The Portland daily press., 1870-12-29
PORTLAN

The beginning CT the bombardment of Paris
probably not A very serious matter, except as
a gloomy augury for the future. Fort Akron
being the extreme French outpost, six miles
from the city, the metropolis itself is said to
be bombarded only by a figure of speech
But the next thing we hear the bombshells
may be making as free with the Louvre,
Tuileries, Notre Dame, the Pantheon and
the Invalids as they did with the cathedral at
Stlasbourg. Far worse, they may be carry
ing slaughter among the bundreds of thous-
an is of defenseless people who swarm in the
great ely. TIE woes that beiell the people
of Vicksburg, Petersburg, Charleston, Stras-
bourg and Metz may be regarded hereafter as
relatively endurabe. This will be terrible
enforcement of the lesson inculcated in the
letter of Strauss to Renan-that the French
people need to have the word 'glory" taken
out of their vocabulary. These same people
only last midsummer were squirting on their
wicked and ambitious prince, who was only
too willing to listen and obey, to mass his
troops on the Prussian frontier for the pur-
pose of beginning conflict from which even
warlike antiquity would have shrunk as
causeess and inexcusable. Five months have
passed, and their armies are destroyed, their
country is overrun by the enemy, their EN-
peror is prisoner, and their metropolis is
about to suffer from Prussian artillery. If
this will permanently cure the people of their
insane hunger for military success and terri
torial aegrandzement, there will not be so
much reason for regret, especially if we have
now seen the last of the Bonapartes.
1t is Prussia now that is in danger of being
eaten up by desire for conquest, pride and in
science. Their successes have been so Won
derful in their three wars since 1864 that they
regard all the world betides as Philistines,
who are to be smtten as the Hebrews smote
those oft enumerated Jebusites, H.ttites,
Invites, Amorites. and Girgashites. This
newborn insolence is evinced in numberless
ways, but particularly in the determination to
brave the execration of the whole civilized
world by opening fire upon the French capt.
tai. The bombardment of Copenhagen by
England in the first years of the present GEN.
fury gained for that country a most unenyia.
BILE reputation, and brought upon its instiga
tors the reproach even of many of Great Bri-
tains foremost citizens. But that was a We
NAL offense compared with the bombardment
of a city of two millions of people, when ulti-
mate military success is not endangered by
abstaining.
This rapidly developing Prussian reckless
ness is further seen in King Williams attitude
toward poor little Luxembourg. He is like the
wolf that accused the poor little lamb he wish
ed TO deyour of muddying the brook from
which he was drinking, though the victim
was farther down the stream than his de-
stroyer. The gigantic Prussian trumps up
some sort ola charge against this pigmy neu-
trail State, and everybody sees that he is
about to swallow it as the ogre swallowed
Tom Thumb.
1t is no wonder that we hear of an attempt
to assassinate William on the same day that
his guns opened on Paris. The conduct of
that sovereign toward the French people is
such as to justify any French Brutus who
may attempt to destroy the destroyer. The
King, who is about to become an Emperor,
and who has mistaken himself for Alexander
and wishes to overrun the world, has ignored
every principle of right and Justice, and being
far above the jurisdic tionof courts, and safe
from the penalties of law, is a proper subject
for the steel OF him who ageuges the murder
of his brethren. The King, with curious
persistence, appeals to God in every dispatch,
oIo r. II: -. I.
thor But appeals to God in this case do not
show SO much good motives and good pur-
poses as an uneasy consciousness of crime.