proportion are said to be massed in Georgia, a State that has hitherto suffered little from the war, but which now seems about to become the scene of vast and important operations, which cannot be carried on without causing sweeping devastation.  The public journals state that there are two million slaves in Georgia, most of whom have been taken or sent thither by their owners, inhabitants of other States.  This must tend greatly to increase the difficulties of the enemy, whose stores of food and clothing are not large in any of the Atlantic or Gulf States.

Much stress has been placed on “the starvation-theory,” and it is probable that there is much suffering in the Confederacy; but this does not proceed so much from the positive absence of food as from other causes.  The first of these causes is undoubtedly the loss of all faith in the Southern currency.  That currency has not yet fallen so low as the Continental currency fell, when it required a bushel of it to pay for a peck of potatoes, but it is at a terrible discount, and the day is fast coming when it will be regarded as of no more value than so many pieces of brown paper; and its depreciation, and the prospect of its soon becoming utterly worthless, are among the chief consequences of the triumphs of our arms.  Men see that there will be no power to make payment, and they will not part with their property for rags so rotten.  They may wish success to the Confederate cause, but “they must live,” and live they cannot on paper that is nothing but paper.  The journal that is understood to speak for Mr. Davis recommends a forced loan, the last resort of men the last days of whose power are near at hand.  Another cause of the scarcity of food in the South is to be found in the condition of Southern communications.  If all the food in the Confederacy could be equally distributed, now and hereafter, we doubt not that every person living there would get enough to eat, and even have something to spare,—­civilians as well as soldiers, blacks as well as whites; but no such distribution is possible, because there are but indifferent means for the conveyance of food from places where it is abundant to places where famine’s ascendency is becoming established.  The Southern railways have been terribly worked for three years, and are now worn out, with no hope of their rails and rolling-stock being renewed.  Our troops have rendered hundreds of miles of those ways useless, and they have possession of other lines.  Southern harbors and rivers are held or commanded by Northern ships or armies.  The Mississippi, which was once so useful to the Rebels, has, now that we control it, become a “big ditch,” separating their armies from their principal source of supply.  It is that “last ditch” in which they are to die.  That wide extent of Southern territory, which has so often been mentioned at home and abroad as presenting the leading reason why we never could conquer the Rebels, now works against them, and in our favor.  Food may be abundant to