First for the general situation. In 1870 so inefficient and
so wanting in numbers was the French professional Army, and so efficient and so numerous were the Germans, that at the beginning of the war the Germans outnumbered the French by two to one. After the flower of the French Army had either surrendered at Sedan, been interned in Metz, or shut up in Paris, the superiority of the Germans was infinitely greater. Yet even in the desperate position in which the French found. themselves after the first six weeks of the war, they were able to prolong it for six months, and even then the Germans had not overrun much more than a third of the territory of France. And France then had no allies either by sea or by land and no hope of any outside help. Consider Low France is placed now, and what is the military situation. Is it conceivable that France, with our aid and with the French Army of to-day instead of that of forty-four years ago, will not do as well, to put it at the lowest possible point, as she did under a tottering Empire and a Provisional Republic?
