The New York herald., 1870-09-14
Tho Lo..s. and th. Gain. Of France.

AeO $1,000 esssA s~V ~H~AuD - 6Ae1cOe
II the losses Of France by the war have
been heavy and disastrous her gains have
been and will bo great and enduring. She has
lost, perhaps, Of her army, in killed, wounded,
prisoners and from disease, in this war, two
hundred and City thousand men; she has lost
the military prestige under the second empire
which she gained under the first; she has lost
with the empire the position which was held
even by Napoleon ILL.,. while the empire
was peace, the proud position Of arbiter OF
the Continent; she has in two months from
the ravages of this war within her fairest
departments lost in the destruction of her
crops, live stock supplies of all kinds, inter-
nal improvements, &C., an amount Of material
wealth which, in those suffering departments,
1t will take ten years Of industry and economy
to restore. 1t is expected that she will have
to foot the bill to the extent of five or six
hundred millions Of dollars as indemnity to
Prussia and her German allies for their
expenses in this causeless war, declared and
commenced against them; and, lastly, France,
instead of securing an extension, may have to
consent to shortening or disarmament of her
Rhine frontier as security to her German
neighbors for the future.
Such are the expenses which have resulted
or will result to France from this terrible war
of her own making; but her gains, we believe,
will amply compensate her for all these losses
She loses the empire, but she regains the
rAv,,,h1sn snr ouiu ~uskb onJs sh
and without crime she commands from the
outset the admiration of all other republics,
and the respect even of her monarchical
enemies. This is an encouraging beginning,
and strongly justifies the opinion that the
French republic henceforward will be free
from the vicious and ruinous excesses which
converted the revolution of 1889 into Reign
Of Terror and diabolisms, and free from the
follies and imbecilities Of the revolution of
1S4S, which invited the coup Gstat of Louis
Napoleon. We have no fear that the French
republic of 1870 will revive the guillotne for
the determination of the aristocracy, or set up
again the Goddess of Reason in mockery of
Christianity. Nor do we apprehend that the
third republic, like the first, will send out its
armies, right and left, ''to run muck" for
'1iberty, equality and fraternity" or that,
like the empire, it will undertake again for
France the dangerous Office of regulating the
boundaries of other States or the line of sue
cession to its neighbors.
We expect that France as q republic will
come out of this war purified, like gold from
the crucible. We believe that the dearly
bought lessons of their experience under the
Bourbons, the Robespierres, the Lamartines
and the Bonapartes have taught the French
people series of wholesome lessons-against
the extremes of despotism on the one hand
and of anarchy and sentimentalism and COM
munism on the other-which will be turned to
a good account. We expect that the public
mind of France, from the wholesome lessons
of this war, will be turned from the barbarous
vanities of bloodshed and military glory to the
loftier achievements and enterprises of art and
science in the ways of peace. We entertain
the hope that after this sanguinary war a new
reign of peace will dawn upon the earth, and
IN Franco as republic under this new dis
pensation, there is the promise OF career Of
prosperity and glory which will throw into the
shade, as among the crimes upon humanity of
an age of barbarism. all the bloody achieve
ments of the past from the greatest of the
to the last Of the Bonapartes.
We have assumed that the republic will be
But is this thing certain? We
cannot tell The issue is mainly in the hands
of the King Of Prussia, and he is not q repub-
Iican nor s. believer in French republics. But
come what may, we still hold to our conclu-
sion that the losses of France from this war
will BE- bat a bagatelle compared with her
solid gains in her new career Of experience
and wisdom.