The conscript army will be sacrificed to what is to be the regular
army. It will be young and ill-trained.'
'But your new regular army,' I said, 'will be more formidable to the
enemy than your present force.'
'I am not sure of that,' he answered. 'The merit of the French army was
the impetuosity of its attack, the "furia Francese," as the Italians
called it. Young troops have more of this quality than veterans. The
Maison du Roi, whose charge at Steenkirk Macaulay has so well described,
consisted of boys of eighteen.'
'I am re-editing,' I said, 'my old articles. Among them is one written in
1841 on the National Character of France, England, and America,[1] as
displayed towards foreign nations. I have not much to change in what I
have said of England or of America. As they have increased in strength
they have both become still more arrogant, unjust, and shameless.
'England has perhaps become a little more prudent America a little less
so. But France seems to me to be altered. I described her as a soldier
with all the faults of that unsocial character. As ambitious, rapacious,
eager for nothing but military glory and territorial aggrandisement.
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