We have elsewhere stated our belief that the contest be-
tween the military and civil powers is reaching an acute stage. General Zurlinden showed that he thought so when he snatched Colonel Picquart away from the civil Court which intended to try him for libel, and placed him in rigorous solitary confinement; and now M. Dapuy has ad- mitted publicly that he thinks so too. The trial of Colonel Picquart is rapidly becoming the turning point of the con- test, first, because the War Office people are embittered against him for, as they think, "giving them away ; " and, secondly, because the Army really holds, honestly holds, that it has a right to control its own people and its own affairs without interference. There is some justification for this belief, too, for it is admitted to have been the practice in Louie Philippe's time, when the power of dismissal as between master and servant was taken way from the throne, during the whole period of the Empire, and during the twenty-eight years of the present Republic. The officers know of no other system, and are as furious as we should be if Lord Wolseley affected to control the procedure of the Queen's Bench.
