The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-27
FRENCH THEORIES OF DEFEAT.

TO the evils OF monarchy, ana may learn to
govern themselves.
FRENCH THEORIES OF DEFEAT.
From the Pail Mall Gazette.
No nation has theorized SO freely as the
French on the causes of the military ill-suc-
cess which it has occasionally experienced.
Our English way is to forget our defeats, and
singular examples of this convenient oblivi-
BUSINESS are to be found in our nearly COM
plete ignorance of some naval engagements
with the French in which we were signally
worsted, and in the dimness of our know
ledge of such battles as Fontenoy The
French are more in the habit of recollecting
and explaining away A person moderately
acquainted with French popular literature
can recall at least dozen theories of the
fortune of Waterloo, ranging from the auda-
cious inventions of NM. Theirs and Victor
Hugo to the simple popular story that the
Duke of Wellington made his troops drunk
with gin, and SO conquered through sheer
inebriety. 1t was not, in fact, till
it became evident that the profit of
all these ingenious explanations
went exclusively to the Bonapartes that NM
Erckmann- Chatrian ventured to say in a
popular novel that the secret of Waterloo was
q very simple one-that the English general
had chosen very strong position, and that
his soldiers fought exceedingly WELL It is
possible that this French habit of theorizing
is partly attributable to what is really true of
French military ill-success when it has here
tofore occurred on large scale. The utmost
point to which French popular knowledge of
history goes back is the seventeenth century,
and it is certainly the fact that, from that
time to this, the miscarriages of France as
military power have not been simple failures
in trial of strength against some other ma
ton. She has never been brought very low
except by coalition.
All explanations of this kind cease to be
true of the present struggle; and new
theory is wanted of the late Prussian victo-
ries. 1t is very improbable that more than
part of the account which the neutral by
stander will give himself of these events will
ever be received in France. We can see on
the one hand that the French military coun-
sells have been characterized by the worst form
of indecision-that under which man, pos
sibly of some degree of slow sagacity, but of
no great natural talent and no military know
ledge, is charged with the duty of selection
between the competing plans of number of
rival generals, varying very much in their abili-
ties, and even belonging to differeHt
schools of warfare. On the other
hand, we can have no doubt that q
practically make their first appearance in the
world. The truth, disguised by the extrava-
CANT Importance assigned to the needle-guu
in the campaign of Sadowa has now been
made palpable. A nation as completely
armed from one end of society to the other as
ever were the Teutonic tribes from which it
is descended in their forests has hurled itself
against what, after all, is a mercenary army
A royal house of which the princes are care
fully trained to generalship, an aristocracy
educated by the severest study and the
cncfaiT a6 Y1raotiaa 10 10 L.,
working officers, and rank and file in which
the whole male strength of the most highly
educated nation i'll the world is told off
to the military duties most accordant
to its period of life, constitutes what
is probably the highest development of the
mechanism proper for the exercise of the
military art which the world has SEEN There
is an aspect, no doubt, under which this
elaborate organization of community as an
army, In which the proper place of all the
constituent parts of society is preserved, NAV
be viewed with anything but satisfaction. It
will seem to some that no more lamentable
perversion of the powers which should be
employed in the arts of peace has ever yet
been witnessed. But it is impossible not to
admire its perfect adaptation to its immediate
end, and the almost irresistible forces which
it concentrates and places at the command of
its leaders
We may be sure that, In French opinion,
the Emperor Napoleon or his memory will
be made to bear the full responsibility of ill
success, whether it be ultimately less or
greater than at present appears. But it is at
the same time little likely that the inherent
inferIority of the French to the Prussian mill
tary system will ever be admitted in France.
The French theory is that armies become
irresistible, and must embody the true genius
of nations, when nations are in state of
revolution. This half-mystical notion of the
virtues of revolution is very commonly enter
tanned in France even by persons
most afraid of civil conYulsion.
1t is the theory which animates
the late proclamation of the French Ministers,
and which would explain an outbreak in the
streets of Paris at a moment like this. 1t is,
moreover, theory which has been largely
borrowed in the countries over which France
exercises an influence