nies suggested here. This second series of armies could be established either by grouping two fourth battalions to form a new regiment, or by converting each fourth battalion, with the addition of the two depot companies, into a separate regiment. In either case the unutilized reservists of the original regiment would be at once incorporated into the new regiment thus formed.
This general scheme of action would fit in equally with either of the hypotheses of victory or defeat, provided always that the garrisons of the intrenched camps were constituted at the very commencement of the concentration, and not at the moment of a disaster. The troops which occupy them would have fighting to do, for the great space covered by these camps, especially by the fortifications round Paris, would render investment very difficult, if not, indeed, impossible, and would in all probability oblige the Germans to try to storm them. For the same reason, sorties on a large scale against extended circles of attack might confidently be looked for. It is therefore of extreme importance that the defence of these positions should be organized at the very origin of the campaign, and that it should be intrusted to thoroughly solid troops.
The successful holding of fortifications depends, however, in these days, almost as much on the power of the artillery on the ramparts as on the vigor and tenacity of the garrison; and in the organization of their artillerie de forteresse the French have still a great deal to do. Each of their nineteen brigades of gunners includes three dismounted batteries, making fifty-seven batteries in all. It is, then, with the men of these fifty-seven batteries that, thus far, the French army is supposed to be able to serve the immense defensive works which have been constructed at so much cost! There is here one of those strange negligences which puzzle foreigners. Why has this essential point been so neglected? Why, after six years of organization, is France still unable to completely man her ramparts? The mixing up of garrison and field batteries in the same brigades is an inexcusable error; they ought to be separated at once; and the fifty-seven batteries of heavy guns ought to be carried as rapidly as possible to two or three times as many. Until this is done, the question of the practical defensibility of the new forts will remain somewhat in doubt; for though, of course, it may be said that sailors can be called up to work the batteries, yet still, from a military point of view, that solution settles nothing.
It is now time to go on to the territorial army and its reserves, of neither of which has anything been said yet.
The territorial army includes, theoretically, all Frenchmen between the ages of thirty and thirty-four, and its reserve takes all those between thirty-five and forty. But as no attempt whatever has been made, even on paper, to organize the reserve of the territoriale, it may be left out of the account, for the present at all events, as a non-existing force. The territorial army, properly so called, is, however, on the contrary, a progressing reality. It is composed, nominally, like the active army, of five annual contingents. As there are scarcely any exemptions, each of those contingents may be roughly guessed at two hundred thousand men; its general total would seem therefore to reach one million. But that figure is illusory; it allows nothing for mortality or for other causes of diminution; and furthermore, the one hundred and forty-five regiments of infantry into which the tetritoriale is divided, are composed, by law, of three battalions of one thousand men each, and can only absorb, therefore, 435,000 men; so that, allowing the additional proportion of 120.000 more for cavalry, artillery, engineers, and auxiliary services, the utilizable total of this force would not exceed — or, perhaps, not even attain — 555,000 men. Practically, indeed, it would be wiser not to count on the mobilization of more than 500,000 — the surplus men, if any, remaining disposable for ulterior needs. Of that number it may be calculated that, at the present moment, about 280,000 are old soldiers of the active army, that 120,000 served in the last war as mobiles, and that the remaining hundred thousand have had no military training. The ratio of old soldiers is, however, increasing now each year with the regular application of the universal service law, and from and after 1886 every man in the territorial regiments will have passed through the active army. Meanwhile those regiments contain a large proportion of men who have been non-commissioned officers, and who would, for that reason, contribute to the rapid instruction of the others.
As regard the officers of the territoriale, the situation is not very satisfactory. About two-thirds of them (8000 out of 12,000) are appointed. They have been selected after a personal examination, and such of them as happen to be retired offi-
