The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-29
SPIRIT OF TEE PRESS
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.

THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE AND THE
GREAT WAR.
From the NJ Y. Herald.
=. To and fro the tide of opinion sways, from
side to side, in reference to the right and the
strength of this power or of that in the terri
BILE conflict which threatens TO cover Chris
tendon with blood and ashes. The number
of the armies is counted, the array of fleets Is
given in elaborate detail, and the ability of
the leaders and the captains is extolled in
endless articles. France, Prussia, England,
Russia, Italy, etc., are mentioned confidently
as undivided units of strength. But as yet
no one in the press of Europe or America has
bethought him, or at least has expressed the
thought, that there may somewhere beneath
the surface reside a vast, silent, suffering
multitude of men to whom the marching end
countermarching of these hosts mean ruin,
misery, and death. What has the individual
in either nation embattled against the
other to charge upon the poor work
ing man or peasant who lives and
tolls beyond the dividing frontier? lie
is a brother in poverty, and In oppression,
perhaps, with the conscript who is suddenly
called from his humble hearth so face bayonet
and bullet for q cause he does not CON pre-
bend and to the benefit of men who have
been the masters of him and of his kindred
before him for hundreds of years. Peace is
the gospel of civilization and progress, and
war is the doctrine of every violence and
every vice. A century ago thisw was not COM
pretended, but to-day of the one hundred
and fifty millions of human beings who people
Europe the vast majority, in accepting the
general truths of the religion of Christ and
receiving the rudiments of knowledge, have
learned to look upward for a higher glory
than to manure the soil for the ambitious
satisfaction of a prince, and to a nobler end
of life than the memory of wounds and
slaughter received by their comrades or in
hicted upon their antagonists.
This is the idea that pervades the working
masses-the true Done and sinew-of Europe.
Emperors and kings issue pompous riders
from their palaces and bodies of armed sol
diery advance to the field of death; but the
millionaire mass of suffering, toiling men
remember that on the East and West they
have only brethren laboring and praying like
themselves. This is the inner tone that we
begin to discover already in the great dia-
pason of war that sounds in our ears from
beyond the Atlantic. At Strasbourg, at Co.
logne, at Geneva in Switzerland, at Florence
and Milan in Italy, the popular party, as con-
trad%istinguished from the Court and the army,
has spoken. When, as early as 1851, M. Ro-
mieu predicted the coming of the "Red Spec
tire" he feared the terrific outburst OF re-
volutionary passion that then threatened to
overthrow all forms of order in Europe.
But the rise of Napoleon III and his military
government conjured the ghost and laid it
with the welcome formula, "The empire is
peace" Peace alone was the safety, and
only with peace could the old systems hope
for any lingering permanence. But now il
has been shown by war after war, eliminating
at last in a catastrophe that has no better
pretext than the succession to a discarded
crown in a country of but third or fourth-rate
importance in the world, hat while the
monarchical system endures and standing
armies are tolerated there is no guarantee
against a sudden deluge of blood. The only
rainbow in the sky to the nations of the earth
is seen in the colors of the republic, one and
universal. This is a mighty lesson, and at
the hour while we write the peoples of the
Eastern hemisphere watch impatiently for
the moment when by mutual defeats the iron
rod welded by either hand of armed power
shall be worn and broken. Every necessary
of life made c~ostlier, the very finger Of
Providence, by its shortening bouuties in the
harvest field and its burning heats on land
and sea, pointing to a period of intense tri-
b~ulation, how shall the people exult in mutual
slaughter?
The voice of the humble ascends to the
throne of God for rescue from this endless
scourge. Tn prayers of all good men go up
luCts5auuy iOI podCo anu iOI tu0 O"dulSnnl6uI
of the causes and instruments of war. How
shall the most venerable and most enlight-
ened nations of the world continue this
bloody orgie while on the hither borders of
the ocean there is a spectacle of strength,
prosperity, and happiness with liberty, and
without the sword, continually offered to
their gaze? This war, with its accumulated
horrors, will do more to utterly disgust men
with the grim Moloch that has SO long deluded
and trampled on them, and its memories will
more incline them to the cause of republican
ism, and, we believe, of final truth and peace
among nations, than any event since the cru
cifxion.