• General .A.ndr6, the French War Minister, made a remark-
able speech at Beaune on Christmas Day. After denouncing the unpatriotic action of a newspaper in revealing his nego- tiations with M. Turpin, the inventor of a new explosive which would place France at the head of the nations of the world, General Andre vigorously attacked the "sham patriots "who had engineered the simultaneous publication in the French Nationalist papers and the Novae Vremya of an article accusing him of disorganising the Army and imperilling the Franco-Russian Alliance. General Andre declared that he had come to Beaune to expose these "odious campaigns," that he feared nobody and nothing, that he would never lower himself by asking punishment for those who were bark- ing at his heels, and concluded : "I shall remain at my post, and when I leave the War Office it will be feet foremost." These are bold words, but General Andre has evidently been stung to something like fury by the insubordination of Major Cuignet, and his resolute action in dealing with every crisis that has arisen since he succeeded General de Galliffet has proved him to be every whit as resolute and fearless as his predecessor. And though he fears "nobody and nothing," he is, happily, no intolerant Secularist, his latest action in the Chamber being successfully to resist the abolition of the chaplaincies in the military schools, on the ground that they were mostly filled by retired naval chaplains, who returned to France imbued with patriotism and loyalty to the Republic, and might serve as a model to all French officers. General Andre is determined at all hazards to maintain the supremacy of the civil power over the Army, and is unquestionably one of the chief forces in the strongest French Government of the decade, perhaps the best since the Empire fell.
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