She had not, however, as yet fallen upon an opportunity for fully re-establishing the military fame, which had suffered so much at the outset of the revolutionary war, and at Jena. She obtained little martial credit for the victory, morally so inglorious, which she won against Denmark. When the time came for her meeting Austria in arms, the friendly spectators trembled for the result, and the hostile awaited it with exultation. Europe then underwent a great disenchantment. But when once more she had to don her armour against France, again a tremor thrilled through her well wishers; even her own valiant people, while resolved to do or die, and hopeful as to the result they might finally obtain by a dogged perseverance, nevertheless anticipated a dark and stormy opening to the war. Nay, we believe that if the heart and mind of her rulers could have been read, many even among them, though without doubt as to their duty, were not sanguine as to the impending destiny of their country. In part, this may have been due to the belief that France had gained some ten or fourteen days in point of preparation; but it must have been mainly owing to the natural and modest apprehension of a conflict of life and death with the first military Power in Europe, which had enjoyed its primacy on the continent for two centuries and a half, which during almost the whole of the revolutionary war had seemed to hold every nation in the hollow of its hand, and which finally succumbed, at the close of that great struggle, only under the double force of nature madly defied amid the snows of Russia, and of the combination of a crowd of foes. Again has come upon us the shock of surprise, and with a violence never felt before. The wealth of France is greater than ever. Her high courage has not declined. The splendour of her martial traditions has been such, that she came into the arena almost with the halo of invincibility around her. The chassepots are admitted to have commanded ranges entirely beyond the power of the needle-gun. Her mitrailleuses were met by no corresponding arm, and are allowed to be, for certain uses and in certain positions, most murderous instruments. Nor, perhaps, if performance in war could be measured by the absolute amount of loss in life and limb inflicted on an enemy, were her achievements ever greater. Yet, as each well-aimed blow descended on her, it has done its deadly work. Straining every nerve to repair her losses, every new reinforcement that she sent forwards did but add to them; until at length,

'In ten great battles ruining, overthrown,'*

Tennyson's Guinevere.'

she arrived at the recent surrender of the Emperor, and the capitulation of ninety thousand soldiers, now prisoners of war, awaiting in Germany the commands of those whose capital they once thought to enter on another errand, and with a different bearing. There is, indeed, something almost of miracle or of magic in the administrative perfection, to which the combined action of necessity and sagacity have worked up the Prussian system. Or, if we dispense with the language of figure, and if we set aside for the moment the moral of the case, we surely must conclude that the army of the North German Confederation has been brought by the skill and wisdom of its rulers to the highest mechanical perfection ever known in history.

The nation has put forth its whole power, with all the order and symmetry that belong to bureaucracy or to absolutism, and with all the energy and fire that belong to freedom. In Prussia proper, and now as it appears through all Germany, the most consummate army ever known is put into the field with the greatest expedition, and at the smallest cost. Besides all the known and usual departments of activity, those services which lie outside the common routine have all been studied, and all developed with an equal prudence and care. The quantity and quality of the artillery have been alike remarkable, and have, like the skilful massing of superior numbers, contributed largely to success. If the steady fighting of the Germans is admired, their flying service, which scours the country, presents itself at a thousand points at once, and makes perfect the stock of information, is viewed with nothing less than wonder. Other armies can destroy a railway; the Germans carry the means, in men and tools, of making one. It seems that even gravedigging is provided for by a special corps. We need not be surprised, then, if their commissariat has fed in a foreign land, without apparent difficulty, more than double the number of mouths for which the French had to provide on their own soil; a duty, which they did not perform without grievous complaints of insufficiency and failure. Every man seems to be in his place, and to know his proper business. The finished intelligence, of large reach and measure, which presides over the whole strategic operations of Von Moltke, is proportionally represented in every military organism from the corps d'armée to the company. Miscarriage or mistake seems no more to adhere to their ordinary operations, than to the working of the machinery of a cotton factory. But when any of these masses are resolved into their parts, the units, too, of which they are formed have each had their separate training,

VOL. CXXXII. NO. CCLXX.

PP

6

Un

and each is capable of acting alone in his own sphere. doubtedly, the conduct of the campaign on the German side has given a marked triumph to the cause of systematic popular education. Diu magnum,' says Sallust, intra mortales certa'men fuit, vine corporis, an virtute animi, res militaris magis procederet.' The mind has now gained a point in the competition with its material partner, its muddy vesture of decay.' But the moral of the case must not be set aside; and moral forces, too, it must be owned, wrought at the outset with an undivided efficacy in favour of North Germany. The material and mechanical process could not have been so consummate unless it had been backed by the elements of a higher strength; and the world is not yet so depressed, nor the law of the stronger so absolute, as that physical power and the calculating faculties should alone determine the great issues of combat. There was of old some secret might which enabled Greece to withstand Darius and Xerxes, and Switzerland to withstand German and Burgundian invaders, and Scotland to withstand England, and America to withstand both. The sense of a good, that is, speaking generally, a defensive cause, of fighting for hearth and home, of delivering no blow except in answer to one given, or intended and prepared, is not only a moral warrant, but a real and fertile source of military energy. A strong undoubting persuasion of being in the right, of itself, though it be not omnipotence, is power.

This immense advantage the Government of France most rashly and wrongly gave over into the hand of its already formidable antagonist. War was proclaimed and waged by France. Doubtless the spirit of her soldiery and of her people has been aroused by a sense of duty to their country. But even the sense of duty to our country cannot have that moral completeness which is necessary for the entire development of human energies, unless the country, which commands the services of her children, has herself obeyed the higher laws of public right. The Frenchman capable of reflection could hardly escape from the sad alternative-either the war was aggressive, or it was dynastic; in the one case Germany was to be a victim, in the other France. What, then, was the immediate plea, which France alleged for this deadly quarrel?

Though it is painful to lay open a dismal chapter in the history of a great and famous nation, yet truth compels the admission that a spirit of perverse and constant error seems to have governed from the first the ruling powers of France in the conduct of the diplomatic controversy, which preceded and ushered in the war. We shall state the facts as they appear

on the face of the papers presented by Parliament. It appears as though an adverse doom were hovering in the air, and a lying spirit had gone forth from the courts of heaven to possess and misguide, with rare and ineffectual exceptions, the prophets of the land. The late French Government, for whose faults that gallant people is now paying such tremendous forfeit, selected first its own ground of quarrel. In this it had no small advantage. The foreign policy of Prussia, if it has been sans peur, has assuredly not been sans reproche. One stain upon that policy it scarcely lay in the power of the Imperial Government to notice, for, when in 1863-4 the British Government proposed a combination of the two Powers to prevent any violent settlement of the question of Schleswig-Holstein, their proffer was very decidedly declined, and the German aggression was left to take its course. Still it is believed that acuteness and skill far less than France has always at her command might have availed to show at least plausible grounds of complaint against Prussia for her proceedings in and since 1866, and to represent some of them as constituting offences against the law and menaces to the tranquillity of Europe. Be this as it may, that chapter of argument remains unopened. Prior misconduct of Prussia, though it might have been brought into the account, yet actually constitutes no part of the res gesta which laid the ground for the war. It was the candidature of the Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the crown of Spain on which, and on which alone, the Imperial Government chose to raise the quarrel.

Now, viewing the case with a cold impartiality, and deeply impressed, as we have ever been, with the value and importance not only of friendly relations, but even of something in the nature of a special amity, between France and our own country, we sorrowfully place upon record the conviction that the whole proceedings of the French Government in the conduct of its controversy constituted one series of unrelieved and lamentable errors; errors so palpable and wanton that when men observe them in the conduct of a Government which rules perhaps the most richly-endowed nation in the world, they appear so wholly unaccountable, upon any of the ordinary rules of judgment applicable to human action, that they are almost perforce referred by bewildered observers to blind theories of chance and fate.

The first question in order which arises is upon the original theme of quarrel. Did the Hohenzollern candidature, with its expected acceptance by Spain, afford such a cause of complaint to France, as would have justified the resort to arms? Upon

this point it may certainly be said that, even if the negative be true, yet the affirmative, when considered in the light of European history and tradition, involves no violent offence to the common reason and feeling of the world. And yet, perhaps, it might be fairly asked whether if France, in 1870, was entitled to object to a Hohenzollern in Madrid, Europe might not with as much reason have objected, in 1852, to a Napoleon in Paris?

However, we assume, as the British Government assumed, that on the whole the French demand for the withdrawal of the candidature was so far legitimate, as to entail a very heavy responsibility on those who should resist it.

But, at the very first moment, the demand had been associated with proceedings tending in the highest degree to increase the difficulties of compliance with it. The case was one in which the Imperial Government ought evidently to have invoked the aid of a friendly State, and for the time to have placed their cause in its hands. Or, if they were not prepared to make over its advocacy to others, they ought at least to have addressed their request through the usual channels to the two Powers complained of. Prudence and principle alike enjoin the rule that, when an injury is alleged by the party supposing himself wronged, and redress is demanded without any prior proof of the case before an impartial authority, at least the manner of requiring the removal of the alleged wrong shall be such as will not inflict public shame on the person, whose guilt, is, after all, only proved to one side. But, instead of this rational mode of action, it was to the Legislative Chamber that the very first communication of the French Government was made, with an intimation that, if the demand were not complied with, the quarrel must be carried to the last extremity. Thus the Ollivier Administration, while urging a requisition in itself open to controversy or cavil, did all it could, by its unwarrantable method of procedure, to make concession difficult for the Powers from whom it was required.

The aid, however, of the British Ministry, and that of other Powers, had been requested by France. Whether because of the advantage of proximity, or of a more disembarrassed promptitude of action, or because the world has been more fully informed of our national part in the proceedings than of that taken by other countries, the British Government appears to have been principally concerned in obtaining the withdrawal of the candidature by Spain, and a renunciation by the father of the Prince in the name and on the behalf of his son. Spain undoubtedly deserves credit for the readiness with