TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RESIGNATION OF GENERAL CAMPENON.
MFERRY is swimming into very deep water. The
• resignation of General Campenon, on the grounds which he has made public, reveals a great deal more than the existence of a difference in the French Cabinet. It shows that M. Ferry, with the political nerve, not to say audacity, which is his first characteristic, and which, amidst the feeble wills that surround him, has given him his ascendancy, has decided on a policy so daring that his Minister of War repudiates it, and believes that it will overtax the great resources of France, and probably overstrain the patience of her people. Whatever his original convictions, M. Ferry is now convinced that his policy in China cannot be carried out without a serious land campaign : and, rather than renounce his dream of securing for France a dependent Tropical Empire,—an India, in fact, with taxable millions, and a settled agriculture, and a possible great commercial future,—he has decided not merely to menace but to conquer China. General Campenon tells those who question him that the idea of merely defending Tonquin, which he admits to be wise, has been given up ; that reinforcements are demanded which he cannot supply ; and that to carry out M. Ferry's plans, which will involve, he adds, a march to Pekin, the War Office must either withdraw the best-trained men from all regiments—as was done for the Tunis campaign—and thus endanger the mobilisation of the whole Army, or must order one complete territorial Corps d'Arm4e to China, a step which would involve the calling-out of the Reserve for that region, and would, over that section of France, disorganise society. The General declines that responsibility ; and M.
Ferry, rather than yield, has dismissed him. A new Minister of War, not so rigid in his convictions, has been appointed ; reinforcements are being quietly ordered out in numbers so large that there is some difficulty about transport ; a decree has been issued dividing the Foreign Legion, and therefore doubling it if recruits can be found ; a large loan is to be raised ; a vote of the Chamber sanctioning a new enterprise is to be taken ; and, in short, France is going to war with China with the intention of dictating peace in a way which will affect all politics in Asia for at least a century. Pekin, and therefore the world, is to recognise France as supreme throughout Indo-China, if not also in two at least of the Western provinces of China herself, and as consequently entitled to an effective voice, if not to the supreme voice, in all Chinese affairs.
This is the programme before which General Campenon has recoiled ; and it must be acknowledged by the least imaginative to be serious enough. The effort required will be greater than is as yet clearly perceived in England. The one fact past discussion which has come out in the Tonquin campaign, and the abortive attempt to occupy North Formosa, is that the French Generals either will not or cannot do their work as the English Generals do with apparently inadequate means. The conscripts die fast, they invalid at an inexplicable rate—vide the medical returns of the Tunis campaign—and they enter on their work in a temper which requires the encouragement of visible numerical sufficiency. It may be that French soldiers lack that inner contempt for Asiatics which is at once the English strength and weakness ; it may be that they dread defeat under tropical circumstances much more, or it may be that their want of experience discourages them ; but whatever the reason, they demand a certain equality with their enemies, which makes tropical campaigning a terrible drain upon the resources at home. It will be indispensable, as General Campenon admits, if great work is to be done, to send large armies ; and if Tonquin is to be thoroughly conquered, Formosa occupied, and China itself invaded, either in the North or West, fifty thousand men will scarcely be sufficient. That force would be required for the advance on Pekin alone ; and although Formosa may be abandoned for a time, or only harassed by an ineffective blockade, Tonquin must be strongly held, for General Negrier has already orders to capture Langson, on the frontier ; and part of the plan is at all events to threaten, if not to enter, Yunnan and Kwangsi, provinces swarming with life, with a great militia of their own, and crossed by innumerable streams. It is the opinion of every French General, as well as of General Campenon, that to supply such a force, to refill its ranks as they grow thin with disease, and to hold reinforcements ready, will most seriously disturb the organisation of
the Army, which, though it may count 400,000 men round the colours, includes less than 100,000 men who have been trained for two years, who are not in French Africa, and who are not required to keep up the supply of non-commissioned officers. No such difficulty would be felt if France were invaded, because the Reserves would be called out, and the Reserves are fully trained ; but to call them out for a war with China would excite the wrath of the entire peasantry. It follows that France, though she can make the effort required, and can hardly fail of success if she does make it, cannot make it without suspending action in Europe, and without remaining exposed, if the Germans are unscrupulous, to a serious danger. With 50,000 of her best men in Asia, and 50,000 in North Africa,. France, in the event of invasion,— which is, remember, an affair of a fortnight,—would find a clear fourth of her Regular Army away, locked-up, as useless for battle in Champagne as if they were in another planet. This is the danger which alarms General Campenon and many another French General ; this is the fear which has, till recently, checked M. Ferry ; and this, we should have said, is the cry which, if raised with energy, would overthrow him and his Administration. It is the precise risk which the peasantry, with their experience of invasion, and their rooted idea that Prince Bismarck is always hostile to France, will be immovably unwilling to encounter.
Still, M. Ferry perseveres ; and as M. Ferry is neither fool nor dreamer, what is the reason for his perseverance ? We are not in the French Premier's secrets, and he may know that Russia will join him in a Chinese campaign, compensating herself with Corea,—which would materially alter the situation ; but failing unknown data, we imagine the answer to that question to be this. M. Ferry is a man of genuine fearlessness, who is excited rather than cowed by obstacles, and who desires to earn in his Premiership a name in history. He is shut-up to an audacious advance or a discreditable retreat. He considers that invasion is impossible while France is hampered, because Germany will not be alarmed and will have no motive for running so grave a risk ; and apart from invasion, he has more to gain from an advance than from a retreat. If he succeeds and dictates terms to China, he will be forgiven everything—loans, losses, and all—and will have secured for France a grand position in Asia ; while if he withdraws, he will be declared politically a failure, a man who has spent twenty millions and 10,000 men over an enterprise so much too grand that he had to retire in disgrace. His courage, his ambition, and his amour-propre alike forbid such a course, at least until the Deputies desert him. If they overthrow him, he will be absolved, and may say that, but for the feebleness of the peasantry, he would have succeeded ; but he hopes he will not be overthrown. The feeling for the flag is strong in France ; the curious impression, once strong in England also, that China is a comic Power, has not been wholly removed, and is in his favour ; the French suppose that they, in 1858, defeated China ; the Church is distinctly on his side ; and the reluctance of all parties to take power Only to organise a retreat is very great, possibly invincible. He may be allowed to go on ; and if he is, may reasonably consider he is taking the least risky course. He is not, if history may be trusted ; for he is assuming a perseverance in his people which they have never displayed in Asiatic war, and he is underrating the alarm caused by the prospect of more taxation. But a French Premier can hardly be expected to reason in that way ; and from his own point of view M. Ferry is probably in the right. Retreat is ruin for him ; and if Germany will only look on, advance may send him down to history as a ruler of the kind which France cannot help admiring, and which, sore as she is with defeat, she halftimorously, half-eagerly now seeks. To have gained an India will be " glory " in French eyes, if it is lost within ten years.
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