The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-21
POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND Ma
TTONAL DISASTER.
From the london Spectator.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND Ma
TTONAL DISASTER.
From the London Spectator.
remarkable letter in the Daily Ne,os
seems to afford the real key to the explana-
ton of the gigantic failures of the French
army The writer was told by two graziefs
of Picardy, as matter within their vn
knowledge, that in very considerable num-
Der of instances which they could specify the
military authorities had got only 1900 men in
q full regiment, instead of 5000, though there
were 5000 names on the rolls. The moduS
OperGndl was this. Fourteen or fifteen years
ago, private societies undertook to fiud sub
stitutes for such of those drawn in the con-
scription as could pay for a substitute. While
this was so, those societies received the con-
scripts 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 re-
quired the money paid by those
who can pay for substitutes to be paid di-
Iectly into the military chest, il 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 Netcs' correspondent
that they could point out many companies
which nominally consisted of one hundred
men, and could only muster about thirty, and
as we have said before, they maintained that
the average French regiments could not mus
ter much above half their nominal strength.
Now, individual statements of this kind, made,
as they only could be made, from personal
knowledge of a few selected cases, would be
utterly orthless 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 any
thing of the war knows that of the
$50, 900 men whom the French army should
have numbered on a war footing, barely
40O,0 900 fighting soldiers were to be found in
France before the great defeats. And if this
policy of embezzling the ESQ 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. 1t is ''real cause" 4. e., one proved
to exist, and also one adequate to produce the
remarkable effects which have been produced
hence, may fairly assume it as one of the
most prol able of all the hypotheses account
ing for the French failure. That the same
cause-gross corruption-was at work in the
CommissAriat Department and the depart
ments regulating the supply of Chassepots,
every one knows. Everywhere the French
army has been starved to enrich individuals.
This is the more serious a lesson to us, be-
the greatest and most menacing evils in every
Anglo o-Saxon society. 1t caused great pro-
portion of the disasters in the Crimea. It
caused enormous waste and many disasters in
the American Civil War; 1t still causes the
greatest possible political evils in American
society. 1t was certainly at the root of the
monstrous waste of our Abyssinian campaign,
where the published evidence goes to show,
for instance, that good million sterling was
wasted mules never wanted, or at least
never used; that "Consuls and Vice -Consuls
received huge commissions for few weeks
service in procuring mules"-we quote from
Aliens Indian Mail of the 23d of August
that "a large batch Of camels was bought at
Suez the day after Magdala aoas
Kno@n to hage faHen;" and gene
rally, that several millions were wasted on
what was known to be useless to the expedi-
tion, for the gain of various classes and indi
viduals. Unless there be some early and
severe check to this sort of canker at the
heart Of all great organizations, the Germans,
who seem at present to be almost completely
free from the temptation to corruption, will
not only become the masters of Europe, but
deserve to be so. No nation can confess
more plainly its complete unworthlness to be
held as of any great account in the political
counsels of the world than by giving evidence
that its average citizens-those whose opin-
ions build up the public life of the State
value their own private interests so far more
highly than the public interest that they
will cheat the State to serve them
selves. 1t is quite certain that people
of this kind do not deserve to belong to
State which exercises wide control in
foreign affairs, and that they take the surest
possible means to undermine the very foun-
dations of the controlling power. tenn
perate, frugal, and laborious Germany, in
which every man really honored the State as
the true organ of what they call with so much
love "the Fatherland," would have every
right to what it would certainly soon gain
a predominant influence in Western Europe,
if its only rivals were q selhshly and un-
scrupu,ousy mercantile Great Britain, a
false and gasconading France, and an in
triguipg, willy, plant Italy There is no such
thing as great State built up out of people
that is not great. If any sort of corruption
pervades public morality, this dry-rot must
attack, and sooner or later, as now in France,
go far towards running the State.
But there is undoubtedly in the present
day very large amount of political corrup-
tion which does not imply anything like as
great an extent of personal corruption as it
would if the same deceptions were practised
on private persons; and it is to the extinction
of this that we look most hopefully, for when
once the morality of a whole nation has be-
come conscientiously Indifferent to the obli-
cations of sincerity and honesty, inveighing
against those sins is as improbable as the
most unproftnble of all the exercises of the
pulpit. No Englishman, however, can doubt
that there is great deal of political corrup-
tion which does not imply any equivalent
amount of personal corruption, and so far,
perhaps, a remedy is possible Surely there is
hope of teaching people-teaching children as
oe Iii. al,