The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-29 00:00:00

FIE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVRYIBER 29, 1870.

stuck in the popular remembrance!] one could as.
easily crumple up Russia" exclaimed COBDEN—
glancing round at the table in front of which
he was standing on the platform of the
great room at the London Tavern, and picking up,
on the spur of the moment an old envelope which he
crushed in his hand, and flung upon the boards of the
platform—" as I crumple up that piece of paper !"
This was in 1849—a whole lustre before the out-
break of the Crimean war, when the mere fringe
of Russia somehow took a long while crumpling, and
that, too, under the united force of England, and

France, and Turkey, and Sardinia. The boast, as it
proved to be soma five years afterwards—especially
falling, as it had done, from the lips of a peace-at-
any-price advocate—was, to say the least of it,
inopportune.
lf, instead of COBDEN uttering these words about

Russia, BISMARCK had given utterance to them, less
than five months ago, in regard to France, we doubt
very much, indeed, if, in remembrance of the astound-
ing successes of the German arms at Sedan, and Metz,
and Strasburg, and Worth, and Weissemburg, and
all the rest of those overwhelming victories—we
doubt very much, indeed, if anyone would have
ventured to revert to the expression in that case, as
a hyperbole ! Looking at the map of Franco' so far
as the war of 1870 has yet gone—it hat been
crumpled up like a piece of paper ! And
this wholly and solely by the forces of Ger-
many, forces no doubt directed by the genius
of one of the greatest strategists who has ever lived ;
forces that, under the conduct of Generals like VON
MOLTKIS and VON RooN, led by Princes as chivalrous
and resolute as the CROWN PRINCE and the RED
PRINCE, under the eyes of a dauntless old Warrior-

King like WILHEL3r, hitherto King of
Prussia, henceforth Emperor of United Ger-
many, have enabled the wily and sagacious
and unscrupulous Chancellor of the North German
Confederation to hold France as one may say in the
hollow of his hand, and (hitherto) to crumple it up
remorselessly in his grasp. Nothing of all this, how-
ever, was boastfully foreshadowed in any way by Count
BISMARCK. His successes, he has contented himself
with organising. He has allowed them simply to speak
for themselves. In all this, in nearly every sense but
the moral sense in which his political career can be
regarded, he is worthy of arousing among sur-
rounding nations—those, at least, who are wise in
their generation—a spirit of patriotic emulation. Silent
preparation, systematic organisation, a. preference for
efficiency the most thorough, rather than for those
alluring and specious economies (so-called) that sap the
strength of empires, these are peculiarities, distinct-
ively characteristic of the policy of Count BISMARCK,
that if we are only wise in our generation, ought to
be sedulously imitated henceforth by our ourselves.
Otherwise—as curses proverbially come home to
roost, a boast may also : more especially a boast
uttered in a moment of exaltation, by one of the
most rarely gifted of all our great advocates of the
craven principles of Peace-at-any-Price.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Government would give in if Paris were taken.
Many French writers assure us, however, that such
will not be the case ; and some of them have un-
folded their scheme of prosecuting the war, if the
capital should fall into th 4 hands of the Germans.
If the siege cannot be raised, the garrison can
at all events cut a way through the
German ranks and form an army of provincial
defence. This force joined to the armies of the
Loire, West, and North, will make up a formidable
field array. The conquerors, on their side, will take
no armed men in Paris, except the National Guards,
who are of little use ; and two army corps, at least,
will be required to occupy the captured city. The
Republican Ministers will, of course, all sail away in
balloons at the time the supreme effort is taking
place. What is to prevent the war going on in the
provinces ? The provinces have already shown that
they can fight without Paris. It is to be observed
that this project depends entirely for its success upon
the garrison fairly getting through the besieging
army—a feat which is by no moans to be regarded
as virtually an accomplished fact.