The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-08
AMERICAN SYMPATHIES IN THE LATE
WAR
From the N. Y. World.

WAR.
From the N. Y. World.
Had it not been for the fact that we have a
large and estimable population of German
immigrants, the whole tide of American favor
and good wishes would have set strongly in
one direction, owing chiefly to the traditional
friendship which this country has always
cherished for France It was to have been
expected, as a matter of course, that our Ger
man citizens would side with their native
country. All true Americans respect and
honor their unhesitating preference, which is
all the more noble because it implied an act
of silent forgiveness. How many of our most
cultivated Germans were driven to these
shores by political persecution How
many of them fled hither to escape
an ignominious death! Francis Lieber is
political refugee; Carl Schurz is a political
refugee; and so are thousands of others not
quite so distinguished who sought in this
land of freedom an asylum from the tyranny
of their German rulers. The revolutionary
disturbances of 1913, that memorable year,
brought us large crop of such refugees;
many of them richly endowed-men of genius,
culture, eloquence, patriotism, who felt
"where liberty dwells, there is my country"
The German movement of 1S4S, so fruitful
in exiles, was consequence of the French
revolution of the same year, which overturned
the throne of Louis Philippe and inaugurated
r6DuDuC. lu6 6Xll6 Vi OhTl DCduTZ Auu 30
many other noble and gifted men was penalty
for their keen sympathy with France and their
emulation of French example; and yet
when the late war broke out between France
and Prussia, these same men promptly sided
with the country from whose tyranny they
fled, and against the country whose example
they had emulated. Base and ignoble must
be the heart that could taunt them with this
inconsistency. There is something better
L. -
verted nature. The man who defends
the mother that bore him, or the wife to
whom he has plighted his faith, may be ex-
cused for his zeal even if no other person in
the world adopts his estimate of their char
acter Whatever may be their errors and
frailties, it is virtue in him to regard them
as ''wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best" and
his faithfulness is all the more respondent if
he has no memory for the wrongs they may
have done him.
Similar to this is the magnanimous warmth
with which exiled Germans in this country
espouse the cause of their Fatherland. 1t
was one of those occasions in which impulse
is superior to reason. The noblest qualities
of the human heart are instructive; they
would be chilled out of existence by cold
calculation and strict logical precision.
Shame on the man who does not esteem and
venerate his grey-haired father beyond any
title which could be established to the satis-
faction of scrutinizing strangers The
stanch adherence of the American Germans
to their Fatherland in the late momentous
conflict has always had our admiring ap-
proval.
If our country had not been full of these
Germans, American sympathy would have
been wholly given to France, with as much
promptness and as little reflection as charac-
terizsd the unhesitating preference OF our
German immigrants for Germany. The spon-
taneous American impulse was not quite as
strong, not quite as noble, it had nothing Of
the magnanimous and unconscious forgive
ness of the German political exiles; but it
was equally genuine and natural. We can do
full justice to the German feeling because 1t
springs from sources which exist in every
human heart. But our German fellow-citi-
zens cannot so readily enter into the American
| feeling because it is more the effect
of education and tradition than of a
universal human instinct. The sentiments
of every people are more or less moulded by
their history; and every American has been
taught from lisping infancy through the
whole period of Ingenious, lmpresslonaole
| youth, to love and venerate France. 1t is to
her cooperation with our brave ancestors
that we owe the independence of our country;
it was by the assistance of France that We
were enabled to open this great asylum to
the oppressed Of all nations-Germans among
the rest. In our patriotic associations the
laurels of Lafayette are inseparably en-
twined with those Washington, and both
have always been equally green in Ame-
rican memories. What welcome given by q
nation to a benefactor was ever SO warm, Sc
| demonstrative, or SO affecting as that ex-
| tended bV our Government and our whole