The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-27

they were German by every material and
natural bond Bismarck might have made
and enforced other more obnoxious conditions
than this cession of territory but less than
this Germany would not let him do; more OF
concession France could not ask him to grant.
If any are wronged in this forced restitution
of stolen territory, it is the people who are
transferred with the property, not France;
and ii is not yet settled by any fair election or
free interchange of opinion which side the
conquered provincials prefer to go with.
The indemnity claim is moderate, consider
ing the great sacrifices which Germany has
been unnecessarily forced to make. From
two milliards of thalers it has been reduced
one-half, and two-thirds of this sum have
been remitted in consideration of fines and
acquisitions and debts. The sum which
France will have to pay is still enormous, and
will tax her industries for some years to pay,
but no one will doubt that the war expenses
of Germany are far from being cancelled by
the indemnity she has insisted upon.
The most gratifying condition of the peace,
thus far known, is that in which the Germans
abandon all intention of marching into Paris.
There is no need for German soldiers to carry
relics of Paris home to prove to their grateful
countrymen that they have conquered France
and its capital Their triumphal march
through the city would have proved nothing;
it would have been mean qualification, un-
worthy of soldiers, gone with the hour that
witnessed it, and would have aroused in the
French heart hatred which ages would not
have assusged.
Another welcome assurance of peace is con-
tanned in the order for the Liberation of all
French hostages. There are numbers of
French citizens, officials, and others of rank
and wealth who have been arrested and held
as hostages for the payment of acquisitions
asts e -,
revolving to every sense of right and human
ity. Their release ought to have bean ordered
long since; it is qualification to know that
it has been first result of peace established.
The formal proclamation, the abandonment
of the field by the French, the embarkation
or march of the Germans homeward, the tri-
umphal entry of the Emperor into Berlin, are
yet to come. But crisis is now upon
France hardly less momentous than any lately
past. The task that confronts her in the for
nation of a new government, when the cohe-
sion of common danger and the influence of
the presence of an armed enemy are removed
from the public mind, is one requiring far
more varied and extensive effort than the work
of holding together the unauthorized admins
tration that followed the fall of Napoleon.
That task is begun under favorable auspices.
There are few better men in France or else
where than those experienced and
uD6IhlS WHO nave COm6 10
the front under the pressure of dan
ger and necessity Thus far their efforts
have been directed to the securing of peace.
In this they have shown practical wisdom
and good sense, and a recognition of existing
facts which does the highest honor to their
judgment and their patriotism. When the
foreign armies abandon the soil of France,
the true crisis of her fate will come. L. will
then be seen whether her people have had
their folly brayed out of them in the mortar
of war; whether they have learned to set their
country above party, and to acknowledge, as
the first and best of the fruits of revolution,
the absolute rule of civil equality and sub
mission to the regularly expressed will of the
greatest number. When the last Prussian
has gone back to the Rhine, the deadliest
enemy of France-the spirit of faction-will
still remain to be grappled with and subdued.
1t is upon the result of this contest that
humanity is waiting with mingled hopes and
fears.