Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/40

34 genius of Count Moltke on the one side, and on the other by the inactivity of the emperor of France, whose energy had already begun to be lamed by the difficulties, which never fail, sooner or later, to grow up in the path of an usurper.

Austria was now humbled, and Prussian pride, in the matter of national position in the Fatherland, gratified to the full. But there remained still the internal difficulty of coming to a compromise with the Parliament, whose beard Bismarck had plucked so rudely, not to mention the soothing of the thousands of fretful spirits in the provinces which the red hand of war had so rudely appropriated in the affair of 1866. Out of these difficulties Bismarck and the king were triumphantly helped by the folly of the French, who, with a display of vaporing gasconade unexampled in recent history, insisted on dictating to Germany in a matter of Spanish concern with which they had nothing to do. This insolent dictation arose naturally out of the national vanity of the French people, fostered by the ambition of the great Napoleon, and the soreness which they felt at the territorial aggrandizement of Prussia, as fixed by the peace of Prague. The breach with France, however, was so manifestly in the interest of Bismarck, and so much in harmony with his declared policy of "blood and iron," that French partisans were not slow to endeavor to lay on his shoulders the guilt of the bloody struggle. But it was not so. Bismarck knew that the ambition of the French emperor, the irritation of French politicians, and the vanity of the French people, equally pointed to a war with Germany, for the realization of their favorite dream of the Rhine boundary. He knew well, also, that a war with France, if successful, would tell in his favor with even more force than his recent triumph over Austria; but he was too wise a politician, and I believe, also, too good a man, to throw himself rashly into the risk of so terrible a struggle. The main points of his German policy had been already achieved; and, so far as France was concerned, his only duty was to keep out a habit-and-repute burglar from the German home. Though not, however, seeking war, he was always prepared for it; and in the moment of alarm he pounced upon the burglar in a style which astonished Europe, and himself too, we may well imagine, not a little. For there are always chances in war; and though Bismarck knew France and the emperor well, he never could have predicted that the splendid edifice of Napoleonic ambition would have fallen to pieces, like a castle of cards, so suddenly. But it did fall; and though the chapter of accidents may have been largely in favor of the Germans, yet the main causes of the wonderful campaign, which turned what might have been a bloody defence into a brilliant invasion, were the physical, intellectual, and moral forces on the German side, which, with wise accumulation, did not fail to reap their natural reward.

The completed Prusso-French war of 1870-1 stands now before the world as at once the most brilliant and solid achievement of modern history. Prussia has stoutly asserted herself as the natural head of Germany; German unity has been achieved after centuries of unhappy division by the willing submission to a Prussian hegemony; and Germany now stands firmly in the centre of the European political system, a massive bulwark against the encroachments of Russia on the east, and the aggression of France on the west. And this mighty change will be recorded for posterity as the fruit indirectly of the regenerative policy of the Baron von Stein, but directly of the far-sighted intelligence, manly purpose, firm will, strong hand, and astute management of Prince von Bismarck.

 

 From The Nineteenth Century.

English are just, but not amiable." A well-bred Frenchman, who has recently travelled in India, and who has published in the Revue des deux Mondes an interesting account of what he saw and heard there, ends with this criticism. It conveys, he says, as to the English and their rule, the real mind of the best-informed and most intelligent of the natives of India with whom he conversed. They admitted the great superiority of the English rule in India to every other which had preceded it. They admitted the good intentions of the English rule — they admitted its activity, energy, incorruptibility, justice. Still, the final impression was this: something wanting in the English, something which they were not. Les Anglais sont justes, mais pas bons. "The English are just, but not kind and good."

It is proposed to raise, on the field of Newbury, a monument to a famous Englishman who was amiable. A meeting has been held at Newbury to launch the project, and Lord Carnarvon made there 