The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-18
SPIRIT OF THE PRnss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WAR.


From the NJ Y, Times.
The die is cast. The Emperor Napoleon
has once m ore stirred the blood of France by
appealin q to the last arbitrament of battle
We believe that this will be one of the most
popular wars in which France has ever en-
gagged. The same state of feeling exists in Prus-
sia and North Germany. 1t is a contest the
issue of which no impartial observer can pre-
tend to foresee. Sympathies on one side
or the other may lead people to predict
success for France or Prussia; but in
reality all that is certain is that the struggle
must be one of the most desperate ever wit
messed on the battle grounds of the Old
World. Those who suppose that France will
easily succumb little understand the character
of her people or the resources of the empire.
On the other hand, there are more powers
than one in Europe anxious to see Prussia
Inundated. The smaller powers which she
absorbed soon after the Austrian campaign
may not, perhaps be able to do her much
harm; but Austria would be only too eager to
embrace any opportunity of avenging Sadowa.
When once the torch of war is Lit in Europe,
no man can tell how vast may be the devas-
tation which it spreads.
Since the Italian war of 1859 it has been
the boast.of French statesmen and publicists
that the Second Empire had introduced a new
idea into European politics-that of nation
alty-and that the Emperor had shown, by
refraining on that occasion from territorial
ACKNOWLEDGMENT, that he was capable of going
to war for an idea. The fatal expedition to
Mexico was justified on the ground of the
solidarity of the Latin race, whether settled
in the Old World or the New. 1t is tolerably
certain that the declaration of war lust
promulgated will be justified in France as
a step necessary to free scandinavian popu-
lace from German yoke, and to restrain
Prussian ambition from its designs on the
Peninsula. In short, the unful6lled article
of the treaty of Prague, which relates to
Denmark, and the late Hohenzollern candi-
dature for the throne of Spain, will be the
grounds on which the war will be eventually
defended. Rightly or wrongly, however, the
rest of the world will see in the present out
break of hostillties an effort on the part of
France to rectify her frontier, and to possess
once more the left bank of the Rhine For
this represents national desire older than
the enthusiasm for freeing subject races,
older than the concern for the balance of
power, older even than the revolutionary pro-
paganda which ended by changing the face of
Europe.
Startling as it may appear, the historical
fact of Rhine frontier is 400 years old.
1t came in with the Franks when they
overran the Roman province of Gaul in the
fifth century; it was established by Clovis,
the first of Frankish kings; it was restored
and then overleaped by Charlemagne, the
Emperor of the West" three centuries later;
the great Philip Augustus made, in the
beginning of the thirteenth century,
forty years reign glorious by ruling
over a territory that extended from the
Rhine to the Pyrenees. Louis, the saint
retained the Rhine boundary, and added
Provence and Languedoc, while Louis
Quatorze, .the great monarch" par excellence,
convulsed Europe, at the end of the seven
teenth century, by his efforts to regain the
provinces on the left bank of the Rhine
which had been wrestea from his predeces-
sors. Napoleon I only fulfilled a national
aspiration when he made Flanders, Luxem-
bourg, and other territories between the
Rhine and the sea an integral portion of the
First Empire, and Napoleon III is perfectly
aware that he would cover his name with i'm
perishable glory by making the Rhine, the
Pyrenees, the Alps, and the ocean the boun-
daries of modern France
1t needs but a superficial glance at the map
to perceive that there is species of terrific
rial fitness in this much coveted Rhine from
tier. Beginning at the Mediterranean, France
is separated from Italy by the Var and the
Alps; from Switzerland by the Rhone and the
mountains of Jura; and finally, from the
Grand duchy of Baden by the Rhine. Just
at the angle which the Lauter forms by falling
into the Rhine, the natural boundary ceases,
and an imaginary line commences, which
runs to the North Sea. Taking this line as
the base of a triangle, and the further course
of the Rhine and the sea-coast as the two sides.
we have territory one-half of which is occu-
pied by the kingdom of Belgium, and the
other by Rhenish Bavaria, Rhenish Hesse,
Rhenish Prussia, and small slice of Holland
comprehending a superficial area which may
be roughly stated at "a 900 square miles, oc-
cupied by population which probably num-
bers nine millions. In language, not over
three millions of these speak French, the re-
mainder using either Flemish, Dutch, or Ger
man, with an occasional admixture of p0tOis.
compounded out of some two of these four
languages. So far as national sympathies go,
the German populations and the Flemish
sections of Belgium have an intense aversion
to France, while the avowed partisans of an
extension of the empire only exist in some
of the large cities of Belgium, and even there
have but little power or influence.
Any obvious determination on the part of
France to make comprehensive annexation
of the left bank of the Rhine would probably
be a signal for a contest from which scarcely
any of the great powers of Europe could
stand aloof. The independence of Belgium
is guaranteed by Russia, Prussia Austria,
and England, as well as by France. On the
partition of Europe in 1915 it was given to
the King of Holland, and after the successful
revolution In 1880, the same powers that had
consented to the treaty of Vienna concluded
fresh agreement in London, which made the
maintenance of the newly created kingdom,
shortly after accepted by Leopold of Sake
Coburg, a question which each and all of
them would be obliged to support by force of
arms. The Prussian possessions on the left
bank of the Rhine may probably become the
immediate theatre of war, and the develop
nent of French policy will, no doubt, be