LETTER IV.

ARMINIUS ASSAILS THE BRITISH PRESS FOR ITS FREE AND INDEPENDENT COMMENTS ON FOREIGN POLITICS.

BERLIN, August 11, 1866.

SIR,FOR Heaven's sake try and prevail upon your countrymen, who are so very anxious for peace for themselves, not to go on biting first the French Emperor's tail and then ours, merely for the fun of the thing apparently, and to have the pleasure of at least seeing a fight between other people, if they cannot have one of their own. You know that Michelet, the French historian, all through his history, familiarly talks of your people as ce dogue; "upon this, ce dogue mordit such a one;" "upon that ce dogue déchira such another." According to him, you must always be mordre-ing or déchirer-ing some one, at home or abroad, such is your instinct of savageness; and you have,-undoubtedly you have,a strong share of pugnacity. When I was over in England the other day, my poor friend Mr. Matthew Arnold insisted, with his usual blind adoration of everything English, on taking me down to admire one of your great public schools; precious institutions,

where, as I tell him, for £250 sterling a year your boys learn gentlemanly deportment and cricket. Well, down we went, and in the playing-fields (which with you are the school): "I declare," says Mr. Matthew Arnold, "if there isn't the son of that man you quarrelled with in the Reigate train! And there, close by him, is a son of one of our greatest families, a Plantagenet! It is only in England, Arminius, that this beautiful salutary intermixture of classes takes place. Look at the bottle-merchant's son and the Plantagenet being brought up side by side; none of your absurd separations and seventy-two quarterings here. Very likely young Bottles will end by being a lord himself." I was going to point out to Mr. Matthew Arnold that what a middle class wants is ideas, and ideas an aristocracy has nothing to do with; so that that vulgar dog, Bottles the father, in sending his son to learn only cricket and a gentlemanly deportment, like the aristocracy, had done quite the wrong thing with him. just at this moment our attention was attracted by what was passing between the boys themselves. First, a boy goes up to Bottles, and says: "Bottles, Plantagenet says he could lick you with one hand; you are as big as he is,-you wouldn't take a licking from him, would you?" "No!" answered poor

rushes to Plantagenet.

But

Bottles, rather hesitatingly. Upon this another boy "Plantagenet," cries he, "that brute Bottles says he wouldn't take a licking from you." "Does he, the beast!" thunders Plantagenet, and, flying at Bottles, hits him full on the

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 playingfields. 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 enormously 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 his greedy fist over German soil. Will you let him have it? Think of the prodigious strength you have just shown, of the glory you have just won. Think 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 do not you play the " dogue" and make moderation harder both for the Emperor and for us.

I assure you a war with France would be a curse