THE POSITION OF FRANCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 867, 15 November 1870, Page 2

THE POSITION OF FRANCE.

[daily southern cross.] France may have siuued much, but she has suffered much; and qveu Jiussia, against which France drew the sword to stay the pre-determined policy of the Czars, will not hear of dismemberment; and it may be that the time is near when Prussia will regret that she was deaf to pleas of mercy. It should be bered that almost all our intelligence of operations in France, and especially around the capital, have come to iw through Prussian channels, Communications being intercepted, but one courier from Pans has found his way to England, and he does not speak; very despondingly of his beleaguered comrades. And, dark though the prospect seems, France has seen darker days before, and when she had fewer sympathisers. The hungry shoeless uuarined soldiers of the Eevoiut tion had not one friend among all the European Powers, and yet France then stood at bay against the world; and ic may be premature to say that the children of such sires are conquered now, T»ie investment of Paris is* saiq to have required twelve hundred thousand rneu tu be complete. Meantime the Government; of France, though a fugitive to Tours amj thence to Bordeaux, is grappling with fste, and all the south of France is brisk ling with arms, ft should be remembered that Paris is now no longer France, and even the fall of the capital would be very far from, the conclusion of the war. Should a general aupear such as terrible disasters have produced in France —a. man in wbom the people would conijde as. ihey have confided in generals before—even yet that warlike and impetuous people, driven to extremities though they are, might roll back the tide of war, anci make Prussia regret the exorbitant de-. mands presented to defeated France in. the, (ace of indignant Europe^