ROUTINE OF INSPECTION.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY SYSTEMS FOR RECRUITING ARMIES.

THE severe scrutiny to which recruits are subjected in Europe, grows out of circumstances in which this country has not yet been placed. We are strangers to the “ Conscription." European armies have, during their last long wars, depended on requisitions so extensive, that it has been necessary to prescribe the examination of conscripts so keenly, as to preclude the possibility of escape from a tour of service.

The security of society requires that a certain

amount of male population should always be left to raise food, to protect the helpless, and otherwise provide for the well-being of civil life. The amount of this population taken for the purposes of war, depends somewhat on the nature of a contest, and the extent to which it involves the safety of the country. In ordinary wars, the voluntary system may suffice; under other circumstances, legal conscription or involuntary levies are made or required. As a determinate order of physical force is necessary to constitute a well-appointed army, and as a class not efficient for military service, but fully adequate to social and civil wants, always exists, governments have resorted to legal selection to fill their armies, when emergencies call for more than is afforded by voluntary enlistments. In various countries, various considerations are adopted, such as youth, age, and infirmities physical and mental, as disqualifying for military service-while as differ

ently constituted authorities exercise the necessary discriminative functions in the matter of these disqualifications.

The system applicable to involuntary levies has been carried in France, under Napoleon, to a degree of perfection not likely to be excelled, either for accuracy or for justice to the State and to the conscript. It must be acceptable to the surgeon to have that system always at hand for reference, as it suggests every principle that is involved either in the involuntary or the voluntary enlistment. And although the rigorous application of the "Code de la Conscription" may not be called for in our land in our day, yet it develops in precise and perspicuous terms most useful matters for reflection to every man who professionally examines a recruit.

The "code" requires that when a conscript pleads inability to do a tour of military service, he must,

1. Procure a certificate from a health officer

to that effect;

2. With this certificate he goes before, what is termed, the municipal administration where he resides;

3. He is then examined by a health officer in the presence of this municipal administra

tion;

4. Before he can be excused from service, the decision of the municipal administration must be considered and approved by the commissioner of the executive directory;

5. If the municipal administration deem themselves incompetent to decide on the case, the conscript is carried up to the central administration. The municipal administration can only decide finally on palpable infirmities; then:

6. All municipal decisions must go for further examination to the central administration; from whence they are finally

7. Referred to the Minister of War.

In

In the army of the United States, where the voluntary system prevails, this duty of deciding on the efficiency of the recruit depends on an examination by one military surgeon. order to have a full view of the whole difference between the conscription and the voluntary enlistment, it will be remembered that, in the conscription or involuntary system, the object of the recruit is to escape from service by the exhibition of infirmities that may or may not exist; while, in the voluntary system, the design of the recruit may be, and frequently is, from a desire to seek subsistence in the service, to conceal disqualifying defects.

The "Code de la Conscription" includes two classes of infirmities: 1st. Those that are so palpable as to be left to the decision of the municipal administration. 2d. Those that from less obvious characters are carried up to the central administration.