Paris, Nov. 12.
A distinguished French military authority (who, I understand, is General Joffre himself) has ' disagreeably impressed the public by predicting that the war will last three years. He thinks that when the German forces in France and Belgium are at length compelled to retire, they may hold out four or five months on the line of the Meuse, which they have already fortified in anticipation of having to defend their own territory after having invaded that of Belgium and France. After this he predicts another period of trenching and siege warfare in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, and the final stage will be the advance across Germany to Berlin All these calculations, of course, are purely military. War can only be carried on by a commander-in-chief so long as he continues to receive men and supplies of all kinds; and nobody believes that either France, England or Germany can stand the present economic strain for three years, Germany least of all. The calculation also takes no account of the steadily increasing pressure on Germany and Austria from Russia, whose—military machine now appears to be in full operation, or of the—consequences to German industries of the stoppage of all supplies of raw materials and scarcity of food. Unless the Allies, by some extra ordinary combination of misfortunes, lose the command of the sea, these econo considerations are bound to tell more effectually than military conditions, The French view seems to be that bar accidents, the campaign will continue during the winter and spring, by which time the German and Austrian public will have it brought home to them that the game is up, and that negotiations' had better he opened to stop further loss and bloodshed. At the Present rate of wastage, there would be no armies left at the end of a couple of years, except pera few hundred thousand Rus.
ins, and by that time other nations will no doubt be taking a hand in the game.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.