The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2453, 27 December 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1870.

The telegraphic news received via Suez adds very little to our knowledge of the progress of the Fraiico-Prussiau War. It seems to bo raging in different parts of France with slightly varying success. As far as we can judge of the state of affairs, France’s misfortune has been want of unity between the army and the people. The late standing army was identified with the Empire ; and that form of government overturned, both officers and soldiers appear to have considered their engagement at an end, and to have preferred a Prussian prison to defending the Republic. It would have been wise on the part of the Prussians to have maintained their first view of the wav, consistently. When it the Prussian Government professed they were not warring against France, but against Napoleon. When therefore tiiat immense force which had maintained him on the throne was disposed of, they should have listened to any reasonable proposals for peace ; but refusing to do SO on such grounds as are now put forth, they have placed themselves in the wrong, and made the war one of conquest. Neither is it by any means certain that they can ultimately succeed. It seems to us that they must be prepared to make enormous sacrifices of wealth and life if they intend ultimately to be the victors. They are now playing precisely the same game as European monarchs have found so costly in all time. Without consulting the population of the Rhenish provinces forming the French 'Von tier, they make the cession of them to Germany a condition of peace, under the pretence that possession of them will form a barrier against future encroachments. It is quite likely that the people may be as safe and as prosperous under German as under French rule—perhaps more so—but the reasoning seems to us absurd. So far from those provinces changing hands being security for peace, the transfer appears far mote likely to lead to future war, unless it be supposed that France will be so impoverished and reduced in population by her more restricted area as not to bo able to endeavor to regain the lost territory. One lesson, at any rate, may be fairly learnt from the events that have taken place—a lesson that history has taught for ages : standing armies are n®t to be relied on for national defence when their leaders arc captive or dead. They have no interest in common with the citizens. We are not by any means certain that if the Germans were to withdraw from Franco without further struggle, it would settle affairs there. Some common object is required to unite them as a nation, now that the empire is overthrown; and, dearly as they are paying for it, some form of government must be adopted that, being accepted as a necessity, may be sustained as a national benefit when these troubles are over. Were there no foreign war there would be civil dessension. We fancy the Prussian Government has succeeded beyond the intentions of King William, whose interest as a monarch it was to have retained monarchy in France. The blow struck against Napoleon was a stroke against monarchical institutions that will one day recoil upon the smiter in his descendants. The Russian dispute will in all likelihood be resolved without war. There are some wrong-headed people in the world who will see in a peaceable solution of it that England’s influence has sunk, and that she is no longer a leading power in Europe. 'Some of the Home papers very sensibly point out the folly of such an assumption. They claim as one of tiie blessings of Mr Gladstone’s Premiership—Whig rule, as they call it—that England is kept out of war, and yet her honor is maintained : whereas, bad the Tories been in power, she would have been involved in a quarrel in which she is not in the slightest degree interested. Those sticklers for England’s supremacy do not seem to imagine she has anything to do but to act the part of an armed policeman amongst nations, and that her duty is to take one side or the other in every fray. Fortunately, up to this time, wiser counsels prevail; and while other nations are busily engaged in mutual destruction, and quarrelling about a thousand square miles of .territory, the British race is quietly taking possession of countries as large as Europe, and laying the foundations of nations united in a federal bond of identity, of language, manners, style of thought, and freedom of institutions—nations that are spreading over half the habitable globe. The conquests of peace far transcend the triumphs of war.