The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1870-12-06
DAILY PRESS.
Tuesday Morning, December 6, 1870.
Carlyle on the War.
PRUSSIA DEFENDED
PORTLAND +.

! Thomas Carlyle's letter on the war which
has been alluded to in a cable dispatch. Mr..
carlyle, In his characteristic and trenchant
style, maintains that Prussia is right in de-
manding the cession of Asace and Lorraine,
and relates historical precedents furnished by
France herself He adds:
No nation ever had so bad a neigbpor as
Germany has had in France for the last four
hundred years; bad in all manner of ways !:
continually aggressive.
And now, furthermore, in all history there
is no insolent, unjust neighbor that ever got
SO complete, instantaneous and ignominious
smashing down as France has now got from
Germany. Germany, after four hundred
years of illusage, and generally of ill-fortune.
from that neighbor, has had at last the great
happiness to see its enemy fairly down in
this manner; and Germany, do clearly be-
lieve, would be foolish nation not to think
OF raising up some secure boundary-fence be-
tween herself and such neishbor now that
she has the chance.
There is no law of nature that l know of,
no Heavens act of Parliament, whereby
France, alone of terrestrial beings, shall not
restore any portion Of her plundered goods
when the owners they were wrenched from
have an opportunity upon them. To nobody,
except to France herself for a moment. can ii
be credible that there is such law of nature
Alsace and Lorraine were not got, either of
them, in so divine manner as to render that
a probability. The cunning of Richelieu,
the grandiose long-sword of Louis XIV,
these are the only titles of France to those
German countries. Richelieu screwed them
loose, and, by happy accident, there was
Iurenne, as General, got screwed along with
them; Turenne, think, was mainly German
by blood and temper, had not Francis l. egged
on his ancestor, the little Duke of Bouillon,
in the way we saw, and gradually made him
French; Louis lie Grand, with his Turenne as
supreme of modern generals, managed the
rest of the operation, except indeed, should
say, the burning OF Palatine, from Heidel-
burg palace steadily downwards, into black
ruin; which Turenne would not do suffi-
GENTLY, apd which Louis had to get done by
another. There was also good deal of ex-
tortionate law practice, and what we may
fairly call violently sharp attorneyism, put in
use. The great Louis's Chambres de Re-
union, Metz Chamber, Brissac Chamber, were
once of high infamy, and much complained
of, here in England, and everywhere else be-
yond the Rhine. The Grand Louis, except
by sublime gesture, ironically polite, made no
answer. He styled himself on his very coins
(ecu Of 1887, say the medalists,) Ercelsus su-
per 0nanes Gentes Dominus, but it is certain
attOrneyism of the worst sort was one of his
instruments in this conquest of Asace. Nay,
as to StrasbOurg, it was not even attorneyism,
much less long sword, that did the feat; it
was housebreakers jenny on the part of
the Grdnde Mondrche. Strasbourg was got
in time of profound peace by bribing the
magistrates to do treason, on his part, and ad-
NIT his garrison one night.
The French complain dreadfully of threat
ened "loss of honor" and lamentable bystand-
ers plead earnestly, "Don't dishonor France
leave poor Frances honor bright" But will
it save the honor of France to refuse paying
for the glass she has voluntarily broken in her
neighbor's windows? The attack upon the
windows was her dishonor. Signally dis
graceful to any nation was her late assault on
Germany; equally signal has been the igno-
miny of its execution on the part of France.
The honor OF France can be saved only by the
deep repentance of France, and by the serious
determination never to do so agan-to do the
reverse of so for ever henceforth. In that
way may the honor of France again gradually
brighten to the height of its old splendor, far
beyond the First Napoeonic, much more the
Third, or any recent sort, and offer again to
our voluntary love and grateful estimation all
the fine and graceful qualities Nature has i'm
planted in the French. For the present, 1
must say, France looks more and more delri.
ous, miserable, blamable, pitiable, and even
contemptible.S refuses to see the facts that
are lying palpable before her face, and the
penalties she has brought upon herself. A
France scattered into anarchic ruin, without
recognizable head; head, or CHIEF, indistin-
guishable from feet, or rabble; Ministers fly
ing up in balloons ballasted with nothing but
outrageous public lies, procamations of victo-
ries that were creatures of the fancy; gov
ernment subsisting altogether on mendacity,
willing that horrid bloodshed should continue
and increase rather than that they, beautiful
Republican creatures, should cease to have the
guidance OF it; I>know not when or where
there was seen nation to covering itself
with dishonor. If, among this multitude of
sympathetic bystanders, France have any true
friend, his advice to France would be to aban-
don all that, and never to resume it more
France really ought to know that "refuges of
lies" were long ago discovered to lead down
only to the Gates of Death Eternal, and to be
forbidden to all creatules-that the one hope
for France is to recognise the facts which have
come to her, and that they came withal by
gilded, proudly vanished anarchy-has will
fully insulted and defied to mortal duel a
neighbor not anarchic, but still in a quietly
human, sober and governed state, and has
prospered accordingly. Prospered as an array
OF sanguinary mOuntebanks versus Macedo-
nian phalanx must needs do; and now lies
smitten down into hideOus wreck and impo-
tence testifying to gods and men what extent
of rOttenness, anarchy and hidden vileness
lay in her. That the inexorable fact is, she
has left herself without resource or power of
resisting the victorious Germans; and that
her wisdom will be to take that fact into her
astonished mind; to know that, however
hateful, said fact is ineXorable, and will have
to be complied with-the sooner at the cheap
er rate. 1t is hard lesson to vanglorious
France; but France, we hope, has still in it
veracity and probity enough to accept fact as
an evidently adamantine entity, which will
not brook resistance without penalty, and is
unalterable by thelvery gods.
The quantity of conscious mendacity that
France, official and other, has perpetrated lat
terly, especially since July last, is some thing
wonderful and fearful. And, alas, perhaps
even that is small compared to the self delu-
sion and unconscious mendacity long preva-
lent among the French; which is of still feller
and more poisonous quality though unrecog-
nized for poison. To me at times, the mourn
fullest symptom in France is the figure its
"men ofgenius", its highest literary speakers,
who should be prophets and seers to it, make
at present, and, indeed, for generation back
have been making. 1t is evidently their be-
lief that new celestial wisdom is radiating out
of France upon all the other overshadowed
nations; that France is the new Mount Zion
OF the universe: and that all this sad, sordid,
semi-delirous, and, in good part, internal stuff
which literature has been preaching to us for
the last fifty years is veritable new Gospel
out OF Heaven. pregnant with blessedness for
all the sons of men. Alas, one does under
stand that France made her Great Revolu-
ton; uttered her tremendous doom's voice
against world of human shams, procaiming,
NTH tba T octT hat ehox,
should be no more. / often call that celes-
tial-infernal phenomenon-the most memo
rable in our world for thousand years; on
the whole a transcendant revolt against the
devil land his works (since shaIns are all and
sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unen-
durable to man, For that we all infinitely
love and honor France. And truly all nations
are now busy enough copying France in re-
gard to that! From side to side Iof the civil
lied world there is, in manner, nothing no.
ticeable but the whole world in deep and dis
mally chaotic insurrevtion against shams, de-
termination TO have done with shams coute
quill coute. Indispensable that battle how
ever ugly. Well done, we may say to all that:
for it is the preliminary to every thing: but
alas, all that is not yet victory; il is but half
the bottle and the much easier half. The in
finitely harder half, which is the EQUALLY or
the still more indispensable, is that OF ac6iev.
ing, instead OF the abolished shams which
were OF the devil, the practicable realities
which should be veritable and of God. The
first half OF the battle, rejoice to see is now
safe, can now never cease except in victory;
but the further stage of it also see, must be
under better presidency than that of France,
or it will forever prove impossible. The Ger
man race, not the Gaelic, are now to be pro-
tagonst in that immense world drama; and
from them l expect better issues, Worse we
oo,,o. Ill b,ga France with a dead-ift Of