The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-18
THE IMPERIAL INDICATOR OF
AMY MO kEMENTS.

IF Napoleon has served no other good pur-
pose in the present war, he has at least fur
nished by his individual movements fair in
dication of the direction in which the tide of
battle has turned Despite the conflicting re-
ports of various engagements and diverse
theories of contemplated or completed mill
tary operations, close approximation to the
truth may be cleaned from the record of his
peregrinations. Anxious to be at the front
whenever there is possibility of achieving
French victory, he smells danger from
afar and is the first to fee when
retrograde movement is rendered necessary
by the determined way the Germans have
adopted of pushing things. At the first and
only French victory, at Saarbruck, Napoleon
was of course present, and the detailed &C
counts of that affair describe with touching
minuteness how bravely and skilfully he
compelled a small Prussian force to retreat
before an overwhelming French force, and
how warmly he was congratulated by the
courtiers of the camp on the splendor of this
achievement. But when real war commenced
the glories of Saarbruck quickly paled, and
finding that there was harder work to be
done at the front than he had bargained for,
Napoleon was the first to seek shelter behind
the strong walls of Metz-this individual re-
treat typifying the retreat of the whole
army, for the paramount object of its ex-
istence, under imperial mismanagement, is
made the protection of the Emperor.
Then, when dangers thickened around
Metz, the degenerate nephew of a great
uncle was the first to fall back to Verdun, and
his despatch announcing this fact told more
plainly than a circumstantial newspaper re-
port that his army was about to follow in
the same direction. Although absurd gas
conade was intermingled with his sentences,
they told story of disaster and defeat as
significant as if he had repeated to the world
the exclamation which he is reported to re-
peat to himself, and which has been
freely translated into English by the
phrase:-''I have got sockdolager"
This imperial indicator of army movements
has since turned up at Chalons, and this last
change of base foreshadows determination
to select that famous battle-ground as the
scene of the decisive conflict of the war. If
the French cannot make stand there, all hope
of resisting the victorious advance of the
Germans must be abandoned by the Empe-
peror and the Empire, and there will be no
alternative left but humiliating surrender,
or the establishment of a republic that will
once more inspire France with the heroic
feeling that wells up in the breasts of brave
men when they are fighting for their country
and themselves, instead of striving to perpe-
tuate a rotten dynasty.
Good management, skilful generalship, and
continued activity in Paris in forwarding
reinforcements and supplies may enable
Napoleon to render Chalons an impossible
barrier. But the Germans harass his regular
army so necessarily, and they have already
done SO much to destroy and dispirit it, that
the remnants which reach Chalons will be ter
ribly shattered, while the new recruits, who
have arrived there from the rear, are said to
be fearfully demoralized. They lack the in
centives which made the old republican
armies invincible; and while they are, doubt
less, anxious to save their country, they would
fight with much greater zeal under a repub-
ioan government than under the rule of the
Imperial indicator who is the author of all
their present woes.