THE WAR IN EUROPE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 845, 19 October 1870, Page 2

THE WAR IN EUROPE.

The Prospect of a General War. [FROM THE OAZETTB. BU MIDI.] The actual situation of Europe may bo thus briefly described:—England, surprised and dissatisfied with the FrancoPrussian war, condems in all her journals what she calls " the aggression of France," and the Times has gone so far as to charge her with a political crime; the greatest enterprise which that paper contemplates for England being for her to keep Belgium from being attacked. Yet, notwithstanding the thoughtlessness of M. Beuedetti—who was wrong to accept the perfidious overtures of M, de Bismarck —we feel quite assured that the Government of France never did add to its other faults any intention to annex the Belgian territory. We are assured that he had decided on the annexation of Belgium to France, wheu the success of the Coup d'Etat of 1851 persuaded him that he might venture upon every risk; but the intelligent opposition of M. de Morny, and still more the certainty of a maritime war with England, made him renounce that attractive dream ; and it was not till after the battle of Sadowa that any one could possibly be lulled to sleep with such *a grand delusion. Tiiey became more ! moderate in the matter of any territorial compensation, and we all know that the Cabinet of the Tuileries confined itself to demanding the restitution of the line of frontier wrested from us by' Prussia in 1851. If King William persisted in his celebrated reply —" Not even a village " it was desired that he should at least concede to us either the duchy of Luxembourg, or the duchy of Deux Points, lately held by the King of Bavaria. All the suggestions of the unfortunate Beuedetti having been rejected or eluded by the Cabinet of Berlin, it must clearly have become an absurdity even to think of getting Belgium. And so M. Emile Ollivier, in his letter to an Englishman, repelled the Prussian accusation with a sincerity and a force which appear to us to be "convincing. If England, at the instance of M. de Bismarck, is not resolved to seek a German quarrel against us, she ought to declare herself to be equally convinced of our sincerity and our gijod faith. In this situation of affairs, Belgium and Holland can only be still more resolved to adhere to their neutrality. Span, too, on her side, lias every reason to do her best to make us forget the ill offices of Prim in the Hohenzollern question ; and as for Italy —our country will agree to accept her promises of an aid, bought only too dearly if we are to pay for it with the price of abandoning Borne ; for, apart from every religious aspect of the question, we should be giving up to her a position admirable in a strategetic point of view—to her as our ally, forsooth, and a pretty ally she is likely to prove 1 This is what we have gained for a power which could-not maintain her ground in the face of Austria, either by iand or by sea. What help then could Italy venture to promise us against Prus-

sia? A great question yet remains—the attitude of Russia, and that i 3 one which may compromise our present relations with the United States. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg has declared that it will preserve a strict neutrality as long as the interests of the Russian Empire do not render it imperative upon that Power to adopt another course. This declaration would be thoroughly satisfactory if Turkey did not lie before it as a prey which has never ceased to tempt Muscovite ambition, and then the great military Powers must of necessity be drawn in. Inferior to Prussia in her armaments, Russia will regain all her superiority ia the presence of the Turks, on whom she may weii desire to take sortie signal re ven_>e. If the war on the Rhine is prolonged, the temptation on tile Danube must become strong and irresistible. What means would Erance then have to oppose such secular ambition, and save Constantinople ? Could England alone be sufficient to prevent that consummation ? Most assuredly not. The more that this question shall be examined, the more it must be seen (what we pointed out in 1863, as in 1870) the sole means by which Prussia can be kept apart from Russia, and punished for any action taken against us. And what is that means ? It is to arm Poland —to cast upon the shores of the Baltic vast supplies of firearms, sufficient, rapidly ami effectually to.

arm 200,000 Poles. la that way, it may be safely predicted, Russia would be certainly vanquished, for an insurrection in Poland would draw after it six millions of Sclavouians now under Austria, and pro* bably ten millions more in Hungary. Without doubt, we must then expect a general war; but it would be one that must result from the deliberate choice of Russia, and a war which England co'sli not prevent from takiog place. The Cause of the French Defeats. The Paris correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes— •*' That the Emperor was utterly unfit for the post of Commander-in-Chief, so rashly assumed by him, that he hesitated, vacillated, listened first to one and then to another, and thus lost ground that could not bo recovered, seems certain; also that ha delayed action, while sending useless embassies to Austria, Italy, and Denmark, imploring the aid of which he so haughtily denied the need in the proclamations to the army and to France, seems to be established by the private advices received at the various Legations. But that Prussia, or rather Germany, aware that the Emperor would, sooner or later, endeavour to secure the favour of the French people by undoing the bases of the future German empire, and giving them the Rhine, has been quietly straining every nerve to prepare for the struggle, and has studied out the problem of beating her enemy with the stern sagacity and painstaking perseverance necessitated by the expectation of this fearful struggle, is also certain. The Prussian officers who followed the great American war appear to have learned the tactics of masking their forces, which so signally contributed to the final success of the North. The French commanders, too conceited to study the lessons of that great struggle, have been completely baffled by this system of covers and surprises. On each occasion they appear to have been completely unaware of the forces massed against them, every tree, every bush, every bit of rising ground being made a cover for men and guns, that seemed to the astonished French troops to spring out of the ground, ur to be raining grape upon them out of the sky. The French divided their forces into seven corps d'arm6e, left them unsupported, and allowed the Germans to come upon them with vastly superior numbers. It is said that at Reichshoffen the troops were short of cartridges. Altogether, the futility of the pretexts for this war, the rashness with which it was rushed into, and the incapacity with which it has been conducted, are exactly on a par with each other." Discipline in the Prussian Army.

M. Jeaanerod,. correspondent of the Temps, who was for a time a captain in the French army, while following too closely the movements of the French advance upon Saarbruck, entered the town, and was taken prisoner. After some forty-eight hours' detention he was allowed to return, and upon recrossiug the frontier was arrested for a Prussian spy. He says that when onee in the forest occupied by the Prussian troops he perceived that he was among the members of a flue army as well as of a nation powerfully organised for war. The attitude of tha men, their subordination in the most trifling movements to a discipline much more strict than that of the French, tho patriotism displayed by all, the constant zeal and vigilance of the officers—a point worthy of the envy of the French—these points struck him forcibly during the whole time he sojourned among them. Neither officers nor men know what a tent is, and he learned that the men had had scarcely anything to eat for the previous tweuty-four hours. After spending a miserable night in the wind and rain, stretched on the ground without sleeping, he was taken to Lebach, passing through, he says, 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. After suffering some fears lest he should be shot as a spy, he was taken before General Goben, who released him with full permission to tell what he had seen, after entertaining him at breakfast, sent him in a carriage toSaarlouis, woere his eyes were bandaged, and he was taken to the frontier

and demised near to Merten, where after having offered twenty francs for a carriage to Buulay, he was arrrested as a spy, and experienced the greatest difficulty in inducing the stupid peasants who arrested him to take him to the nearest outpost of the army. On arriving at Metz he slept, he says, for sixteen hours without awakening,

FEARFUL COLLISION AND' LOSS OF LIFE AT SEA. The particulars of a very fearful collision near the Equator, which resulted in the foundering of the Royal Berkshire, of Sunderland, and the loss of seven lives, have been received. The ill-fated vessel left Port Louis, Mauritius, about the 9th of April, with a cargo of sugar for England. She crossed the line at midnight on May 27, in lat. 23 44 W. ', and on the 28th, at 1.40 a.m., weather thick, with rain, wind at W. (the ship going between four and five knots, and heading about N. by E. J E. on port tack), the look-out man reported a light on the port bow, which proved to be a red' light within a quarter of a mile. Captain Grant, the commander, came on deck at the moment. The helm had been put hard aport, and the captain repeated the order to put the helm hard up. In the course of a minute, and whilst the ship was still falling-off, a green light came in view, and almost instantly the strange sail struck the barque right abeam on the port side, and she immediately began to sink. Six of the crew who were forward in the Royal Berkshire had just time to jump on board the stranger, which proved to be the ship Bengal, of Boston, United States, Captain Burgess. She lowered her boats, and remained by the spot until after daylight. Two more of the crew were picked up on a spar the next morning by a boat from the Bengal. Those who perished were the master, Captain Grant, and his sister, two seamen, and three apprentices. Captain Burgess, of the Bengal, treated the survivers with every kindness, and landed them at Rio on June 16.—European Mail, August 12.