The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-02-25 00:00:00

WHAT HAS THE WORLD GAINED BY
THE WARP

The Time, In a leader, makes the followlog practical com-
ment. 011 the Issues of the War:—

When the War is over at last, and the sympathies
and animosities kindled by it have subsided, we shall
begin to ask ourselves calmly what the world haa
gained by it. What lens been lost in bßod, in treasure,
in the happiness' ef domestic life, in the mutual con-
fidence of nations, in the stability of public law, never
cm be known, much less stated in words or figures.
Nor is it true, in any rational sense, that all this loss
has been caused by what is loosely called a political
necessity. To assert, in effect, that nations, like wild
beasts, cannot reconcile their conffictiug interests, or
et ea settle the order of their relative precedence, with.
out tearing each other to pieces till the weaker yields
out of sheer exhau.tion, is not only to belie the aspires
ti ne, but to insult the actual cis bization, of Europe.
Whatever has been lost by the War has been lost
gratuitously and in vain, since it might have b.en
saved by a simple resort to friendly mediation. But
has nothing been gained by way of compensation—Ai
there no permanent benefit of which in can be said
that, but for the War, mankind could not have obtained
it? It is humiliating to feel that such a queetion
should not admit of a decisive answer, and yet what
answer can be given? The unity of Germany has been
consolidated by the War; but a tenth part of the
resolution shown by German patriots in slaughtering
the French would have broken donn all dynastic or
constitutional obstacles to a restoration of the German
Empire. The hollow and corrupt syttemof Imperialism
in France has been swept away; but this ay stem would
have crumbled Long ago had a few thousand French
citizens shown as much spirit in resisting its abuses as
tune reds of thousands have shown in serving against
the invader. The war cannot fairly be credited with
either of these results, beneficent as they may be, for
they might have been realized, without blood-shed, at
the will of the German and French peoples. It has
rot, Lowever, been wholly barren of rood if it has im-
pressed afresh on the minds of rulers and nations the
awful responsibility of rousing warlike pmsions, the
utter impotence of conventional rules to control them,
the hope:were of regulating invasions, like tourna-
silents, by a code f honour. This is a lesson which
had been et thoroughly learnt in the wars of Napoleon
that Went. ra Eur.pe Eri•,yed an unbroken peace 01
nearly forty years; hut it had sell-nigh been forgotten,
and neither the Russian war, nor the Italian war, nor
the Germen war of 18tfi, had sufficed to revive it.
There was an idea abroad that NVar, though not
aban,loned, might be reduced to an affair of aradee
and fleets, divested of its ugliest features, and more
attractive than ever to poets and historians. Let.us

hope-that such dellisions have been tif
yelled, at least for one generation. No campai!ms
have ever been so faithfully and graphically described
as those of 1870-1 ; never have the romantic pomp and
circumstances of "glorious' war been so ruthlessly
stripped r if, or the naked and hbleoum reality so per-
m's:ently dragged to NIA. Full jullee rkra been done
to stragety as consumee and deeds of acme as heroic
as any recorded in military history, but the exact Fice
to be paid for the dieplay of these qeslit'ea is n
known as it was r ever known be' ore. The belllg, rents
have, indeed, bought their experience dear. but, if
it has been laid to Ewalt, the War cannot have been
a pure waste of human eoffering.