The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-10

his caprice. Were our German transac-
tions of 1866 and subsequently different
matterP Did the panels with which we lined
our hitherto notoriously uninhabitable house,
the rafters that we strengthened, the walls
that we carried up, shake our neighbours
house2 Did they threaten to intercept its
light or air2 Did they expose it to danger
from fire? No such thing. 1t was simply
that our house appeared TO him too noble.
This neighbor of ours, he wished to possess
the finest and highest house in. the whole
street, and above all must ours not be too
strong. We must not have the means of
making il fast he must never be deprived of
the power to do what he had already done
several times, of taking possession of few
of our rooms whenever it suited him, and
throwing them into his own house. Yet in
remodeling our house we had made no claim
whatever to those portions of it which our
violent neighbor had appropriated in bygone
days. but had left them to him, and given
him the right of prescription. But now, in
deed, since he has appealed to the sword,
these old questions rise up again.
France will not give up its European
primacy. Only, if it has right to this, has
it right to interfere with our internal ques-
tions? But on what is this pretended right
to the primacy based? In cultivation, Ger
many has long placed itself on a level with
France. The equal rank of our literature has
long been recognized by the representatives
of that of France. The just proportion in
which, thanks to a well-devised school educa-
ton, moral and intellectual training has
penetrated every class of our people, is en-
We'd by the best men among the French.
The exclusion of the Reformation
from France, greatly as it con-
tributed to strengthen its political
power, had an equally great effect in destroy
s.- &c it,fa oY,1 l,o;,
But even in political capacity we have now
fully come up to the French, though slowly.
The Revolution of 1889 appeared to give
them an immense advantage over us. We
have to thank it for loosening US from many
chains, which otherwise would have weighed
upon us far into the future; what we have seen
in France since the Revolution has not been
of character to frighten us out of our COM
petition. Limited governments appear to
have come into being only to be undermined,
to sink into anarchy, as this in its turn into
despotism. Whether constitutional mon
archy, in which you, no less than myself,
recognize the only durable form of govern
ment for Europe Exceptional conditions put
aside), can ever strike its roots deep in France,
appears to be doubtful to yourself in your
admirable essay on the subject; at least it is
your wish rather than your hope. That l am
not blind to the many good qualities of the
French nation; that | recognize in it an
essential and indispensable member of the
European national family, a benefcent leaven
in their mingling, it is as little necessary that
l should assure you, as that you should assure
me of the like uDperverted estimation of the
German people and their merits, on your
side But nations as we'll as individuals
have, as the reverse side of their merits, not
less conspicuous faults, and in relation to
these faults our two nations have for centu-
ries enjoyed very different, nay, totally op-
posite training. We Germans, in the hard
school of calamity and dishonor, in which
your countrymen in great measure were our
relentless schoolmasters and chasteners, have
learned to recognize our essential and here
ditary faults under their true form-our
visionariness, our slowness, and, above all,
our want of unity, as the hindrances
of all national success. We have taken our
selves to task, we have striven against these
failings, and sought more and more to rid
ourselves of them. On the other hand, the
national faults of the French, pampered by
a succession of French monarchs, were for
long ii ne intensified by success, and not
cured even by misfortune. The craving for
glitter and fame; the tendency to grasp at
these rather by sounding adventurous achieve
ments without than by silent efforts within;
the pretension to stand at the head of ma
llOIS, anu tuc W pdJIOulZo dlu DluDu0I
them ALL all these faults which lie in the
Gallo nature, as those above named do in
the German, were fostered to such an extent
by Louis XIV, by the first, and by Qet us hope)
the last Napoleon, that the national character
has suffered the deepest injury. Glory in
particular, which one of your ministers has
recently called the first word in the French
language, is rather its worst and most perni-
cious-one which it would do well to strike
out of its dictionary for long time to come.
1t is the golden calf round which the nation
has for centuries kept up its dance; it is the
Moloch at whose altar it has sacrificed and is
even now again sacrificing its own sons, and
the sons of neighboring nations; it is the
SgntS fdtuuS which has lured it from fields
of prosperous labor into the wilderness aud
often to the brink of the precipice. And
! while those earlier monarchs, Napo
leon l especially, were themselves
possessed by this national demon,
and therefore went even into then
| unjust wars with something of sincerity, with
the present Napoleon it is the conscious cum
ming desire to lead the nation astray into
aims of self-seeking, TO draw their attention
away from their moral and political destitu,
ton within; that is by ever and ever stirring
up the national passion for glitter, fame, and
depreciation. Against Russia in the Crimes,
against Austria in Italy, he was successful. In
Mexico he met with sensible disaster Against
Prussia he let the right moment slip. At the
beginning of this year the world could for q
moment believe that he was in good faith
leaving this path and turning to that of inter.
! nal reform, in the sense of rational freedom ano
administrative amendment, till his backward
spring to the plebiScitum convinced all the
world that he was still his old SELF From
that time, too, Germany had everything tc
fear, rather should say, everything to hope
That unity which he desired to frustrate il
ours. The unheard-of claim which lay in hii