General Andre, ex-Minister of War, who succeeded General Gallifet, is
publishing some sensational reminiscences in the Malin. The first instalment, summarised in Thursday's Times, deals with his efforts, on assuming office, to crush the tyranny of the military bureaucracy which had usurped the powers of successive War Ministers. A serious conflict with General Delanne, the Chief of the General Staff, at once ensued, and culminated in a remarkable incident recorded in Wednesday's Mafia. Count Muravieff, the Russian Military Attache, called on General Andre, and bluntly asked him to revoke his decision to remove three Lieutenant-Colonels from the General Staff. When General Andre refused with equal bluntness, Count Muravieff accused him of not having kept to the Alliance, thereby implying that it contained a clause requiring an understanding between the two General Staffs in cases of change of personnel. As General Andre had not seen the text of the Alliance. he at once terminated the inter- view, and drove off to M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who assured him that there was no such clause in the Treaty of Alliance, and requested him to report the matter to M. Delcasse, with the result that shortly afterwards Count Muravieff was recalled. The whole incident, according to General Andre, was engineered by the clerical coterie of the General Staff, who had induced the Russian Attache to intervene in order to make the War Minister capitulate.
