if the truth could be known, Europe would put pressure on M. Thiers and force him to come to terms. 'Your English press,' said one of them, whose large dreamy eyes haunt me still, has treated us shamefully. We see all your papers, and there's not one that writes with common fairness.' Except Reynolds,' added a merry fellow who took my fancy greatly; and that, I'm afraid, saving your presence, is un peu le journal des blackguards, n'est-ce pas ? pas?' 'Your press will come round,' said the other, who had a power of faith in the strength of naked truth. 'I'll tell you what'll bring it round at once,' said I. 'Patch up anyhow with Versailles, tear up that infamous Treaty of Peace, and march both of you on St. Denis with just as much courage as both have been showing at Neuilly, and then carry on the war, not with hosts of half-starved frostbitten Moblots, but as the Vendeans did. You'll soon weary Germany out that way; and you'll lose far less than you're losing now between this civil strife and the war payment.' 'Well, Versailles has been tried over and again. "You resign and we'll resign was our very first proposal. But they won't make terms of any kind. No: it's a sad necessity, but we must do the best we can. France will speak, if we hold out long enough.' The truth is, they never thought tiger Bismarck would spring just at the last moment and shut up their way of escape. They were to have gone away quietly to Brussels; but when their retreat was cut off, like many other weak things, they went raging mad. This accounts for everything. From the Hôtel-de-Ville to the Prefecture, to get my passport visé -a vain precaution, for no passport was needed till near Havre-I came again in contact with the Versaillese. Thence to the Sainte-Chapelle: the man who showed us over pointed out the precious stones encrusted in the glorious mosaics, as much as to say, Whatever they tell you, the Commune is not such a terrible church-robber after all.' That night, of course, I went to a club. I chose the Church of St. Eustache: I was late, and the place was full from end to end-more than half women. Do you know the church? So lofty, that the dim petroleum lamps left the roof in total darkness. At a little table on a platform were the men who presided. Opposite them the pulpit, into which, one after another, got up young enthusiasts, hard business men, and old workmen. One old man who had been a soldier talked well: he spoke of the sufferings of the poor and the selfishness of the rich, and how Government after Government had plundered them, and how the people hungered and had to cringe to priest and mayor for a morsel of bread. All the old platitudes powerfully put, and put under circumstances to make men feel as if they were unanswerable. And then he talked of their hopes and aspirations, and Well, from this you can judge a little what sort of a place Paris was just before the middle of May. St. Sa Denis was (as I have told you) a pandemonium: the last thing I saw there was a fine field of hay trampled down by a body of cavalry at drill: the poor owner was looking on hopeless in a corner. And so ends my story. I've no horrors to tell you. I saw none. When Trochu says that one grand cause of France's misery is the abandoning, by Frenchmen, of the management of their own affairs, we can't help feeling that it was this self management (so long wholly withheld from her) which Paris desired to attain. it. She took a wrong way to attain The Commune was a mistake; but it did keep Paris clean and morally wholesome; it did manage its police, its schools, its hospitals strangely well. This is to me the greatest marvel of all-the mixture of practical ability and wild dreaminess in the men who headed this grand confederacy of workmen and bourgeois. Let me be understood: I am not their apologist; no one yet clearly knows what they designed and what was merely attributed to them. H. S. F. MORE ON GREAT BRITAIN CONFEDERATED. [A dialogue appeared with the title of 'Great Britain Confederated' in the July Number of this Magazine. The writer supposed the Confederation to have become a fact, and dated from it the recovery of England's position in the world. But the Confederation unhappily not having as yet become a fact, and there being so many obstacles in the way of it that it may never be brought about at all, I desired the Author to give us a few words on the alternative side.-ED.] HE causes which led to Con- skilled producers of it might be clearly example, that you should be able to conjecture the condition to which the various parts of the Empire would have been reduced had the remedy of Federation not been applied. A. The noticeable feature of the period preceding Federation, and succeeding the German-Franco war, was want of confidence in the Government of the day. The condition of Ireland created indignation not unmingled with alarm. It was felt that to meet certain evils, only quack remedies, themselves provocative of fresh diseases, were employed. The lamentable weakness which for years had permitted sedition to be preached in Ireland until it was practised began to show itself in England. Disloyalty, sedition, and incendiarism were openly and constantly 'spouted' about the country, and more especially in London. The Government, instead of seeing the law enforced, restrained the police from enforcing the law. The foundation of chronic turbulence was being dug. A curious International Organisation of Labour was being developed, the response probably to the great Freetrade movement of a few years previous. Q. How a 'response'? 4. The effect, if not the object, of free trade was to place all labour upon one footing of competition, irrespective of the nationalities. Wherever labour was, to be had cheapest, there each article was to be produced; but its use was to be universal, so that where it was most largely consumed or employed, the workers of Great Britain might remain idle if those of Belgium could be employed at a fraction less cost. Thus, all labour was subjected to the keenest and to universal competition; and without a clear notion of the causes which produced it, an International com bination of labour was the response. Q. And what did this combination threaten? A. It was largely composed of excellent men. Some few of its members threatened anarchy. The Colonies insisted on their right to impose prohibitive tariffs; the Government denied that right, but yielded assent. It declared the army to be inefficient; but it abandoned the measure it asserted to be necessary for the reorganisation of the army. A sense of insecurity at home and abroad was the widely pervading feeling. Q. And Federation cured those ills? A. It struck at their very root; for, after all, they were but the consequences of enervating_ease and dread of organisation. Federation cured them, because by its means the nation once more awoke to a sense of strength and power. Its effects were magical, because the United Kingdom became in reality a many times multiplied territory, with boundless pathways for the previously overgrown and cramped population. Ireland, under the new régime, became the most prosperous country on the face of the earth. To it returned, from other parts of the world, its exiled people, grown rich during their wanderings, and with capacities surprisingly matured. Q. I gather your argument to be, that without Federation the effect would have been in an opposite direction? A. Such a conclusion is irresistible. More and more contracted would have become the policy of the United Kingdom. With gathering internal difficulties, its place in the scale of nations would have been abandoned without a struggle. It would have accepted its position of a nation of rich and timid traders -a second Holland, but much less happy because of its huge pauperism. In sheer disgust its selfgoverning colonies would have withdrawn from it. Its strategically important colonies it would have been deprived of; or rather it would not only have ceased to feel their want, but it would have dreaded to continue to possess them. Spain, a growing power, would have taken back Gibraltar. American influence would have established a Protectorate in the West Indies. The risk of holding India would have been canvassed. In short, the now grand centre of the grandest Empire of all time would have become a dwarfed and shrunken State, the mark for the scorn of all Europe, throughout which the tendency to form Federal States had become so distinguishing a feature. Q. And the rest of the Empire ? A. Is it possible to paint in sufficiently vivid colours the painful contrast? In North America, in Australia, and in South Africa, the wars of the South American Republics would have been reproduced. You know what the countries first mentioned now are. Think of them as little States, a prey to all the ills consequent upon unsettled forms of government, wasting their substance and their energies upon internal disputes; waging with each other desolating wars, the ploughshare turned into the sword and the rifle; public works neglected; public credit impaired; promising lands forced back from the development to which they had surprisingly attained, to undergo long, laborious, and miserable experience of the hard noviciates through which new States may pass. Q. Do you think that such must have been the inevitable results had Federation not been effected? A. With some of the isolated colonies there might have been exceptions, but the groups must have suffered. The Dominion of Canada could only have held together with infinite difficulty. The Australian Colonies, with their riverine boundaries, must have been subject to constant wars. it to be supposed that the breakup of a large Empire could have failed to be accompanied by a vast amount of human misery and retrogression? Is THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1859, 1866, AND 1870-71. HAT are military resources? This question has been suggested by a leading article in the Times of March 7, 1871, criticising, amongst other things, a speech of the Marquis of Salisbury in the House of Lords. The writer says: 'The only just estimate must be formed by a comparison of the relative population, wealth, and military and naval resources of England and other countries of the present and of former days.' It is evident from the context that resources are here intended to represent something different from population and wealth. What is this something? To our judgment it appears to be science; organisation; discipline as regards purely military matters, and accurate information; dispassionate judgment; common sense as regards political affairs. In the month of January, 1871, the French army lost, under M. Gambetta's management, in prisoners alone, 77,000 men from the armies of Generals Roye, Chanzy, Faidherbe, and Bourbaki; 80,000 men crossed the Swiss frontier, and were disarmed; making a total of 157,000 prisoners. During the same period Chanzy, Faidherbe, and Bourbaki lost between them 34,000 killed and wounded, and the garrison of Paris 7,000 in the same way. The total immediate losses of the French army were, therefore, in this one month, at least 200,000 men, for there were several other bodies of troops in the field which suffered losses, putting Garibaldi's people and the Francs-Tireurs altogether out of the question. Eventually, in consequence of the German operations in January, 150,000 French troops had to lay down their arms in Paris, the National Guards having been most unfortunately permitted to retain them, in despite of General Moltke's most earnest remonstrances; so that, in fact, the French military resources were weakened to the extent of about 350,000 men, besides 800 guns, and an immense quantity of other material, by the events of one month, during which the German losses amounted to a total of 10,000 men at the very utmost.' It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of these figures. At the commencement of the campaign of 1870 a British statesman asserted that the events which had just occurred had sounded the knell of standing armies: what we say is, that the events of January, 1871, sounded the knell of all military improvisations, Moblots and FrancsTireurs, Militias, Volunteers, et hoc genus omne. What happened in Paris during the months of April and May, 1871, affords additional evidence, if such were needed; but something of far greater importance than all this is to be learned from a critical review of the three wars of 1859, 1866, and 1870–71, taken together as one great epos. The long series of wars commencing with the first French Revolution and ending in 1815 had so wearied and exhausted Europe, that the disinclination to military action of almost any kind which supervened grew into a sort of fatuous belief that there was never again to be a great war; that everything might in future be managed by little diplomatic dodges, or the secret police; and that the only use of an army was to keep up appearances, and support the prestige of the Government. Great was the amount of righteous indignation The above details, published in February in the Preuss. Militar. Wochenblatt, are taken from official returns of the Berlin War Ministry. |