These military critics are very positive in their statements. The _Revue hebdomadaire_, M. Veuglaire in the _Revue encyclopédique_, Captain Gilbert (G. G.) in the _Nouvelle Revue_, support each other in these statements. The former, in an article on the instruction of the officers, says that this instruction is very badly conducted; the special editor of the _Nouvelle Revue_, after having demonstrated that the competitions, the methods, the programmes, considered individually, are characterized by grave defects, proceeds to show that, taken together, there is a complete absence of co-ordination. "No general view," he exclaims, "no common impulse, presides over the functioning of our establishments of military education. Saint-Cyr, the École Polytechnique, the École d'application, the École de guerre, are so many entities absolutely independent; have distinct inspections, comités de surveillance having no relations with each other; admitting only one common attachment,--the Minister of War. Now, our ministers have a too precarious and too brief existence to exercise any regulating influence upon the schools." The administration varies according to the personal qualities of the successive directors; sometimes it is the physical exercises which are cultivated at the expense of the intellectual, and sometimes the reverse. The general commanding at Saint-Cyr two or three years ago, a former colonel of Zouaves, was, above all, a man of action, and that which he exercised upon the school "was bad;" he was succeeded by one of the most brilliant professors of tactics at the École de guerre, who gave to the oral instruction an importance which it had never had before, the evolutions, the perfectioning of the manual of arms, the manœuvring in the field, the blacking of the shoes, and the proper alignment of the beds in the caserne.
"At the École de Versailles, where are formed the future officers of artillery and of engineers, there is to be found the same incoherence. The changes brought about each year in the '_coefficients de majoration_' demonstrate with how little spirit of consecutiveness these affairs are managed. Having attributed more importance to the general information than to the qualities of manœuvring, you are quite stupefied to see admitted novices, bachelors who have failed, more or less, and very mediocre subaltern officers, whilst excellent _maréchaux des logis_, intelligent, vigorous, industrious, are refused, because the blackboard intimidates them, because they design in but a mediocre fashion, and have, concerning the rivers of Asia, only vague ideas and perhaps erroneous ones," etc. Captain Gilbert has proposed, in order to do away with the inconveniences attending this anarchic régime, to institute, as in Germany, an inspector-general of all the schools, a sort of high master of the military University. "In any case, it is necessary to adopt some method that will put an end to a situation that is truly dangerous."