The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-21
THE PRINCIPLE OF NAT1oNALlTTEs.

Inc cOmmOneSt phrase Tor the last year or
two in the slang Of European Cabinets has
been that of respect for the principle of ma
tionslities. 1t is vague phrase which may
mean anything a strong power chooses, and
nothing that a weak one claims. Ii was irst
announced and sent out by that great master
of shams, the late Emperor of tue French.
He used it in his indefinite way to sustain the
Crimean war, by which the power of the
Turk over the Greek was sustained aud con-
firmed. He never grew tired of affirming the
same principle those words OF pompous
inanity by which he heralded and expounded
his action in the Italian war. In behalf of q
historic nationality he promised that Italy
should be free from the Alps to the Adriatic;
but he sold the Italian cause at the first vic
tory, and afterwards exacted as the price of
his assistance the two Italian provinces of
Nice and Savoy.
He fourd how little he had gained by that
adventure when the,army of Victor Emanuel
refused to recognize the cession of Venetia
by Austria TO France; and he was afterwards
forced by circumstances into trampling that
principle under foot when Italy was following
Garibaldi to Rome, and nothing but the
chassepots of De Failly stopped her. But 1t
was only when he saw the portentous
growth of the German nation after the catas
trophe of Sadowa that he began thoroughly
TO comprehend what Frankenstein monster
he had been shaping during oil the years of
his reign. The principle of nationalities he
had so petted ard patronized now threatened
his very existence. The creation of his own
policy would destroy him, 1t appeared, unless,
like the tabled Chronos, he seized the dan
gerous birth and devoured it, The result of
his attempt to swallow the newborn ma
tionality is sufficiently notorious
Now that France is conquered, and it rests
with Germany to dictate the terms of peace,
it seems impossible for the European mind to
escape from the absurd rut in which it has
been travelling for years. The provinces of
Alsace and Lorraine are to be seized and
annexed to Germany, for the valid and suffi-
cient reasons that this fortified frontier is
needed as a defense for the future; that the
territory will serve as compensation for the
expenses of the war: that if France had con-
quered, she would have exacted the Rhenish
provinces. But not content with this, all the
professors in Deutschland grow red in the
face with demonstrating that these are Ger
man provinces, and therefore should be an
nexed. They make it point of honor and
conscience to talk about Wasgrau, Lothrin-
gen, and Elsass, and to speak always of re-
storing, and never word of incorporating,
the conque red territory.
So fully has this new and fantastic idea of
the aggregation of nationalities taken posses
sion of the ordinary European mind, that it
has utterly superseded the notion of the ne.
cessity of consent as a condition of annexa-
tion. Not only do the apostles of this crude
chronological theory assert that men of the
same race must form the same nation, but
they also virtually insist that the stronger
people shall expound the scientific merits of
the case, and then proceed to annex all those
in whom they have discovered kindred blood.
If the smaller nations object TO the evidence
presented and prefer not to be adopted into
the growing family. they are denounced as
rebels and traitors and persuaded into the ma
tional unity about as gently as Hoods butcher
''conciliated" a refractory sheep, neck and
CROP into the slaughter pen. This was gro
tesquely shown at the Pans Slavic Congress
held some time ago in Russia at the invita-
tion of the Gar. IL was largely attended by
Bohemian scholars and professorsfrom Prague,
who camored for liberation from the mild and
debonnair despotism of Austria, and yet de-
nounced as monstrons and unnatural the
movement towards freedom on the part of the
trampled and agonizing Poles The utterly
unjustifable agitation in Austrian Poland,
where an almost complete autonomy prevails,
is considered noble and heroic by these pur-
blind theorists, because it is directed against
a German prince; while the long and des-
perate protest of the chivalrous people of
Warsaw is regarded as crime against
ethnology because in this case the tyrant is
Sclave. The very midsummer madness of
this pedantic dream is seen on the Lower
Danube, where few professors intoxicated
with thin draughts of the Pierian spring, have
begun a Pan Dacian movement, to fuse into
one nationality all the peoples inhaEting the
territory of ancient Dacia at the time of
Traian's conquest.
There is no doubt that many of the near
sighted gentlemen who search the libraries
for muniments of title take their fancy seri
ously and really believe in it. But it is equally
certain that the statesmen who pull the wires
TO which these earnest puppets dance regard
the whole comedy as very ridiculous The
Russian politicians who keep this Pan-Slavic
agitation on foot in Austria and along the
Danube are nearly all Germans by birth anC
race. The Emperor himself has scarcely
drop of Tartar blood left in his veins after al
the Teutonic alliances of his family. Louis
Napoleon himself, the patentee of the theory
spurned it whenever il came In his way HI
did not stop TO consider il Nice were NOR,
Provencal or Italian. When he attempted tt
found Latin empire in America under tht
lieutenancy of Hapsburg, he was not in
huenoed by the fact that an aboriginal Presi
dent was the chosen ruler of the native-borr
people of Mexico. When Bismarck adds t.
the Prussian crown a Schleswig- -Holstein,
Luxemburg, or Lorraine, he will not troabl
himself to prove that the Inhabitants ar
pure -blooded Aryans of the Teutonic family
He will make up his mind that the absorption
is wholesome and digestibe for the monarchy
and he will let Herr Won Teufelsdroeck and MI
Carlyle amuse themselves over the histories
argument.
ERNEST RENAN on PARIs.-No one admire
and loves more than / that extraordinar
centre of life and thought which is calle
Paris. disease, if you will, but a diseas