all kinds are scattered under twenty different headings in our budget, and the Reporter-General for that of 1899 has announced that nobody, either at the War Office or in Parliament, can accurately dissect the expenditure.

The actual pay—of which I give you the amounts—is in practice augmented by a mass of "indemnities," so-called, for residence, travelling, mustering, lodging, high price of food, office expenses, maintenance of dignity, first equipment, &c., varying with the nature of the employment, and the individuals employed.

Some officers draw their bare pay, whilst others make a large income, of which no official trace can anywhere be found.

Similarly, in the case of the men: the cost of provisions, firing, lighting, sleeping accommodation, medical treatment in or out of hospital, is reckoned in a lump sum, without distinction between different branches of the service.

This extraordinary confusion is cunningly contrived to prevent any control.

These are the items of pay:

Note the exactitude of the above figures to a single centime, and yet there may be in addition hundreds or even thousands of francs handled in reality, either in money or in kind.

I leave to M. Gohier the whole responsibility for these statements, as I am not in a position to test their correctness. I may add, however, that French officers, whatever their faults, have always seemed to me remarkably straightforward in money matters, and even M. Gohier—whom I cannot follow in his virulent attacks upon all officers indiscriminately—has never even hinted that any of them enrich themselves by dishonourable means.