Year: 1870

that the different spirit Of the time and the


different state of Europe mako inevitable.


She has already come to count, not whether


she can subdue her enemy, but whether she
can resist him, and whether her very capital


can be saved from his grasp. To-day Marshal


MacMahon is reported at st. Dizier, and the


very name Of this place, where Napoleon
threw himself upon the communications of the
allies, suggests painful resemblance to those
melancholy days when even the efforts Of that
great soldier were in vain. Out of this war
there is certainly no triumphant way for
France. There is no glorious escape by
victory. What escape, then, is there? She
must make the best peace she can.


As to va. 3 the best peace there will be
very different views, even in France-for the
imperalists. the Orleans party and the republi-
cans, cannot be reconciled in case in which
one must have the preference to the exclusion
of the others It is certain that the republic
is not at hand, and this would be the same
even II Louis Blanc did not magnanimously
refuse to go to Paris lest his appearance there
should excite revolt against all constituted
authority. Prussia will have no republics
within the sphere in which her arms are
omnipotent She could not be moved from
this point if there were any desirous to move
her, and we cannot suppose there are. Russia


has no fondness for republics, neither has


Austria nor Italy and as for England, the only


one she ever did sincerely love and admire.
was the republic of ''the late United
States" 1t was said some days since
that England, in the event Of negotiation,


would favor yielding to France entire freedom
Of choice as to the form and the material of
her government. If this were done would the
republic find friend even in the French
nation? Suppose pye6iscitum were taken
with the republic as one of its possible results,
would majority or plurality of the French
people choose it? Such vote, decided yea
or nay, would at least be very instructive, and
would clear up those knotty points of French
history whether or not the many movements in
the name of the republic since 1898 have had
a spontaneous impulse from the people, or
whether, as has been persistently declared by
their opponents, they were all maneuvred in
socialist clubs and conclaves of the enemies of
good order.


1t seems to be concluded at several points
in Europe that whatever else may come out of
this war at least that Caesar is dead, with none
so poor to do him reverence-that the Napo-
leonic empire is ended forever. 1t will be
strange exemplifcation of the way the world
wags if, indeed, this King Of Prussia, who is
merely the military fgurehead of his army,
shall really stamp out what was founded by
the greatest soldier Europe ever saw, and
that, as thus between Drawn and brain, the lat
ter shall be nowhere. All our stories from
Europe to this effect have come from sources
in which we know that the wish is father to
the thought; yet these men only say earlier
what others must say little later. Facts
give the ultimate verdict by which
the world must stand and vote
Of France taken to-day, even if the
last vote were an honest one, would not
give the same decision. France wants a gov
ernment that can either avoid war or win when
it comes. Failing the republic and the
empire, an Orleans sovereign is perhaps inevi-
table This will satisfy Prussia, Russia and
England, and cannot dissatisfy Italy or Aus
tria. 1t will also meet the wishes of, perhaps,
the strongest party in France, when strength
is measured by any more rational way than
that of the 1,lebiscitum. 1t was the strongest
point Of the Bonapartes that they, in the his
tory Of France, were the only middle term
between the impossible extremes of the demo-
Gratis and the legitimists but this is charac
ter that to-day falls more decidedly to the
Orleans princes, who have assiduously courted
the popular attention and good will, and have
gained both.


There will doubtless be territorial changes.
Prussia will claim to cut off from France as
much as France would have gained from Prus-
sia if she had secured the Rhine frontier.
Russia's protest is heard against this, and also
the proposition of England, aimed to meet the
views of both sides-to please Prussia by
reducing France, and to please Russia by pre-
venting the aggrandizement Of Prussia. This
proposition is for the erection Of another Bel
gium-another State to figure on the upper
Rhine as Belgium does on the lower Rhine.
Alsace and Lorraine are to constitute this
State. Thus is Frances chalice COM
mended to her own lips. The first Napoleon
made the Confederation Of the Rhine to be
barrier for France on the German side of the
river, and now Germany will exact, perhaps,
the material guarantee of similar barrier on
the French side of the river. With peace
involving this France cannot be content; but
to the vanquished. Peace, however, that
involves such heartburniug is not so lasting
as some others.