In the year 1894, in the month of July, the then German Military Attaché in Paris, Colonel Schwartz Koppen, was for some time considerably worried and puzzled during his morning rides in the Bois de Boulogne by the frequency of the reports of artillery fire, which he heard coming from the direction of Mont Valérien. He would have been still more worried if he could have looked into the future and seen what those sounds betokened for his countrymen twenty years ahead. They were due to the experimental firing of the new gun invented by Colonel Duport (who, like most inventors, got nothing for his trouble), which was being put through its paces under the auspices of General Mercier, the Minister of War, largely owing to the public-spirited action of another Minister, now President of the Republic. For it was M. Raymond Poincaré, at that time Minister of Finance, who proposed in the Chamber a vote of credit for “Repairs to artillery material,” which really meant (as the members of the Chamber were well aware) the construction of twenty-four guns of 75 millimetres calibre, the first of their race, and the actual disturbers of Colonel Schwartz Koppen’s morning peace of mind. How long it was before he found out that his ears, though not his eyes, had assisted at a first appearance of some military and historical importance, I do not know, but at all events the Germans were at the time so much occupied with the subject of their own new 77 mm. field-gun that the genesis of its slightly smaller rival apparently escaped their notice. After that, in spite of the efforts of General Deltoye, nothing further was done about the Soixante-Quinze for two or three years, when General Billot, Minister for War in the cabinet of M. Méline, took the matter in hand, and enough money was voted for their manufacture on a large scale. But once that was done no time was lost, and in 1897 the first Soixante-Quinzes, considerably improved by Colonel Sainte-Claire Deville and Colonel Rimailho, the inventor of the 155, were served out to the artillery of the army corps of the north-east. Apparently the moment chosen for their _début_ could not have been more happily timed: the revival of the Dreyfus case had just suggested to the minds of the war-party in Germany that the golden opportunity for declaring war, while France was torn by internal strife, had arrived, and it is said that it was only the reports of the foreign military attachés on the great superiority of the 75 mm. to the 77 mm. in stability and rapidity and precision of fire that caused them to change their minds. Since then they have been able to introduce certain improvements into their own gun, modelled on the chief features of the Soixante-Quinze, but it still remains an inferior weapon.