The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-23 00:00:00

THE STRUGGLE IN FRANCE.

What may be the result of this tremendous struggle,
remarks the Dully News, it is impossible to say with
absolute certainty. We are witnessing the death struggle
of two great peoples ; German patience against French
endurance, Teutonic pertinacity against Gallic energy.
It is, perhaps, too much to expect that the gallant
resistance of Paris will be rewarded to success. The
Germans are capable of greater efforts than they
have yet made, and we have no reason to believe
that they will loosen their grip of the capital till they
have passed it under the yoke. There is, of course, no
knoN;ing what winter may do. The hard weather may
tell against the besiegers, but it can hardly do other than
increase the privations of the besieged. Apart, however,
from any of the contingencies which may arise, the one
object of the war, which is now clearly the possession of
Paris, is more likely to be eventually attained
than abandoned by the German forces. But what
then ? Well, then it is that the long resistance of Paris
and the uprising of France will tell with irresistible effect.
Count Bismarck will hai dly attempt to hold such a nation
in subjection. Germany cannot afford to send all its able-
bodied men as a permanent garrison to hold France as a
material guarantee for German claims. It would
be buying gold too dear. The German soldiers are
all wanted at home. Their wives and children are
mourning their absence at this Christmas season ;
their business is standing still while they are away, and
if their absenee is prolonged till the return of spring,
there is no knowing what discontents may arise at home.
It is getting to be the interest of Prussia to finish up
the war ; and we therefore see reason to hope
the struggle may quite wear itself out around
Paris. The two hostile nations have learned
to respect each other's powers, if not to respect each
other's territory. Even if Prussia wins some French
soil, she will always remember with how great a price she
bought it; and if France loses it, she will always be proud
of the heroic struggle she made in its defence. Why
cannot two such nations agree with each other while they
are in the way—why must they play the dicer's game of
double or quits, and risk all to gain a point of honour?
The Standard says :—The war goes on, and demands
every day larger sacrifices. The slaughter, confined
in the first weeks of the contest to a narrow slip of
French territory, is now waged almost continuously
over well-nigh half of France. Every day has
its tale of killed and wounded. Great battles rival-
ling Woerth and Gravelotte in their sum of car-

nage have become such matters of course that
two or three may be expected every week, and on
the " off days," if we may use such a phrase, come stories
of small encounters in different parts of the country,
which make up in the aggregate of their bloodshed the
bloodshed which usually gives the rank of a serious en-
gagement. Each day disease and want claim an increas-
ing number of victims. Each day adds immensely to
the desolation of France, to the misery of her unfortu-
nate cultivators, to the privations and to the sufferings
of Germans and Frenchmen alike. What has to
come promises to be even more terrible. Winter is on the
land in its bitterest mood. Fighting, more desperate
than any yet witnessed, is likely to mark the Christmas
week. And what then ? Who will dare to say ? Who
can venture to do more than to suggest that the daughter
and the starvation, the destruction and the desolation,
will continue to increase in something like
geometrical prcportion ? No wonder, therefore, that
Englishmen are almost as impatient as the Germans
themselves that the contest should end. Their humanity,
not to say their interest, impels them to shew themselves
impatient for the termination. France may be wrong in
continuing the war, but the question is one which she
has to determine, If she thinks anything
better than the humiliation Prussia seeks
to impose upon her, she is right to continue
the war; and, as we have said, she has the further right,
which even her critics will probably have to admit, of
being able to continue it with a good hope of success. We
recognise and applaud such patriotic efforts, but we offer
no opinion as to the course France should take, further
than to state the reasons which may influence her. Her
destiny is in her own hands.