I repeat, the sub-lieutenant in the French army is sure to get his captaincy, if he do not advance further. I am aware that the provisions of the new law have endeavored to "put a spoke in that indiscriminate wheel of promotion," by insisting upon certain further examinations in the cases of promotion both by seniority and by selection; but I am also aware that these provisions are virtually a dead letter and that the examinations are nothing less than a sham.

The German officer is not called upon "to cram" for an examination every two or three years of his career; for if the examinations in the French army are going to be taken au serieux at all, such tests will be required of its officers at frequent intervals, inasmuch as promotion is much quicker with them than with their German compeers. The German candidate for a sublieutenancy, whether he be a cadet or an avantageur, has to justify his candidature by an excellent educational foundation. In the one instance he has a ten years' training in the schools; in the other, the very fact of his belonging to the better middle classes, without which there is not much chance of his admission as an avantageur, presupposes a higher intellectual training than that of the young Frenchman, who joins the regiment as a private because he must and springs from an altogether different class, and endeavors to work his way up. The German superior officers see the fähnrich at work often for two or three years, and have a veto upon his further advancement; the French superior officers have no veto at all; the St. Cyrien or Polytechnicienthe X, as the latter is more frequently called-comes to the regiment with his commission in his pocket; his superiors have never cast eyes on him until that day. Nor is there a veto with regard to the non-commissioned officer who has successfully passed through the school of St. Maixent.

Promotion in the German army goes by seniority alone. Up to the rank of captain inclusively, it is regulated per regiment; beyond that rank it extends over the whole of the army. There are a few exceptions to these rules in favor of aides-de-camp to the Emperor and other sovereigns and officers leaving the Kriegschule with a staff-brevet. But in all other cases, the system of seniority is strictly adhered to, and the officer who sees a junior promoted over his head knows that he has no alternative but to apply for half-pay or send in his resignation. He

need not console himself with the thought that he has been accidentally overlooked or that there has been any favoritism. He has been plainly given to understand that he is not considered capable of occupying a rank superior to that which he holds. In that way and without the least fuss the officer of inferior attainments is quietly eliminated. I have said that promotion in the German army is slow. A French sub-lieutenant may confidently count upon a forward step in his career after three or four years, the minimum is two; the German sublieutenant has often to wait ten and never less than eight. The French lieutenant gets his captaincy after two or three years; two years being still the minimum; the German lieutenant does. not get his company before six. The French captain has at an average to wait for his next promotion five or six years, four being the minimum; the German captain twelve or thirteen at the least.

I need pursue my comparisons no further. If I have been at all explicit, the reader will be able to fill in the rest for himself. ALBERT D. VANDAM.

THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT AND THE PUBLIC

HEALTH.

BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M. D., ALVAH H. DOTY, M. D., HEALTH OFFICER OF THE PORT OF NEW YORK, AND C. M. DRAKE,

M. D., CHIEF SURGEON OF THE SOUTHERN RAILWAY.

I.

THE epidemic of yellow fever which has been raging throughout several Southern States for the past three months has aroused anew in the lay mind the question of the relation of the national government to the public health. I say in the lay mind, for, almost without exception, physicians and sanitarians in all parts of the country who are most competent to speak on this subject have long since decided that a well-equipped strong, active department of health in the national government is a pressing necessity. The American Medical Association has for years passed resolutions at its annual meetings urging the importance of such legislation, and year after year a committee appointed from that body for that purpose has endeavored in vain to induce Congress to pass a proper national health bill. President Cleveland in two of his messages urged Congress to make such provisions as would improve the facilities for extending the aid of the national government to local and State health authorities in their fight against disease at all times, and especially in times of epidemic.

In 1894 the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York Chamber of Commerce, acting together through committees appointed for the purpose, drafted a bill providing for the establishment of an efficient Health Bureau in the Treasury Department of the United States. This bill was introduced in both Houses of Congress and referred to the proper committees. Large

numbers of petitions and letters from distinguished physicians and medical societies in every State of the Union were sent to their respective representatives in Congress, urging the passage of the bill.. Leading physic 3, sanitarians, and bacteriologists of the country appeared before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the Lower House, to which the bill was referred, and demonstrated the need of such a law.

Notwithstanding all this, the bill was not favorably reported. It was defeated because of the cry raised by members from certain sections that it would be an interference with "State's rights" for the Federal government to assume the function of general supervision over the health boards of the various States, and by advice and suggestion endeavor to secure uniformity in their health laws and concert of action in enforcing them.

The opposition argued that it would savor too much of centralization for the Federal government, either under the direction of a Cabinet Officer of Public Health, or of a National Health Board, to step in and suppress epidemics when they appeared in any one of the States outside of the District of Columbit even though such State had demonstrated its inability to cope with the situation alone. Carried to its logical conclusion, the argument amounts to this: A State's rights are more precious than the lives of its people, and though all should die, yet must not the assistance of the other States of the Union be accepted by the afflicted one, because their power can be exerted only through the common central government.

Members of Congress from the Southern States, where the opposition to national health legislation was greatest, boasted that sanitary conditions in the Southern cities had been so much improved, and the local and State boards of health had become so efficient, that all fear of yellow fever becoming epidemic again was without cause, although the leading sanitarians and scientists of the country held a contrary opinion.

It has taken less than four years to prove that this boasted sense of security was false. The recent epidemic of yellow fever long and obstinately defied the utmost efforts of the local and State health authorities to stamp it out. It is no reflection on these afflicted States that they failed, and were obliged to ask aid from other sections of the country. Similar failure is liable to be the experience of any State when attacked by an epidemic

disease, because no State can have at hand proper resources in money and organization to repel promptly and effectively an extensive invasion of disease germs, any more than it can be expected single-handed to repel an vasion of its territory by a foreign army.

It is unjust and unreasonable that one State should have to bear alone the brunt of suppressing an epidemic which appears within its borders. By reason of climate and geographical location some States are more liable than others to epidemic outbreaks, and the burden of protecting all other States in the Union should not fall on the State attacked. Disease germs have no respect for State lines, and no effective warfare will ever be made on them until the resources of the whole country are united in a thoroughly equipped national health department, which will stand ready at all times to promptly stamp out infection wherever it may appear, regardless of political divisions of the country.

Scarcely any two States in the Union have the same health laws, many of them have none at all, or they are so inefficient, both in construction and enforcement, that they are unworthy of serious consideration in the light of modern knowledge of the causation and prevention of disease. This present condition of chaos in the health laws of the various States of the Union destroys all hope of stamping out, or materially lessening, the micro-organisms which produce any one of half a dozen diseases which attack hundreds of thousands of our people annually. The efforts of any one State to destroy within its borders diseaseproducing germs will be neutralized by the failure of all the other States to act in concert.

Some of the States, New York and Massachusetts, for instance, have taken steps to stamp out tuberculosis through their Boards of Health. It is well known now that one of the principal occasions of infection of human beings by tubercle bacilli, is eating the flesh and drinking the milk of tuberculous cattle. A system of inspecting the cattle throughout the States above-mentioned has been in operation for several years, and large numbers. of diseased cattle have been killed and paid for by the State. But the existence of this law in one or two States alone makes those States a market for diseased cattle from all other States which have no such law; and as the State pays a fair price for