Paris, Jan. 12.
Four out of the 37 French infantry regiments which have been disbanded since the war are to tho replaced in French garrison towns by Algerian or Senegalese battalions. This is the beginning of the new system of utilizing the African troops France as well as abroad. The Army Bill, shortly to be "discussed by the Chamber, provides that the total strength under arms in France is to be 356,000 men, made up of 293,000 French and 63,000 Africans. The other French troops will serve in the army of the Rhine, Morocco, the Levant, Algeria, etc.
This system, which has been forced upon the military authorities by war losses and straitened finances, will no doubt give rise to Serious objections when it comes to be discussed in Parliament. In case of strikes or riots the Senegales or Algerian soldiers might have to be called out to keep order in a French town and be authorized to use their weapons against Frenchmen. Even if no actual lash occurred, the temporary possession of power over whites by Senegalese negroes might very well prove highly subversive of the prestige of the white races We had evidence of this during the war, when some Annamite troops in garrison in Pavis were requisitioned during a disturbance which occurred after an accident in a munition factory. They immed-lately imagined themselves invested with authority over everyone not in uniform, and their conduct was so overbearing that it became necessary to send them elsewhere in a great hurry to avoid sanguine ary conflicts between them and the Parisian workmen, who were by no means inclined to submit to bullying from Annamites.
A Manvracrurer oF Opiates.
Sentiments of a vigorous open-air kind somewhat rare in the French Press ate expressed in "Paris-Mich? by a well known French journalist, M. Maurice de Waleffe, aropos of the grand cross of the Legion of Honour which the Government has conferred on M. Pierre Loti, the author of "Madame Chrysanthéme," "Les Désenchantées'"" and other masterpieces.
As everyone knows, Pierre Loti is the nom-de-plume of Capt. Julien Viaud, of the French Navy. M. de Waloffe remarks that if the Grand Cross is bestowed as a reward on M. Pierre Loti as a thinker and moralist, as one is bound to suppose, the conclusion naturally follows that his works have some educational value for the rising generation. M. Pierre Loti,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.