is not a mere imaginary corps; officers would then be forthcoming in any numbers, for everybody would have to serve. The resources of France would not be limited to the active army and its reserves; the territorial troops would rapidly acquire value, and would present a very different character from the mobiles of 1870. It is true that they are not yet in a state of cohesion which would permit them to render immediate service as a separate army; but they may certainly be relied on as auxiliary forces, the more so as they would not, in all probability, be needed so much for campaign work as for guarding étapes, for keeping open communications, and for aiding to supply garrisons for the intrenched camps, and for Paris and Lyons. And it should be particularly remarked that the engineering element of the Territoriale will be most useful, for it will include the most effective part of the corps of ponts et chaus

cers of the active army will of course do These insufficiencies are, however, of no their work well. But it is notorious that very serious importance; they supply some political and social considerations have further evidence of the want of military been largely consulted in choosing these administrative power which is so strangely officers, and that most of them have been evident in the present generation of named, not because they were soldiers, Frenchmen, but they will not do much but because they were gentlemen in posi- | real damage. If a war broke out, it would tion or Conservatives in opinion. Certain at once be seen that the armée territoriale applicants who were professionally capable have been excluded because they were too Republican. Furthermore, it is becoming more and more difficult to find candidates for commissions both in the territorial regiments and in the reserve of the active army. It is absolutely forbidden to officers of those two services to wear uniform off duty; consequently the applicants who thought it would be agreeable to them to swagger about in red trousers find their dream unrealizable, and no longer pursue it. Then, again, though there is no pay (except when under arms), officers have to provide their own clothes and equipment. Finally, almost all the great financial and industrial institutions of the country, with the Bank of France at their head, have very practically, but not very patriotically, announced to their employés that if any of them accept a grade in either the reserve or the territorial army, they will instantly be dismissed from their places. The result is, that by refus-sées. ing the permission to wear uniform when not convoked for service, all the vain-glorious aspirants have been discouraged; by obliging officers to pay for their dress and arms, all the fortuneless are driven away (and the fortuneless are numerous); and by proclaiming incompatibility between clerkship and soldiering, a great part of the lower bourgeoisie is shut out.

The result of all this has been, that the enthusiasm of 1873 -- when crowds of men of all ranks petitioned to be made officers of the territoriale - began to die out in 1874. In 1875 it became necessary to reduce the difficulties of admission; non-commissioned officers of the mobile were admitted to the examinations for the reserve artillery; soon afterwards the same measure was extended to all other It was constantly declared that each examination would be the last, and that the list was on the point of being closed; but more examinations followed all the same. Their level was lowered;

arms.

and only last month the Journal Officiel of the army published another new programme, still less developed than its predecessors, for another series of examinations in April.

The organization of the Territoriale is now quite complete on paper, but the men have only been called together once, for one day, to receive their register-books. At least a month would be required (supposing even that their arms and uniform are really ready, which does not appear to be quite certain) before the battalions could be formed into regiments and brigades.

Still, notwithstanding, it must be repeated that the Territoriale presents sufficient elements of number, of solidity, and of reality, to justify its admission henceforth into the list of the disposable forces of France.

Recapitulating the figures at which we
have now successively arrived for the vari-
ous elements of those forces, it appears
that the entire combatant strength of which
France could now dispose (one-half of it
within three weeks, and the rest succes-
sively), would be made up as follows:
Field armies,

Camps and garrisons,
Unconcentrated troops,
Unincorporated men at depots,

Total of active army, .

455,000 210,000

325,000

310,000

1,300,000

In 1870 only 250,000 men could be concentrated in a month, while the reserves and garrisons did not, at first, reach 300,000. The position is therefore completely changed; money, work, and time have, in spite of obstacles and incapacities, converted the French army into a machine of power.

For what purpose can this machine be used?

Can it possibly be employed for attacking Germany?

Or is it, by the force of things, utilizable solely and exclusively for defence?

1,300,000 of the Alsace-Lorraine fortresses means 25,000 much more than this; it means, also, the 500,000 total stoppage of all traffic on the railways which pass through and are com1,825,000 manded by those fortresses. Consequently, supposing even that France were able to devote 400,000 men to the merely secondary task of reducing the lateral obstacles in her path supposing that she had enough men to besiege several firstclass fortresses, and to simultaneously conquer all the German armies in the field — she would not, even then, have the command of a single railway until one or more of the fortresses were taken, and would have to contend, meanwhile, against difficulties of transport, which it is impossible to suppose that she could overcome. The holding out for a few weeks of a little place like Toul caused the very gravest difficulties to the Germans in 1870, because it deprived them of the use of the line to Paris, which passed under the guns of that fortress. What would happen then to the French, with their inferior organization, if such an obstacle arose in every direction at the very origin of the campaign, if they had to try to fight their way ahead without a railway? Turn and twist this difficulty as you like, you cannot get over it. There it is, absolute and unchangeable. If, then, we follow up the idea of an attack by France on Germany, we are bound to suppose, first, that all, or nearly all, the 1,300,000 men of the French active army can be brought on to German soil at the very commencement of the campaign; secondly, that the supplies for, say, 800,000 men (no weaker army could be supposed to force a road against united Germany), could be carried regularly to constantly increasing distances in carts.

To obtain answers to these questions it is essential to look at them from three different standpoints to measure the strategical, the material, and the political considerations which seem likely to influence the action of France.

When the Germans took the AlsaceLorraine fortresses, and surrounded them with additional fortifications, which have rendered them impregnable without a long siege, they thereby rendered it virtually impossible for France to undertake an offensive campaign. The annexation of those fortresses has turned out to mean something more than territorial conquest, something else than homage to a German sentiment; it is now proved to be an act of the profoundest military wisdom. They close the road to Germany.

The experience of recent campaigns, and especially of 1870, has clearly shown, that though an army can advance into hostile territory without immediately investing the fortresses on its way (unless, indeed, they contain a numerous garrison, in which case that garrison must of course be watched by a more than equal force), it is scarcely possible to advance at all with the masses of men which modern war puts in motion-unless the invader has a railway at his complete disposal for the carriage of his supplies. It happens, however, that the new German strongholds between France and the Rhine would, in consequence of the space covered by their fortifications, be, of necessity, heavily garrisoned in the event of a French attack, and that it would therefore be indispensable to invest them at once. Such an investment would mean the immobilization, for an undetermined period, of a force which can scarcely be estimated at less than 400,000 men. But the loss

It is surely needless to pursue such an hypothesis as this.

Yet, all the same, let us go one step further, in order to exhaust the wildest possibilities of the case. Let us conceive (if we are capable of so mad an imagining) that the armies are forthcoming, that all the fortresses are invested, that the Germans are defeated and are driven across the Rhine, and that the French follow them and advance into pure German ground. An offensive war under such conditions, with the prodigious quantities of men which would be employed on both sides, with all the Fatherland in arms in front, and with all the men of France surging onwards from behind, would necessitate a vigor of command, a unity of action, a perfection of administration, which would imply not mere ordinary

resses still.

may be incapable of using it to the best | And the commission, "Go ye into all the effect, or of extracting from it all that it is world, and preach the gospel to every susceptible of producing; but, however creature,” reveals at any rate a marvellous weak may be her management of it, the foresight of the work which the preacher material force is there. She still needs of that gospel was destined to accomplish two years to finish up the details; she has for mankind. It was by a sermon from still to finally terminate her matériel and bold, firm, but quite unlearned lips, that her fortresses, to re-model her garrison the movement was inaugurated which has artillery, to re-organize her Intendance since grown into Christendom, and is now, and her staff corps. But all the really by more silent though not less potent heavy work is done. She is ready now to agencies, visibly overspreading the earth. fight upon her own ground if needful. At Men went forth preaching "Jesus and the home, one-half of her difficulties would resurrection," and from their generation disappear. Her fortresses and her en- we date, not our years only, but a new trenched camps would supply her armies movement of human society which is fillwith magazines and solid points d'appui. ing the world with its pressures and progHer railways would furnish ample means of transport from the rear. Of course she will grow stronger with each year; of course with time her army will steadily improve; of course its faults will gradually diminish, at least it may be hoped so. But it is an army now; and it is useful not only to declare that fact, but to add to it the distinct statement that if Germany were to once more raise the menace of two years ago, France would no longer depend for her existence on the intervention of Europe. She would, most assuredly, accept that intervention gratefully and heartily, in order to avoid war; but she no longer imperiously needs it, as she did in 1875, to save her from destruction. If another "scare" burst out to-morrow, it would find her, at last, in a situation to efficaciously protect herself. She would no longer talk of withdrawing her useless soldiers behind the Loire, and of leaving the invader to overrun an undefended country. If Germany again proclaimed the wish to crush up France for good, before she is fit to fight, France would, this time, look her calmly in the face, and would say to her, in the consciousness of sufficient strength,

It is too late.

From The Nineteenth Century. IS THE PULPIT LOSING ITS POWER?

"Quam pulchri super montes pedes annuntiantis et prædicantis pacem!"

ST. PAUL must at least be credited with a far-reaching glance over the future of the kingdom of which he was the foremost minister, when he wrote in the beginning of the gospel, "When in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

We are assured authoritatively by serene censors that all the force which was once in that movement has quite spent itself, and that this gospel of "Jesus and the resurrection" must be struck out of any reliable estimate of the forces which are working for progress in the deeper springs of society. And yet somehow it refuses to be struck out. Quietly, but mightily, in the midst of the bright Saturnian realm which pure intellect seeks to restore, theology with all that springs from it is holding its place in the front rank, and is mixing itself, with an energy which shows no sign of decay or weariness, with all the practical interests and activities of mankind. It concerns itself, apparently in increasing instead of decreasing measure, with the foremost questions which occupy the attention of the statesman, and it enters, to an extent unparalleled probably since the great Puritan age, into the familiar household intercourse of our times. Those who advise us quietly to ignore it, and to lay it up with the lumber of dead superstitions, little dream how they are strengthening the hands of the party which they chiefly dread, and whose stronghold is the Vati can; perhaps they may be startled some day by the outburst of fanaticism which they are preparing, and which will be formidable precisely in the measure of their success. There is no rest possible for man in nescience, or in any negation. He needs a rock and not the pivot of a balance to sustain him; and the end of a long course of painful balancings has always been a swift rush downwards towards an abyss.

But, whatever may be the destiny of Christianity in the future, no student of history can ignore the power of the preacher in relation to its first establishment and its earliest triumphs. It is the

preacher rather than "the pulpit"-which | ciple of the Marian party, and was adopted represents the preacher expanded into an by Cæsar and the Cæsarean house, was institution, with more or less detriment to carried up by the Roman see into a highhis vital power with whom we have to er region, and became charged with more do in the early days of the gospel. They pregnant results. The empire meanwhile, had no pulpit, those men who shook the having been mastered by the spirit of that world-happily for them and happily for East which it had conquered, as Dioclemankind. But it did please God," by the tian's keen insight discerned, withdrew foolishness of preaching," to make what itself to the south-eastern corner of the must be confessed on all hands to be a continent. There, in its fair marble palaces mighty impression on human society - by the Bosphorus, it guarded its priceless the foolishness in this connection really literary and administrative heirlooms durmeaning the purest wisdom, that wisdom ing the stormy age in which the West was which looks like foolishness only to fools. growing to its manhood; it shielded them The work of the kingdom of heaven was from wreck with a steadfast courage and done mainly by the preacher, because it a successful tenacity which are among the was a history, the tale of what had actually wonders of history; and it yielded them been said and done by a living man upon up at last in its heroic death, only when this earth, and not a discipline or a phil- the West was ready to receive them, and to osophy, which had to be planted in the scatter them by its discoveries and settlebelief of mankind. ments through the habitable world. It would not be difficult to show that the spirit of the new faith was the most formidable of the invaders of the empire, and the most fatal solvent of its system. It was manifest from the first that a new theatre, in which that spirit should be able to work on the very foundations, would be needed for the structure of Christian society.

They were simple preachers, sent, as St. Paul declares, "not to baptize, but to preach the gospel," who, by the confession of their opponents, before many years had passed away, had "turned the world upside down”—that is, right side up, with its face towards heaven and God. That Godward aspect and attitude it has since maintained, though in a very confused and blundering way; and it has been greatly helped by its preachers in its aspiring effort, and, alas! in its blundering too. I am not inquiring here what reason we have for believing that there is a living reality above this Godward attitude and aspiration of Christendom. But, as matter of fact, it cannot be questioned that those ideas about God and divine things, and about man's relations to God and to divine things, which these men proclaimed, have been before the face of Christendom and in some measure in its heart through all these Christian ages; and as little can it be questioned that through all these ages Christendom has been the focus of a vital activity and progress which bear indisputable marks of superiority to every other form of the activity of mankind.

The preacher continued to be the main power of the new movement, while the ideas and the forces which Christianity brought to bear on men were at work within the bosom of the empire. The new spirit strained the old bottles of the Roman imperial civilization to bursting; while it wrought at the foundations of a new empire in the West, mainly over peoples of Teutonic blood, wherein that policy of large comprehension which was the prin

The power of the preacher was a main factor in the early stages of the culture of Christendom; for it had to do with the moral ideas, the aims, and the hopes of men- by which things societies grow. And it continued to be a chief factor through all the formative ages of its growth, until that decay of old institutions began which was the first warning of the Reformation. Many, no doubt, will be disposed to question this estimate of the value of the preacher's influence, and would attach a very much larger impor tance to the manifold secular influences which were at work. Influences of various orders work together happily in society, as in nature. Rain, dew, frost, storm, the juices of the earth and the air, combine benignly for the nourishment of the plant; but the sunlight is supreme, and, where fruitage is in question, rules over them all. After the same fashion the sacred and the secular seem to some of us to be related harmoniously in the order of the great human world.

At the Reformation this power of the preacher, which had been prostituted in the Roman Church to the very basest uses, broke out with overmastering energy, and assumed the leading place in the conduct of the new movement when it first arose. The preacher became organized