Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1914. PARIS IN 1870 AND 1914

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 58, 5 September 1914, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1914. PARIS IN 1870 AND 1914

Though the German vanguard is said to be near Paris, and the defenders have prepared for a siege, it may well be doubted that the invaders will apply themselves in grim earnest to a task without parallel in history, the inrestment of the strongest rings of fortifications in the world. The defences have been planned on such a Titanic scale that only a long, courageous, Titanic effort can hope to prevail against them. The fall of Paris, by any means short of sheer starvation, would be a world's wonder, a triumph for the besiegers would be the greatest military feat in human annals, unless a paralysing panic, a craven a« fear, unexampled in French records, shook the weapons out of the trembling hands of the garrison of over half a million men. The starvation process was effected hi 1870-71 by an army of 200,000 men, in four months and a half, but since then the girdle ot forts has been greatly widened. A German historian, Niejnann, whose book was published in 1872, estimated that if the mource* of Parte had been under tho direction of a, good manager «uid

leader of men, an army of a million would have been necessary to check the softies of large bodies of troops — sorties for which there is excellent provisioh in the system of defence. On that basis ot calculation — summarised in the course of a news article in The Post to-day — the Germans would require a host of a million and a half to maintain * tight grip of the outer works. The minimum would be a million, involving a tremendous problem of transport and the guarding of communication lines. Moreover, the besiegers, who have not smashed the outer armies of France and England, would have to reckon with brave and ■wellequipped assailants m front and rear. It is possible that the invaders' plan*, designed with a knowledge of the French excitable temperament, do not aim so much at a hard-and-faßt investment as at a great demonstration in force to worry the nation as a whole and to disarrange the Allies' w«ll-dravrn, plans. The Germane, -with an advantage of numbers and with the keen desire of obtaining a big vnn against the Allies before the winter sets in, have tried to draw the French and British into a pitched battle, but the invitation has been declined. All the way toward* Paris the invaders have been eager for an opportunity to thoroughly roll up the defence, but the retreatuig lines have not been broken. A deliberate investment. of Pans, while large, powerful armies of the Allies", capable of taking the offeneive, are in the field, would surprise military students a.t this distance from the" theatre of war. It is extremely improbable that, whether the Germans' onset to Paris is merely strategic or a set purpose of siege, the French public will be in the miserable condition of 1870-71. It is. incredible that such an extensive combination of misfortunes, colossal blunders, and mishaps could again be repeated in the history of any nation. Even with the capital in a. state of civil war during • the siege of 1870-71, the province* had a patriotic vitality -which" surprised tKe Germans. — and the interval of lorty-thre» years has not been wasted by France.