290
��Blinker Hill.
��[May,
��state, and general, and so bases that government in self-interest and bene- ficial experience, that it is a pledge of security and perpetuity as regards socialism, communism, and as it would seem every other revolutionary influence from within. It is in strong contrast with the commune of France. France is divided for the purposes of local government into departments ; depart- ments into arrondissements ; and arrondissements into communes, the commune being the administrative unit. The department is governed by a pr^fet and a conseil-g^n^ral, the pr^fet being appointed by the central government and directly under its con- trol, and the conseil-g^n^ral an elective body. The arrondissement is presided over by a sous-prdfet and an elective
��council. The commune is governed by a maire and a conseil-municipal. The conseil-municipal is an elec- tive body, but its duties " con- sist in assisting and to some extent controlling the maire, and in the management of the communal affairs," but the maire is appointed by the cen- tral government and is liable to suspen- sion by the pr^fet.
The relation of the citizen to the general government in France is there- fore totally different from that of the citizen of the United States to his gen- eral government, and the town organi- zation is a school of free citizenship which the commune is not, and so far republican institutions in America have a guaranty which in France they have not.
��BUNKER HILL.
By Henry B. Carringtox, U.S.A., LL.D.
Author of The Battles of the American Revolution.
[(a) The occupation of Charlestown Heights on the night of June 16, 1775, was of strategic value, however transient, equalizing the relations of the parties opposed, and projecting its force and fire into the entire struggle for American Independence. (Pages 290-302.)
(b) The Siege of Boston, which followed, gave to the freshly organized Continental army that discipline, that instruction in military engineering, and that contact with a well-trained enemy which prepared it for immediate operations at New York and in New Jersey. (Pages 37-44.)
(c) The occupation and defence of New York and Brooklyn, so promptly made, was also an immediate strategic necessity, fully warranted by the existing conditions, although alike temporary. (Pages 154-161.)]
��An exhaustless theme may be so out- lined that fairly stated data will suggest the possibiHties beyond.
Waterloo is incidentally related to the crowning laurels of Wellington ; but, primarily, to the downfall of Napoleon, while rarely to the assured growth of genuine popular liberty.
No battle during the American Re- bellion of 1861-65 was so really deci- sive as was the first battle of Bull's Run. As that Federal failure enforced the issue which freed four millions of
��people from slavery, and had its sequence and culmination, through great struggle, in a perpetuated Union, so did the battle of Bunker Hill open wide the breach between Great Britain and the Colonies, and render American Independence inevitable.
The repulse of Howe at Breed's Hill practically ejected him from Boston, enforced his halt before Brooklyn, delayed him at White Plains, explained his hesitation at Bound Brook, near Somerset Court-House, in 1777, as well
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