THEN AND NOW

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 31, 5 August 1914, Page 2

THEN AND NOW

— ♦ FRANCE'S FORTIFIED FRONTIER. WAR ' VETERAN^ COMPARISONS. At present domiciled in Wellington is a French resident who sa*w active service , in tho Franco- German war of the '70's, , being wounded at Villers Bretomeux, near Amiens, and who for many years past has been a keen student of political . affairs on the Continent. Conversing with ;a Post reporter to-day he stated that tho French military arrangements to-dajr were infinitely better than they ! were in the troubled times of forty years ! ago. At the time of the Franco-Prussian ( war France was seething with political , unrest, and was absolutely unprepared for an_ armed clash. The frontier was quite inadequately fortified, and when the forts wero taken possession of by the troops it was found that the anna ments were entirely obsolete. Now the frontier was very heavily protected by forts which were practically invulnerable, and all the roads and railways had I their batteries to keep off invaders. France, he added, had manufactured tho big guns which wrought such deva&tal tion in the Balkan war, but the standard guns of the French Army were of quite ■ a different pattern, and were even [ superior to those used in the Near East. : When he took the field with the i Northern Army, under ' General Faidr herbe. the troops were armed with tho ! old Chassepot weapon, which very easily ! jammed, and which was absolutely,, un- . - suitable. With his own eyes,"ife'had often seen a man* get so disgusted after firing a few rounds that he would throw the weapon away and snatch another from the hands of a dead or wounded companion. In the last war, too, tho commissariat arrangements were very bad, and tho_ troops \vere sometimes days at a time without food, whereas at tho present time the haversack of each man contained i enough tinned and other eatables to tide him over two or three days.