France has in this department, so to speak, stripped herself
for battle. She has relieved herself of a multitude of burdens which in any great emergency would have hampered her free action. She has maintained her Treaty with Russia so far as to relieve herself greatly from apprehension on the German side, but has at the same time loosened many bonds which impeded, at least, her diplomatic action. She was, for example, owing to her perverse policy of pin-pricks, almost entitled to consider Britain an enemy, and•-certainly entitled to believe that this country would witness her failures rather with a sense of relief than with any sympathy. Owing partly to the unusual ability and moderation of M. Delcasse, and partly to a change of sentiment within the French people themselves, this situation has been exchanged for an entente cordiale so sincere that it might in many contingencies be rapidly transmuted into a firm alliance. Englishmen of the last generation saw such an alliance, and it lasted undisturbed through one great war. The desperate bitter- ness, again, which existed between herself and Italy which was fostered both by the Papacy and by the two Imperial Governments of the Triple Alliance, and which seemed to be spreading till Italian workmen could not live in France or French gentlemen sojourn in Italy—has been carefully soothed away by concessions which have enabled the Italians to improve their economic position, and to recog- nise that in the Mediterranean their interests and those of France are not incurably diverse. The jealousy existing between France and Spain also, upon which Bismarck traded when he proposed a Hohenzollern candidate for the Spanish throne, has been gradually removed, and the economic relation has been drawn closer, until the two Governments have been able only this week to accept the bases of a plan for " extinguishing the Pyrenees " by the construction of two magnificent tunnels, which will allow of swift and direct communication by railway between Madrid and Paris. The obstacle to this great project was strategic fear, and this has at length been removed. The great problem of the future of Morocco, again, which divided France from Spain as well as Great Britain, has been settled to her advantage, so that she will reign in Northern Africa from Mequinez to Tunis and from Algeria to Lake Tchad over an Empire which she believes will in the end sustain the whole overspill of her population. She has, indeed, abandoned her claims on Egypt; but in return she has obtained, as is explained. in the July Edinburgh Review, full sovereignty over all the territories she has claimed in West Africa, and the power of changing the Sahara, if she will expend the money and the effort, into provinces as rich as the poorer provinces of India. We are not so confident as the writer in the Edinburgh Review that she will succeed in this branch of her policy, for we doubt if the difficulties presented by Nature can be entirely overcome by science, or if a vast expanse of desert can be cosseted into fertility by multiplying artesian wells ; but we admit fully with him that, although France is incapable of colonisation, she can create most valuable dependencies. There are features in the government of Algeria, expensive though it is, which we should do well to imitate. At all events, even if it should prove im- possible to stud the -Sahara with oases which will permanently endure, France is released within the sphere of her energy from opposition, and has as free a hand to make experiments in her section of Africa as we have ourselves in ours. An immense weight has been- taken from her shoulders, and for the first time since 1871 her statesmen can feel that they can initiate new efforts or direct their diplomacy independent of external menace. '
We record this change in the condition of France with the more pleasure, first, because we regard an alliance with the Republic as by far the most promising of all that can be' offered for our acceptance, and secondly, because we believe that the promise of peace with which all French statesmen now decorate their speeches is much more sincere than the professions with which it is cus- tomary for Sovereigns and statesmen to deprecate alarm. The French electors rule their Cabinet, and the electors of France are for the time being devoted to a policy of peace. How long this new impulse will last it is im- possible to decide, for it is hardly in accord with the long history of France, or with the character which Europe has for generations attributed to her people. It may arise from the fact that, for the first time in her history, every man in France is compelled to pass through the military mill, and is able to feel acutely that if he votes for war he is voting for personal sacrifices to be made by himself or his children. Or, and this is more possible, it may arise from the desire' to solve in •tranquillity some of their heavy internal problems, and to make the equality which her people have always sought in their recent Revolutions a little more real. It is now, by the confession of most Fdrench thinkers, disturbed or impeded by needless and very serious inequalities of fortune. Or, and this is the most probable of all the explanations, the desire for greater and more diffused physical comfort which is in all white countries the dominant note of this genera- tion has seized in a special degree upon the population of France. Their endless industry, which is surpassed only by that of the population of China, has not, they feel, yet brought them its complete reward, or terminated that sense of pecuniary apprehension which lies at the root of the French habit of saving pence for investment. But whatever its cause, and however liable it may be to be arrested by an outburst of emotion, or by the appearance of a man of ambitious genius, it cannot be doubted that the population of France is for the moment averse to war, —so averse that it would overthrow any Government which, without the gravest excuse, brought it to the edge of a serious campaign. All her successful statesmen make peace their theme, and the party which persistently murmurs that the glory of France is dimmed succeeds only in preventing unanimity at the polls. France will not accept insult any more than she ever has done ; but no one intentionally insults France, and in the absence of insult her people approve a policy which gives no provocations. They are not greatly desirous of expansion anywhere, for they think their children perish too fast, even in Northern Africa; and apart from the coast of the Mediterranean, no project of expansion comes really home to the peasantry, who, though they leave their Government a free hand in the great inland sea, are not without a recollection that conscripts sent to "Africa " are very rapidly invalided, and that those conscripts are their own children, whose health is the first of the' family assets. We believe France to be so devoted to peace that she would sacrifice even the Russian Alliance rather than risk for the sake of her ally the grave losses and graver risks that must be involved - in any war with a first-class Power. France is not exactly afraid of anything, but she is penetrated for the moment with the ideas which dominated Sir Robert Walpole.
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