The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-15
SPIRIT or rzn PRESS.
Editorial Opinions OF the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
DaV for the Evening Telegraph.
THE SHAME AND THE GLORY OF THE
WAR

THE SHAME AND THE GLORY OF THE
WAR
From the NJ Y. Herald.
''The Judgment of the Almighty aud of
mon, says King William of Prussia, ''falls on
him who forces into wars of devastation two
great and peaceful races living in the very
centre of Europe These are memorable
words, which will bear frequent repetition.
Whether they fully apply to the Emperor
Napoleon Ill of France or to the pretended
statesmen behind his throne, who insisted
upon war and claimed that it alone could
''crown the edifice" of imperial glory, matters
little so far as the point and truth of the
lesson are concerned. The invocation of
Divine resentment and of human disapproval
is Just, wherever the answer to this solemn
appeal may have already fallen or yet may
fall. All who provoke or precipitate war,
especially in the very midst of peaceful COM
munities, are amenable to the one grand rule
they are conspirators against the happiness
of humanity and rebels to the law of God.
Let lis transfer ourselves for moment to
the extreme frontier of France, on the little
river Saar, and close to the main line of ope-
rations selected by the French and Prussian
armies. We will put the date at the 10th of
july or less than one brief month ago. We
are at the inn door of the small town of Sar-
reguemines, looking out beyond the slender
The Saar winds placidly between its low, flat
banks, and disappears gracefully, says the
French correspondent whose eyes we borrow
for the occasion, ''behind screen of pop
lars" On the other side is a neat little cot
tape home, with white curtains and yellow
blinds at the windows, and in the tiny garden
that slopes down to the river side
peasant saunters quietly, pipe in
mouth, caressing his dog who gambols beside
him. Peeping over the green top of gentle
acclivity is the sharp spire of small village
church. Near by is wide field of waving
grain, and on the rustic road that descends
90 the edge of the Saar is hay wagon of
quaint construction, drawn laZily by four
sleek oxen. The driver, in blouse and pan
falcons of coarse linen, his brows screened
with straw hat, lazily swings his ox-goad
and huns country song of the Fatherland.
Suddenly the scene is enlivened by a group
of chubby, faxen-haired children, who emerge
from the cottage and clatter down the garden
walk, the youngest clinging to the hand of
an elder sister, herself not six years old. A
grim Zouave who is near us on the French
bank leans against the vine-covered doorpost
of the inn where we are standing and invol-
unfairly smiles as he looks out upon this
pastoral little picture in an enemys country
An enemy? Poor little home on the YER
dant slope on the farther bank-does it
shelter enemies? And those humble
peasants, all unconscious of the wrong
that even now holds murder and ruin over
their heads; those playful children, laughing
in the sunshine, are they also to be the vic
Tins of the internal orgie which madmen call
GLORIOUS war;" Even SO. Behind yon green
meadows, and poplars, and waving grain
fields lies the gathering might of an indig-
nant nation, while here are concentrating the
martial terrors of an empire famous for its
fearful energy in warfare. A few days more
and all this peaceful scene will have disap-
peared; these banks will be stained with
human blood; fire and havoc will have scat
tered forever that humble home and its help
less occupants-the peasant and his little
ones-and all that makes the domestic groups
at which we now gaze so charming, even in
their unpretending humbleness, to the true
heart.
Yet this is no mere fancy sketch. Such is
an accurate portrayal, although feebly given,
of Just the scenes that were witnessed, only
the other day, along the streams and in the
smiling valleys that unite, not separate, the
''fair land of France" and thrifty, hard work
ing Rhenish Prussia and Bavaria. All who
have travelled in that fine agricultural region
will recall them, with a sigh of regret, as
among the most pleasing of the pictures with
which real experience or rural description
may have stored their memories. When we
reflect then, that it is to this profound peace
sin the very centre of Europe"-to thou
sands of humble and happy homes like this
to whole regions of cultivated country, that
the horrible iniquity of sudden wal
is bringing ''the blackness of dark
ness" with desolation, moaning and
death; when to this we csnjure uI
the vision of penury among the work
men and their families in the crowded towns
the vice and degradation that follow it; thu
bereaved and broken hearts; the widowhooC
and worse; the orphanage, the beggary, tn,
open and ferocious crime-in fine, the end
less miseries that must inevitably follow clos,
upon the march and countermarch of armies
that massacre each other in the harvest field
and by the very hearthstones and in tn,
shadow of church steeples which mark tn
abode of Europe's most dense and alas mos
Christian population-what voice, could it b.
heard over the whole vast circuit of the uni
verse, would be loud enough to denounce be
fittingly the shame and the horror of thi
outrage against God and man which ruler
make who "batten like butchers dogs upol
the garbage of the shambles while the slaugh
ter of the good and brave goes on aroun
them?"
But we may still fervently offer up heart
felt thanks that just in proportion to the fur
of this riot of evil the better angel of humanit
puts forth a stronger effort. The courage
the devotion, the elf-sacriiee, the numberles
exalted and manly traits that this stern alarur
of war thrills into revivified energy are partl
a silver-lining to the cloud, dark and heavy a
it is. Ii the flower of France and German
be led away from home and kindred and th
gentle works of peace, they go forth singin
of God and Fatherland The French soldier
chanting the noble words, ''Mouirir pour
patrie !" is answered by the grand old hymn
''Ein feste burg ist iunser Gott" And tn