little nearer becoming a French colony than at the date of conquest. A hundred and twelve thousand Europeans, imperfectly guarded by seventy-six thousand soldiers, in the midst of two millions and a half of Arabs ever ready to take advantage of the slightest negligence to rise in revolt against us-voilà l'Algérie.' Pointing to the rapid progress of the young colony of Queensland, Prevost-Paradol asked sorrowfully what would it have been in the hands of France? 'What Englishman would ever have been tempted to emigrate thither? What else would have been seen there but a camp, a café, a theatre, a prison? May the day soon come,' he exclaimed,' when our countrymen, finding themselves cramped for room in French Africa [Frenchmen have hitherto formed an inconsiderable portion of its scanty European population], will overflow over Morocco and Tunis, and at length lay the foundation of that Mediterranean empire, which will not only supply a satisfaction for our national pride, but which, in the future state of the world, will certainly become the last refuge of our national greatness.' After all, has not every nation its bee in its bonnet?—and may it not modestly be asked, whether the British buzzer has not perhaps buzzed as idly in its time as any of its neighbours'? Amongst the titles of the chapters remaining unwritten of Arbuthnot's History of John Bull,' we find the following'Chap. iv. Of the methods by which John endeavoured to preserve peace among his neighbours; how he kept a pair of steelyards to weigh them, and by diet, purging, vomiting, and bleeding, tried to bring them to equal bulk and strength.' Of the schemes to preserve the European balance of power which busied John Bull three centuries, it may be observed that his apprehensions and his armaments were almost always directed against objects of traditional jealousy and enmity which had become antiquated, and long after the real sources of danger should have been sought (if such must needs be sought) elsewhere. Thus James I. lost credit for seeking to be friends with Spain, after Spain was no longer dangerous as an enemy; and Cromwell gained credit for the 'spirited' foreign policy which sent a British auxiliary force to Dunkirk to help France to substitute a really formidable rising power for the safer neighbourhood of a sinking power in the Spanish Low Countries. In John Bull's slowly transferred apprehension, the French next succeeded the Spaniards in the traditional character of 'natural enemies,' which they have only of late lost. By a whimsical contradiction, while at the present time the old bugbear of Antwerp (supposing it in the possession of France) being a pistol presented, as the first Napoleon vaunted, at the breast of England, has been revived in Parliament, Parliament, and out of it, on the provocation of recent disclosures, a month or two back John Bull was begging the French Government to let him lay out millions in constructing a French port for steamers of the largest size directly opposite Dover-furnishing funds, in other words, for presenting the pistol to his own breast formidably nearer than the Scheldt. When Goethe accompanied the memorable Prussian campaign of the Argonne in 1792-a campaign commenced, in M. Ollivier's phrase, à cœur, léger, and soon retreated from with heavy hearts over heavy roads-he describes the sudden awakening of the German excursionists into France from their dream of conquest, so similar to that of the French excursionists into Germany seventy-eight years afterwards. Every one now,' said Goetheon the first rumour of intended retreat-' saw the situation; none looked each other in the face; or, if they did, it was to curse their luck or their leaders. Towards night we formed a circle in which few seemed disposed to break silence; but at length there was a general appeal to me to know what I thought of it all. I replied, "From this spot and from this day begins a new epoch of world-history, and you will be able to say that you were here to see it.' The wheel of Revolution has run full circle. What lessons Revolution had to teach, Germany as well as France has learned. This time it is France, not Germany, that has rushed into 'war for an idea,' and the idea she warred for was to arrest by force of arms German national union, which her declaration of war at once converted into an accomplished fact. The baffled French belligerents of this year-carent quia vate sacro-are scarce likely perhaps to hear the sentence, which the great German poet prophetically uttered to his comrades in the Prussian campaign of the Argonne in 1792, applied with equal frankness by French lips to the French campaign of the Rhine in 1870— From this day begins for France and Germany a new epoch, and you may say you have lived to see it.' If we could imagine ourselves unconcerned spectators of these European vicissitudes, there might be reserved for us a rude awakening at no distant period. When Louis XI., in Quentin Durward,' asks his astrologer if he can predict his own death, he replies that it will happen twenty-four hours before that of your Majesty. The present collapse of a military power, which has marched abreast with our own through so many eventful ages of European history, must have something of consequence to teach And that something we cannot think to be exactly what Mr. Lowe says it is, in his recent speech at Elgin: 'What we Vol. 129.-No. 258. us. 2 D have have been witnessing' is not precisely 'the destruction of a most gallant standing army by what is not a standing army.' What we think we hear'-if we hear rightly-is not 'the knell of standing armies.' There is something almost like what our French neighbours call an amère dérision, in terming the Prussian military organisation, as remodelled since 1860, an organisation mainly useful for defensive wars.' It was remodelled expressly for such purposes as it served in 1866 in the war against Austria; and that war was neither defensive, nor, in its outset, otherwise than most unpopular. The ineffectiveness of the calls made upon the Landwehr in 1830, 1848, and subsequent years, when Prussia was really playing a defensive part in German and European politics, had sufficiently shown that, unless at exceptional epochs of enthusiasm, such as 1813, Mr. Lowe's 'armed nation' was, even for defensive purposes, a frail reed to trust to. It was in direct defiance of popular predispositions, and repeated parliamentary majorities, that King William and Count Bismarck carried through that reorganisation of the Prussian military system by which it has been, during the last ten years, without losing its Landwehr reserve, approximated, as regards the regular forces kept on foot, to the great standing armies of neighbouring rival Powers. The Prussian Government,' says a well-informed French military writer, just before the sudden outbreaking of the present war, from the beginning opposed to the discontent of the doctrinaires of the Liberal party that placid indifference which so long enabled it to sustain a chronic constitutional conflict with the Chambers. All endowed with political foresight anticipated with confidence that, on the day when success should ratify the policy pursued by the Crown, the démocrates unitaires [ultra Liberal partisans of German unity] would be the first to applaud a policy from which they had withheld their sanction, and would thus themselves, almost without knowing it, be brought under discipline by the prevailing military spirit.' drill The governing power of Prussia is that ascribed to her by Mr. Carlyle including under that name whatever comes within the description of systematic scientific civil and military administration. Her military organisation has always had a strong royal and aristocratic backbone; it is this that is represented by King William and Count Bismarck at the present day; but the unpopular stiffness of the system has not prevented its superiority in science and action over the less rigid military hierarchies of Austria and France. The English army, scanty *L'Armée Prussienne en 1870, p. 20. as as it has always been in numbers, compared with the work it has to do, has hitherto preserved those solid qualities in its regimental system-those habits of respectful command and steady obedience, which the French army was losing, by the testimony of General Trochu, three years back,* even before the rude tests of this war. Unfortunately there is not yet apparent in our civil or military authorities that genius of organisation which calls a nation-as Stein and Scharnhorst did in 1807-in aid of an army compulsorily reduced in numerical force, but not less on that account the indispensable nucleus and vital centre of the whole national military organisation. Between the two stools of our relaxed Militia and our amateur Volunteer system, there is imminent danger of our national defensive force falling helplessly to the ground. Admirable raw material of such force we have indeed in abundance, but partly unemployed, partly frittered away in detail. The Volunteer movement itself, indeed, in its origin, may be regarded as a patriotic protest against the neglect of the practical solution by national authority of the problem of national defence. But it is a protest sectional, scattered, and so far powerless.† If we want such lessons as Prussia got in bygone years, and as France is now getting, to teach us how to make effective military use of the men and material we have, we are not unlikely to get them in our turn,-perhaps at no distant day; but national greatness and independence do not always survive such lessons. It would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that the establishment of a great military Empire, under the supremacy of an ambitious and aggressive State like Prussia, is a serious danger to the independence of the other European powers. We are astonished to find persons seeking to impose upon our credulity, and to quiet our apprehensions, by the assurance that the military organisation of Prussia is designed only for defensive purposes, and is not adapted to aggressive war; nor have we that confidence which many of our contemporaries profess to feel in the moderation of Prussian statesmen and of the German people. The eagerness with which all classes in Germany now clamour for the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine affords a bad augury for the future. L'Armée Française en 1867,' p. 29. The very variety of volunteer uniforms is a source of weakness and impotence. It is within our own knowledge that young men, after fitting themselves out in succession with two different uniforms of two different local corps, have declined to join a third, merely on the score of the required further expense of a third uniform. Common sense suggests the question-why is not the volunteer uniform alike, in cut and colour, for all ?-with a distinctive button, or belt, or cockade, or what not, to mark the different corps. 2 D2 The * The love of foreign conquest grows with success, and soon takes possession of a people. The great Prussian historian describes the feeling of his Government at the time of the infamous partition of Poland, in words which are now applicable to the whole German people :-'The Prussian Government grasped eagerly at Polish territory, delighted at every fresh acquisition, and careless of future consequences." Count Bismarck has, in fact, told Europe that he is careless of future consequences; and it would be madness in Europe not to be on her guard. But if Prussia, intoxicated with her unparalleled success, should seek still further to enlarge her empire, at the expense of neighbouring States, she will sooner or later arouse against her an European coalition, which no single State, however great and warlike, bas ever yet withstood, and which will as surely humble the pride and power of Prussia as it overthrew the mighty monarchy of the First Napoleon. ART. IV.-Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. 1870. THEA great war which has desolated the Continent this summer has left England unscathed by its scorching fire. The nations engaged in this conflict are neither of them those which she is bound to assist by treaty; but it has been acknowledged by statesmen of both parties that there are countries whose independence she must be prepared to defend, and that there are treaties which it would be dishonour to repudiate. The possibility of having to make war with either of the great military nations now engaged in hostilities, has led Englishmen to ask how far we are prepared for such a contingency. A general impression appears to pervade the public mind that our state of military preparation for a land war is insufficient and disjointed; that our regular army is too small in numbers to be of much weight even as auxiliaries in a European war; that the infantry, though the best in the world, has been reduced even below the numbers desirable for Home defence; that the numbers of men in each company, and the numbers of companies in each regiment, are lower than is necessary for regimental efficiency, and that the cavalry, the artillery, and the army transport are not in a condition to enable us speedily to take part in the labours, the dangers, and the glories of a campaign. * Von Sybel's 'History of the French Revolution,' vol. ii. p. 423, translation. But |