New-York tribune., 1871-01-11
xr,y-vopx DAILY TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY JANUARY II, 1871

what ia necessary in the terrible strait TO
which the late autocracy brought their nation.
They would accept the requirements OF the
time, but for their certainty that the popular
mind is not now in condition to listen 10
any words of reason or to face soberly the ex-
isting facts and necessities
1t is this passionate, unreasOning ontcry or
France that finds utterance in the letter OF NJ.
Feydeau We contend that there are few bet
ter qualified to express the average sentiment
of his people. lie is type of that school OF
ANALYTICAL romancers, bred Of the vague unrest
and disorder of the Empire, whose energies,
repressed from public affairs, found exercise
in the minute dissection Of false and unlaW-
full passion. The vast circulation anu p0pu-
larity of his books prove well enough how
general was the moral pestilence whose phases
they chronicle, diffused through every class OF
society and how acceptable was his portrait
ure of those tricks of posture and grimace by
means of which passion that is mean and
eroyeling persuades itself that it is lovely and
of good report. 1t is o suggestive commentary
upon the general decadence OF morals into
which tho Empire and the people had
sunk, that now, in the solemn crisis
of their destiny the serious protests
which tho most eminent French writers
make against tho conquering power
sound curiOusly like the lyric walls of the
baffled lovers of Fanny and the ComtesSe de
Chalis. You see the same assumed or real
uncOnsciousness of having done any wrong;
the same clamorous call for the world to come
in and declare that grief to be noble and glo-
rious that comes from wounded vanity and
ungratiGed desire of what is anOther's. There
are two lessons for the elegant Parsians to
learn from their ruder cOnquerOrs: that nation
which makes q causeless war has no sympathy
when it is beaten, and that man caught
making love to another mans wife Will ind
scant comfort in the street when he has been
kicked down the doorstep.
Mr. Feydeau makes as good presentation
as we have seen of the claims of France to
the sympathy and actual Intervention of the
world. He rehearses the old charge OF treach-
cry and espionage by which the French have
sought to account for the very SIMPLE TACT
that the Prussians were well acquainted with
the resources and topography OF the country
they have invaded. He very truthtully de-
nounces the Empire as responsible for the war,
for which the Hohenzollern question furnished
no pretext whatever He passes over IN DIS
Greet silence the popular delight with which
the war was hailed He finds in the daily in
cidents of campaigns materials for impassioned
rhetoric which bears only on the exceeding
sinfulness of all war; and, rising with his
theme, he denounces the curse OF death and
sterility upon the year just finished, "because,"
TO use his own phrase, which so admirably
spans the step between the sublime and
tho ridiculous, "when France extinguishes her
torch darkness covers the universe" lie warns
the world at large of the disastrous results
that will follow when the King of Prussia sets
US all to learning the Potsdam goOse-step; and
concludes with the only spark of consolation
glimmering amid the imminent despair, the
prospect that France, when annihilated and
dispersed, "shall perpetuate herself throughout
" the universe by succession Of transInigra-
"tionsD
1t cannot be denied that this is the French
case presented with great warmth of fancy
and feeling, but embodying about all that
can be said TO claim for the great and beauti-
full nation now treading the wine-press OF
war our sympathies and assistance. And this
is evidently not enough. 1t leaves far out of
view the fact of French responsibility for
French wrongs. No people, by repentance
even, can escape the penalty of transgressions
committed. New governments inherit and
must meet the mortgages due to justice on
the old. If the Republic-as we fervently
pray-is to stand and endure, it will not be by
refusing to recognize the actual state of
things; it will not be by affecting to consider
and asking the world to consider France as too
beautiful and gracious to be punished when
she sins; it will not be by hysterical denuncia-
tions of brute force in other nations, for brute
force is good thing to possess, and no Re-
public can live without it. 1t will only be by
the recognition of the fact, palpable TO all but
those of the Celtic-Latin blood, that there is
a democracy of nations as of men, that one
national glory is as good as another, and that
no sovereign nor people can ever make war
without paying the bill Of costs.