Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

nose; and as Bottles's blood streamed out, and I turned away in disgust, I heard the exulting cries of your young "dogues" making the arrangements for a systematic encounter.

Now really, Sir, since I have been back in Germany your newspapers are perpetually bringing to my mind Michelet's "dogue" and what I saw in your playing. fields. First you go to the French Emperor, and say: "Ha, tyrant, we hope humble-pie agrees with you! We hope your tail between your legs is not productive of much inconvenience. Just as the intellectual Emperor was overmatched by an Italian statesman, he now finds himself outdone by a German statesman; a most agreeable thing for an intellectual Emperor-ha! ha! The intellectual Emperor distinctly intimated there must be no disturbing the European equilibrium, else he should interpose. Now the map has been altered enor mously to the profit of Prussia, so what is the intellectual Emperor to do? Acknowledge himself outwitted by Count Bismarck, just as he was outwitted by Count Cavour-ha, ha! Humble-pie!' Humble-pie !"-With the greatest alacrity the malcontents in France, the old Constitutional party, take up your parable: "France is eating humble-pie!" they scream out; "the tyrant is making France eat humble-pie! France is humiliated! France is suffocating!" France is not difficult to stir up, and the French Emperor has already had to ask

for the frontier of 1814. If you go on at this

rate I expect he will have to ask for the Mark of

Brandenburg next week.

Then you will come to

Bismarck and say: "Bismarck, the tyrant is stretching

Will you let him strength you have just won. Think

his greedy fist over German soil. have it? Think of the prodigious just shown, of the glory you have of French insolence, think of 1813, think of German honour, think of sauer-kraut, think of the moral support of England. Not an inch of German soil for the French tyrant!" And so, while you yourselves, the new man in you, that is,-teach the nations, as Lord Stanley says, how to live, by peacefully developing your bottle-man in the Reigate train, your half-naked starvelings selling matches in St. James's Park, your truss manufactories in Trafalgar Square, and your Daily Telegraph saying in spite of all powers human and divine what it likes, you at the same time want to throw a bone to the old "dogue" in you, in the shape of a very pretty quarrel of your getting up between other people.

Do, Sir, let other people also have a chance of teaching the nations how to live, and emulating your bottle-man and your Daily Telegraph. For my part, I have the greatest aversion, and so have all the clearest-headed Germans of my acquaintance, to a quarrel with France. We, as genuine Liberals, know that French democracy is our natural ally. You will observe it is the Constitutionalists in France who are crying out so loudly for more territory to make their strength keep pace with ours. And then think of our poor delicate constitutionalism at home, and of the cruelty of leaving it with its work to do

in the face of a war with France, and Bismarck made stronger than ever by such a war! I know our German constitutionalism pretty well. It comes up to the throne, "With fullest heart-devotion we approach Prussia's King, reverently beseeching him to turn away his unconstitutional ministers." Prussia's gracious King gives a grunt, and administers a sound kick to his petitioner's behind, who then departs, singing in fervent tones: "Hoch for King and fatherland!"

No, Sir; peace, the growth of a republican spirit all through Europe, and a mutual support between all those who share this spirit, are what I wish for. The French are vain; they have been spoilt; we have been going very fast; and you and the Orleanists keep telling them they are humiliated if they do not get something. No doubt people have a right to go to war for the balance of power if they believe in it; you have gone to war for it often enough when it suited your turn. So the Emperor of the French, as you will not let him have a chance of being wise and of seeing that here is a new spiritual force he had not reckoned on, which yet he may perfectly make friends of and live happily with, thinks he must do something for the balance of power, must ask for some rectification or other of frontier. I only hope he will ask for something moderate, and that we shall be moderate when he asks for it. Pray, Sir, pray not you play the " dogue" and make moderation harder both for the Emperor and for us.

do

I assure you a war with France would be a curse

1

to us which even the blessing of your moral support would hardly compensate. And supposing (for certainly you do hate the French pretty strongly) in a year or two you determined to give us your active support, and to send, with infinite crying out, an expedition of fifteen thousand men to the coast of Gothland or some such place, I am afraid, Sir, with the vast armaments and rapid operations of modern warfare, even this active support of yours would not do us any great good.

Your humble servant,

VON THUNDER-TEN-TRONCKH.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

P.S. By the way, I read poor Mr. Matthew Arnold's letter to you the other day. You see just what he is; the discursiveness, the incapacity for arguing, the artlessness, the not very delicate allusions to my private circumstances and his own. It is impossible to enter into any serious discussion with him. But on one point of fact I will set him right. I saw Mr. Lowe and found him very affable; even

1 This is puerile. War between France and Prussia has since happened. We have not been able to give our undivided moral support to either combatant; of our active support, therefore, there could be no question. But it may be fearlessly asserted, that the well-balanced alternations of our moral support, the wise and steady advice given by our newspapers, and, in fact, our attitude generally in regard to this war, have raised Great Britain to a height even more conspicuous than she has ever yet occupied, in the esteem and admiration of foreign countries.-ED.

more like his ancestor Pangloss than I should have thought possible. "The best of all possible worlds" was always on his lips; "a system of such tried and tested efficiency;" "what can we want more?" "the grumbler fails to suggest even one grievance." I told him of that bottle barbarian in the Reigate train, and he said that on men of this kind rested "the mighty fabric of English prosperity." I could not help saying that in my opinion no country could long stand being ruled by the spirit (or rather matter) of inen like that; that a discontent with the present state of things was growing up, and that to-morrow even, or next day, we might see a change. Upon this, Mr. Lowe threw himself into a theatrical atti tude, and with the most enthusiastic vehemence exclaimed ::--

"To-morrow?

Oh, spare it, spare it!
It ought not so to die." 1

In a man like poor Mr. Matthew Arnold, this infatua tion about everything English is conceivable enough, but in a man of Mr. Lowe's parts I own I cannot quite make it out, notwithstanding his descent from Pangloss. VON T.

1 As the sentiments here attributed to Mr. Lowe, together with this very remarkable and splendid passage of poetry with which he concludes, are all taken from Mr. Lowe's printed speeches, and may have been read by Arminius in the Times, I still retain my doubts whether his interview with Mr. Lowe had ever any existence except in his own fertile imagination -ED.

« ZurückWeiter »