The War.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 363, 26 April 1856, Page 5

The War.

PROPOSALS FOE PEACE.

[From the Times, January B.] Will Russia accept the terms offered to her by the Allies? They readied her on the 28th of last mouth, and as yet the telegraph records nothing. She has neither thrown the messenger into a well, as the ancient Greeks did the emissaries of the Great King when they came to demand from them earth and water, nor run him up to the yardarm of one of those frigates which though secluded from the sea, may yet perform indifferently well the functions of a gallows, nor dismissed him without an answer. Russia is silent, and we presume, therefore, is meditating, and in the interests of peace the more profoundly those intrusted with her destinies meditate, the better. We cannot, indeed, expect that she will hurry herself to gratify our impatience. She has our secret, and may reasonably take her time before she imparts to us hers. A simple " No" would have been soon sent, and the fact that it has not been uttered for ten days is some proof that " No'1 does not fly so readily to her lips as her English admirers and supporters would have led us to suspect. Doubtless, her wary diplomatists are turning over and over the propositions of the allies, and seeking for a soft place on which they may hang an assent, a negotiation, and then a refusal. At any rate, we can wait, for we are in the position of a chess-player who has got the' best of the game, and ought not to rap the board with his knuckles if his antagonist be rather long in choosing between the embarrassmants which are set before him. Russia has, indeed, much to consider. We are now beginning to see, and she to feel something of those effects which the fall of Sebastopol was sure, sooner or later, to produce. There is a perceptible alteration in the attitude of die smaller States of Europe. The Scandinavian kingdoms have taken a decided step in advance by entering into the alliance of the Allies, who are the avowed enemies of Russia. What is more exiruordiuury still, those Slates lliat appeared to he the most entirely under the control of ihe mod era iMacedon—Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurteiiburg—are (altering in their allegiance, and, true to the principle of being strong upon the stronger side, are afflicted with doubt whether their side he not now the weaker. The great passive and inert bulk of Germany is bestirring itself in a lumbering and hesitating manner; visions of hesitating manner ; visions £of national unity, of merging interests in a truly German policy,

of substituting patriotism for individualism, and many abstruse logical entities for many other equally abstruse, flii before the German mind, shadowed forth in pamphlets of pages innumerable and sentencesjinterminable, and the duty of considering whether something having some remote relation to conceited action ought not to be considered of is enforced with the subtlest diatetics and most recondite terminology of Kant and ETagel. Germany, if not wholly awake, is certainly not entirely asleep ; if a little fuddled, it is not entirely inebriated ; if a tittle giddy with tobacco smoke, is not wholly stupified ; and is, indeed, gradually awaking to the conviction that she has talked and written rather too much, and done and adventured rather 100 little. The Russian mind has never evinced much proueness to metaphysics, but enough is disclosed to occasion some anxiety as to the permanence of an influence which, until the war came, she believed to be indestructible. Nor is it easy to say what effect these symptoms of incipient waking may have upon the counsels of Austria and of Prussia. To Austria such an awakening of the public mind is no inconsiderable encouragement to advance in the course on which she has just entered, since it not only promises to her that support for which she has so long been seeking, but gives an earnest that, far as her policy has fallen short of her duties and obligations, it has still .been of some advantage to her in comparison with the far less'exc usable tactics of her rival, Prussia. The Court of Berlin, on the other hand, seems to be threatened not only with a descent from the position of a great Power, but with complete isolation from those States, the support of which she has with so much crooked policy been courting. These things must tend to convince the one German Power that it has been friendly over much to the Czar, and the other that safety and ambition alike point to a course of more decided hostility. The work of 40 years of intrigue is being rapidly undone, and a further continuance of the war bids fair to uproot an influence in Germany which 40 years of like intrigue and corruption may not restore.

Yet we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the Emperor of Russia, though he hesitates to refuse, will make up his mind to accept the terms offered him by the allies. In the interior of the kingdom the German party, usually regarded as the friends of peace, has been prostrated; and the Old Russians, the implacable advocates of war and conquest, reign in their stead. Out of Russia, the Belgian organ of the Czar keeps up bravely the note of defiance, and challenges the allies to try the fortune of a campaign in the North. With great ability, and with not more unfairness and effrontery than the exigencies of a rather unmanageable case demand, this journal strives to create dissension between Frunce and England, and to prove to both that any hope of success in the Baltic is utterly futile and absurd. To be sure, it a little overargues its case when it states that the Baltic is only open four months : but there is, no doubt, great justice in what it says with reference to the impossibility of wintering in those inhospitable regions. Since the lime of Charles XII., no enemy's army has wintered in the dreary confines of Russia, and the success of that experiment was not so •Treat as to induce its repetition ; but when the Nord tells us that we can only scratch the feet or pull the hair of Russia its metaphors carry it a little ton far. Our scratches have drained the arteries of the giant, and, though applied at the extremities, have been only the more effective o n that account.

We anticipate, then, from Russia neither a refusal nor an acceptance, but such a modified counter-proposition as may give lise to negotiations, and enable her to play off upon us the devices of another mystification and another conference. Unless there be a broad and clear acceptance of every main pomt —unless the proposal relate only to matters of secondary importance, and such as might fairly and reasonably form mailer of di(Terence between negotiators agreed on essentials, we trust that such insidious overtures will be peremptorily rufused. On the conduct of our own Government we have no doubt, and as little of the course which a sense of his own dignity and interest will induce the Emperor of the French to pursue. It must, indeed, be abundantly evident that it is absolutely requisite for the very existence of our Government that it should meet Parliament with a decided announcement

of peace or war. In announcing either Government may reasonably expect the support of the nation, but a repetition of the uncertainty of last April, the House and country cannot, and will not tolerate. War to be successful must be carried on not only with the assent, but with enthusiasm of the people, and enthusiasm cannot be maintained if we are perpetually halting in mid career, and teaching our friends and enemies alike to believe that we are unequal in spirit, if not in strength, to the task we hare undertaken. It were presumptuous to speculate as to whether it would be for the ultimate peace of Europe and the world that peace should now be concluded. It may be that an immediate cessation from toil and danger may be dearly purchased by giving Russia breathing time eie her strength be thoroughly exhausted ; but we cannot be wrong in thinking that whatever be the merits of either alternative, the course that halts between the two is fraught with mischief and disaster.