Year: 1870




great and peaosable races living in the very
centre Of Europe" These are memorable
words, which will bear frequent repetition.
Whether they fully apply to the Emperor
Napoleon III. Of France or to the pretended
statesmen behind his throne, who insisted
upon war and claimed that it alone could
"crown the ediloe" Of imperial glory, matters
are concerned. The invocation of Divine
resentment and Of human disapproval is just,
wherever the answer to this solemn appeal
may have already fallen or yet may fall. All
who provoke or precipitate war, especially in
the very midst of peaceful communities, are
amenable to the one grand rule-they are
conspirators against the happiness of humanity
and rebels to the law Of God


Let us transfer ourselves for q moment to
the extreme frontier of France, on the little
river Saar, and close to the main line of ope-
ratiOns selected by the French and Prussian
armies. We will put the date at the 10th of
July, or less than one brief month ago. We
are ut the Inn door Of the msll town Of Sarre-
guemines, looking out beyond the slender
stream that separates us from Prussian soil.
The Saar winds pacidly between its low, fat
banks, and disappears gracefully" says the
French correspondent, whose eyes we borrow
for the occasion, ''behind screen Of pop
lars On the other side is neat little
cottage home, with white curtains and
yellow blinds at the windows and in
the tiny garden that slopes down to the river
side peasant sauaters quietly, pipe in mouth,
caress.ng his dog, who gambols beside him.
Peeping over the green top Of a gentle
activity Is the sharp spire of small village
church. Near by is wide field of waving
grain, and on the rustic road that descends to
the edge Of the SAar is a hay wagon Of quaint
construction, drawn lazily by four sleek oxen.
The driver, in blouse and pantaloons of
coarse linen, his brows screened with a straw
hat, lazily swings his ox-goad and huns q
country song of the Fatherland. Suddenly
the scene Is enlvened by group Of chubby,
faxen-haired children, who emerge from the
cottage and clatter down the garden walk, the
youngest clinging to the hand of an elder
sister, herself not six years old. A grim
| Zouave who is near us on the French bank
leans against the viue-covered doorpost Of the
inn where we are standing and involuntariy
smiles as he looks out upon this pastoral little
picture In an epemy's country. An enemy?
Poor little home on the verdant slope on the far
ther bank-does 1t shelter enemies? And those
humble peasants, all unconscious Of the wrong
| that even now holds murder and ruin over
| ofc bNo Ill 10 lin
in the sunshine, are they also to be the victims
Of the Internal ryis which madmen call ''glo-
rious war;" Even so. Behind yon green
meadows and poplars and waving grain fields
lies the gathering might Of an indignant
nation, while here are concentrating the mar
tial terrors of an empire famous for its fearful
energy in warfare. A few days more and all
this peaceful scene will have disappeared
these banks will be stained with human blood
fire and havoc will have scattered forever that
humble home and its helpless occupants-the
peasant and his little ones-and all that makes
the domestic groups at which we now gaze so
charming, even In their unpretehding humble
ness, to the true heart.


Yet this Is no mere fancy sketch. Such Is
an accurate portrayal, although feebly given,
OF just the scenes that were witnessed, only the
other day, along the streams and in the smil-
ing valleys that unite, not separate, the ''fair
land Of France" and thrifty, hard working
Rhenish Prussia and Bavaria. All who have
travelled in that fine agricultural region will
recall them, with sigh of regret, as among
the most pleasing Of the pictures with which
real experience or rural description may have
stored their memories. When we reflect, then,
that it is to this profound peace Gin the very
centre OF Europe"-to thousands Of humble
and happy homes like this, to whole regions
of cultivated country, that the horrible iniquity
of sudden war is bringing ''the blackness o.
Darkness" with desolation, moaning and
death; when to this we conjure uT
the vision Of penury among the work
men and their families In the crowd.
ed towns; the vice and degradation thai
follow 1t; the bereaved and broken hearts
the widowhood and worse; the orphanage
the beggary, the open and ferocious crime--ir
fine, the endless miserics that must inevitably
follow close upon the march and counter.
march of armies that massacre each other in
the harvest fields and by the very hearthstones
and in the shadow of church steeples which
mark the abode of Europe's most dense and
alas most Christian population-what voice,
could it be heard over the whole vast circuit Of
the universe, would be loud enough to denounce
befttingly the shame and the horror Of this
outrage against God and man which rulers
make who "batton like butchers dogs upon
the garbage of the shambles while the slau9h-
ter of the good and brave goes on around
| themI"


But We may still fervently offer up heartfelt
thanks that just in proportion to the fury OF