Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1875-05-06
THE WONDERFUL RECUPERATIYE
POWER OF FRANCE

Il
POWER OF FRANCE
Few countries have ever been in a !
worse condition than France appeared
to be In at the close of the late war with |
Germany Her armies had been routed: |
her Emperor had become fugitive her
strongholds, such as Strasburg and
Metz, had been captured Paris, starved
into submission, had been entered by
the German forces. Some of her most
fertile and populous districts had been
so devastated that agents of contributors
to Great Britain and the United States
had been sent into them to supply their
unfortunate inhabitants with food and
clothing, farming implements, and seeds
for the next years crop and as if ell
these misfortunes had not filled her Bit
ter cup, it had been filed to OVERLOOKING
by bloody contest-Frenchmen against
Frenchmen-for the possession and con-
troll of Paris. Her beautiful capital had
been again besieged, not by foreigners,
but by her own people, the monuments
of her glory had been destroyed, not by
the Germans, but by those who shared
in the national honor of the achievements
which these monuments commemorated
By this civil war, so unnatural and so
deplorable, the sympathy of the other
nations, excited in her behalf as defeat
followed defeat in her contest with the
Germans, had been turned into indiffer-
ence, if not into disgust, and so helpless
had she become that submission to the
demands of the coRqueror was her only
alternative. What those demands were
the world knows-the cession of two of
her beautiful and productive provinces,
and the payment of thousand millions
of dollars to indemnify Germany for the
expenses of the war. Never before had
great and powerful nation been so
speedily and thoroughly mastered rare
ly, if ever, had brave and proud people
been compelled to conclude hostilities
with so disastrous results. With a gov
eminent provisional only with a de-
moralized people with an empty treas
ury, an immense debt, to be nearly
doubled by the expenditures of single
year Including the indemnity this great
nation, heretofore one of the most
powerful and influential in Europe,
seemed to be ON the verge of political
and financial ruin.
Such was France as she appeared be-
fore the world some four years ago and
what is her condition to-day I ailude,
not to her political position, although in
the organization of government on a
republican basis, she has surprised the
world by her wisdom and prudence, but
what is her financial position 1t is in
most respects better than that of
any nation in the world. Her waste
places have been restored; her indus
tries have been stimulated into unprece-
denied activity; her exports, largely ex-
ceeding her imports, have made her a
great creditor nation, so that gold has
been steadily drawn to her from En-
gland, from the United States, and even
from Germany, until the Bank of France
holds in its strong rooms the enormous
sum of three hundred millions of coin
and bullion, and its notes, although not
absolutely convertible, are only the tenth
of one per cent. discount. If her pros
tration was astonishing by its sudden
ness and completeness, her recuperative
power seems still more wonderful. 1t is
undeniable that no country in Europe
has been so prosperous as France has
been during the two past years. In no
other country has labor been so well re-
warded. In none has there been SO
little monetary or commercial disturb
ance. 1t is an anomaly in the financial
history of nations that the conquering
nation, to which an enormous indemnity
has been paid, has been, from the be-
ginning of the payment of the Install
ments, subject to greater national disor-
der and embarrassments than the nation
from which the indemnify was exacted.
Hon. Hugh McCuttoch, IN New York
Tribune.
GOSSIP
We condemn gossip scandals twin