The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-09-06 00:00:00

THE ANNIVERSARY OF SEDAN.

The battle of Sedan was won on September 1, 1870,
(after most severe fighting on the three preceding thys.)
On the morning of September 2, Napoleon 111. wrote to
the King of Prussia the following autograph letter :
"Mon trete, n'ayant pu meurir la We de roes troupes,
le depose men op& an pied tie stotre majeste.—NAPoLEow."
He then surrendered to King William, and the capitulation
was aligned the same day.— he Times of Tuesday had the
following leader on the commemoration in Germany of the
anniversary of the victory

To-day is a solemn anniversary in European history.
Nine years ago Napoleon 111. surrendered at Sedan,
and the catastrophe which destroyed one Empire
founded another. The hero of the German victory
designs to commemorate the eveirt characteristicelly,
A brilliant review of troops will be held this morning
at Berlin; and the series of military pageants thus
opened is not to close before the Enspercr has re-
minded Germany and Europe of the triumph of his
arms on the chief scene of its achievement. At high
festivities, a coronation or an Imperial marriage,
the crowned host leads his most illustrious guests
in a stately dance among and through the admiring
courtiers. The glittering column, with a King or an
Emperor at its head, threads the throng, every where
eispensieg the radience of its presence, until the
flies and the throne are reached once more. The
Emperor Willi am executes his polonaise in full
armour, to the clash of trumpets and the roar
of cannonades. Through the wide circuit of his
Empire he makes his gorgeous progress, with
feudatory royalties and principalities around and
behind him, with Marshals to witness how the
trophies were won, with armies to show how they
are kept, and Ambassadors to put the seal of
nations to the results. Metz is the goal of the
German Emperor's martial promenade. None fitter
could be chosen. At Sedan crumbled into dust the
Napoleonic power which had vetoed the consolidation
of Germany. At Versailles the German Empire was
proclaimed. But it was in the lines of Metz that
Germany demonstrated once for all the impotence of
one nation to control the destinies of another. Scandi-
navian chiefs were raised upon the shields of their
clansman in token of their sovereignty. Amid the
monuments of the field of Gravelotte tilt first German
Emperor may recall with little effort of imagination
how his throne was first reared upon the spears and
bucklers of his warriors.
There and thus it rose. But its foundations were
deeper and more solid than German military organiza-
tion and French military anarchy. The Emperor
William renews in this month of September the
memories of a wondrous succession of warlike ex-
ploits. Those exploits, however, were but the
crown to years of national sacrifices borne patiently
by Germany for their prospective sake. The King
of Prussia led to Sedan and Metz a people which
had been long preparing itself by discipline and
hardships for those ordeals. It had counted the
cost of freedom to work out its own unity, and it
was willing to pay it. Even yet the price is not
fully counted out. Germany still has to surrender
ease and well-being to secure what nine years ago it
vindicated so valorously. When the Emperor calls
over the roll of his victories, and sees about him the
illustrious Generals by whose aid be won them, he is
not the man to forget that after all the work was done
by and for the German nation. That is his real glory.
If the German Princes hailed him Emperor, it was
merely the formal publication of the national decree.
Germany on its part has in the nine years which have
since passed given no sign of discontent with that de-
cision, or of doubt whether the work were worth the
expenditure. Catholicfanatics and Hanoverian separa-
tists might at one time conspire against the new Constitu-
tion. But even they have ceased to believe in the possi-
bility of reversing it. German Socialist's may imagine
a visionary futtue when the powers of the State shall
be at their command; they anticipate the transfer of
the control of the Empire to themselves, not its disso-
lution. To the German mind a return to the days of
a Germany diluted among fifty petty principalities
may be taken to be simply inconceivable. Rather than
subject the unity affirmed by the deeds of 1870 and
1871 to toe chances of attack the German people
endures a crushing conscription. At the intimation
of its master statesman that political economy was
irreconcilable with the financial exigences of national
unity, it thing only last summer political economy
to the winds. Germans may harbour their several
views on foreign policy. No love is lost between them
and Russia. They do not desire the territorial ag-
grandizement of Austria in the East. Yet through,
cut the conflict between Russia and the Porte they
kept even their wishes in solution, lest an inclination
either way should prejudice some contingent German
alliance in the future. They urged Austria to annex
Herzegovina and Basnia, not so much in the Interests
of European tranquility which that appropriation
favoured, as to hied away Austrian thoughts from
regretting the disintegration of the old Ger-
mani s Confederation. The German nation is as
determined as nine years back to sacrifice all private
differences and objects to German unity. National
unity now that it appears placed beyond the accidents
of foreign j :stoney is no less the centre of German
devotion than when it appeared an aspiration and a
dream. The E eperor as he reviews his legions and
his battlefields will have a right to feel that the nation
rides with him, and repents of not one drop of the
blood it shed in torrents for the consolidation of Ger-
many.
It is well to be assured that the days the Emperor
is commemorating have left benind them one grand
result which can ba calmly examiued and approved.
Wars have not bean always so fortunate. What one
sanguinary conflict has written up another for the
most part comes and with a sponge full of blood wipes
out. The campaigns of 1870 and 1871 are not likely
to be exceptions to the universal rule. For Germans
themselves to suppose every decision of those ter-
rible years irreversible would be to forget all the
lessons oi history. But so far as the event which this
anniversary recalls, and those from a military point
of view still greater which followed in its train, were
needed to establish German may, the results may be
accepted as final. Otherwise that agony of warfare
might be thought to have been even less calamitous for
the means it used in the settlement of its disputes than
fur the fact that it settled so few. For the past nine
years Europe seems to have been ever expecting the
Deluge. No sooner had the sound of strife between
France and Germany been stilled than the shriek of the
Paris Commune was heard. Legitimism and Com-
munism worked their evil will on so much as was left of
Spanish prosperity. In Germany itself Socialism has
for the time scared even Ultrarnontanism out of its
vindictiveness by threatening religion no less thanthe
State. It has been a period of reckless anticipation of
future resources succeeded by a crisis of stagnati,n
which shows no signs yet that it has exhausted its
powers. The whole Continent remains an armed
camp. Nation is plotting against nation, not in
arms alone, but in trade. A year or two more,
and it mieht almost be imagined from the declara-
tions of European statesmen that a Chinese barrier
would be raised around every country lest its cit;zens
should profit by the skill of their neighbours. Of the
two principals in the gigantic struggle of 1870 and 1871
it is difficult to say which has emerged the lees scorched
and scarred. France, materially prosperous, continue'
unable to understand when she is politically well off.
Germany, with a Constitution beyoed the dangers of
revolution, appears to fancy that commerce can be
mariceuvred like an army, and that professional
lectures can cure the craving for other persons' goods.
The war of 1870 has not the guilt of having created
the agencies which have ever since been suspending
Europe over an abyss, but it precipitated their opera-
tion. Its heroes as they sum up their great deeds of
the anniversaries when they were done may be paid
cloned for a sentiment of natural exultation. By thorn
deeds they founded a nation. To train it to pros-
perity other arts are necessary than strategy and
tactics. Germany is entitled to rejoice on the day of
Sedan. It is a signal epoch. But Germany has her
own reasons for sympathizing when Europe looks
back with dismay and self-reproachings upon the area
of discord within and plotting without, of riotous
speculation and commercial despondency, which that
splendid military triumph inaugurated.