He will have his entire division with him by the end of the first week in January. The order for the Sixth1 Division to mobilise was issued on the 2nd December, and the first of its troops left Southampton on the 16th. By the 15th January the whole division will have landed in South Africa. The Seventh Division began to mobilise on the 18th December, and when this article went to press the arrangements for its embarkation had not been published. As its despatch will now be expedited, it is expected that the troops composing it will have arrived at Cape Town by the 1st February. The Tantallon Castle, with the first part of the siege train, comprising eight 6-inch howitzers, and four 4-7 quick-firing guns, left Southampton on the 9th December, and is due at Cape Town the first week in January. "T," "Q," and "U" batteries R.H.A. are also on their way out. The above reinforcements when they arrive will give an addition of 35,000 men and 72 field guns to our force in South Africa. By the 1st February we shall have in the field, after allowing for casualties already recorded, a force of regulars approximately amounting to 100,000, with 220 field guns, and about 20,000 Colonial and local troops. During the months of February and March, if the progress of the (1) The following is the detail of the 6th Division: Commander-LIEUT.-GENERAL T. KELLY-KENNY, C.B. 12TH BRIGADE (MAJOR-GENERAL C. E. KNOx). Infantry. 2nd batt. Bedfordshire Regiment. Royal Irish 2nd 2nd Worcestershire Departmental Troops. Supply Column-No. 7 Co. A.S.C. 13TH BRIGADE (MAJOR-GENERAL R. A. P. CLEMENTS, D.S.O.). 66 "Q," "T," and "U" batteries R.H.A. were mobilised at the same time as the 6th Division, and embarked on the 19th and 21st December. war requires them, reinforcements on a still larger scale will be sent out under arrangements now being concerted at the War Office. The reception given to the news of the three successive reverses in December marks the temper of the nation at this crisis. Disappointment there naturally was, but neither panic nor impatience. Prosperity has not softened our character nor shaken our nerve. We still have "the will to do, the soul to dare." The determination of the country is as strong now as in the darker days of the Indian Mutiny. So long as we maintain this spirit our neighbours will observe their neutrality and our dependencies will respect our strength. 'Tis the hard gray weather (1) Kingsley. *The Editor of this Review does not undertake to return any manuscripts. It is advisable that articles sent to the Editor should be type-written. The sending of a proof is no guarantee of the acceptance of an article. THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. No. CCCXCVIII. NEW SERIES.-FEBRUARY 1, 1900. A LANCE FOR THE FRENCH. Now that the good taste and better feeling of the French people have asserted themselves, and that the caricatures which caused so much just indignation in England have ceased to appear in certain of the Paris comic papers, it may not be out of place to analyse the state of feeling which recent events have brought to light, and try to read its lesson for the future relations of England and France. We have seen that there is a great readiness on both sides of the Channel to take exaggerated offence; that the French and English, although such near neighbours, are profoundly ignorant of one another's character and susceptibilities; and that neither the English nor the French know how much they owe to one another. The present state of irritation on the French side of the Channel dates back from the Fashoda affair. The French did not make it a cardinal question; the vast majority of the people being quite indifferent to all Colonial matters. In fact, comparatively few, even of the Paris electors, are to the present day aware that there had ever been a danger of rupture with England. The middle and upper classes, however, felt deeply humiliated that France should have been forced to accept an ultimatum-to accept it, not because she was afraid of the result of a rupture, but because she can no longer, with her present institutions, make war for any but vital questions of self-conservation. Statesmen, politicians, and journalists felt this, and swallowed their indignation; but it was a bitter draught, and the bitterness remained. Englishmen do not seem to realise what must necessarily be the feelings of the leading spirits of a great nation in such circumstances, though they themselves would certainly feel a similar position most acutely. The bitterness had not passed away when a new cause of irritation supervened in the manner in which the English treated the Dreyfus aff. They never understood that case. When ingenious persons in England were still at great pains to show that Dreyfus had not been proved guilty, in France this aspect of it had long before dwindled into insignificance compared with the graver question of preventing either of two prejudiced antagonistic views from prevailing and bringing about a violent scission among the French people; very little more would have brought on a civil war. The French working-man looked upon the anti-Dreyfus movement as clerical; the officers of the army upon the revision agitation as directed against their prestige; and the more devout Catholic party saw in the affair a struggle against the supremacy of the foreign Jewish and financial element, to which, rightly or wrongly, many attributed the corruption revealed by the Panama and some other financial scandals. All, however, were agreed, at a certain stage, on one point, viz., that the Dreyfus affair must be brought to a conclusion for the sake of the peace of the country. How to put an end to it became, from that moment, the real problem. While statesmen were in vain groping after a solution, there was intense distress of mind among all classes at the deadlock. The institutions of the country could not be altered except by constitutional methods. The chose jugée, which some English writers made fun of, could not be tampered with without risk to public order. The court-martial, under the existing law, was the legal jurisdiction, and the only way of reversing its judgment was to apply to a higher jurisdiction. This was done, and the ordinary jurisdictions had been legally exhausted before the agitation for a retrial began. By the ingenuity of different ministers an issue was at length found, and nothing more conclusively shows M. Loubet to possess statesmanlike resourcefulness than his choice of a cabinet, composed of resolute men, men daring enough to cut the Gordian knot, the only course left. While all this was taking place, and true patriots in France were almost heartbroken at the long duration of the sickening affair, they received not one word of sympathy from England. On the contrary, only opprobrium was heaped upon France by English writers ignorant of her worry and vexation. It is easy to understand the feeling of Frenchmen who read that the case "was a fearful revelation of the moral decay in France," that her civilisation was "a mere external skin, veneering a body corrupt, decaying and ready to perish," that her military men were scoundrels, the staff a sink of vindictive vice and corruption, and the whole nation a blot on the map of Europe. The English, in fact, saw only one feature of the Dreyfus affair: the condemnation of a man without the proof, which, according to English notions, constitutes legal evidence, while the Frenchman, however. much he might be of the same opinion, could not ask that justice be done otherwise than according to the laws of his country. With the pardoning of Dreyfus the agitation came abruptly to an enl, showing what the real feeling of the country was. The irritation at the unjust attitude of English writers in connec |