The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-01
SPIRIT or THE PRnss.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE DIFFERENCE.

From the N. Y. Sun.
The declining fortunes of France offer a
fresh illustration of the ever-shifting fate of
nations France, like England, has been for
many centuries at the head of civilization,
and, like Greece and Rome of old, they
seemed to be destined to rule the universe
for all time to come. But, again like the
great empires of antiquity, both France and
England seem to have run their race and to
have taken secondary place among the
nations of the earth.
America, Russia, and Germany are the
new great powers which begin to overshadow
the fame and the prestige of France and
Great Britain. Italy, too, with her capital
transferred to Rome, will make good her
claim to prominent place in the new galaxy
of ruling nations. No doubt Eastern Europe
must be profoundly affected, if not
convulsed, by these momentous changes.
Like Greece and Rome, France will forever
live in the memory of the world for her re
nown in letters, art, science, and political
and military history; but henceforth she will
find it hard to compete with the preponde-
rance of Germany and the United States.
While the masses of Germany have been
filed with education and culture, those of
France have been left to vegetate in igno-
rance and superstition; and nations are des
tined to rise or to fall not according to their
nominal political institutions, but in har-
mony with the degree of moral and mental
culture among the masses of the people.
Both in France and in England the masses
are in almost as miserable and benighted
condition as they were in the days of the
Stuarts and the Capets. Indeed, whatever
may have been the degree of factitious splen-
dor which has lowered round the military i'm
perialism of Bonapartized France, or what
ever may be the seeming power of the ruling
landed and monetary oligarchy of England,
both these nations are decidedly inferior to
Germany, for the reason that the people of
the latter country are in much higher de-
BILE of self government.
To us the lesson comes home in this, that
all the pretensions of our sporting, fashion
able, shoddy, corrupt, and criminal classes
are symptoms of national decadence: and
that our only claim to q high place among
civilized nations rests upon the eniighten-
ment of the masses of the American people,
upon the independence and moral principle of
our working classes, and upon the steady pro-
gress of education and moral and intellectual
culture All else here as in France, is
snare-a delusion-fitting the people to be-
come slaves and tools of such scoundrels as
Louis Napoleon, and uniting them both
for self government and for the protection of
their country in the hour of danger. Super
fetal observers may ascribe the achievements
of Germany to the superior craft OF Bismarck
over that of Napoleon; but the Prussian' s
craft rests upon the solid structure of a
highly civilized and truly religious nation,
while that of Napoleon, depending only upon
q benighted peasantry, demoralized middle
classes, and rotten aristocracy of money and
fashion, rested upon sand, and is swept away
at the first mutterings of the storm.