FIRING THE HEARTS OF THE MASSES.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2303, 23 September 1870, Page 2

FIRING THE HEARTS OF THE MASSES.

The firing the hearts of the masses is just as much a part of the war as the drilling of soldiers or the preparation of arms and ammunition. A de- laration of war is a mere piece of paper by which very little can be effected if the people who arc to carry it on have not been worked to the due pitch rf extravagant and patriotic enthusiasm. The moral power which a belligerent can wield is almost as important as the weight of metal which be can bring to the contest. We accordingly find that nearly all great conflicts arc ushered in with a grand pyrotechnical display of falsehoods, in which neither side is checked by any very serious scruples. The great object is to get to the field with the proper spirit. The battle once opened, the rest may be safely left to the rivalry, the pas lion for glory and the destructiveness of the contending hosts. After the first discharge of artillery no one wh > has engaged in the fight cares a button whether bis side is in the right or the wrong. His friends or relatives have boon slain—a favorite commander has fallep—au injury and an insult have been inflicted on the Fatherland, and thereafter there is no other thought predominant but the desire for victory. Or perchance they are beaten at the first onset. It matters, therefore very little who was at fault in precipitating the collision. That disgrace has to be wiped out ief<lTc we can have any calm reasoning or deliberation, and so mankind goes cutt'ng and slashing itself, and will so keep on to the end of time ; or until poor humanity is reconstructed by some higher power. We arc not at all, therefore, surprised to Darn that there has been something like sharp-practice in getting up the avar which has just been commenced, or that a systematic effort has been made by the Gove nment to keep Europe in the dark in r lation to the state of feeling in Franco, and France as to the actual conditio 1 of its own public mind. That is the way in which matters of that kind are usually managed. Of course nobody would be silly enough to believe that there was not an individual in France who had the independence to offer an objection to a wav so suddenly brought upon the nation. The natural policy for the party of the Left was to growl, and it did, but only, it uid be seen, hypothetically. M._ Thiers himself grounded his opposition mainly upon the fact that war had been declared not upon a telegram, but a copy of a telegraphic despatch procured by French spies, which set forth that William of Prussia not only refused to receive the last communication which the French Minuter was directed to present him, but returned that answer by the very significant instrumentality of an aide tie camp : for be it known to all the world, the cause of the war is not so much the candidacy for the throne of Spain of Captain Leopold HohcnzoTern, as the rudeness to which the French Minister was subjected, when that matter was under consideration. _ It is an event which happens while negotiations for peace were going 011, that has produced the war. But neither M. Thiers, nor Jules Favre nor Gambetta, will be able to hold out lopg in the position whicl| they have assumed. The first'battle that occurs no mated; what may be its result, will force them on the war. side. If it should be a victory for French arms, they will be carried off by the enthusiasm of the moment—if it should be a defeat a menaced and bleeding Fatherland will claim and receive all their sympathies. Knowing fall well the curious 'phases through which humanity passes when war breaks out, it was, perhaps, nothing but a very venial offence, to suppress the preliminary fault-finding, or to resort to a strict censorship, so as to prevent a demoralization which might prove fatal at the very threshhold. War is not a moral enterprise, _ a in] cannot very well be supported strictly moral means. The heart-firing business baa to be res-Tied to, until the desired amount of combustion is reached. It i 4 possibly that. neither yyill be jloiuvl to be absolutely free from those practices,