The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-03 00:00:00

GAMBETTA AND HIS PROCLAMATION.

The Telegraph says :—Another calr.mity has fallen upon
France. As will be seen from the proclamation of M.
Gambetta and the decree of the Bordeaux Government,
the unfortunate country is now the victim not only
of defeat, but of divided councils. M. Gambetta
has virtually declared war against M. Jules Favre,
and, in doing so, he has unequivocally and utterly
placed himself in the wrong. lie protests against the ar•
mistice, on the ground that it has stopped the operations
of the French troops ; he calls upon the people to drill
night and day ; and he summonses all Frenchmen,
whether Legitimists or Democrats, to rally round the
Republic, and repudiate the infamous pact into which
the Government of Paris entered with the " barba-
barians." So far his words are only excited
rhetoric. But the proclamation is followed by a formal
decree, signed by all the members of the Bordeaux Go-
vernment, and stating the arrangements for the elections
to the National Assembly. M. Gambetta and his col-
leagues roundly dec!:::::liat, as a punishment for the sins
of the Empire, those persons who, from the date of the
coup d'etat to that of Sedan, have accepted the office of
Minister, Senator, or Councillor of State, or Prefect,
shall not be eligible for election. In the same black
list are placed all persons who, within the same period,
were official candidates of the Government. The members
of those families that have ruled over France since 1789
are also declared ineligible ; and thus the Orleanists and
the Bonapartists are cut away by a stroke of the pen.
Finally, the voting is to take place, for the most part, in the
chief town of the canton, and therefore, in many cases, far
away from the homes of the peasantry. Thus the voting
power of that great class will be seriously lessened, and a
proportionate amount of influence transferred to the
hands of the Republicans. More wanton indiscretion and
a more flagrant usurpation of power were never dis-
played by a responsible Government. The proclamation
and the decree are alike so bad that the authors of
both can be treated leniently only on the supposition that
they do not expect to be obeyed by the country, and that
they are merely indulging in the vanity of empty rhe-
toric. At the very moment when unity of council is
all-important to France, and when she may be ruined by
her divisions, M. Gambetta throws down the gauntlet
to his colleagues in Paris, and denounces their pro
ceedings in language which befits the acts of traitors
alone.

The Standard remarks :—The Bordeaux Government
has accepted the armistice, and issued decrees for the
election of the National Assembly contemplated in the
Convention drafted by Count Bismarck and signed by M.
Favre. But it has done so very much against its will, and
under protest and reservations which practically amount
to a bitter condemnation of its colleagues in Paris. M.
Gambetta complains—and as between him and M. Favre
the complaint is almost unanswerable—that, with-
out informing or consulting the Government of Bordeaux,
an armistice had been signed which paralysed the action
of France, and which, pretending to establish the mili-
tary status quo of that day, made an exception in the one
instance in which an an exception could serve Prussian in-
terests. There can be no doubt about the fact. M. Favre
accepted the terms Prussia prescribed, and made himself
an agent for enforcing them upon France, without
any inquiry or consultation with the colleagues
who had for four months governed the rest of France.
Probably enough M. Favre's conduct was honest. He
belongs to the school which acts as if Paris were France,
and he very likely believed sincerely that the provinces
must as a matter of course dance to any tune
Paris might pipe. But M. Gambetta had cer-

tainly good grounds for complaint, and it will always
remain a marvel how M. Favre could have consented
to an armistice from the operation of which what must
have appeared to him the last army of France was ex-
empted !
Porr France ! the Germans insist upon a dis-
memberment
which is equivalent to death as a condition
of peace. A section of the men who usurped the power in
September has practically pledged itself to accept these
terms, ; the other members of the Government reject them
with horror and indignation. They hold that France should
make no peace, whatever it may cost her to continue the
struggle, upon terms so cruel and so impossible of per-
manent acceptance, and yet these very men, whilst calling
upon France to fight and to suffer, treat as traitors and
serfs, or at the best as mere food for powder, the great
mass of the population of France. We are loth
to believe that these decrees express M. Gambetta's
views. We desire to regard them as the work of the
wretched creatures, his colleagues in the delegation, whose
one idea is their maintenance in the power they ursurped
by the favour of a mob and the treason of General
Trochu. But whosoever their inspirers, they come before
the world as the decrees of a Government of France, and
between such acts of folly, of the narrowest selfishness,
of the grossest treason to France, and the extravagant
demands of Count Bismarck there is, indeed, very little
room to expect or to hope for peace.

BOURBAKI'S DISASTER.
The Daily News observes :—" The Army of General
Bourbaki, 80,000 strong, has entered neutral Switzer-
land. This is the fourth French Army rendered in-
capable of further fighting." Thus runs the telegram
front the German Emperor at Versailles to his Em-
press at Berlin. The usual pious postscript—the grace
after meat—is lacking. Perhaps it has been sup-
pressed as a common form which may henceforth
betaken
supplies
the place the meaningpl
eo
f o
that
f tlie "
which i
ehoccasionally
distin-
guished consideration " which, by a happy reciprocity
every diplomatist entertains for every other. Perhaps
the Emperor-King is becoming ungrateful for small
mercies. Eighty thousand men—a trifle, a mere hand-
ful ; and escaped, too, into neutral Switzerland, instead
of being slain or swallowed up alive in Germany !
What is there to be thankful for in that ? In the mean-
time, the practical destruction of :General Bourbaki's
Army, though a small matter for the Emperor and for
Germany, is a very serious thing for M. Gambetta,
and for France. We are far from sharing
the virtuous indignation which has been roused
in the breasts of some eminent English men
of letters by that " übiquitous criminal," whose
crime it is not to have despaired of France or of the Re-
public. Probably in a country and at a time of broken
communications, of uncertain intelligence, of flying and
magnified rumours, he has shared the delusions he has
communicated and fostered them in his own breast
while he endeavoured to inspire others with them. If 111!
Gambetta could have communicated some of his other
qualities, the position of France would be more
,hopeful than it is now. His keen, eager, and
indomitable spirit ; his fertility of resource, his unwearied
energy, animating the arm-bearing population of France,
would have hurled back the German invasion. The illu.
sion is proverbial which leads men to see their own quali-
ties reflected in others ; and M. Gambetta has fancied
that all the men of military age in France were
of like mind and temper with himself. The awakening
'rom this dream must come ; it ought to have come before

now,