REMEMBER 1871!

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 70, 17 December 1918, Page 6

REMEMBER 1871!

GERMAN TRICKERY WITH A TREATY. Object-lessons are the best; let us see (writes Mr. Richard Wliiteing in the "Daily Mail") how the Germans dealt with an offer of armistice when the pro : sent, conditions were reversed and they were throttliifg France in the war of 1870-1. She was done. M. Thiers had made the tour of Europe without finding an ally; and lie and Jules Favre sought Bismarck with a plea for a stoppage on all fronts to negotiate terms of peaco and surrender. It was granted, -nd they met the man who had lured them into the war with with the of the- Ems telegram, but who now, with all the cards in his hand, seemed to have no temptation to any f,urtliFF- exercise of his favourite vice v He drew up the agreement and presented it for their immediate signature. It purported to contain a full list of all the French armies in being; and never doubting that this was even too elaborate in its detail, Jules Favre, who had the matter in hand, took it as read, and with Thiers appended his. signature. They were bowed out, and left with the only consolation possible, that the morrow would bring with it a surcease of profitless slaughter." What was their- horror to find that it brought only a savage.attack on General Bourbaki's army of eighty thousand men penned up against the Swiss frontier and at the mercy of a German force of double their number. A cry went up, not from France alone, but from all the world; and the-French plenipotentiaries sought the conqueror again, almost with clasped hands, to know the lneaiiihg of the breach of faith. Bismarck was ready for them. If they would kindly consult again, he said, the paper they had just signed, they would .find that there was no mention of Bourbaki's force in the list of particulars. In other words, he had diddled them again, this time with another lie in the form of a sin of. omission. It had done its work; Bourbaki was driven across the Swiss frontier and of course disarmed and interned, and so wiped off the list of the armies of France. >