The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-11
NJ. TIMERS, DIFFICULTIES.
NJ the london Spectator,


cal difficulties in his way are greatly under
rated in England. They are such as no states
man in the world, not even Prince Bismarck,
would willingly be called upon to face. De-
irving his title wholly from Parliamentary
vote, and holding Office during the pleasure
of the Assembly he is called upon in time
of civil war to restore order without the
cordial support of the very members who
elected him. He mast either conquer Paris,
or conciliate Paris, or compromise with Paris;
and to each of these courses there exist
almost insuperable obstacles, among which
the temper Of the Assembly is not the least.
In England il is held that the first of these
alternatives is the right one, and certainly it
is much the simplest; but the conquest
of Paris, while its people are in
arms, implies the storm of the greatest
fortress in Europe-a fortress which the
greatest general alive, commanding the most
powerful army in the world, preferred to re-
duce by hunger. M. Theirs has to perform
the feat which General Won Moltke declined,
with less than third of his troops-for he
certainly has not $4,000 men-those troops
being soldiers not superior man for man to
the Parisians, dspirited by defeat, disorga-
nized by want of confidence in their officers
disheartened by the feeling that after flying
before the foreigner their first task is to
make their countrymen fly before them. We
do not believe in the stories of disaffecton
among the troops before Versailles, but we
do believe those troops think the work
before them excessively dangerous, not
very honorable, and entirely without
national profit; that they fight fit
fully, more as Sikhs fight than as
Frenchmen were supposed to fight, and that
they are not carried away by enthusia SIN
either for their cause, for their generals or
for victory. Their numbers are constantly
swelled by prisoners released from Germany,
who are as constantly sent to distance for
reformation; and they are commanded by
general who is certainly able, but who has
suffered from horrible wound, who demands
excessive powers and whose probable use of
those powers is suspected by the head of the
Executive. 1t might be possible even with
such materials to conquer" Paris that is, to
force an entrance ia despite of 100000
workmen, fairly drilled, we'll led, and capable
in a fitful and desultory way of very des-
perate fighting, if assistance could be
relied on from within the walls, but it cannot.
Such assistance might be obtained if the AS
sembly would proclaim the republic, or grant
municipal liberty, or even agree to reside in
Paris; but the Assembly will do none of
these things-mIrmurs fretfully when any of
them are so much as mentioned NJ. Thiers
is reduced to his troops alone, and his troops
either can or will conquer only through
slow, irregular, half hearted process of cam
paigning, more resembling the warfare of the
last century than any method of action pur-
sued since 1898.
The conciliation of Paris is at least EQUALLY
difficult, for "Paris' in the insurgent sense
demands impossible concessions. Supposing
M. Theirs, in despair, to concede the first
great demand of the Commune that Paris
should be free city like Hamburg, governed
by its own Senate, and liable to the General
Government only for its contingent of taxes
and men. Paris, in its profound distrust,
would still demand that the national army
should be excluded from the city, a right not
claimed either by Hamburg or New York,
and in its historic pride that it should remain
the seat of the Government of France-in
other words, that it should be independent,
yet retain the power of upsetting the autho-
rity to which it does not yield. Nothing less
than this would thoroughly "conciliSte" Red
Paris, which indeed goes farther, and in its
very latest official proclamation demands per-
mission to federate itself with other great
cities, and with them to exercise a predomi-
nant voice in the general legislature. M.
Theirs, as a statesman, could not grant these
terms, which would be fatal to the unity of
France; or if he did, the Assembly would re-
ject them, and either proceed on its own
violent path, sentencing Paris to destruction,
or compel him to strike a coup Getdt, for
which he has probably not the means, and
which could settle nothing beyond the mo-
mentary dictatorship of an old civilian who
must reign by the bayonet and the favor of
the military chiefs. There is, we fear, no
possibility of Cancellation in any adequate
sense.
There remains compromise, and this is
evidently M. Theirs idea 1t must not be
forgotten that he himself is Partisan, and at
heart possibly slightly proud of the fuss his
city is making in the world. He probably
hopes that the Commune, necessarily de-
feated in the field, pressed by the suffering
OF the population of Paris, and aware that
victory is hopeless, may in few weeks listen
to some conceivable compromise such, for
example, as the proclamation of the republic
by the Assembly, the gsrrisoning of Paris by
national troops, and the concession of full
municipal liberty as understood in England
and America. That strikes average English
men, as represented by the Times, as quite a
reasonable arrangement, but it is nearly GER
tain that it would be rejected by the Assem-
| bly-which can be dissolved only by its own
consent or by force-and quite certain that it
would be regarded by the Red chiefs as a
compromise worse, because more dis
honorable, than sullen sub
mission to superior force. The
Assembly does not want an orderly re-
public, or strong municipalities, or a con-
tented Paris; but powerful monarchy and
obedient cities and a humiliated Paris, and
the nearer it seems to approach to victory the
greater will its dislike to compromise become.
The Red chiefs, ON the other hand do not
want to place Paris under a Republican AS
sembly elected by peasants, but under a
approach to defeat, the more passionately
| hnanrna 10 ac