The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-02
THE PROSPECT OF GERMAN UNITY

THE PROSPECT OF GERMAN UNITY. !
From the I'au Mall Gazette.
For Germany there is now only one ques-
tion-that of unity. The unity of Germany
the dream of her wisest, the longing of her
most devoted sons, the object of as earnest
and disinterested prayers as ever were poured
forth for any purpose of this worlds now
at hand. 1t is more than at hand-it is at
the door. Difficulties, intrigues, ealousies,
have vanished like dreams of the night be-
fore the resolution of a people stirred up,
happily for itself, by foreign aggression. The
great step forward has been taken; and that
step cannot be retraced. French victory
might retard the mechanical operation of the
change, by imposing terms of peace incom-
patible with political union, but it could not
destroy the national union once effected, and
the national union, after some further pc
riod of probation, must bring about
the political. To those who cherish aspira-
tions like these. controversies about the rela-
tive morality of Napoleon and Bismarck, or
the meaning of the treaty of Prague or de-
Carnations about Prussian ambition, are
really altogether out of place. They are be-
side the mark-by currents, swallowed up in
the mighty food which is now setting in one
direction with concentrated and irresistible
energy. We may call this the language of
enthusiasts if we please. But enthusiasts
such as these have have shaped the course
of European events more than once: in 1889,
and again in 1914; and it has been one great
misfortune of statesmen-especially, per-
haps, of English statesmau-that they could
rarely comprehend the force of popular en-
tbusiasm, or the control of public affairs by
any stronger springs than those of dynaslic
intrigues or calculations of expediency.
If we British are rendered little dull in
divining the tendencies of things, partly from
phlegmatic habits and partly from unreadi-
ness to enter fully into the mind of foreign
nations. the Judgment of French observers is
far more distorted by their own antipathies
and prejudices. The spirit of German unity
is thing they cannot understand, because
| they are determined not to understand it.
| And the consequence is that their best politi-
! cal writing on the great European question of
! the day seems antiquated as soon as it is pub
lished. They are months, or years, behind
the clock. nj. Victor Cherbuliez, ''publ-
cist" of repute, has published a series of able
articles on ''La Prusse ct lAllemagne" in the
Reyue deS Deuc Mondes; and this is point
of knowledge at which NJ Cherbulez has
arrived with all Frenchmans s certitude) no
longer ago than last April
"Europe may be reassured by the fact that the n.
eress of Germany are In accordance with he" ~ n.
had consented to surrender themselves tC Pruesii
without condtit MS it was all over with Germany.
| And suppOsing that majority in Wurtemberg and
Bavaria had gone so far as to solicit the accession
of these states to the Confederation of the North,
| the opposing minority would still be 80 numerous
! and formidable that Prussia, in order to hold the
South, would have to hold it for half century under
the dominion Of the sabrea sad result for Germany,
for Europe, and for Prussia herself. Would
Europe really gain so much If a stroke of the pen
were to suppress, together with Baden, Wurtem-
| berg, and Bavaria, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and
! Switzerland"
If NJ Cherbuliez were to maintain that the
decline af provincial cities and their practical
absorption by Paris is an evil, probably some
! ,,l,t Rat l;cli
tendency, he were to deny its existence, he
would be looked on as a very paradoxical
trifer. And yet the absorption of small
States by large ones is as undoubted a ten
dency of the age as that of small cities and
small industries, most of all when these small
States are really only such in statistical de-
scription, but in truth only fractions of one
great community with common language and
laws. Local jealouses in Germany were
rapidly tending to extinction before the pre-
sent crisis; the war now commenced will
crush out such vitality as they have left, aud
perhaps more effectually through defeat,
should such be the upshot, than through vic
tory. There is no centrifugal cause of any i'm
portance at work in Germany except difference
of religion, which the Ultramontanes are, of
course, endeayoring to make the most Of.
But even this is of less magnitude than at
first sight might appear. Germany, it is
commonly said, is divided between Catholics
and Protestants in nearly equal numbers.
But this calculation includes among Germans
all the Slavonic subjects of Austria whose
countries formed part of the old German
Empire. OF Germans by race considerable
majority are Protestants; and the Catholics
are scattered, preponderating in widely dis
tant localities at the extremities of the coun-
try-on the Rhine and under the shadow of
the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. But, what
is more important religious feeling in Ger
many is too strongly impregnated with Libe-
ralism to set itself in effective opposition to
the general desire for political unity.
There are several lessons which European
history very distinctly teaches on this great
subject. One is, that number of small
States inhabited by people of the same race
and language have never failed of accomplish
ing consolidation if seriously determined on
it, Another, that the opposition of foreign
powers has always tended in the long run to
promote, and not to prevent, this consumma-
ton. And another, that, Notwithstanding all
the regrets of an over-refned school of politi-
clans over the suppression of small realms
and little dynasties attached to them, union
has always promoted the strength and pros
perity, not only of the whole, but of the
component parts. 1t was the great object
of our Plantaganet sovereigns, for a GEN.
tury, to prevent the consolidation of the
feudal quasi sovereignties which were then
established on French soil. And the popular
instinct of the English people was as adverse
to that consolidation as that of the French
: has been in our time to the unity of Italy
and of Germany. But English opposition
only reused the French spirit. Crecy and
= Agincourt gave birth to French patriotism.
France was not france until England taught