The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-08

twill never permit German prince TO take
his seat upon the throne of Charles the Fifth.
Behind these words stands the Emperor with
his majority of nearly seven millions of votes
on the pleJiScjte of 1870; and behind the Em-
peror stands the army Of France Ieorganized
through all its departments in the four years
which have passed since the electrifying day
of Sadowa. The opportunity which Bismark
allowed to slip out of his hand in 1866,
destiny has now extended to his imperial rival,
and Napoleon has seized it with q decision
which is itself substantial victory.
1t is not. Of course, beyond the limits of
possibility that Prussia may refuse to accept
the moral defeat inflicted upon her by this
attitude of France. But, though this be pos
sible, we rel dice, in the interest of the peace
of the world to believe it eminently impro-
bable Even for strictly German question
it would be harder for Prussia to 60 to war
with France in 1870 than it would have been
for her to do 50 in 1866. During the past
four years she has lost rather than gained in
point both of prestige abroad and of power at
home. Her financial position is worse than
it was in 1866; her people are more discon-
tented her newly annexed provinces even
are more hostile to her supremacy than they
then were The glory of her military achieve
ments has lost something of its dazzling bril-
iancy as those achievements have come TO be
patiently analyzed by cold-blooded critics.
her great minister than she had four years
ago. Her position relatively to the rest of
Europe has been still more impaired.
Austria has greatly recovered from the
shock which prostated her four years ago;
the South German States have drawn nearer
together and further away from their over
sh0dowing Northern sister France has not
only reconstructed her gigantic army, as we
have said, in all its departments: she has ac-
Al -
sympathy and of popular support. All these
things would be important even in war
begun by France for the possession of the
Rhine. They would be decisive in war
provoked by Prussia for dynastic advantage
beyond the Pyrenees. Who shall fill the
Spanish throne is a question in which Ger
many cannot possibly see any German in
terest strong enough to justify the shedding
of German blood. To call Germany to war
for the sake of filing chat throne with
member of the royal family Of Prussia would
have seemed quite in the natural order of
things a century ago. Attempted now, it
would do more to shake the position of King
William at home than to confirm the position
of his kinsman at Madrid.
For Spain herself an attempt to make a
Hohenzollern her king in the teeth of France
would be an act of madness equally without
motive and without measure. tits scarcely con-
CGlNdbie tIdI Sucu II pfOJeCG can DC seriously
entertained by any intelligent Spaniard. The
most rational explanation, perhaps, that can
be suggested of the share taken by Prim in the
transaction is that he hopes through pressing
it to reconcile all parties in Spain to the cleo
ton of the Prince of the Asturias. The most
obstinate enemy of the House of Bourbon in
Madrid might well prefer boy of Spanish
birth, even though Bourbon, with peace on
the Pyrenees, to new civil war aggravated
by the armed Intervention, not of the French
government only, but of the whole people of
France.
But, whatever form the matter may take, it
is plain that in permitting it to be brought
forward Prussia has committed O terrible
blunder, and conferred upon Napoleon an
immense benefit. If the issue be war, it will
be war in which Prussia will appear as the
aggressor, and as an aggressor inspired, not
by any noble zeal for the national aggrandize-
ment of Germany, but by an antiquated and
anti-social impulse of mere dynastic ambi-
tion. 1t will be- so far as Prussia is con-
cerned, not a war of the people, but war of
the palace.
If the ISSUE on the other hand, be peace,
preserved by the sacrifice of the pretensions
of Prince Leopold, Prussia will have sus-
tanned diplomatic defeat, amounting almost
to diplomatic humiliation, on question
utterly foreign alike to the interests of Prus-
sia and to the hopes of Germany.
In either event, all that Bismark has
thrown away Napoleon wins. The chances
of war and the certainties of peace alike have
been newly put at the service of his dynasty
by the very power which seemed but the
other day to have shaken that dynasty to its
foundations.