New Britain herald., 1915-05-26
WHAT OTHERS SAY
Views on nll sides of timely questions as discussed in ex- changes that come to Herald oflca
1s1s-1s15.
(New York Tribune.)

(NeW York Tribune.)
 Rarely in human history have the
 events of one country more accurately
 reproduced those of a preceding than in recent weeks. In 1913 Napoleon was fighting his last campaign Tn
 Germany. He had against him an
 alliance that included Engrand, Russia
 Prussia, Sweden and Spain. Despite the odds he had opened his campaign
 with his characteristic skill and ac- customed success. Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden had been tought and won.
 But the issue of the war was still in doubt.
 At this moment Austria served upon the great Emperor demand the main cctail in which was that she should have the Illyrian Provinces. And the Illyrian Provinces included lstria, Dalmatia and Trieste, While Italy asked yesterday Austria asked a cen- trry before under conditions almost identical. Like Austria, France re- fused. Francis Joseph.s answer is that of Napoleon.
 Looking backward now it's is clear that this refusal was the decisive in cident in the Napoleonic disaster. It brought Austria into the field with 900 ,O00 troops, some of whom shared in the great triumph at Leipzig few weeks later. Bavaria ana Saxony, Ma poleon's allies at that moment, chang ed sides when Austria Joined his enc mics When Austria declared war Napoleon, like the Kaiser today, was fighting on foreign soil. Wellington had not yet reached the Pyrenees, in the north French troops were along the EIbe, and Danzig and Hamburg were in French hands.
 It requires no argument to demon strte how completely the situation today reproduces that of 1913: Italy TOW comes in as Austria did then, at the moment when a great coalition is making head against one great na- ,tion, for Austria has become little more than German province. Ru- mania, Bulgaria, Greece are bound to follow Italy ultimately, as the smaller German states follow Austria. For then the profit is all in one direc- ton, and the entrance of Italy is firal evidence that in the world out side her own frontiers Germany can not win.
 But there is something more than chance resemblance between the pre- sent and the Napoleonic era. The German idea, which has plunged the whole world into war, is but an adap- tation of the Napoleonic idea of world empire. It was not an accident that century ago practically all of the nations of Europe united to drive Napoleon first out of Germany and Spain and then out of France.
 The one great fact in the world situation of 1915 is the one central fact of the situation of 1913. The battle that is being fought today in Europe is just as clearly battle for liberation as that in 1913 in which Prussia played so honorable part. For generation German scholars, soldiers teachers, princes have been 1c oking- over the frontiers to other lands in which they hoped to plant the German flag, the German, langu- age, the German idea. They have looked upon. the world as Alexander the Great did, they have sought to adopt and adapt the ideas of Napo- leon; for them Corsica has conquered Galilee.''
 In German propagandist literature the nations of the earth have been sentenced to death, decadent France was to vanish, the corrupt British Empire was to fall apart, Russia was to feel the weight of German might rolling her back from the vistula. Turkey was to become q German annex, Austria to join in the Teutonic world, which was to pass the Dar- Ganelles and the Bosporus, follow the Eagdad Railroad across Asia Minor to the Euphrates and approach India Ey the road of Alexander. Italy was to obey German direction and accept French provinces in return. South and Central Africa were to become German lands Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Scandinavia, "Germanic by rnce," were to disappear in the greater Germany.
 History will see far more clearly than we do now the extent, the grand eur and the vitality Of the German iceas But it will see with equal clarity why Europe rose to combat it. It will perceive that the end of sll nations, the subJection of all races 10 one. return to the old Roman idea was inevitable if. Germany con- quered It will perceive that the French, the British the Russians, the Italians, the Serbians,' probably the Rumanians, the Greeks and the Bull sarians, fought Germany ,becaAse the German idea would have been fatal to them. Napoleon abolished states ! and sought to destroy nations, but r1a- tions, the people when their kings failed. overthrow Napoleon, because the spirit of race and nation was un- eonqderable 1t is the same spirit pow that is moving Europe from the Straits of Dover to the Golden Horn. | Nor should Americans permit their vision to be obscured at this time. The German idea is as fatal to what we | care for as to what the English and { the French cherish. The subordina- 1 tion of the indiyua1, the destruction of a free press, of individual liberty, l of All that the Anglo Saxon tradition [