Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1901 — IGNORANCE IN FRANCE. [ARTICLE]

IGNORANCE IN FRANCE.

Amazing Density of a Large Percenter* ot Army Recruits. Not long ago a writer on military subjects related with conceivable stupefaction an anecdote for the truth of which he was able to vouch. In the course of a visit of inspection, a General had questioned a recruit as to what he knew about the war of 1870. In his utter inability to even grasp the meaning of the question, the soldier had stared open-mouthed at his officer, and it was finally elicited from him that this was the first he had ever heard of the Franeo-German war. The narrator of the anecdote expressed the belief that this remarkable example of class ignorance was a wholly exceptional case. He as speedily received proof that he was mistaken. A cavalry officer has written him a letter, from which I make the following interesting extract: “You cite a case which you suppose is isolated, but which, nevertheless, astonishes and grieves you. What would you say if you knew the truth? I am in the habit of making every year a small, informal inquiry into the degrees of instruction of the recruits drafted into, the company I command. I always put to the men the three following questions among others: What do you know about the war of 1870?' About Alsace-Lorraine? About Blsmarca? I receive on the average fifty recruits composed of peasants from Normandy and Brittany, and some few Parisians. Out of the fifty thirty can make no answer whatever to my questions. They know nothing at all. Ten have heard something to the effect that Lorraine is a province, that Bismarck was a German General or Emperor (!) and that the war of 1870 was not favorable to France. But their notions are far too vague to make any impression on their minds. Finally ten of the men, the Parisians in particular, have some idea of what our disasters were. For five years in succession I have obtained a like result. I inform you of it without comment” As the writer points out, the German Invader was seen in almost every corner of Normandy, and penetrated far into Brittany, so that it is all the more astonishing that the rising generation in these provinces should know so little about the war. The Ignorance of the peasants of the South of France may be expected to be more absolute still. With a state of things such as these facts reveal in existence, and even a Paul Deroulede admitting, as he did in his recent speech, a war for the recovery of the lost provinces to be out of the question, it Is evident that the policy of "La Ravanche” has lived.—Paris Correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette.