It is stated in a serious way that the French
Government is at last alarmed at the perpetual increase of expenditure. The country Deputies are becoming restive from fear of their constituents, one or two taxes have ceased to be elastic, and the financiers are warning the Treasury that a new loan would be most unpopular. There must be reductions, and the Government, which is in the main a sensible one, is look- ing round for opportunities of saving. It finds that although it can check, and has checked, colonial expansion, and can be slow about reorganising the Navy, large reductions cannot be made unless the Military Budget is attacked. The Cabinet, therefore, intends to propose certain "economies " of no great interest except to officers which will save a million sterling, and to reduce the total strength of the Army by forty thousand men, which will save two millions more. We question the story, because we doubt whether any Government in France would have the nerve to make the proposal in face of the ever-grow- ing German armaments, but we take it to be certain that the Government wishes the nation to be warned that it is spend- ing too much, and that the incessant demands of the Military Department must be brought to an end. If there are real military reductions to be proposed the Session will be some- thing more than lively. All the Reactionaries will be up in arms, all the Chauvinists, and all the silent men, a numerous
band, who at heart believe that much of the money voted is wasted on huge jobs.
