The French national character exhibits striking contradictions. High and noble qualities exist side by side with base impulses. The French soldier exhibits heroic courage side by side with the instincts of a "_Nettoyeur_," and, in the treatment of our prisoners, his conduct has been worthy of an apache. The French officers have completely lost that chivalrous sentiment which as late as 1870 found expression in the words of an old Frenchman: "The person of a prisoner is sacred." The French, both white and black, and their women no less, have not scrupled to jeer at and ill-treat our prisoners in the most flagrant manner, and the Government of the Republic has in general furnished an example of unworthy treatment of prisoners. The naturally amiable and, under ordinary circumstances, good-natured Frenchman easily degenerates, as a result of his excitable temperament, into the very opposite. The history of the wars of religion and of the Revolution affords evidence of the fact. The human beast is always roused in him with surprising suddenness. His characteristic light-heartedness engenders in him a disinclination to think things out to a conclusion. This renders him very susceptible to influence, and prevents him from seeing through the tissue of lies presented to him in the newspapers. While the Frenchman had always displayed military aptitude, his training in time of peace upon the basis of universal military service had only still further developed his good military qualities, and he has never exhibited those failings which formerly and often erroneously have been attributed to French armies, such as lack of endurance in difficult situations, the inability to endure defeats, susceptibility to panic. The effect of universal military service has manifestly been to discipline the whole nation, and to furnish an appropriate vessel for its always very strongly developed sense of unity. Those who judged the French nation by the customary standard of former days have been astonished at their conduct in this War.