The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-23 00:00:00

OUR CO rEMPORARIES—This Morning

THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS.

The Times believes it is impossible not to ponder, with
the utmost interest, on the nature of the concessions M.
Thiess must be contemplating, and on the momentous
conseqUerices, for good or for evil, which hang on the
spirit in sthish they may be received by the French
Assembly. Deeply convinced as we are that, if France
is to be saved, peace Must be made at all costs, and
that scarcely any concesslene would be too great
to attain this boon, we feel tst the same time
not less deeply that a terrible wound Will be inflicted on
French feeling. There is no disguising the truth that
France is called on to accept, however lustily, a
grieviortsliation. There will now be no snore
room for illusions. The loss of several Departments;
'and of the most fantods fortresses of France will be
facts too conspicuous, too constantly felt, for the most
obstinate believer in French glory to shut his
eyes to the truth. The present may be painful, and
may be embittered by the recollection of the past ;
but there is nothing to despair of in the future. France
will have suffered a severe loss, but nothing more. She
will still be France, and the sacrifices she makes are as
nothing to the moral tend material resources she still pos-
sesses. It may take long to recover the devastation and
the debt which now burden her ; but the years of a nation's
life are not. limited like those of au indivi-
dual, and no such loss nerd be snore than
temporary. lies homes will be darkened fur many
years to come ; but the places now vacant will gra-
dually be filled, and not less surely may the void in
her material possessions be replenished. The French
have mistaken "Toutes les Gloires de Is France," but such
glories exist in abundance. She possesses a soil un-
rivalled for fertility, a climate which is the delight,
the refreshment, and the envy of other nations;
she contains within her own borders most of
the necessary elements of material wealth ; her
geographical Position is the finest in Europe ;
she is open one side to the Old World, and on ,the other
to the New ; she is already furnished with a material
organization admirable in all its outlines, and in some par-
ticulars superior to that of any other country, Above all
she contains a race, or several races, of people who, what-
ever their failings, have at all times known how to march
in the van of civilization, and sometimes to lead it. They
are, moreover, a people at least as well adapted to who
glory in peace as in war. In the tasteful
and ingenious arts they excel all other nations ;
in patent industry and persevering economy they are
unsurpassed. Nothing is more clear from the
revelations of the last six months than that the mass of
the French population are as averse from the fallacious
"glories" of war as the most peaceable German or
English peasant. Let the leaders of the nation at this
crisis only do justice to this spirit, let them recognise
the blessing's it would insure their country if it had but
fair play, and let them fix their attention on the hopes
thus offered by the future, and the present genera-
tion may not have passed away before France will be
richer,• happier, and more useful than she has ever been
before.
The &dig News considers the first result of the peace
negotiations is the extension of the armistice to Sunday
evening next. Those negotiations have, therefore, not
only begun, but have begun with flt good many omens in
favour of success. The political situation in France, of
course, waits on the military situation. France has
everything to do, but is resolved to do ono thing at a
time. Everything' has to be reconstructed, but
there• must first be a France to reconstruct. At
this moment she is not mistress of herself. Her
capital and large parts of her soil are in foreign hands,
and what will be France and what will not be France
when the enemy has turned his back on the capital and
gone home it is at present impossible to say. But the
very marked feature of the present situation is the absence
of political excitement. For months past France has been
one and indivisible in a sense she has not known for
years. Fighting for the 'tufty and indivisibility of her
soil, she has attained the higher unity and the more
patriotic indivisibility of all classes of her people.
At the present moment the Assembly is not political, it is
simply patriotic. It has made a Government, not that
the Government may make a dynasty, but simply that it
may make a peace. The peace will, in fact, not be the
making of any one political party, nor of any one group of
statesmen. The national disaster is shared by all parties.
It was brought on by the Empire, increased under the
Republic, and will be brought to a climax in
the peace negotiated or the further war resolved
on under the moderately Orleanist Assembly.
It is impossible that a statesman of Count Bismarck's
shrewdness should not see how greatly it is to the
advantage of Germany that the peace now being
made should be " acceptable at Bordeaux." We shall
know in a day or two whether the expectation that the
Germans will be be thus conciliatory is to he realised.
The extension of the armistice to Sunday shews that the
negotiations will not be long, and lends colour to the
rumour in Paris that the Assembly will have the
terms before it for final discussion by the end of this
week. We can only express one more hope that those
terms will be such as France may honourably accept, and
even such as will allow her to forgive and forget. The
whole proipect at this moment depends on the question
whether political or military considerations are to pre-
dominate in the counsels at Versailles. There will
probably be peace ; but whether it will be a lasting peace
entirely dependson whether it is or is not a generous one.
The Standard says :—All the facts of which we are in
possession confirm the statements which promise an early
conclusion of peace. Besides this seeming resolution on
the part of the new Government, which enjoys, as the
vote establishing it shews, the confidence of the Assembly
if not of the country, to accept and recommend the terms
insisted upon by Count Bismarck, there is in favour o f
this assumption the evident desire of that Assembly to be rid
of the war at any cost. We do no injustice to the deputies
now assembled at Bordeaux if we describe them as guided
a great deal more by the desire to relieve France from the
material disadvantages under which she now suffers than
to maintain any point of honour. The Orleanist majority
in that A ssembly is very much snore concerned about
the establishment of its own authority than any-
thing else. It has no heart for a renewal of the con-
test, and it has reasons enough, it must be allowed,
for deciding against any such renewal. The
armistice has damped the courage of the nation.

It has sown division and distraction

It has

thrown out of the saddle the man who, with all his faults,
was the life and soul of that resistance. It has necessarily
put, and almost first, upon the order of the day that
question of the future form of government which, whilst
the war lasted, all patriotic Frenchmen, however indig-
nant they might feel at the conduct of the Dictator and
the proconsuls he appointed, resolutely adjourned to the
season when France, vista or rictrix, might have leisure to
consider it. The National Assembly will accept any peace
M. Thiers and his Ministers may recommend it. What
will be the character of that peace is another question.
Certainly France would not consider the territorial ques-
tion settled favourably for her, or even, ready as she is to
think the best of herself, regard her honour as completely
intact if the peace should wrest from her Strasburg and
Metz, Alsace and Lorraine. May we then hope that the
German Government has shown a wise moderation of
which all the utterances of its accredited organs have
allowed no expectation ? May we trust that if asking a
cession of territory, it will ask but a very small one,
that only such for which it might assign certain re on
of strategical convenience o' ^ ,^ally defensive 'character?
We doubt it, we must confes, will
A. day or two N solve
all doubts.
beTenhefolrmdealfillYrapchonocblsuedrmay 11‘efarTainora:
any
so fully
evdes,
weAlthough peatce has not
that the Treaty has been signed. yet
niaesqautaioinnte,d)f wFitrlaintolise
that
tibhlee eciihlaursetfii7e annod
ttehremdsisl(v)rhgjoal;
and whatever treaty
stop short of outrageousi severity
.l.;be endorsed. by the
may be signed by
still believe that they will
be harsh ; but we
nation. The Germanil him will
will, no doubt,
theyht
elsita vter
übs
te eona
ndesignated
by common repord
sli
prove more reasotnabxleottitihaen
lthotyth Count Bis-
d
amount o
in the stafteitnheenintsocnirecyuilnatmansittyo. the supposed enormous
with a prostrate foe, he
marck may be acquittedof display.ing such weakness as
generosity when he is treating
is
exempt from the weakness of cherishing
hopes, and he knows as well as any
man in Europe that the force of all his armies
could not wring from France so prodigious
visionaryegually
a sum as that which vague rumour has
placed among the conditions. Nor, we trust,
will the cession of territory be so extensive as that which
has figured in popular reports. There is one humiliation
which the advisers of the Emperor seem bent on exacting
from France, and which, if it be imposed, will never be
forgotten or forgiven—the entry of the victorious army
into the capital. What the conquerors are planning is the
bitterest insult that can be inflicted upon a prostrate foe.
The apparent determination to make the French
people drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs
displays a lack of generosity which excites in neutral
bystanders mingled feelings of indignation and contempt.
The citizens will not, as they did after the fall of the First ,
Napoleon, welcome the invaders. They are, heart and
soul, the foes of Prussia, and the insulting procession of
the German troops will leave undying memories of hate.
Their feelings have been expressed with dignity and
eloquence by General Trochu. Whether the citizens
follow his advice or not, it is far more improbable
that the presence of the foreign soldiery and
Princes in the Rue de Rivoli may provoke a dangerous
disturbance. The throwing of a single grenade, or the
firing of a single shot, may lead to dreadful bloodshed,
and give additional bitterness to the memory of the insult
ing march through the streets of Paris. The force of
these considerations is so obvious that to the last we shall
cherish a hope in the prevalence of Wiser and more magna-
nimous counsels. Were the Emperor to refrain from the
contemplated sacrifice to military pride, he would, indeed,
lose a barren triumph, but he would gain new hopes of
permanent peace.