Besides Italy s three million new men, we must reckon
the amazing improvement in the French Army. So great is that improvement, and so magnificent a fighting machine has the French Army become, that it seems almost like an imperti- nence for us to speak words in praise of it Competent observers tell us that between the French Army at, say, the battle of the Aisne, though it there showed splendid qualities of courage and determination, and the French Army of to-day the contrast ie positively staggering. In numbers, in moral, in equipment, and in leading it has grown out of all recog- nition. Yet with all these omens of success in our favour our pessimists sit down and weep because of some superficial German success or because our wounds are bloody and painful! It is not a pleasant eight—nay, it is a disgraceful One. As a French writer in the Echo de Paris has well said: "Le peseimisme eat pour /e civil ce que is desertion eat pour le soldai." That is a truth which there is no gainsaying.
