The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-29
AFTER THE WAR.
From the Pau Mall Gazette.

SpHrlng OF political prophecies but there Is
no great rashness in adhering to the opinion
that the one certain and immediate result of
the Prussian victories will be general eager
ness to copy the Prussian military system in
its minutest details. We have reason to
withdraw from our assertion that unless this
process of literal imitation be checked the
burden cast on Europe through the predatory
and aggressive habits contracted by nearly all
Continental States since the establishment
of the second French empire will be fearfully
increased. The Prussian system Git cannot be
too often stated involves standing army, net
distnguishable in any material particular
from the mercenary army of France, resting
on the basis of an armed nation. The instru-
ment thus formed is of prodigious efficiency
and it is possible that the use made of it in
1866 and 1870 will prove to have been an ad-
vantage to the world, taking the world as we
Gnd it. But it rather adds to than diminiShes
the permanent evils which the experience of
twenty years has ever shown to be inherent
in the employment of mercenary armies AS
was proved in 1866, the Prussian army is Just
as much at the disposal of the chief as the
army of France, and the large number Of
citizens in its ranks in no way fetters or
limits his discretion as to the cause for which
he shall MAKE war or the time
at which he shall make it. In 1870
the cause of the King of Prussia is the
cause of Germany, and he did not choose his
own time for fighting; but the events occur
ring before our eyes prove to us that one
consequence of the vast reserve created by
having the nation ready armed at the back of
the army is that human life is cheaper than
ever, and that blood flows like water. We
have not word to say against this army as
military instrument, or against the purpose
for which it is now used; but we do say that
If Europe is to remain under that malady
which the poison of vitiated public opinion
has generated, and is to alternate between
the cold fit of armed peace and the hot fit of
war, the universal adoption of the modern
Prussian system would make the periodical
acute seizure more dreadful than ever.
IT, indeed, the question to be settled at
the peace were question between mercenary
armies and armed nations, there would be
much to be said for the latter mode of pro-
vision against war No doubt from the
purely economical point of view there are
great advantages in mercenary armies, if
armies there must be. The fund diverted
to them from the encouragement of art and
the augmentation of knowledge, wealth, and
comfort is utterly wasted, but it is reduced
to a minimum. The principle applied to
mercenary army is merely the ordinary prin-
ciple of the division of labor, secur-
ing given result at the least
possible cost of money and
morality. But great mercenary armies have
one fundamental vice. They are standing
temptation to rulers to employ them. On
the other band, an army which is really the
nation in arms is wasteful in the highest de-
gree. 1t nips industry in the very bud, and
takes away from the arts of peace and from
the production of wealth the agents which
are most valuable Just at the time when they
are most valuable. But in the existing state
of the world it is certainly free from the great
mischief of mercenary armies. 1t is an un-
ready weapon, and the king or chief who
would use it has to reckon with the hesitations
and the peaceful tastes of the citizens who
fill its ranks From the military point of
view this was the fault of the Prussian sys-
tenn as devised with the view of eluding the
jealous vigilance of Napoleon after the battle
of Jena. To remedy it and to superinduce
on the trained nation standing army which
could be employed at a moments notice has
been the labor of the present Kings life; nor
need we deny that in the permanent menace
addressed to the continent by France there
was a justification for his sustained
and ultimately successful efforts But
with France out of the way, all reason for
looking with complacency on the double sys-
tenn vanishes. If we are from time to time
to have wars, and if we must have the means
of making war and must submit to the COM
parative impoverishment which the provision
of those means entails, the best fate which
could probably befall the men of the present
century is that there should be a gene
raj return TO IQ6 plau OF training anu
arming the whole community as was done in
Prussia before King William came to the
throne. If disarmament in this sense be
agreed to at the peace, diplomacy will have at
least done something on par with its pre-
tensions
Anything is, at all events, to be preferred
to the cruel burden of the double system. 1t
is in such favor at the present moment that
all its evils should be pointed out. Let us
then ask ourselves whether it is not system
which none but despotic and semi-barbarous
government would keep for long in state of
efficiency. If the present war is succeeded
by prolonged peace, we may be quite sure
that nations growing in wealth will not long
submit both to paying for an army and to
constituting an army. One ingredient in the
system will assuredly grow at the expense of
the other But if the Prussian model is
universally followed, it seems to us that
no nation will carry the imitation
further than Russia, and that none is more
likely to maintain the double system after
other States have allow it to fall into decay.
The transformation of the military institutions
of Russia, the most simiously initiative of
nations, seems to us real danger which the
German successes may have behind them,
and not one of those bugbears which the
journals which are welded to the interests of
France have recently been parading. Those
who have been predicting that a policy of
collusion between Russia and Prussia will
place the destinies of Europe at the mercy of
those States seem to be ignorant that the
press of no country has displayed such dis
content at the German victories as that
of Russia. Nor is this mere faucful