The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-10-29
A Speedy Peace. or a Long War?

HULL Az
their work, and the general interruption OF pro-
ductive industry. The cry OF neutral nations Is
for peace, for while they suffer less than the COM
batants, they still share in the injuries caused by
the war, and not at all in the passions which
make 1t possible, and in the objects sought by it.
Every day the journals Of every civilized nation
out of France express their arden. desire for an
end of the conflict, and every day this desire
gives rise to rumors of diplomacy, OF mediation,
of coming official announcements, out OF which,
in some way, peace is to grow.
We cannot but believe that all such rumors
are without any foundation whatever in proba-
biiity, and that they must be dismissed at once
from the mind that would form an intelligent
judgment on the situation. 1t is beyond the
province of the press to predict the future, and
we cannot say that there will be no peace this
year; but it is our business accurately to report
the state of affairs at the present time, and it is
impossible to do this without acknowledging that
no situation can readily be imagined in which
the prospects of an early termination of hos
Utilities would be ~slighter.
If we look at the position and claims of the
cambatants alone this will scarcely be disputed.
1t is easy enough to speak of the war as cause
less, wicked, purpOseless and so, in a sense, it
is. That is to say, if two private citizens should
fall into a duel, from a dispute in all respects
analogous in its causes to this duel between ma
tions, all men would regard them as quarrelsome
and dangerous neighbors. But it is not true
that this war is one of those which are easily
stopped one in which, as in some of the wars
of Frederick the Great and other despots, nothing
but the wicked will of a single ruler stands in
the way of peace. Whatever the conduct of
rulers or of diplomatists may have had to do
with the selection of the moment or of the man
ner in which it broke out, this war is a war of
natiOns-a conflict in which two great peoples
wrestle for a prize which, despise it as others
may who do not see it before them, seems to
them the one object worth existing for as nations,
the national prlmacy of ChristendOm.
For a century France has been the foremost of
the great powers. After the first revolution no
government i'll Europe dared to cope with her
alone and even when she had been drained and
wasted by n generation of constant strife, it took
a coalition of nations to humble her in 1915.
From that day till this no other power has met
her single-handed on the battle field with success.
1t was France that took the Malakof and stopped
the growth Of Russia it was France that won
SOlferlno and gave three-fourths of Italy back to
the Italians it is France that, by the terrible
strength that stands always ready behind her
word, has been steadily regarded as the final ar
bitter of European questions in or day. Now
arises, with unheard of rapidity, another power,
claiming to be her equal, her superior. Prussia,
a creation of modern times, a land that was "a
wilderness of barbarians when Paris was already
the capital of civilization, a nation whose early
military aspirations We're checked a score of
times by the French, and seemed to be finally
crushed at Jena-this modern power now under
takes to fashion Europe at its will. BY n per-
lection of military discipline such as the world
has not seen before, by a course of willy diplomacy
holding ACKNOWLEDGEMENT always in view and,
above all, by a series of accidental strokes of
good fortune which have no parallel in history
since the rapid growth of the Roman Republic,
Prussia has become a ~first-class power has in
corporated with herself one land after another,
and one army after another, until she is able, at
a week notice, to arm and equip the largest
body of soldiers in the world. At the first pro-
nN1~ f-A., E..-oo L. ----- IL -
country and occupies it; and we are asked to be-
lieve that the French people will confess them
selves vanquIshed, and surrender at once to their
new rival the place they have so long held in the
van Of Europe! But let any man suppose him
self a Frenchman, and he will feel at once, what
every Frenchman now feels, be he Republican,
Orleanist, or Imperialist, that this is not a uues-
ton of dynasty, of policy, of party, but a cues
ton of life and that the only peace possible,
while France is trodden by the invader, is a peace
which follows the exhaustion of all means of de-
fense-the peace of desolation and of death. IF
Germans are to dictate peace to. France, they
must first make France helpless and poor-her
fields a desert and her cities a ruin. The power
OF Germany is great, and the work of war is
frightful, but the richest nation in Western
Europe, with forty millions of people united in
its defense, is not to be made the victim of one
blunder in leadership, the prize of one battle, or
even the prey of one campaign.
Nor is the prospect that Prussia will yield her
demands, better than that France will give up
the struggle. All Germany is intoxicated with
victory, and, at the same time, inspired with an
intense hatred for France, which has only been
embittered by the sickening slaughter of Worth
and of Gravelotte. 1t is not the custom of war
riors who believe themselves irresistible to Law
down their arms just as they see before them the
prize of victory, and there is no question that
the Germans do now see, or think they see, in
the immediate future, the humiliation of the
French nation. They may have taken up arms
to defend the Rhine; many of them doubtless
had this chiefly in view, but now, flushed with
their success in transferring the war to the
enemy's soil, they are clamoring, from the
Palatinate to Konigsberg, for the dismemberment
of the French Empire, and Count Bismarck HIM
self declares that peace is impossible until it is
put out of the power of France to take revenge
for the future that is, until her military strength
is destroyed. If he is ever to take back these
words, it will not be while German soldiers
threaten Paris, it will not be while a man of all
his master armies is left ON the French side of
the frontier.
If the combatants are left to themselves, then,
there is no more prospect of peace to-day, rather
far less, than when the hosts were first gathering
on the boundaries of the Palatinate. Indeed,
most writer's feel this, and found their predictions
of a cessation of strife on a promised Intervention
by other powers. Intervention is of two kinds,
diplomatic mediation, and an armed interference
to stop strife and settle the dispute on terms
dictated to the combatants from without. We
cannot discover any possibility of either. There
can be no friendly mediation, for there is nothing
upon which diplomacy can act, and no principles
to which it can appeal. The question is, who is
stronger, and how are diplomatists to settle that?
What principles of international law can be laid
down to decide whether France or Prussia shall
hereafter take the lead in Europe? In such a
quarrel the time for mediation comes only when
the struggle of one side or the other is hopeless
the attempt to mediate who involves the assump-
tion that it is hopeless, and is therefore unfriendly
and even hostile. Who has the right to say that
France shall fight no longer to maintain her as
cendancy, if France herself is confident that she
can do so? Who has the right to say that. Ger
many shall advance no further into the heart of
France if the French themselves cry defiance at
her, and bid her come on? Every Frenchman
looks on the thought of peace now as degrade
ton. and treats the suggestion as an insult. Un-
der these circumstances a resolute ATTEMPT at