HYPOTHESES ACCOUNTING FOR THE FRENCH FAILURES IN THE WAR.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 153, 12 January 1871, Page 7

HYPOTHESES ACCOUNTING FOR THE FRENCH FAILURES IN THE WAR.

A remarkable letter in the " Daily News " seems to afford the real key to the explanation of the gigantic failures of the French army. The writer was told by tvo graziers of Picarcly, as a matter within their own knowledge, that in a very considerable number of instances, which they could specify, the military authorities had got only 1,800 men in a full regiment, insceacl of 3,000 names on the rolls. The modus operandi was this. Fourteen or fifteen years ago, private societies undertook tajind substitutes for such of those d&iwn in the conscription as would pay for a substitute. While this was so, those societies received the conscripts' money, and as it was, of course, the interest of the Army authorities to get the full number of men, the men were always provided. But since the law has required the money paid by those who can pay for substitutes to ■ be paid directly into the military chest, it has become the interest of those who control the military chest to pocket the money and put sham soldiers on the rolls. These graziers of Picardy told the " Daily News " correspondent that they could point out many companies which nominally consisted of 100 men, and could only muster 30, and, as we have said before, they maintained that the average French regiments could not muster much above half their nominal strength. Now, individual statements of this kind, made as they only could be made, from personal knowledge pf a

few selected cases, would be utterly worthless as evidence, if they did not agree so marvellously with the conspicuous facts of the war. The French have been not only disastrously outnumbered, but their armies have fallen ludicrously short of their nominal strength. Every one who knows anything of the war knows that of the 750,000 men whom the French army should have numbered on a war footing, barely 400,000 fighting soldiers were to be found in France before the great defeats. And if this policy of embezzling the £80 paid by every French conscript as substitute money has been largely pursued in some regiments, there can be little doubt that it has spread more or less throughout the whole French army. It is a " real cause," i.e., one proved to exist, and also one adequate to produce the re markable effects which have been produced ; hence we may fairly assume it as one of the most probable of all the hypotheses accounting for the French failure. That the same cause — gross corruption — was at work in the Commissariat department and the department regulating the supply of Chassepots, every one knows. Everywhere the French , army has been starved to enrich individuals.