Middlesbrough & Stockton Gazette and General Advertiser. — 1871-01-27 (Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, England)

WAR VICTIMS' FUND.  NEVER in the history of mankind have the nations of Europe presented so grand, nay, so sublime, a spectacle as they do at the present moment. France, having been misled by her chief, misguided by her own arrogance—(the promptings of a long course of hot-bed growth and ignerant assumption, by 'which she had been led to believe herself the Power of Europe, the centre of civilisation, and the slumbering war-giant, .who could at any time change the destini;i.s of the world)—France, now humbled by misfortunes, awjtke to her own follies and mistakes of the past, having cast down (all too ruthlessly) the image she had set up, has put on her armour, has purged her house, and, with an energy, a vigour, •a simple purity of motive, fights hard and manfully for life—for life as a nation, for La Belle France, for her fields and her vineyards, for her homes and her hearths, not for victory. Germany—United Germany— roused by the attack of France, banded together, for the love and in defence of "Fatherland' pours her victorious thousands into the quiet plains of France. She gives her best blood for her nationality, she spares neither money nor men, she smites rtv4i,tles.sly, and presses on— not so much in triumph as in deadly earnest. The peace so often broken shall be broken no more by France, the fur fields of Germany should no more be trampled down by the feet of strangers, France shall lay down the weapons of war before Germany sheaths the sword. All honour to both nations for what nobility of sentiment prompts their present actions, but pity— oh, how pitiful !—for the errors that mark their ruyective courses, and the miseries which are the results. France forgets, in her clinging to her ideal, how she outraged decency and dignity at the beginning of this awful *tar, by her vain boasting. Germany, flushed with victory, forgets her first object, presses on with eager vengeance in her eyes, and soils thv. laurels which her just defence had won. And what of England I The whole country was stirred to its depths till our Government announced its policy of a strict neutrality. The position was most difficult, both to assert and maintain; but we rejoice to be able to record the fact that it has been maintained most scrupulously. In spite of reflections and objurations from both s'des, we have, as a nation, maintained a strictly neutral position ; and sow —now that the sorrow succeeds the strife, now that the misery follows th- murder—we are' indeed gloriously neutral. With lyith hands we are rushing out to aid the combatants. Earnest hearts are prompting willing hands in labours of love; and we are neutral inasmuch as we succour all that need, without regard to colours or to crest. First, we had the fund in aid of the sick and wounded, and a stream of gold flowed into hands who did their best, under the guidance of Colonel Loyd Lindsay and many other true workers, to make it helpful and merciful. Then we had, at the hist uice of the Daily News—let the press everywhere feel and acknowledge the honourable precedence—s fund commenced to help those who, guiltless of anything save the desire to live at peace with all, were yet trodden down under the relentless heel of war; their homes destroyed, their fields ravaged their future a desolation. Harmless,inneeent, and happy peasants—men who love the soil— who live in their little holdings, and to whom tqe land is as dear almost as the mother who bore them—now look mournfully on their ruined homesteads, their little vineyards desolated, their very lives a waste. To succour these in their extremity was the object brought prominently forward by the Daily News, aid they were soon followed with the clear and defined action which ever marks all they do by the Society of Friends. The "War Victims Fund "—a most appropriate name, indeed—was commenced, and, as we learn from the pub.