THE INVASION OF MADAGASCAR.
WHEN the history of the invasion of Madagascar comes to be written, the difficulties which have beset the French will, we believe, be traced mainly to two moral causes,—a deficiency of moral courage in the Generals, and a certain want of heart—not courage, but heart—in the men. An English General, say, Marshal Wolseley, in command of such an expedition, would have run every risk in order to seize Antananarivo without delay. He would have provided himself with mules, would have left all heavy artillery behind, would have abandoned any attempt to make good roads, would have been almost " criminally careless" as to the perfect safety of his com- munications, and would have stormed or entered Antana- narivo within a month of commencing the invasion. One would have imagined that any French General would have done the same, and owing to the national character, and the ease with which recruits are secured, would have done it a little more recklessly. The French General, however, though quite as daring as the Englishman against the enemy, is afraid of his countrymen, and felt that he could not adopt that course. He left Paris probably with the strictest orders to be careful that no "reverse" should be reported home, and at all events he was convinced that a reverse would be fatal, probably to himself, certainly to the Government which appointed him. The fall of M. Ferry has burnt that idea into all French soldiers' minds. His first object, therefore, was to make a reverse, however slight, impossible, and therefore he moved cautiously, tried and partly failed to utilise the rivers, constructed a road passable for artillery, used ox- waggons instead of mules, and at every step made new preparations to defend himself against any attack on his communications. No matter if disease broke out among men detained too long in the miasmatic jungles of the lowland ; no matter if the European " engineers " were worn out wholesale by labour for which they are unfitted ; no matter if the conscripts lost all heart at the slowness of the advance, nothing would - be fatal to himself or his Government except a reverse or the near prospect of one. All correspondents' letters, therefore, must be revised ; all officers must be warned to be silent on " military details ; " the very sick must be de- tained, lest they should create among the fathers of conscripts an "injurious impression" of the expedition. Communication with Paris must be limited to accounts of small successes and promises of immediate advance. So complete has been the secrecy observed that the very Government at home is believed to know nothing, and a Parisian caricaturist pictures the President of the Republic anxiously consulting a somnambulist as to what might be occurring on the road to the capital of Madagascar. Even English troops under such circumstances, seeing nothing before them but endless delays, cut off from home, and aware that disease was raging in their ranks, would grow discouraged, and English troops always and every- where enjoy one advantage of untold value. They are chosen by natural selection. They may be rough, or out of work, or in despair when they enlist, though thousands of them are none of these things, but no one of them enters the army knowing himself to be utterly unfit for military service. He chooses it, he is not forced into it, and consequently he has usually a good heart for those troubles which require heart rather than mere physical courage. The French conscript obeys a law which be hates, he specially detests tropical service because it yields so little " glory," and though he will fight to the death against any mortal enemy, he shrinks before the disease which he knows will land him at once in a horrible hospital, and probably incapacitate him for any civil career. When an epidemic breaks out therefore, or when the hot and exhausting labour seems to him too much, he loses heart, and though he does not die, he is declared by the doctors incapable of duty. It is not a relief to him that the enemy retreats, but an additional oppression, a loss of the one excitement which would act like an invigorating medicine. The Bey of Tunis never fought, and the death- rate in that expedition was singularly low ; but the men were invalided on a scale which shocked all Southern France. It is the same in Madagascar. It is believed in France that nearly a fourth of the expedition is already invalided, and it must be remembered that the total of the soldiery includes whole regiments of blacks, who do not suffer in proportion from malaria, and that the burden of disease falls mainly upon the white portion of the advancing army. If the hospitals continue to fill, General Duchesne may arrive before Antananarivo with some good black troops and the mere relics of the white army.
We presume that he will arrive there. It is true that the policy of the Hovas has always been to fight only on the hills, and that they may be prepared there for desperate feats of resistance ; but they seem to be cowed by the superior weapons of the invaders, and may abandon positions which, by all accounts, could be rendered im- pregnable, without any effective struggle. If they are cowards, their history has been misrepresented ; but it is quite possible that they are disorganised, that discipline has gone to pieces, and that the only gallant stand will be made by isolated and minute bodies who will show just so much fight as to wake the French army out of its depression, rebrace discipline—which has, it is reported, suffered seriously—and bring the officers with a rush to lead their men in a way they cannot lead them against the fever. With a reserve for the possibility that the Hovas, if cornered, may choose, like their distant kinsfolk in Acheen, to die in heaps behind every point of vantage, we should expect General Duchesne to announce this year the fall of Antananarivo. The capital can only be defended in the passes which lead to it; and if they are carried the General will be master of the city, and find himself in one of two situations. The Hovas, who have desolated the country before him, and who are not bound in the pecuniary withes which coerce civilised populations, threaten to abandon Antananarivo, taking with them the whole framework of administration. If they do this, which is not impossible, for the ruling men do not care who suffers, General Duchesne can do nothing but establish himself on the hills, enlist labourers if he can get them, improve and guard his road, and await the reinforcements from France which will enable him to 'begin the war over again, with Imerina for its objective instead of Antananarivo. He will have little else in his favour, for the Hovas will be just as strong, or as weak, without Antananarivo as with it, and as they have plenty of arms of sorts, will gradually learn the arts of guerilla warfare. It will in that case take twenty thousand white men to subdue them, and an expenditure of at least fifteen millions sterling, to be doubled if " the war " lasts three years. In the second contingency, that of submission, General Duchesne will have to make of the Queen a "protected" Sovereign, and govern in her name, through Ministers who detest his orders, over a people who, except under terror, will render him no help. He will be exposed to a constant danger of insurrection, and will find it to the last degree difficult to raise the revenue without which the French Chamber will be perpetually inquiring, remonstrating, and changing its Agent-Generals in Madagascar. We do not envy him his task even if he finds it possible to build an opera-house in Antananarivo ; to quiet the Sakalavas, who are almost savages, and whom he has let loose to harry the country; and to decide among the army of persons " with influence" who will be pleading for mining concessions, forest con- cessions, concessions of monopolies, and, if the Tonquin precedent is followed, concessions of an exclusive right to gamble. That he or his successor will triumph in the end and in a certain way, we do not doubt, for we do not doubt the French genius for organisation of a kind ; but we expect little for France from the victory except a second Tonquin, that is, a distant and large dependency kept up at great expense, with hundreds of officials and few traders, disregarded by the bulk of the French people, or dreaded as a dangerous station for their children, and denounced by all Liberals once a year as nothing but a post which, in the event of war, will " imprison " a great detachment of the French Army. We have contended steadily for the right of France, under her arrangements with Great Britain, to conquer Madagascar if she could, and we believe that she will do it, but the whole history of the expedition deepens the doubt whether, in making such conquests, France does not mistake her role. She would be better employed in completing her North African Empire, where she can exert her full strength, where she can see what goes on, and where her people have become accustomed. to see their children stationed. "Colonies" like Iudo- China and Madagascar are heavy drains, not only on the numbers and the health of a conscript army, but on the popularity of that conscription for which Frenchmen as yet perceive no substitute. It is all very well to talk of a "Colonial Army," but if it is to include white men, it must be composed of volunteers, and therefore must be paid, and therefore must arouse the most serious jealousy in every household of France which sends a son to be drilled or to fight practically unpaid. The problem of re- conciling the conscription with the possession of great tropical colonies still awaits solution, Spain feeling it at this moment at least as bitterly as France.
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