The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-02

despatch from Washington city on Monday
morning, points out the practical fact, ap-
palling in its Importance, that, owing to the
wanton destruction of roads and bridges lead
ing from Paris to the provinces-a destruc-
ton wrought by the French themselves-the
invading Germans will find it utterly impos-
sible to supply the two million people which
the capital contains with the necessaries of life
even after the city capitulates. AS it is the
prisoners taken by the Germans in the various
fights and sorties attempted by the garrison
state that the latest rations have been but one
pound of meat per week for each soldier in
side the defenses of the city, with the stock
of animal food rapidly disappearing. Mean
while the investing force have, by intense
exertion and nnceasing vigilance, been able
to keep open communication with the Rhine
frontier, and have drawn very heavy aid, in
all requisites, from home. But they have also
completely eaten out and exhausted the
country environiDg Paris, over radius of
some days journey not made by railroad, and
the daily wider and wider consumption is
rapidly extending the unproductive area.
The food question has already be-
come a very irksome and oppressive one
to the strangers. The latter number nearly,
if not quite, seven hundred thousand
men in arms, and chiefly concentrated around
the French capital, the actual number furn-
ished by the North and South German States
together, for the war, being more than eight
hundred thousand, and allowance being made
for those put h0rS de COMBAT by sickness
wounds and death. ALL then, that the re-
opened railroads running eastward to Ger
many and the scouting expeditions sent out
on every side can do is to meet the incessant
demands of this enormous force They can
achieve no more. What, then, are to become
the inevitable consequences of thro wing the
vast population of Paris on their own re-
sources in the winter season in an isolated
region eaten out and shaven close by the
locusts of war? Will there not be positive
danger of the starvation of hundreds Of thou
sands of people, as Bismarck predicts? The
conclusion is heartrending to contemplate,
yet it is not only possible but Imminent.
But it is not Paris alone which finds itself
in this miserable plight All France is, to
some degree, meuaced with similar calamity.
In the twenty departments now mainly under
the heavy hand of the invader, the arrest of
production and of harvesting, the excessive
consumption by both armies. the reckless or
unavoidable waste, the burning and other
destruction of material and the removal be-
yond the frontiers of large quantities of agri-
cultural produce which cannot be reimported,
have swept the country bare. Moreover, we
must recollect that last spring, before the
war began, we had repeated advices from
ard that these advices have not been contra
dicted. Recently there have been more
satisfactory accounts from the southern
departments, but, as general summing
up, even were there no war; this great
French nation of forty millions would have
had to depend very largely upon imported
cereals for its winter subsistence. The two
years advance supply on hand of breadstuffs,
which was one of the boasted arrangements
t1,ei ol 10, b.
for this year at least, as much a myth as the
strength and reliability of its military organ
ization. In one word-a word of solemn,
overshadowing portent-the gaunt spectre of
famine looms up in more gigantic and ghastly
proportions every hour over the once fair
land of France. The nation but yesterday so
mighty is 'thard bestead and hungry" and
neither rulers nor people know whittier to
look in this hour of their tribulation. The
trials that have fallen upon them
are almost apocalyptic in their sud
denness, their completeness and their
terror. With the threatened dearth
comes the nameless horror of the ''pestilence
that walketh in darkness, which falls upon
all famished regions, and of the still more
frightful outburst of frantic passions among
hot-blooded races driven to despair The
hour seems close at hand, indeed, for the
beautiful, the imperial city of the late Napo-
leonic empire, ''when ''the keepers of the
house shall trembls and the strong men shall
bow themselves, and the grinders cease be-
cause they are few, and those that look out
of the windows shall be darkened, and all the
proud nation shall share in her sorrow.
This is q terrible contingency for Christen-
dom to contemplated momentous lesson for
ambitious princes and statesmen to ponder.
1t cannot be underrated or fail to be compre-
hended. Let us hope that its instruction will
not be thrown away.
Yet again, mingEng with the abstract idea
thus presented to our minds is the agony of
individual suffering, not among stalwart men
alone, but among the innocent and defense
less victims of the war--the aged and infrm
the wounded and the sick, feeble women and
helpless babes. At the thought of their dark
dire, irredeemable destitution the very heart
of humanity thrills with pity. But on this
side of the Atlantic we have never vet con-
fined our sympathies to mere commiseration.
AS for the Greeks in their hour of mis-
fortune; as for Poland and Hungary,
when they both starved and bled; as for
Ireland, when her homeless children were
dying by thousands on the highways or in the
pest houses of their native land, which should
have been the island Canaan of the north, the
hand of American bounty was instantly and
repeatedly extended, so let it be held out
now over the stormy sea and through the
wintry gloom to stricken France. And there
is no time to lose. Every day of delay may
be fatal to many poor brother, whom timely
aid would have saved. Noble societies Of
foreign nationality have already been orga-
nized among us to aid the sick and wounded
in both Germany and France, and native
subscriptions have not been wanting but
the imminent, pressing need at this moment
is for help in kind to whole masses of the
French population. Let, then, the concerts,