at Cherbourg sufficient for five years! At other
stations supplies of all kinds were bought at prices ranging far above
the market rates, and circulars were produced in which successive
Ministers of Marine had ordered the commandants at different naval
stations to 'expend every sou in their possession' on no matter what,
'before the expiration of the fiscal year, as any excess remaining in
their hands would not only be lost to the Ministry by being ordered back
into the Treasury, but would allow opportunities for impugning the
forecast and judgment of the ministers!' Under such a system it is not
surprising that Admiral Krantz, one of the best naval administrators
France possesses, should have been forced to withdraw from the Tirard
Government to satisfy a political Under-Secretary, M. Etienne.

Is it possible that in the actual condition of France and of Europe such
a system as this should last?

If France drifts or is driven into a great European war, one of two
things would seem to be inevitable. If the French armies are victorious,
the general who commands them and restores the military prestige of
France will be the master of the government and of the country. If the
French armies are defeated, the Government will disappear in a whirlwind
of national rage and despair. 'In that event,' said a Republican Senator
to me, 'in that event--which I will not contemplate--the princes of the
House of France would be recalled instantly and by acclamation; we
should have nothing left but that or anarchy.'

But putting aside the crisis of a great war, what other alternatives
present themselves as the possible issues in peace of the system now
dominant at Paris?

Of what weight or avail in the policy of the parliamentary oligarchy
which calls itself the Third Republic are the counsels of men like M.
Leon Renault, M. Jules Simon, M. Ribot, M. Leon Say, who have tried in
vain to constitute in France the Conservative Republic of M. Thiers? M.
Leon Say left his seat in the Senate before the recent elections and
presented himself in the Pyrenees as a candidate for the Chamber, with
the well-understood expectation of finding himself eventually put into
the presidency of that body. This was to be a guarantee of the
Conservative Republic!

Who actually fills that most important post?

M. Floquet, who first distinguished himself under the Empire by publicly
insulting the Emperor of Russia in the Palais de Justice during the
visit