The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-23
sP1R1x OF xRz PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current TopiOs-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
SPOILING A SENSATION.

From the NJ Y. Tribune
1t is rumored- though we cannot vouch
for the truth of the report-that, when Paris
capitulated, the celebrated Major Goliah
O'Grady Gahsgan, who had been for three
months in hourly expectation of the surrender
of Berlin, wandered off into the fields in fit
of bewilderment and modification, and was
never heard of afterwards. Some of his fell
low.laborers nearer home are in still more
painful perplexity. 1t would not surprise us
to hear that the editor of the URiDerSe has
been sitting all night on the sea-wall of the
Battery meditating on the danger of nautical
predictions, and wondering if it can be true,
after all, that the Tennessee has not gone to
the bottom. To the massive intellect of this
great man it must be incomprehensible that
a vessel which eminent engineers" have de-
clared ''unseaworthy,' and which the UNI
gerse has proved, over and over again, ought
to be lying on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean,
should have made safe and comfortable
passage to her destined port; and that the
two columns of agony and doubt with which
our flesh has been made to creep every day
for the last two weeks had no foundation
whatever. Upon the assumed loss of this
ship had been based the most damaging
assault upon the present administration which
has ever been devised. 1t was to establish
the criminal ineficiency of our naval sutho-
rites, and convince mankind that death by
drowning is the natural and inevitable result
of radical misgovernment.
If haply the Tennessee had not gone down,
she had certainly gone adrift, which might be
almost as bad. We remember that, little
more than week ago, the UHS0erSe published
q remarkable scientific demonstration of her
probable fate, whereat half the city burst in
continently into tears. The machinery had
given out the first-day or two of the passage
this was a ''self-evident proposition" which
required no argument. The frigate was then
reduced to canvas, which was of no use to
her. She could no more sail than ga drifting
log in a hurricane" In any weather she would
be utterly unmanageable. She had got into
the Horse latitudes, and there a gale had
struck her, and blown her over to the coast
of Africa. Possibly she might have been
wrecked somewhere in South America-saY
Terra del Fuego, or the coast of Chilli This
would not have occurred to ordinary minds;
but we recollect that the same authority sug-
gested that the City of Boston had been lost
on the Barbary coast, between New York and
Liverpool-and has it ever been proved that
she was not?
And then there was another theory. Maybe
the Tennessee had reached Santo Domingo
and Ben Wade kept the correspondents under
lock and key in their cabins lest they should
tell the truth about annexation. The whole
scheme was a vile radical swindle. No news
should leak out until the commissioners had
presented their report and completed the in
famous bargain. The ruinous expense of send
ing out special correspondent, whose board
cost So day, was so much money thrown
into the ocean. Admiral Lee had surrounded
the island with a picket of men-of-war for
the express purpose of intercepting letters to
The Uni0erSe. The truth would not be told
until it was too late. This conjecture, we
bOnn6 f0 not 1oO0 antartaina1
1t was some relief to feel that our friends
might have saved their lives even at the cost
of their liberty. But the faint ray of hope
was soon quenched in gloom. "This
here ship" had certainly ''g gone
down. BY Sunday obituary notices
of all the commissioners were pre-
pared, and awful detection brooded over the
paper. On Monday morning ''hope" was
changing to despair" in Washington, and
were "disregarded." With a prudence, how
ever, highly proper in writer on nautical
affairs, the editor referred to the expected
arrival of the ST. Thomas mails in these eau
tious TERMS will then be found that the
reasons heretofore given in the columns of
the Uni0eTSe in regard to the absence of
earlier news were in the main correct. Which
reasons!
Well, the bubble has burst. The sensation
Is we CAL rtdu Ddch Oh
the UnigerSe now with any sort of composure.
The special correspondent does not help his
paper bit. He has not found any radical
mismanagement. He has not been blown from
the Horse latitudes to Senegambia, nor
drifted like log in a hurricane, nor been
locked up in his bunk. The frigate has made
an ordinary voyage in the ordinary time,
and letters have come home in the ordi nary
way, and all the fuss has been about nothing.
Considering how fiimsy it was, the sensation
has been kept aaoat pretty good while; but
our esteemed contemporary will not find it SO
easy to initiate another.
THE WEAPONS OF THE EUROPEAN
WAR-AMERICAN SUPERIORITY AND
DEFICIENCY.
From the N. T. Herald.
There are some lessons taught us by the
present war in Europe which should be care
fully borne in mind, and one of them relates
to the weapons used by the contending armies.
We have no large standing army, but our sys-
tenn of military defense, defective as it is in
many essential features, enables us to rapidly
raise and organize hundreds of thousands of
men familiar with the use of firearms, and
more or less, acquainted with the discipline
of soldier. In these scientific days, how
ever, much depends upon the weapons used
by an army-more, perhaps, than even good
generalship and perfect discipline. We doubt
if the French would have gained any victories
in the present war had they been as we'll
drilled as the Germans and remained wanting
in the terrible breech-loading field artillery
used by their adversaries, and which has, on
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