ment. Imperial journey to Rome, if it ever happens, edifies both the French nation and its Governwould be that it would vaguely help to reassure the POPE, who seems to be in despair. The French do not want him to run away from Rome. The Second Empire has mixed itself up so completely with the Roman question, that its credit in Europe, already shaken, would be seriously impaired if the Roman question ended in a Papal flight. Anything -are From the Spectator, Dec. 15. ARMY. that can prevent this would be a valuable THE REORGANIZATION OF THE FRENCH diplomatic move, and it may be with some such object that the EMPEROR is thought to have allowed his permission to visit Italy to be ex- THE Emperor Napoleon has taken a very torted from him by the EMPRESS. In the eyes great, very menacing, and very dangerous step. of Europe, HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY's expedi- While our imbecile War Office is chattering tion would be a further proof of General over an addition of two-pence daily to the solMONTEBELLO's assertion that, though France dier's pay, he has published in the Moniteur a has withdrawn her troops, she still leaves be- proposal, which he will support with all the hind her moral support in case of need. It is weight of a nearly absolute Government, to by no means the intention of NAPOLEON III. subject the whole of the effective youth of to break needlessly with the Papacy, which has France for all future time to military service. served him personally once, and may hereafter Under the existing system, imposed upon the serve the interests of his dynasty, and even country by the Convention when France was render valuable assistance to the foreign policy engaged in a death struggle, every youth in the of France. The withdrawal of the French country at the age of twenty presents himself garrison had become absolutely necessary. to the conscription. The annual number thus Compliments like those lavished by the Times, offered is 326,000, but of these 108,000 are rein a sudden fit of virtue-worship, upon the jected as under five feet, or blind, or lame, or French Government because it has not violated only sons of widows, or in other ways disqualithe solemn letter of a covenant-the consider-fied for military service. Of the remaining ation for which has already been paid by Italy in the transfer of her capital to Florence based neither on good taste nor on common sense. Credit may be given to NAPOLEON III. for friendly feeling to Italy, without representing the evacuation of Rome as a meritorious piece of self-sacrifice. The French EMPEROR leaves Rome, not to please Italy so much as because his own policy requires him to do so; and if he had not meant to go, it would have been madness to have undertaken to go two years since. The truth probably is that a permanent French occupation, in the present state of European opinion, would be undesirable; now that Austria has been driven out of Italy, it is unnecessary; and the EMPEROR can have no wish to bequeath a superfluous political difficulty to his son. The Roman embroglio is of his own making, and, as a statesman, he foresees that it is pre-eminently one to be settled in his own lifetime, before the accession of a woman, or an infant, or of a revolutionary republic, as the case may be. The Times, is so full of admiration at the notion of the rigid performance of a treaty, that one is tempted to inquire whether it seriously believed that the French EMPEROR, if he never meant to quit Rome, would have needlessly complicated matters by contracting solemnly to do so. That is the kind of blunder which a knave who was also a fool might possibly commit, and which apparently the Times, in the plenitude of its wisdom, has been expecting. Some people never can look at the French EMPEROR except with their mouths open. This attitude of perpetual astonishment and wonder on the part of the British spectator is one which probably amuses and 218,000 the State takes usually 100,000 of the most efficient, one-half of the youth of France thus continually passing through the military mill. Exemption can, it is true, be purchased, but at a cost of 100l. down, which is entirely beyond the means of the mass of the population. The service is for seven years, and France has therefore always the control of 700,000 trained soldiers, or allowing for deaths and disease, 650,000. This army, half as great again as the largest number ever raised by Louis XIV., and greater than the largest ever raised by Napoleon I. within the borders of France as now defined, 100,000 more than the nominal roll of the Prussian Army, has hitherto been considered, and with justice, the first in Europe. It has entered every great capital except London, and has within the last twelve years defeated the two strongest military empires- Russia and Austria. The consolidation of Germany, however, which this proposal will itself materially assist, has alarmed the Emperor not only for the prestige, but for the safety of France. It is understood on the Continent, and is, indeed, suggested in the pamphlet of Prince Charles on military science, that should war between Prussia and France ever break out again, the true policy for Prussia would be invasion- -a march, in fact, on Paris. The Emperor, who has a radical distrust of popular force, which in America entirely misled his judgment, is determined therefore that France shall have a trained army superior in numbers as well as in organization to that of any other power. He has decided to raise the annual draft to 160,000 men, or nearly four-fifths of the total number of French youths capable of military service, an addition of no less than three-fifths to the blood tax, which already presses so severely upon the country that councils-general are reporting on the scarcity of labour. To lighten the demand, which even the Emperor feels to be excessive, the new 60,000 are formed into a reserve, which will not be always in barracks, but will be cantoned there for either three or two months in every year, it is not yet decided which. Onehalf will, however, be liable for duty at any moment, in time of peace as well as war, and only the remaining half are protected by an assurance that they shall be called out only in time of grave emergency. Sixty thousand youth still remain exonerated, but they are not wholly exempted, being formed into the National Guard Mobile, and drilled, and rendered liable to be called out in any time of war. The period of service for all classes is reduced to six years, and as the calling out is annual, it will be six years before the plan receives its entire development. In 1872, however, says the Moniteur, France will have of trained soldiers: : Active Army seen in the world, and cannot be without its effect on ordinary civil life. A Frenchman, of all men, takes to drill kindly, and we may yet see in Europe what has never yet been seen, a nation organized from head to heel, able to act for any end, whether it be the building of a city or the conquest of a province, the construction of new canals or the desolation of a neighbouring country, as one man. The additional force thus gained for France will be overwhelming, will materially increase the difficulties of every Government, will compel most of them, Italy, for instance, to arm the whole population, will drive the entire manhood of the Continent under military discipline, and will, we believe, as a first result, force the States of Germany together with a clang. But will the scheme, though proposed by the Emperor, with whom it has been for years a fixed idea, be accepted by the Legislative Body? We believe it will. True, it has been received in Paris with expressions of open annoyance, and will be felt in the provinces as a severe addition to the most painful of all burdens. True, also, it will add considerably to taxation, for 417,483 though the Moniteur says the addition to the 212,373 budget will be slight, it will increase every year 212,373 for six years, and half a million of men not 389,986 volunteers cannot be armed and clothed for all time, fed and housed for three months in every 1,232,215 year, provided with officers, non-commissioned officers, and instructors, and marched from And in a very few years every Frenchman place to place without expense. True, finally, alive capable of military service, except the that three months' life in barracks will interrupt very few who, under the new restrictions, can all careers above that of the peasant, and be a exempt themselves by purchase, will have been drawback in his, that the mere loss in labour, drilled, subjected to military discipline, and calculated at twenty francs a week, the amount have passed much of his life in barracks. The given by M. Perier, will be 4,000,000l. a year; French Army will be the largest in the world, and that marriage will be rendered still later and will have behind it a male population of and more infrequent. All these things are four millions of men, all indeed over twenty- true, but yet the proposal will, we believe, pass. six, but all drilled, disciplined, and capable Frenchmen care for the grandeur of France, are when armed of instantly assuming their places fretting under its supposed humiliation, are in a levy en masse. The Emperor makes no ready to attack their Emperor for having alsecret of his intention to arm the entire people. lowed Germany to unite herself even in part. He boasts, indeed, in the Moniteur that his The sovereign passions of the nation, for equalscheme is "no accidental law, variable accord-ity and for organization are not affronted, but ing to circumstances and the changes of public opinion," but "an institution which organizes in a permanent manner the national forces," which "disciplines the entire nation by organizing it," and which "consecrates the grand principle of equality that all owe to their country their service in time of war, and no longer abandons to a part of the people the sacred duty of defending the land." France is changed into an armed camp. Henceforward she, like Prussia, has the nation for her army, may dare anything to which the whole nation, thoroughly organized, armed, and subjected to military discipline, may in the judgment of her rulers be considered competent. The whole population becomes an army, accustomed to act promptly at the word of command, and there is scarcely any achievement which can be proved to be hopelessly beyond its reach. Such an example of organization has never yet leen rather gratified, by a law which subjects all alike to discipline, and organizes the whole nation as if it were an army. The Imperialists will support their master, the Moderates will not risk a dangerous opposition for the sake of preserving the right of one man to be exempt from a burden another must bear, and the Radicals will perceive instinctively that a purely military rule over a nation armed, trained, and officered is an impossibility. Paris is hard enough to govern now, but to oppress Paris when every male Parisian has passed through the military mill, understands military discipline, and has a direct relation of comradeship with the active service, will be to compress gun-cotton. All of every party will feel that in the mere proposition of such a plan there is a warning to enemies, that if carried out, France can once more become at her own discretion the arbitress of Europe. It is just sixteen years since men asserted that the age of war had passed, that Europe was at last about to enter on a millennium, during which armaments would be abandoned and fleets allowed to rot in quiet. Within that short time the number of regular soldiers has been tripled, the standard of idea for an efficient army has risen from 100,000 to 300,000 men, and all Continental nations except Russia and Spain have accepted the proposition that for a nation to be safe every man within it must be a possible soldier. The railway and the telegraph have but made armies vaster, attack more swift, battles more cruelly decisive, the spread of intelligence has but made it easier to rouse nations, the diffusion of comfort has but increased the readiness to protect that comfort by the sword. All Europe save England has been organized for battle, and the next war must be to all past wars what the shock of planets or moons in collision is to that of human artillery. It is not a pleasant prospect, and for it one man, the Emperor of the French, is mainly responsible. From the Examiner. THE FRENCH ARMY. A FLEET of transports is collecting to bring the French troops back from Mexico; and after the experience of the last three years we may feel pretty certain that no more will be sent across the ocean on the unpromising business of monarchy-making. The ambition of France has long cast covetous eyes on the golden plains and the fragrant isles of the east; and from time to time has wasted much solid treasure and valuable life in the attempt to gain a permanent footing there. But somehow or other remote conquests do not seem adapted to the genius of Frenchmen. With the consent of England and Russia, they have been allowed to establish themselves recently in Cochin China, and, as long as peace prevails between us, there they may remain. In the event of war with this country, with America, or with the Czar, the obligation to defend her Oriental possessions would be to France a source only of difficulty, detriment, and danger; and sooner or later she must inevitably find, as a century ago she found on the shores of the Indian Ocean, that she had acquired the permanent possession of no more of the soil than sufficed for her brave soldiers' cemetery. Even Algeria, within a few hours' sail of Toulon, proves, after six-andthirty years of hard fighting, costly protection, and artificially stimulated colonization, too far off to pay. As a step, and a great step, towards the realization of the splendid dream in which the Mediterranean is to be swept clear of interlopers and stilled into the political calm of a "French lake," the acquisition of half the coast of Barbary is of inestimable value. It is only, we presume, a question of time and expediency, perhaps only of Imperial whim, when Morocco shall be occupied and annexed as Tunia and Algiers have been. And then will come again the old question, Who is to have Egypt? For so long as a Buonaparte reigns in France the Pyramids will never cease to be one of the grand features in the Imperial perspective. Practically and immediately the range of possible fire from the mouths of French guns lies, however, nearer home. If ever there was a prevailing sentiment deserving the name of national, steadily but rapidly acquiring strength, without popular movement or stimulation by the press, it is the sentiment of pique and wounded pride at the late expansion of Prussia without the leave of France, and without any compensatory acquisition by others. It is no use trying to disguise the fact or to reason about it. Every educated Frenchman out of Imperial livery (and a great many who wear that taciturn uniform) think, feel, and say openly that Napoleon III. was jockeyed by Count Bismarck last July. And if we could read the ruminations of the Imperial invalid as he paces, with a single attendant, in these leafless days of December, the grand avenue at Compiègne, we should hardly fail to recognize the sorting and shuffling in his mind of the various cards wherewith this hitherto unbeaten gambler hopes yet to win back the trick. To such a man it cannot be endurable that the world, whose calculations until now he has in every case laughed at and reversed, should find him to have been egregiously out in his reckoning and publicly checkmated by a newer hand. France is ready this time, moreover, to help him to redeem the blunder of allowing Prussia to get its foot upon Austria's neck and to settle terms of submission and respite before France could get ready to interfere. Had the possibility of Sadowa been foreseen, a stroke of the diplomatic pen in the Bureau des Affaires Etrangères would have prevented the firing of a needlegun. It was hard work driving the Prussian King to take the final determination to declare war against single-handed Austria; but against Austria in alliance with France, Count Bismank himself would not have ventured even to suggest it. By oral promises, made secretly, of what he would counsel his sovereign to concede to France on the Rhine, the Prussian Minister had chloroformed the misgivings of Louis Napoleon; and only when Vienna lay at the mercy of the invader, and the Princes of Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony, had fled for their lives, did his Majesty wake up to hear from the lips of Baron von Goltz that King William could not think of granting France any compensation for having looked quietly on during his seven days' campaign. All Reorganization of the French army, which is only a civil way of saying an augmentation of that army's strength for aggressive war when the fitting time shall come, has ever since been the master-thought among our neighbours. Logical argument in deprecation of the national brain-fever it implies would be worse than useless; but it would serve only to add fuel to the fire of suspicion, and food to irritability. Fifty years have not cleared away the smoke that made the eyes of French pride smart when the Prussian garrison of Paris blew up the bridge over the Seine, built of the cannon taken at Jena. Insult effaced by insult and bitterness of spirit festering as the result in a great people's heart, are among the saddest things in history. But there they are, and it is childish or hypocritical to pretend not to know that they are there. The Minister of War has issued a Report of an Imperial Commission, which, in substance, recommends that the muster-roll of the regular French army should be raised from 720,000 to 800,000 men, and that a National Guard, capable of being mobilized, of 300,000, should forthwith be enrolled. This is equivalent to a decree that twelve months hence 380,000 additional arms of precision shall be available for whatever uses the irresponsible Government of France may think fit. There is no military or financial hindrance, that we know of, to the execution of the project; and so long as the credulity of the frugal, saving, and investing middle classes of France enables M. Fould to appropriate under the name of loans any amount of money that may be requisite for the war budget, it is idle to talk of financial impediments in the way. The return of the troops from Mexico and Rome will further increase the available forces of the Emperor in France by 40,000 veterans; and the squadron that for the last three years has of necessity been maintained off Vera Cruz will henceforth float in European waters. Far from satisfying popular feeling, these augmentations of force by sea and land are received with scoffs and sneers as audible as police regulations will permit. Half the troops of the Line are to be kept as an army of reserve, one moiety only being actually in garrison or depot. A National Guard has always been looked upon rather as a political than a military power; and its history has no doubt been rather one of alternate triumph and defeat in struggles with the Government of the day than in contests with foreign foes. We may be quite sure, indeed, that if any considerable body of men are really called into existence under the old popular name, they will be organized for very different wars and in a very different manner. Plainly enough the present idea is to have them ready as a second reserve in case of disaster abroad, as a third line of defence should the frontier ever again be crossed by the German, such a line as, it will be argued, might have enabled Napoleon I. to drive the invaders back during the campaign of the Meuse. But it is not of defence that France or her Emperor are really thinking. It is the re-vindication of territory once French that lies between the Scheldt and the Rhine, or the recovery of some portion of it. It is no use shutting our eyes to the driftings and tendencies of things. With all his self-adequacy and self-possession no man has ever steered his course more steadily in the mid-stream of opinion than Napoleon III. It is thus that he has hitherto avoided reefs and shoals; and whatever old diplomatic charts and recent diplomatic flourishes may indicate to the contrary, to this policy of pilotage he will undoubtedly adhere. From the Economist, Dec. 15. THE MONITEUR ON THE RE-ORGANIZATION OF THE FRENCH ARMY, THE publication of a manifesto by the Emperor of the French is always an event, but even Napoleon has scarcely issued a document of such terrible importance to Europe as that which appeared in Tuesday's Moniteur. It is an official account of the project for the re-organization of the French army, which His Majesty is about to lay before the Corps Legislatif, to be passed into operative law, and which, he declares, is intended to create a permanent system "not varying with the mutations of public opinion." It is to be like conscription itself, one of the organic laws of France, and a vaster change than it will effect in the position of that Empire, and therefore of the whole world, it would be difficult to conceive. The sketch of the design which we were able to give a week or two since, though entirely correct, fell very far short of the reality. We believed that the Emperor intended to add some 400,000 men to his reserves, but never imagined that even Napoleon, with all his dreamy vastness of conception, and all his fixity of purpose, would venture to carry his ideas to their logical conclusion, and decree that the whole male population of France should be placed under regular military discipline, made liable for service at home or abroad, the instant war has been declared. Yet this and nothing less is what he proposes to do, avowedly and openly proposes, for the Moniteur boasts that the plan throws the "sacred" duty of defending the country upon the whole instead of a part of the population, that it equalizes for all men the liability to military service. Indeed the Emperor regards such liability as a needful element in political training, and speaks of his plan as one which will discipline the nation by organizing" it with military rigidity. The system of recruiting, as actually carried out in France, has since the revolution been in this wise. Every man on attaining the age of twenty is bound to present himself at the divisional centre as a person liable to military service, and as a matter of fact does so present himself. The terrible rigour of the Convention, and subsequently the military exactness of Napoleon's Government, has so disciplined France that resistance to the conscription is nearly unknown, and evasion, except by flight, is impossible. The men appear therefore, and as the population is stationary, the total rarely varies, being, says the Moniteur, usually 326,000. Of this number one-third are rejected by the doctors, as being under the standard of height, or maimed, or visibly unfit for military service. A few more plead one of the two or three legal grounds for exemption, and the remaining total of "valids," as the officials call them, averages about 200,000. Of these, the Government takes half or 100,000 to serve for seven years, a tremendous tax not only upon the labour fund of France, but upon her prolificness; for although marriage is not absolutely forbidden to the French army, it is in practice unusual. This number the Emperor proposes to increase by six-tenths, demanding every year 160,000 recruits for the army, and leaving only 40,000 youths "exonerated," who are, however, all swept in by a subsequent addition to the plan. The 60,000 directly taken are not of course to be made regular soldiers, for that would crush the finances, but they are to be thoroughly trained in camps and barracks, then dismissed, and then called out for exercise three months in every year. The ultimate number of the reserve is expected to be 400,000, and of these half are liable to summons at discretion, either in peace or war, even as the Moniteur puts it to fill up the ranks of regiments accidentally weakened. A liability so continuous and unlimited will of course be as serious an interruption to careers as actual service, and will almost or entirely prohibit marriage. The second half are not liable to be called out in time of peace, but are liable the instant war is declared, which, considering the immense number of expeditions sanctioned in this reign, is a very serious obligation even without the drill. Finally, the whole of the "exonerates" and passed soldiers, that is the whole remaining population, are placed in the National Garde Mobile, are to be thoroughly trained if not trained before, and liable whenever danger threatens or the glory of France is at stake. The whole youth of France capable of military service is in fact placed under drill, officered, and legally liable to summons. In twenty years therefore there will not be an ablebodied man in France who is not also an efficient soldier, who has not been thoroughly drilled, who has not passed part of his time in barracks, and who is not accustomed to obey without question the word of command. The French nation will be as thoroughly drilled as the Prussian. At present one exemption of great practical weight is allowed to the middle class. A conscript who can pay 2,500f. to the Caisse de dotation is allowed to do so, and go free, the money being employed in purchasing an equal number of old soldiers, who, it is thought, give solidity to the system, keep up the regimental traditions, and set the conscripts an example of rigid and prompt obedience. Families frequently make the greatest efforts to secure this sum, and so retain their sons, even peasants frequently saving from the time a child is born. For the future, however, this exemption is to be strictly limited on a scheme which we do not precisely understand, but which excites great alarm among the professional classes, and which certainly terminates the legal right of buying exemptions. The whole of France is, in fact, made liable to service, and in France, it must be remembered, a liability to the State is always rigidly exacted. Frenchmen love efficiency, and we may be sure that if a National, Garde Mobile exists, that Garde will very soon be rendered by instruction, drill, and camp life, equal to regular soldiers.. His Majesty, indeed, calculates on this, stating that in six years his scheme will give him an army of 417,000 active soldiers, 212,000 active reserves, 212,000 second reserves, and 390,000 Garde Mobile-making, together, one million two hundred thousand soldiers, supported, it must not be forgotten, by an annual draft of 200,000 recruits. France, in fact, could under this scheme move four armies, each greater than the Prussian at Sadowa, all at once, and feed each of them with 1,000 men per week, and yet leave behind them all the entire male population above twenty-six, every man of whom will have been a trained soldier. It is impossible even to estimate the power of such a prodigious organization, but this one fact is certain, that no first-rate nation, not protected by the sea, could resist it, unless its own population were similarly armed; that Italy, for example, if threatened by France, could secure her independence only by drilling her whole population. The Prussian example already tends in this direction, and we look, therefore, in a few years to see at least one-tenth of active life among all the men on the continent of Europe spent in the barrack or the camp. Small nations are completely over-awed, the entire male population of Belgium, for instance, being only three-fourths the number of the French army, only just equal to the active army and reserves instantly available in war. Of the expense to be entailed by this gigantic plan we have as yet no satisfactory explanation. At first, doubtless, it will not be very great, but it will increase every year for six years, when the whole additional force will require depots, arms, clothing, food for the time of exercise, horses, officers, and non-commissioned instructors. Frenchmen never serve without pay, though the pay is low, and the increase will be felt in the departments, foundries, factories, powder mills, and so on, almost as fully as if the men were added to the regular army. We do not say that it will be unbearable; but it will be a most serious addition to an expenditure already great, a most serious deduction from a reservoir of labour already too low for the best interests of France. In other countries, Prussia excepted, the change will press almost as severely, and even in England it is doubtful whether it will not be felt. True, we are in no new danger of invasion. France has a hundred thousand men to spare even now, and if she had a million she could |