A Word for France.

Cromwell Argus, Volume 1, Issue 51, 2 November 1870, Page 7

A Word for France.

“An Englishman,” writing to an Australian exchange, says : “ A strong disposition seems to be abroad amongst your contemporaries, English and Colonial, for representing Napoleon as a fiend, and the present victorious monarch aa a saint ; whilst the Prince Imperial an • the French people, the Crown Prince and the Comma people, are respectively spoken of as an uuf.cling boy, a collection of reprobates, a model of conjugal devotion, and patterns of chastity. The London Spectator, referring to the ‘baptism of lire,’ gives certain bitter lines relative to the young Prince, who, if aught can be gathered from the accounts of that baptism, betrayed anything but an indifference to the sufferings of t;ro wounded, shedding tears as ha did when witnessing the first death. By what course of ratiocination has the English Press arrived at this frame of mind, so hostile to France and so laudatory of the victors in a few battles, wherein they numbered, with res«oet to the foe, as three to one? Have the English people already iorgotten when, almost to a man, the p pulaliun denounced the invasion of poor little Denmark by the joint forces of Piussia and Austria—when an English House of Commons rushed into the lobbies cheering like ravdmeu on the news that the gallant forces of King Christian had gained a naval victory over the superior forces of his German enemies ? or when tins paragraph and the following lines appeared in the London Punch, to be applauded from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s : —‘The King of Piussia has dared to insult the English people by decorating Prince Alfred with the Order of the Prussian Eagle.’ Take back, and in thy dastard face, As hard as Britain’s might can mug, The badge that would a nog disgrace, Thou caitiff, that art named a king. Thy brow is redder than the hand ot Cain; tihait thou—he slew but one— Murderer of the infant and the Dane, Presume to deck Victoria’s sou. etc. &c. me. Or if the Prussians generally are so devoted to their better halves, and hold that the mania go vow should be kept so inviolably as was staled in the Telegraph of this morning, what encase is there for certain scions of royalty in Prussia* of whom newspaperparagraps related some weeks ago that nut one of them had escaped a whipping, as a result of intrigues with other men's wives ? I have no wish whatever, sir, to tan tna hame in this unhappy quarrel, only let us look matters iu the face as they are, and above aJ. let us give even to ihe vanquished that fair play to adhere to which as a principle is the pride and boast of au Englishman.'’