As one who saw the French during the war of 1870, when--being a
boy--I was very susceptible to impressions, I can hardly express the
difference I notice between the nation then and now. In the former
war there was excitement, impulsiveness, overconfidence, want of
ballast; to-day there is quietude, earnestness, and withal, assurance
of eventual victory. More than once I journeyed through a considerable
part of the French lines, and I assert with confidence that the Army
of France at the present time is incomparably superior to that which
she placed in the field in 1870. As to her civilians, I only saw women,
children, and old men; I did not, in all my thousand miles of travel,
discover a single able-bodied person of military age out of uniform.
The harvest, a very good one, was in full swing. Every family was out
in the fields, all doing something towards the in-gathering. I have
a picture now before my eyes of seven people, all undoubtedly coming
from the same house, working away hard, whilst at the tail end of the
procession appeared what might have been the great-grandpapa, no longer
capable of bending down for harvesting, but who, nevertheless, had his
piece of work in carrying about the baby, who, of course, could not be
left behind alone in the house. The whole nation is doing its utmost.