The White Pine news. [volume] (Treasure City, Nev.) 1868-1906, 1870-07-20
WAR AND lrHf CAUSES OF WAR.

Every war has an immediate and a
remote cause. Immediate causes for
wal transpire SO frequently that if they
uniformafly led 10 hostilities, not a
nation on earth would ever be at peace.
A nation which has in the past received
real or fancied injury from another, and
has aggravated in its " mind the
origin of the offense by vindictively
nursing the prejudice first aroused, is
never without pretext for a rupture.
The immediate cause might be never SO
fragrant, yet without these antecedent
conditions, rarely, if ever, would it be
beyond the reach Of reason and diplo-
macy. Hence it is that the historian
who speculates upon momentous national
events, will always seek beyond the mere
pretext for a war into causes having
sometimes a very remote origin, but
invariably carrying with them antipathies
that grow with time, and become chronic,
or rather standard, as they are engrafted
on the people who nurse them. In
these cases, a cause of war is never
wanting. 1t is in, of and with the peo-
pie all the time. In the amenities of
peaceful intercourse it is suppressed or
glozed over. But it still broods in the
breasts that harbor it, and requires but
the opportunity to leap from its bounds.
So much for those superficial obsery-
ers who set themselves up as critics on
Napoleon's flimsy pretext for a rupture
with Prussia. When they declare that
neither the Hohenzollern candidacy for
the Spanish crown; nor the Beneditti
indignity; nor the OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
doctrine; nor any of the minor causes
assigned for a declaration of hostilities
are sufficient to justify the awful step,
they are right. Let each of these ex-
cuses be set up one after another on its
naked merits, or set them up together.
and they would afford but a very indie
feasible pretext for the hostile march of
and the decimating clash of con-
tending hosts.
If we wish to find the real aggravation
in the present instance we shall be at no
loss to discover it.
Prussia has not forgotten the fatal
field of Jena, nor the more ancient II of
Auerstadt. Her humiliations ranked
.Nfl Wofariaa rrhan 4ha 1onicixra |
Butcher put in an a~yenging blow.
France has not forgotten that day, and
! Napoleon could never cease to hope
Tor O chance to wipe out its memory.
Nor can the geographical partition which
'ollowed the victory of the Alliance and
snured to the territorial aggrandizement
If Prussia, at the expense ofthe Gauls, be
remembered but with shame by every
Even the national patriot
SIN of a legitimist, with a Bourbon
on the throne, would find an
sasy pretext for war in any xcuse that
night lead to a restoration of tho old
erritorial integrity.
But as France has not forgotten the
.8th of June and the decisive sword of
Butcher, still less can she forget Sadowa
md the events which that brilliant
ield of Prnssian glory collaterally pro-
luced. There are the unification of North
I'm Germany and the Treaty of Prague
are quietly binding the Southern
rentons into one cohesive nationality
and defensive. Can France
aese eyes to the augmenting and
Power IN the continent of the
over the Latinic race? True, +,
o far, prestige has not actually declined I
rom the latter; but the former has adj
'anced in strength, in arms and in i'm
ninence Of menace. This growing pre-
'onderance, gradual but formidable,
'ffords no sudden or tangible cause of {
'elligerent aggression; but it does afford
hat motive without which war is i'm
,racticable-without which hostilities are
levoid of substantial basis-without
which two Nations can no more prose- I
ute an earnest and prolonged encounter,
" marshal their hosts under the spirit
orifiammes which lead in en-
husiastic wars, than can the mercenary
lirelings Of an impossible Nation evince
he elan of patriotism in their ~merchanta-
Die profession of arms. Frenchmen re-
only the pretext of opportunity to
issue with Prussia, just as Irishmen
ire never without a motive to levy war
against England; Cossacks against Turks;
Mongols against Tartars, or Indians
against Whifeu