The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-08 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1870.

THE efforts of the English Ministry to procure an
armistice have ended in failure. Several days of
hope deferred created the anticipation of a
better issue=—for delay in disputes is gene-
rally favourable to agreement; but it now
appears certain that the war will proceed.
The cause of thig) failure is not equally clear. The
course of the negotiations and their sudden collapse
are involved in a good deal of mystery. But some
information, which is worthy of attention, leads to
the inference that the leaders could not agree on the
terms of the armistice itself : if the ultimate question
of ceding territory was raised at all, it was preceded

by preliminary difficulties. The French Government
wished, of course, that Paris should be revictualled
for the twenty-five days of the armistice ;
and they desired that Alsace and Lorraine
should, like the rest of France, contribute their depu-
ties to the Constituent Assembly. There seems to be no
doubt that Count BISMARCK rejected the first de-
mand, and there is good reason for thinking that he
also refused the second. Yet the French Ministry
could hardly give way on these points. The refusal
to allow Alsace and Lorraine to return deputies to
the Assembly which was to decide the terms of peace
was virtually to decide those terms by anticipation.
The French must be sunk very low indeed, lower
even than they are now, before they could consent to
deny the two provinces representation. An
Assembly without deputies from Alsace and
Lorraine would not represent France. It is
quite possible that there might be a division so
narrow that the votes from the two provinces would
turn the scale. Their protests might animate the
rest to a resistance of which they -would not other-
wise be capable. This would not suit Count
BISMARCK; we should regard it as deplorable; but ifthe
Constituent Assembly is to decide the terms of peace,
the Deputies must do as they think right, and not
as Count BISMARCK or impartial neutrals would
dictate. Count BISMARCK must bo held guilty of
double dealing if; whilst he agrees that a Constituent
Assembly should settle the fate of France, he re-
duces the deliberations to a farce by declaring before-
hand that two provinces are German territory, and
must take no part in a French general election.
The re-victualling of Paris is a prob!em of greater
difficulty. It is clear that starvation is the most
powerful Gernianweapon against the capital. Offi-
cial telegrams from Versailles announce " that every-
thing is ready" for the siege; but the capture of the
city by force of arms would be a very costly business,
and might not succeed after all. Indeed, the chances
of failure are great. The Germans themselves do not
seem impressed with the belief that they can carry a
place so vast in face of an army larger than their
own—au army whose defects i❑ the field would
be counterbalanced by the assistance of stout walla.
On the other hand, Paris must fall sometime through
famine. An armistice of - twenty-five days without
any revictualling would -mean that the Germans
were to carry on their most effective operation for
nearly a month, whilst the French could not fire a
shot. The probability is that Paris will be
reduced by a blockade, and if the blockade
continued in all its rigour during the twenty-five
days, the so-called armistice would really be a ces-
sation of hostilities on one side only. But were food
for the whole period allowed to the besieged city,
the advantage of the truce would then be on the French
side. A. winter campaign must- at the best be
attended with fearful losses and sufferings to the
Germans. A. month's armistice, with full re-
victualling for Paris, would mean a month's prolong-
ation of fighting in the worst weather and an
additional German loss of so many thousand
men. These difficulties would have been best met
by a compromise. If Paris were re-victualled for half
the time, the advantages, or rather disadvantages,
would have been pretty equal on each side. But
this species of logical agreement did not receive
attention.

The issue is lamentable, not only because the
prospect of peace is indefinitely deferral, but also
because these negotiations shew no great anxiety on
the part of Count BISMARCK to secure an armistice,
and because the Itepublican Ministry is more than
ever committed to pr.)longation of the war.
They must go on, or commit the destinies of the
nation to other hands. It cannot be expected
that the fall of Paris will induces thein
to give way, for such a contingency
must surely have presented itself to their calcula-
tions. Not only ROCHEFORT and GAMBETTA, but
thoughtful men, such as Titocnu and FAVItE, have
again publicly declared, one and all, that no inch of
territory will be ceded. Such a manifesto, made
just after Metz, ought to be decisive. The Repub-
lican Government will perish when an exhausted
nation rejects its Tolley. When there is no longer
any resource to oppose to the invaders, the raison d'etre
01 the September Ministry will disappear. What will
cc me after it—anarchy or a despotism, or a succession
of each--remains to be seen. The prospects of France
were never worse, and it may be added that the
prospects of the Germans are not reassuring. • They
appear likely more than ever to find themselves in
the embarrassment of holding a country in which no
vestige of authority remains, and of being driven to
set up a Government in order to make a peace.

IT is a sufficiently suggestive coincidence that in
the midst of this sanguinary and in many respects
appalling war between two of the foremost nations of
Europe, a Historical Polish Museum should be
opened in one of the free cantons of Switzerland. It
is simply a coincidence, of course, but it is a coinci-
dence we cannot but repeat that is, to our mind at least,
startlingly significant. tmong all the down-trodden
nationalities of which history has any record, the
nationality of Poland—murdered and buried though
it has been now close upon one whOle century ago,
namely, as far back a on the sth of August, 1772,
that being the date of the first partition, as 1793 was
of the second, and 1795 of the third—is the one only
nationality above whose grave mankind have almost
unanimously agreed in inscribing the lac•)nic
legend " ReEurgatul" The restoration of Poland, ever
since Poland was extinguished, has been, off and on,
more or less frequently the cherished day-dream of
modern civilisation. NAPOLEON the GRP:AT and,
nearly half a century later on, the reviver for
eighteen years of his empire, under the title of
NAPOLEON lll.,*played fast and loose with the hopes
of the believers in the possibility of the restora-
tion to power of Poland as among the
independent States of Europe. Nothing in
the end, it is true, has come of it all in either in-
stance. The cause of Poland, however, for all that,
has evidenced far more vitality than the cause of
either of her proposing patrons, by the revival of her
name, as still one of profound interest to the world at
large, as strangely enough indicated on the
morrow alike of Waterloo and of Sedan.
instance this the rumours very recently
afloat in the eastern and central portions of
the European Continent, as not the least remarkable
outcome of the Franco-German war, that the rehabi-
litation of Poland is again dreamt of as an event cal-
culated to restrain within more reasonable limits the
dominant authority, on the one hand, of Prussia, on
the other of the Russian Autocrat. Full of suggestive
interest at such a juncture in the re-adjustment of
the balance of power among the great European
nations, is the opening of that Historical Museum
of Poland to which we take oceasigh elsewhere in
our impression of to-day to direct the attention of
our readers and of our contemporaries.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE GERMAN BALAKLAVA.

The Germans appear to have employed their in-
fantry at Le Bourget very much as the English
employed their cavalry at Balaklava—i. e., threw
away a number of valuable,lives for an entirely use-
less object. Le Bourget is one of the suburbs of
Paris, and is situated on the north side. On the
29th the French sent out two battalions to the
village, and dislodged a 1 russian post of
one company, which fell back on its sup-