This has no doubt been Germany’s intention. A huge army is being concentrated on the Eastern frontier. But France is likely to forestall the movement, and to reach Namur before her adversary. The extraordinary rapidity of her mobilisation may be said to be due in great measure to the perfection of her railway system on the Belgian frontier. She has established between Dunkerque and Mezières no less than seven lines of railway, of which four are double lines, which place her in direct and immediate communication with Belgium. These roads are linked and tapped by a transversal line that follows the whole length of the frontier as far as Longwy. Then she has, moreover, on this frontier four huge entrenched camps capable of serving as manœuvre pivots for her army, and as supports to her base of operations. These camps are Dunkerque (with its annexes—Bergues and Gravelines), Lille, Valenciennes (centre of a system of defence which comprises Condé, Bouchain, and Le Quesnoy), and Maubeuge. To ensure the retreat of her army in case of failure, she has created a first line of defence, formed by Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Landrecies, Hirson, and Mezières. For her second line she has the town of Reims, surrounded by forts commanding the valleys of the Aisne and the Marne, and the iron-bound triangle La Fère, Laon, and Soissons which defends the valley of the Oise, and with the support of Peronne, the valley of the Somme. Thus encouraged by the rapidity of mobilisation—a rapidity certainly never anticipated by Germany, and probably a little unexpected by her own officers—France has decided to attack Germany by Belgium. The seven natural obstacles in her path are not in themselves formidable. She has, indeed, to cross the Meuse, the Lower Rhine, the Teutoburgerwald, the Weser, the Hartz, and the Elbe. The Teutoburgerwald checked, it is true, the Legions of Varus, but to-day the great roads pierce it in several broad cuttings, and it is, moreover, traversed by two railway lines, running from Hamm to Hanover and Magdeburg. The Hartz also is traversed by good roads and girdled by two railway lines running to Berlin, one of which is the line which places the German capital in communication with Coblentz and Metz. Thus her advance should unquestionably be more rapid than by the inter-Moselle and the Rhine. If, moreover, she can make good her footing in Belgium before the German army, she will undoubtedly find there better roads, better cantonments, and far greater resources of every kind than she would find in Lorraine and Oldenburg and the Palatinate. With this object, we hear that the 1st and 2d French Army Corps are being concentrated at Maubeuge, the 3d and 10th at Hirson, the 4th and 9th at Givet, and it is expected that all these forces will be united in the neighbourhood of Namur in the course of the next four days—that is to say, sooner by five days than any military authorities have believed possible.