I

SIT down to write these pages (September 17th) in the midst of circumstances which have as yet no parallel in modern history. Paris, the metropolis of continental Europe, the capital of the world's pleasures, stands invested by hostile hosts, and that, not after a protracted warfare, but after a campaign of seven or eight weeks only; nor are those hosts the gathering together of a world in arms, as has been seen twice before this century, but the outpouring of a single nation, risen for the first time in its gigantic unity. It is a life-anddeath duel, in the main, between Celt and Teuton, that we see: a fight, as it has been termed already, for the military championship of the world. This it is, indeed, which makes the struggle so awful a one, its immediate results so difficult to define. The presence of many different flags within the allied camps in 1814 and 1815, though it might seem to make the material force brought to bear upon France more overwhelming, bore yet with it a limiting, restraining power. The interests, the passions, of each invading nation were kept in check by the interests, the passions of every other. Here the passions, interests, of a single invading people are brought into play, giving thereby to the struggle a singularly personal character; the roused fury of the German will haughtily spurns already all control but that of sheer force.

I shall not, therefore, attempt to forecast the immediate future. I may believe still, as I believed before the beginning of this war, that both France and Germany, once on foot in self-defence, are invincible on their own soil; that, come what may in the interval, the ultimate woe inexorably betides the invader of either. I may be entirely mistaken in so believing; events may have given me the lie before my words reach their readers. What I wish mainly to consider here are-first, the principles involved in the present war; next, the more permanent issues likely to be evolved from it, as respects the two nations engaged in it, the other states of Europe, and the world at large.

At its outset irrespectively of all pretexts on the one side or the other the war was, on the part of the rulers of France, avowedly one for the limiting of the power and influence of Germany; one of self-defence on the part of Germany, not against the French nation as such, but against the Government of the Second Empire, in the hope of better constituting its own unity. The French declaration of war, delivered at Berlin on the 19th of July, assigns for it no other cause than that, in the refusal of the King of Prussia to pledge himself that no Hohenzollern should ever ascend the throne of Spain, "the Imperial Government has been forced to see an arrière pensée, menacing, in, like manner, to France and the European equilibrium." The public declarations of Germany are no less explicit on the other side. In the King of Prussia's speech to the North German Parliament (19th July) the following passage occurs:

...

"With a clear gaze we have measured the responsibility which before the judgment seat of God and of mankind must fall upon him who drags two great and peace-loving peoples of the heart of Europe into a devastating war. The German and French peoples, both equally enjoying and desiring the blessings of a Christian civilisation, and of an increasing prosperity, are all called to a more wholesome rivalry than the sanguinary conflict of arms. Yet those who hold power in France have, by preconcerted misguidance, found means to work upon the legitimate but excitable national sentiment of our great neighbouring people, for the furtherance of personal interests and the gratification of passions."

Clearly, then, at its inception, this was, from the point of view of the Prussian government, no war of nation with nation. France was acknowledged to be "peace-loving," as well as Germany; it was the "preconcerted misguidance" of those who "hold power" which had worked upon her, so as to "drag" her into warfare. The address of the North German Parliament, in reply to the king's speech, is still more outspoken as to the war being one of Germany against the Bonapartes:

*

* Two different texts of this address have appeared in the Times of July 21 and 25. I follow the latter, which is, by the Times' correspondent, professed to be the more authentic one.

"The German nation has no more ardent wish than to live in peace and amity with all those nations which respect its honour and independence. As in 1813. . . . we are now forced again to take up arms to vindicate our rights and liberties against a Napoleon. . . . That portion of the French people which by envy and selfish ambition has been seduced into hostility against us, will too late perceive the crop of evil sure to grow out of sanguinary battle-fields. We regret that the more equitably inclined in France have failed to prevent a crime, aimed no less at the prosperity of their own country than the maintenance of amicable international relations in this part of the world. . . . Friendly nations are looking forward to our victory, which is to free some from the ambitious tyranny of a Bonaparte and to avenge the injury inflicted on so many others."

It was thus only a "portion of the French people" which had been" seduced into hostility" against Germany; the efforts of "the more equitably inclined in France" to prevent the "crime of the war were acknowledged. The same tone of clear disavowal of the idea of a really international war between Germany and France, the same clear distinction between the acts of the French people and of its rulers pervades other important documents of the period. Thus the address to the king by the Berlin Town Council (16th July) says,

"Two nations who might live harmoniously side by side, engaged in developing their institutions and increasing their prosperity, have been forced to a duel by a Government which cannot bear the idea of a United Germany on the borders of United France."

More emphatic still is the "Proclamation to our Countrymen " of the Committee of the National Liberal Party, embodying the vast majority of the educated middle class :

"To mask his domestic embarrassments, to save his throne, which would otherwise succumb to the hatred and contempt of his own subjects, the sanguinary adventurer has embarked on his last military job . . . In contending against the execrable system of Bonapartism, we shall be fighting not only for our independence, but for the peace and culture of Europe. Unknown to the Germans is the lust of conquest; all they require is to be permitted to be their own masters. While protecting our own soil, language, and nationality, we are willing to concede corresponding rights to all other nations. We do not hate the French, but the Government and the system which dishonours, enslaves, and humiliates them. The French have been inveigled into war by their Government misrepresenting and calumniating us, but our victory will be their emancipation also."

It would seem impossible for words to convey more strongly the sense of the German Liberals that they were about to wage war, not against the French, but against the government which "dishonoured, enslaved, and humiliated them," a war in which Germany's victory would be the " emancipation" of France. That the view was a true one is proved as well by contemporary as by subsequent events. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the motto of the Republican party under the Second Empire has been Peace, and, as the essential

means thereto, abolition of the standing army. In the Legislative Assembly the war was resisted by them to the uttermost. When M. Ollivier (sitting of July 15) made his famous declaration that he entered upon war with a "light heart," M. Esquiros flung in his teeth at once the bitterly deserved reproof,-" You have a light heart, and the blood of nations is about to flow." When the minister persisted in declaring that war was "forced" upon the government, M. E. Arago exclaimed, "You made it." M. Depreaux again, "You have provoked it." Again M. Arago declared: "When this becomes known, the civilized world will know you to be in the wrong. . . If you make war, it is because you desire it at any price." As to the Republican papers, they were still more outspoken. The Cloche declared (July 16) that there was not " a shadow of pretext for the war." In fact, the government could only succeed in kindling the war-fever by the successive suppression of every one of the ultra papers, not only the Cloche, but the Réveil, Rappel, Marseillaise. In spite of all, cries of "Vive la Paix!" were raised on the Boulevards till the very outbreak of hostilities. And what was true of Paris was true also of the provinces, wherever Republican sentiments could make themselves heard. In Limoges, which has a large and energetic working class, men were arrested for shouting " Vive la Prusse!"

In short, whilst Germany took up arms as for a holy war against a crushing despotism, that portion of the French nation which most closely represented the sentiments of the popular classes, so far as these knew their own minds, was entirely averse to the struggle. Never, therefore, was there a war which gave so fair a promise of not degenerating into a mere duel, of terminating in a durable peace, so soon as the stumbling-block of the Napoleonic empire was removed, as this one.

I do not hesitate to say that at the commencement of the war my sympathies were absolutely and entirely with the Germans. For twenty years the Napoleonic régime had weighed upon mankind like a nightmare. It stood forth, the very Babel-kingdom of our days, the colossal embodiment of successful force and fraud. All the lies and hypocrisies, all the lusts and greeds of the world basked in its smiles, shouted its praises, whetted their swords at its bidding. It had made Paris more than ever before, the lupanar of the nations. Whilst banishing or choking all free speech, all free thought, all free action, it exalted the demi-monde into rulers of fashion, it spread throughout the world the name of "Mabille," and glorified a "Thérésa." French novels-to a great extent French newspapers -became utterly unreadable by a decent woman, the French stage unfrequentable by such. A Schneider ruled the boards of opera. Cassagnacs gave the tone to journalism. A La Roncière, who had

been convicted for rape and fulfilled his sentence, was governor of a colony. The shameless dishonesty of almost every prominent servant of the empire was notorious. A Pierre Bonaparte was a member of the Imperial family. The Emperor's mistress's brother could become, after a series of scandalously rapid promotions, a marshal and minister of war. The new Cæsarism was utterly poisoning France, and thereby poisoning Continental Europe at the heart. Whilst withholding jealously the means of self-defence to the population, reducing the National Guard to a shadow, it was assiduously building the army into a military caste, or rather a series of military castes, and, through the employment of Mussulman or heathen "Turcos" (more and more recruited from among the negroes of inner Africa), ostentatiously threatening all inward or outward foes with the most hideous barbarities of warfare. Its militarism was slowly penetrating the whole civilized world. As it was evidently utterly reckless in choosing pretexts for warfare-now claiming to protect Turkey against Russia, now championing the "nationality" idea on behalf of Italy, now conquering a whole realm in CochinChina on the plea of some apocryphal, or all but apocryphal, massacre of Roman Catholics; now intervening in Mexico to set up a Latin empire in the New World-no one knew whose turn might come next, every nation felt compelled to be on its guard. Courting itself a false popularity by the recklessness of its expenditure, the French empire was raising the level of expenditure in all nations. And since every evil example, the larger the scale on which it is offered, spreads its influence to the greater distance, and into the remotest corners, there was probably not a well-to-do household throughout the civilized world in which the rate of expenditure was not increased through the ever-increasing extravagance of the Tuileries, and the caprices of an Empress, the acknowledged arbitress of the world's fashions. Meanwhile, as extravagance always goes side by side with dishonesty, the wildest speculations, distinctly originating with certain notorious French experiments on the purses of the simple, were more and more contaminating the commerce of the world. Perhaps it was in this quarter that our own nation most suffered through the corrupting influences of the Second Empire. The soil had been but too well prepared amongst us by our railway mania, amongst other causes, not to yield a rich growth of financial rascalities when the seed was wafted from over the Channel.

Sooner or later some nation or other must have risen up against this baleful oppression. As it happened, the lot fell to Germany so to do. Her attitude at the first seemed to show how fully she felt the moral grandeur of her part. It was resolute but unboastful, grandly self-possessed in its moderation. Even after the com