France Under the Republic

resent limitations of French officers, there is an essential difference between them and those of the Empire. An officer of the staff of General Felix Douai asked at Mttl- hausen, in 1870, if the Hartz was broad and had a bridge over it, taking that forest for a river; and General Michel telegraphed the Minister of War to ascertain where his own troops were.1 The officers of to-day have worked much, and from a technical point of view are superior to all their predecessors. Taken all and all, the same thing must be said of their manliness and devotion to their country. The campaign in Morocco and the present war haveabundantly demonstrated their heroic spirit. The corruption revealed at the time of the Dreyfus case was connected with the Bureau of Military Information, in which a man to excel is tempted to trample under foot the moral principles everywhere upheld by true men. The army is now like the nation. It is no longer made up of the poor, the ignorant, or paid substitutes. The marchands d'hommes, who made it their business to provide some one to take the place of the rich, disappeared with the Empire. The son of a peasant and the son of a duke now stand side by side in the ranks. There wealth and birth no longer create much inequality, though the officers come mostly from aristocratic families; but the middle class is more and more taking an important place among them. 1 Scheurer-Kestner, Souvenirs de jeuneste, p. 160. 1 It was restored to three years in 1... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.