It is necessary to recur to these German accounts of
their own numbers. The German papers affirm with one voice that when the King entered France there were 250,000 troops with the Red Prince, 250,000 with the Crown Prince, and 70,000 under Steinmetz,-570,000 in all. There were besides, 200,000 men in the second line, between the Rhine and the Weser ; 150,000 under Von Falkenstein in the coast pro- vinces; and 150,000 in garrison eastward, especially in Posen and Silesia,—which latter, we may remark, is certainly well garrisoned. This gives a total of 1,070,000 troops in actual readiness. The numbers, as numbers of efficients, seem monstrous ; but it should be observed that they correspond exactly to the number of efficients which would be produced by a conscription throughout Germany of all men of 21, 22, 23, and 24. That would yield 1,600,000 men, and Germans, whose surgeons are not bribed, do not reject more than one in four. The statement, affirmed and reaffirmed as it is, seems to us almost incredible ; but we have English official testimony to the fact that in 1866, Prussia, without her conquests or her allies, had 676,000 trained soldiers in movement.
