The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-10-02 00:00:00

Tim 20. ',JAE GUN 13 A GOD, AND 1118101 K

UN PltorkiET 1

To the Editors.

Verily! a new era is dawning on mankind l
While nations strive for cheap government and
reforms, Prussia hae triumphed, and with her the
cause of civilization and nationalities. She has
gained already the adhesion of France. In the lest
century Frederick the Great made all European
armies learn the Prussian drill. Now Prussia lead.
again the van, and all nations will again follow hor
example, and learn how to increase their powers as
well as reduce their Budgets, by adopting an organises
tion that makes • people invincible, and inspires all
Its defenders with patriotic and gentlemanly feelings.
For it is not merely the needle gun that has wrought
thee° wonders, lint also the national education and
the general militia system that make the whole
nation move as one intelligent man. All the nations
of Europe then must sooner or later adopt both the
organization and the gun. Instead of keeping up each
half a million or more of men that impoverish and
demoralise them all, they will have only a few
skeletons of regiments, whieh will soon fill incase of
' need, when service in limited to a couple of years,
and after that to he like the yeomanry or volun-
teers, nobody will object to being a soldier.
Then all soldiers will be treated as rational beings,
tad will become intelligent citizens, not only equal
before the law and the needle gun, but also equalized
in education and manners, and all this reform will
he as cheap al it is powerful. There is no time to
lose, for all nations are now on their mettle. The
Germanic question is hardly settled than we have
two other vital questions—that of the East and
that of the West; Russia and America want also to
! rectify their frontiers, and them two powers, of the
first magnitude, have not only sworn eternal alliance,
but actually sent their fleets to meet. They uphold
Peter the Great's and Munroe's doctrine. That is,
Russia wants to absorb Greene and Constantinople,
the key to Egypt, India, Malta, and Gibraltar,
while America wants the British American posses-
sions to herself. Knot checked, both will soon make
the Mediterranean • Russo-American lake. Bisinark
and Napoleon require health and rest, but they
will soon coalesce with England, with Italy. and a
restored Poland! At the Congress of Vienna,
Talleyrand hearing the door of the Conferencesqueek
on its hinges, said "The Porte wants Greece."
Now-a-days it is Greece, or rather Bear's Greece, that
want. the Porte ; or as sailors would my, Greece
wants to fry the last slices of Turkey. If the Russo-
American alliance succeed in having their own way
and sway in the Mediterranean. then England and
France must hide their diminished heads. But if
the Anglo-French union, now beaked by their
Palliser and Chmeepot, re-asserts its power, then
England will keep India and her American posses-
sions, and France will be spared then disgrace of
abandoning Mexico to native and foreign cut-throats.
Perhaps, at this moment the Ruaeo-American Ileete
have met, or aro on the point of meeting. Before
long, them, we may expect interesting and truly
'absorbing news from the Archipelago, which is
very mild in the autumn. May our sailors also join
in the l'yrrhic dance, singing the Byronian " Isles of
of Greece," drinking Chio and 111alvoisie, and eating
figs and oranges, about Christmas, under the flowery
bowers of Candle and Rhodes.
ANGLO-FRENCII.