The Paris correspondent of the Times says that a change
is passing over French feeling towards Germany, and that there is a distinct decrease in the rancour with which the conquer- ing Power was regarded in Paris. The only facts he quotes in proof of this opinion are that Madame Sarah Bernhardt has appeared with success in a German play, and that the Figaro has welcomed with courtesy the German Emperor's inquiries as to the fate of the Gascogne,' the French liner erroneously supposed last week to have been lost, but M. de Blowitz is a shrewd observer. The French hope, it is said, for German good-will in Africa, where, they say, the French are pressing towards the Nile through Darfur— rather a long march—and have just secured the formal endorsement of their right to the pre-emption of the Congo State, should the Belgians ever wish to sell it. There is no doubt that the desire to checkmate England in Africa, and build up an India there, is strong in the minds of the French governing class ; and it is quite possible that M. Hanotaux thinks the spitefulness displayed for twenty years towards Germany inconvenient and stupid. It may be questioned, however, if this is more than a surface-change. A class of Frenchmen are frightfully bitter against England, mainly from envy of her expansion ; but the permanent idea of the nation, and especially of the Army, is to "restore its glory" by winning a pitched battle against Germany, and to recover its provinces or compensation for them. A war with England must be a maritime war, and victory at sea is not the French peasant's ideal.
