The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-22 00:00:00

FRANCE ON HER DEFENCE.

There are people who profess to see in warfare the one
point on which the human race have made absolutely no
progress. The hordes of primitive men who, on the
strength of a more fatal kind of flint arrow-heads than
their neighbours, made war on an adjacent tribe, furnish
in the opinion of such critics, an exact counterpart to the
modern nations, who no sooner possess an improved fire-
arm than they shew an unbridled haste to try its effect on
the field of battle. Adzuftting the radically barbarous prin-
ciple that underlies all warfare, it is a very noticeable
fact that each successive outbreaki of hostilities finds
the belligerents more desirous than ever of setting them-
selves right with the rest of the world in regard to the
purity of the motives that impelled them to fight. Of the
two nations now engaged in actual conflict, France has
assuredly been the most severely arraigned at the bar of
civilisation and humanity. Even in quarters where she
might reasonably have expected sympathy on the
score of previous alliances and mutual services,
the flimsy pretext on which she entered into
the quarrel has caused other grounds on which
it may have become inevitable to be lost sight
of, and thus she has been forced to occupy, in
the estimation of other nations, the position of actual
aggressor, and therefore of the Power directly responsible
for the contest now in progress. The attempts already
made by the French Government to vindicate the tech-
nical justice of its declaration of war against Prussia have
been but partially successful. They have all virtually
resolved themselves into the statement that the growing
ascendency of Prussia was dangerous to the freedom of
Germany, to the existence of Austria, to the safety of
France, and, therefore, to the pea& of Europe. The
Germans have already given the most emphotic re-
buff to foreign intervention in their affairs by hasten-
ing to enrol themselves without reserve or hesitation
under the banner of the King of Prussia. Austria has
probably already begun to pray to be saved from such
exhibitions of friendly concern, and Europe generally has
unequivocally expressed its conviction that Prance would
have had a much stronger claim to the title of a peace-
maker had she accepted the mediation of neutral Powers
which was so qrongly pressed upon her. Apparently
chafing under what they consider a grievous misapprehen-
sion, the French Cabinet return once more to the task
of self-defen.ee, and, to judge by the sample
transmitted by telegraph, have emitted another
elaborate vindication of the • position whose
ultimate settlement now rests with the strongest
battalions. All unprejudiced observers have already
concluded that France has a much stronger case
against Prussia on the general basis of a rivalry which
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lomacy of Berlin has, in fad, been more than a match for
that of Paris, and the somewhat declamatory sentences
quoted from the Duke of Grammont's circular do not
tend to raise our estimate either of the ability or the
candour of the late foreign policy of France. It is,
doubtless, perfectly true that proposals for mutual dis-
armament were made by France to Prussia, but most
people will be inclined to think, as Count Bismarck seems
to have done, that the sincerity of these proposals was
open to question. " Preoccupied "as she may have been
with the development of her political institutions," the
fact is now patent to the world that France has been
steadily preparing for a great struggle, and that when the
moment arrived she was in a more advanced stage of pre-
paration than Prussia. It is obvious that her readiness to
fight had a pretty intimate connection with her opinion as
to the outrage which no nation could accept without
incurring contempt." In fact, the present attempt at
laboured defence, like those that have preceded it, only
serves to shew that good as the general grounds of the
quarrel may in many respects have been, its special occa-
sion was, on the part of France, ill-chosen.—New York
Times.