The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-30

thetic habit of mind is SO zealously cultivated,
and in which one or other of the parties to
nearly every quarrel is so sure OF having the
founts of feeling made to play for his benefit.
1t is Just as much as the Government can do,
whenever a convulsion Of any sort breaks out
between any of the principal powers of the
world, to prevent the eruption of q sort of
supplemental conflict on American soil, or
the introduction of the controversy into
American politics as ''an issue The chair
man of the House Committee of Foreign
Affairs, indeed, stands constantly on the
watch, pocket handkerchief in hand, for the
purpose of pointing out to the nation some
cause to take up or some victim to weep
over. One does not need to be very old to
have swum through half a dozen floods
of sympathetic tears. The country went
nearly crazy over the Hungarians, and, in
deed, over one party of the Hungarians
which Hungary has since rejected. The
Young Ireland martyrs also about the same
time threw a good many people into a melting
mood. Since then, the patriots whom Maxi
milan kept from establishing ''truth and JUS
tice, religion and piety" in Mexico have
been feted and caressed. The bands of Greek
robbers and politicians who got up the
Cretan Instruction found no difficulty in
havinga regular organization established here
to aid them, with the accompaniment of a
newspaper, public meetings, and subscrip-
tions, and music, and the press resounded for
months with frantic praises of them.
The Fenians-the heroes of Trout River,
and Franklin, and Elm Park-were able
to command so much sympathy that the
Foreign Committee of the House reported
and the Republican majority of the House
voted for a bill, the avowed object of which
was so to modify the neutrality laws as to
permit large bands of cut-throats and thieves
to pass our frontier to murder and rob the
Canadians, and that the leading organs of the
Republican press fiercely abused the Presi-
dent for doing his duty by stopping them.
We need not say anything about Cuba-the
latest object of our sympathy" We have
all been sympathizing with that island for
the last year, some of us for love and some
for money, and it seems as if our compassion
for her had no limits.
But do we exact from others what we are
so ready to bestow? Yes, we do. Her fail
ure to sympathize with us during the late
Rebellion has so affected our relations with
England as to make our differences with her
almost incapable of adjustment, and to have
sown the seeds of bitterness that will proba-
bly, bear fruit for generations. On the other
hand, the ready accordance of sympathy on
the part of Russia has SO fixed that power in
the affections of a large portion of the Ameri-
can public, that we shut our eyes to the ex-
traordinary inhumanity, to use a mild term,
of her policy towards the Poles. With such
a record as this open before us, it is needless
to say that there is not much use in calling on
the Germans to be silent and impair
tial witnesses of a struggle which
is to drench their old homes in the
blood of their fathers and brothers,
and on the result Of which the place and in
fuence of their race in European civilization
is to depend. Moreover, although we con-
denim, as stronglyas anybody can, all attempts
- oo,,,,;& <ho TTr;kal Gtoxo,
any participation in the controversy, or to
make difficult the rigid performance of its
neutral duties, and though we confess we
think neither Mr.. Carl Schurz nor any other
United States Senator is in his place in going
about the country delivering speeches on
either one side or the other, we are not in
clined to exact from the Germans that COM
plete ~casting-out of the old German Adam,
and that complete transformation into pure
and judicial-minded American citizens, for
which some of our contemporaries are calling
on them. Germans are men, like the rest of
the world, and there is no magic in natu-
ralization to convert them into anything else.
When their kinsmen bleed, they must feel
sad; when they triumph, they must rejoice;
and when they watch the struggles of the
nation to which they once belonged, and
which nothing short of a miracle can prevent
retaining a large portion of their tenderest
dutCtlOES. tuoy WOulu 10 hOf0 Vi l6SS UnAu
human if they could suppress all sign of
interest in the progress and result of the
strife. We confess we think they are not
worse but better American citizens for utter
ing all they feel.
AS to the attitude of native Americans
towards the struggle, we believe a good many
excellent people refuse to see any claim to
our sympathy on either one side or the other,
simply because they have got into what we
cannot help calling the depraved habit of
mind of thinking that no struggle can have
any interest for republicans if carried on by
monarchs, and that, to make a cause holy or
respectable, its supporters must be ''Rebels."
This was not always so. During our Rebel
lion, we saw the rapid growth of the idea that
all Rebels must be bad men, q striking
illustration of the confusing influence
which words so often exercise on ideas.
So also in England, thousands justified
their sympathy with the South by simply
alleging hat the South was F'the
weaker side, or the minority, and seemed to
think that rational beings, making a profess
sion of Christianity, were not called upon,
before they patted a combatant on
the back, to ask whether he had
the right on his side. Intelligent men,
however, before passing Judgment on a
war, ask not simply what are the names
and titles of the belligerents, or what is their
relative strength, but what are they fighting
about, and what is their fighting likely to
result in Emperor" and skiing" 'loyalist"
and ''rebel, are but signs by which the great
problems of politics are worked out; it is
with the result that the rest of the world is
concerned.
Applying these tests to the conflict on the
Rhine, it is difficult to see where an enlight-
ened American can find an excuse either for
Indifference or neutrality. The result of a
French victory it is not hard to foresee. The