realize that it would be suicidal for France to provoke a war with her
formidable neighbour. And at the same time I candidly confess that I do
not know what some journalists mean by what they call the "New France." To
my thinking there is no "New France" at all. There was as much spirit, as
much patriotism, in the days of MacMahon, in the days of Boulanger, and at
other periods, as there is now. The only real novelty that I notice in the
France of to-day is the cultivation of many branches of sport and athletic
exercise. Of that kind of thing there was very little indeed when I was a
stripling. But granting that young Frenchmen of to-day are more athletic,
more "fit" than were those of my generation, granting, moreover, that the
present organization and the equipment of the French army are vastly
superior to what they were in 1870, and also that the conditions of
warfare have greatly changed, I feel that if France were to engage,
unaided, in a contest with Germany, she would again be worsted, and
worsted by her own fault.

She fully knows that she cannot bring into the field anything like as many
men as Germany; and it is in a vain hope of supplying the deficiency that
she has lately reverted from a two to a three years' system of military
service. The latter certainly gives her a larger effective for the first
contingencies of a campaign, but in all other respects it is merely a
piece of jugglery, for it does not add a single unit to the total number
of Frenchmen capable of bearing arms. The truth is, that during forty
years of prosperity France has been intent on racial suicide. In the whole
of that period only some 3,500,000 inhabitants have been added to her
population, which is now still under 40 millions; whereas that of Germany
has increased by leaps and bounds, and stands at about 66 millions. At the
present time the German birth-rate is certainly falling, but the numerical
superiority which Germany has acquired over France since the war of 1870
is so great that I feel it would be impossible for the latter to triumph