The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-31
SPIRIT or TEE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions OF the Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE PROSPECT OF THE WAR.


famous district of Ardennes and the Ar
gonnes or of the progress of the Prussian
armies towards Paris All manner of tales
reach us from the headquarters of armies
which, as we know, permit no news to be sent
forth from their lines, and over the wires of
telegraphs which, as we know, are absolutely
controlled by one or another of the contend
ing Governments. II is worse than idle to
base either criticism or speculation upon such
information as alone it is in the power of the
most active and capable representatives of the
press to accumulate from the scenes of waste
and woe which all the able-bodied men of the
two foremost nations of Continental Europe are
now devoting all their energies to create.
Reasoning from what we know positively of
the conditions of military success or failure,
of the resources of the two hostile powers,
and of the disposition of the now neutral
States of Europe, we may, however, with
some degree of confidence assert it to be
growing daily more and more certain that
this abominable war will last much longer,
cover much wider area of desolation, and
inhict upon both the parties to it vastly more
suffering and disaster than either of them,
or, for the matter of that the rest of the
world contemplating them, four short weeks
ago imagined. We ought, perhaps, to ex-
eept the Emperor Napoleon, whom it is
Just now so easy to vituperate and so fash
ionable to disparage that it is almost an act
of moral courage to say that he is the only
conspicuous public man of either side who
went into the conflict believing and asserting
openly that it would be both 'long and ex-
hausting." It is true that he expected the
war to be fought out upon German rather
than upon French soil, and that he paid his
antagonists, therefore, the tribute of antici-
pating from them q resistance in defense of
their homes and their altars as determined
and as obstinate as that which they are now
destined to encounter from the invaded
empire of France. 1t is probable, likewise,
that he looked forward to neutral attitude
on the part of the South German govern
ments, which would doubtless have facilitated
the progress of French arms in North Ger
many, without, however, much diminishing,
if at all, the persistency of the North
German resistance. But these miscalcula-
tions cannot deprive the Emperor of
the credit, such as it is, of fully estimating
the gravity of the prospect which opened
before him when the bugles blew their first
rallying blasts on the banks of the blue
Moselle. On the side of the Germans, after
it became clear that France was suffering the
initiative of the attack to slip away from her,
other illusions unquestionably took posses
sion of the leaders minds. 1t has been
quite evident throughout the campaign of
which decisive act is even now passing in
one of the most famous battle regions of
Western Europe, that the Prussian COM
manders have been pressing forward to
Paris under notion that the appear
ance of their armies before that mag
nifcent capital must be the signal of
a great popular cataclysm in which the ad-
ministrative system of France would go by
the board. All the signs of the time con-
spire to demonstrate the faulty of this
notion, and to make it plain that the Prus-
SLAMS are laboring under a misconception of
the political aspects of the present war in
France at least as profound as the Emperor
Napoleons misconception of its political
aspects in South Germany. If the Emperor
exaggerated the significance in great war
crisis of the deep and genuine anti-Prussian,
liberal, and progressive movement in Ger
many, the Prussian princes, who alone now
control the action of Germany, as surely ex-
aggerate the significance in a similar crisis of
the equally deep and genuine anti-imperialist
and anti-bureaucratic movement in France.
That King William should fall into such a
mistake as this is natural enough; nor is it
unnatural that Count Bismarck should share
his blunder, for Count Bismarck has dealt
during his remarkable career with a people
much less practised in self-government than
the French, and much more patient than the
French of misgovernment. To bring the
of hostility against Government like that of
Prussia as France during the last year has
made against the government of Napoleon
III, it would be necessary that the Govern
ment should have inflicted what we may call
the actual cautery of oppression upon the
people. And when a German State is brought
to such demonstrations it is not far from
vehement armed revolution. This was true
of France generation ago. We do not be-
lieve it to be true of France to-day
If it is not true of France to-day, it will be
found, should the Prussians reach Paris and
invest the city, that, instead of attaining the
climax and consummation of their victories
in brilliant and satisfactory peace, they will
be confronted with the ominous and disma
prospect of a war only Just begun, anG
likely to be protracted long beyond the
period through which it will be possible fol
the existing system of German and PrussiaI
administration comfortably and successfully
to conduct it. What was said by the ablest
of Prussian writers on the war of 1866, tha
''disaster in the field was due to errors il
the cabinet, was perfectly true of the rout
of Austria, and not of the Austrian army
only, at Koniggratz. The same thing seems
to have been expected and to be now expected
by Prussia to be true of France. If it proves
to be false in regard to France, it is clear tina
it will prove to be true in regard to Prussil
herself. Political misconceptions of tn,
actual condition of France threaten now t,
counterbalance, in deciding the future of thi
dreadful contest, the advantages won b,
Prussia up to the present moment threugi
the perfection and accuracy of her militar
organization.
PARIS.
From the n. Y. Tribune.
The outbreak of revolution in Paris ha
been preyepted partly by the energetic mes