The demand for a sortie _en masse_ is not so strong.

Every one is anxious not to surrender, and no one precisely knows how a surrender is to be avoided.
Successes on paper have so long done duty for successes in the field, that no one, even yet, can believe that this paper currency has been so depreciated that bankruptcy must ensue.

Is it possible, each man asks, that 500,000 armed Frenchmen will have to surrender to half the number of Germans?
And as they reply that it is impossible, they come to the conclusion that treason must be at work, and look round for the traitor.
Trochu, who is as honest and upright as a man as he is incompetent as a general, will probably share the fate of the "Man of Sedan" and the "Man of Metz," as they are called.

"He is a Laocoon," says M.Felix Pyat in his newspaper, with some confusion of metaphor, "who will strangle the Republic." We hear now that Government is undertaking an inquiry to discover precisely how long our stock of provisions will last.

Matters are managed so carelessly, that I doubt whether the Minister of Commerce himself knows to within ten days the precise date when we shall be starved out.