Views of the Hour. — The world is full of war-like propensities at present. No nation can feel secure of a term of peace, long or short. The most restless of our neighbours have a prodigious proportion of soldiery to the area of their territory; whereas England has a prodigious proportion of territory to take care of with a small army. The Continental nations obtain augmentations of force by conscription, under one name or another; whereas our only resource is inducement to volunteers.—This is one view.

It has thus far been universally true, that the dangers of the military profession arise less from the enemy than from the incidents of the mode of life in which the enemy have no concern. The killed and wounded form a very small proportion of the sufferers by a campaign. Disease from exposure, fatigue, and want, is far more fatal than shot, shell, and bayonet; and when disease arrives in the form of epidemics, the troops in fact sustain at once the horrors of war and pestilence; and the two classes of evils ought not to be mixed up together, and laid at the door of war. All the armies of our time have been seen suffering under the evils of disease, whatever their fortunes in conflict. In the late Russian war, all the combatants pined and perished, in greater or smaller proportion,—the Russians the worst, but all very bitterly.