interest as an illustration of French acumen in public finance; it may become a text-book instance in due course, and it might even be studied with profit by the financiers of the new Irish Land Act. The French Treasury has already lost by the delay, but, borrowing in its own market, it will at all events operate on better terms than any of the other borrowing nations, now clamouring for admission to it. But however details may be arranged, the fact that there must be an issue is a thing settled. The new France is, in short, possessed of the spirit of sacrifice. The patriotism that is in fashion is sincere enough to pay the piper from whom it has called the tune. But it is in the region of ideas, rather than in that of current policy, that we must seek for the key to the future. It would be extravagant to say that the mocking hatred of Christianity has been banished, and that the vendetta against the Church is at an end. Despite M. Briand’s famous _apaisement_ speech, despite the success of M. Poincaré’s “national” programme, the State has not yet returned even to a position of neutrality. But the vivid colour of hope dominates the horizon. Combes-ism is no longer opposed as unjust, it is dismissed as vulgar. The boulevards may not have shed their scepticism, but at all events they recognise religion as one of the ideal forces that make men good citizens and gallant soldiers. As the army recovers its prestige there is a return to the spirit of that strange and burning remonstrance of Alexandre Dumas, the younger-- “Had I been Bazaine” (he wrote), “I would have set up a statue of the Virgin in the midst of my army on the Fifteenth of August--not because it was _Saint Napoleon_ but because it was _Sainte Marie_--and I would have delivered battle against the God whom King William carries about in his pocket, behind whom he speaks like a ventriloquist, and who is not the God of battles, for the very simple reason that there is no God of battles. I would have said to my soldiers: ‘My children, I place the Virgin in your midst. See in her your daughter, your betrothed, your wife, your sister, your mother. Over there is a masked “God” who menaces her with insult. Defend her! Honour her feast with a victory!’ And the Germans would have been defeated. There is, there will always be, in the French soldier something of the Frank of Clovis, something of the Crusader of Saint Louis.”