The Times of Tuesday gives an abstract of a very
curious proposition de loi which M. Cabart-Danneville recently pre- sented to the French Chamber of Deputies. This Bill, which pro- poses to make better provision for the coast defences of France, is remarkable as the first State paper which openly contem- plates war between England and France. Still more remark- able is the fact that it contemplates the invasion of France by an English army. The Cotentin Peninsula—that blunt headland between Normandy and Brittany, at the end of which is -Cherbourg—is the point at which an English attack is -dreaded, for the possessor of the Cotentin would he able to threaten the French capital. The authors of the Bill assume that our vieille rancune against France "cannot but incite us to join the Triple Alliance" and to seize on the Cotentin and make it a new Gibraltar. In spite of the smallness of our Army—it is only an Imperial police—and its multitude of duties, it is assumed that we shall be able on the instant to throw 60,000 men, with 5,000 horses and 240 guns, into the Cotentin. We wish we could take so sanguine a view of the .ability of our War Office to send out such a force on the eleventh day after the declaration of war. To be prepared for this emergency, the Bill proposes to build forts and make strategic railways on a grand scale. No doubt, if the French tried to invade us and failed, we should try to strike back ; but the idea, of sending 60,000 men into the Cotentin is absurd. The proposition de loi declares that "lee Anglais sont jingoistes comme on nous reproche d'être chauvins,"—a curious example of how a word invented by the "lion comique " of a music-hall may run round the world.
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