Then there was M. Clementel, a former Minister of Colonies, with some experience of army affairs, who had likewise his little plan to propose. He wished to divide the reserve into eleven classes which would train alternately, for a month at a time, during the year. Parliament rejected it, not because it was fanciful, but because the transportation of 200,000 men a month to their training camps would disarrange the railway systems. M. Messimy—who was Minister of War, during the early days of the Great Invasion, and, like Mr. Winston Churchill, resigned his Cabinet functions to join the army—devised a method whereby the youth of the country would be trained for twenty-six months. How he proposed to bridge the gap between the departure of the time-expired men and the arrival of the new recruits was never made clear. In the light of his subsequent experience as a Colonel of troops, and wounded in action, he probably thought better of his own plan. General Pau clinched the matter by a series of irrefutable figures. His style differed utterly from that of any other speaker. He showed the quick temperament of a leader of the old school, who believed in a brisk offensive. Taking umbrage, one day, at the remarks of a deputy, he gathered up his papers and walked out of the House, to the consternation of the Government. Wounded in the 1870 conflict and bearing the token of it in an amputated arm, he looked and spoke with the abruptness of the traditional soldier. As a leader of men he was impetuous and brusque in his methods, rather than a cool calculator like the Generalissimo. He told the House, with a certain impetuousness, that the troops available for national defence were scarcely more than half the German effectives. For, abstraction made of the number serving overseas, France had only 480,000 in her active army, whilst Germany had 830,000. First-class reserve, territorials, and the reserve of the territorials amounted to 3,978.000, of which a part had performed only twelve months’ service in accordance with the terms of the 1889 law. In Germany, the reserve amounted to 4,370,000, giving an advantage to that country of 400,000 men. The effectives were constantly growing in the one country, with the advance in population, but remained stationary in the other. Whilst France called up every available man for service, Germany was in the happier position of being able to dispense with a certain portion of her resources. Thus, automatically, an increase in her peace establishment meant an increase in the reserve.