Wednesday, April 21.—­I dined with D. and met, among several others, Admiral Matthieu the Imperial Hydrographer, and a general whose name I did not catch.  I talked to the general about the army.

‘We are increasing it,’ he said, ’but not very materially.  We are rather giving ourselves the means of a future rapid increase, than making an immediate augmentation.  We are raising the number of men from 354,000 to 392,400, in round numbers to 400,000; but the principal increase is in the cadres, the officers attached to each battalion.  We have increased them by more than one third.  So that if a war should break out we can instantly—­that is to say in three months, increase our army to 600,000 or even 700,000 men.  Soldiers are never wanting in France, the difficulty always is to find officers.’

‘I hear,’ I said, ’that you are making great improvements in your artillery.’

‘We are,’ he answered.  ’We are applying to it the principle of the Minie musket, and we are improving the material.  We hope to make our guns as capable of resisting rapid and continued firing as well and as long as the English and the Swedish guns, which are the best in Europe, can do.  And we find that we can throw a ball on the Minie principle with equal precision twice as far.  This will double the force of all our batteries.’

‘Are you,’ he asked me, ’among those who have taken shares in the Russian railways?’

‘No,’ I said.  ‘They are the last that I wish to encourage.’

‘Englishmen or Frenchmen,’ he answered, ’who help Russia to make railways, put me in mind of the Dutch who sold powder to their besiegers.

’The thinness of her population—­that is, the vast space over which it is scattered—­alone prevents Russia from being the mistress of Europe.  If her 64,000,000 were as concentrated as our 34,000,000 are, she would be irresistible.  She loses always far more men in marching than in fighting.’

‘The events of the war,’ I said, ’lead me to believe that the goodness of the Russian soldier is exaggerated.  They were always beaten, often by inferior numbers.’

‘In the first place,’ he answered, ’those who were beaten at Sebastopol were not the best Russian soldiers.  They were short small men, generally drawn from the neighbouring provinces.  The Russian Imperial Guards and the Russian Army in Poland are far superior to any that we encountered in the Crimea.  In the second place, they were ill commanded.  The improvements of weapons, of science and of discipline, have raised the privates of all the great military nations to about the same level.  Success now depends on numbers and on generalship.  With railways Russia will be able to bring quickly a preponderating force to any point on her frontier.  Her officers are already good, and for money she can import the best generals; indeed, I do not see why she should not breed them.  Russia is civilised enough to produce men of the highest military qualities.’