able as he was unscrupulous. If the heroic Army would but remember the history of their country, they would know that they should not put their trust in princes.1 For the Heir Apparent, to be sure, only admiration was expressed. He had managed, somehow, to keep his halo, even when his head was helmeted. But he would have to prove himself a saint, indeed, were he to withstand the traditions of Prussian leadership, once he had come to power. 2 The Quarterly believed that till the whole of Germany, yet unannexed, should be absorbed into the German Empire, one and indivisible, Prussia would remain insatiate and profess fear for her security. In the Diplomatic Review, Urquhart warned that she would attempt to reestablish the Roman Empire, and that if the ransom of France proved insufficient to finance her armies, she would exact ransom of England, too. At Cambridge, Lord Acton told his classes that Prussian dominance was the greatest danger that remained to be encountered by the Anglo-Saxon_race.* "Who will be surety for Germany?" was asked in Blackwoods. "Who will say that greater and longer wars will not grow out of the war that has just ended, and involve the whole Continent in quarrels?"5 One of the correspondents who had followed her armies and had high admiration for their valour and noble qualities, believed that the dangerous impetus to aggression came solely from a passion for nationality. So far as Belgium or Poland were concerned, he 1 Westminster Review, Jan.-Apr., 1871, vol. xcv, pp. 160 et seq. 2 Third Republic and the Second German Empire, Quarterly Review, Apr., 1871, pp. 351 et seq. Third Roman Empire, Diplomatic Review, Apr., 1871. * Selections from the Correspondence of the first Lord Acton (edited by J. N. Figgis, London, 1917), vol. i, p. II. The End of the War, Blackwood's Magazine, Apr., 1871, vol. cix, p. 506. declared that Germany would not molest them, were Europe totally disarmed; but where she believed the territory was inhabited by Teutons, conquest would seem to her a religious duty.1 Hope was expressed in the Edinburgh, that Germany, in a generation or two, might become a republic and adopt ideals that would be less disquieting to her neighbours, but of its own generation it expressed a distrust that was pathetic. We are at a loss whom we can trust and with whom we can act, because, in a word, the system of European policy has been destroyed, and as yet we see no approach to a reconstitution of it. . . Without mutual confidence, regulated and protected by public law, there is no security and no peace; and the most frightful and alarming symptom of the present state of the world appears to be that force rather than law, at this moment, governs the most civilized nations of the earth, that all alliances are shaken, and there are no longer any standards or principles of political action. And all this, it believed, was the result of the policy of which Count Bismarck was the prime originator.2 The immediate reaction of England was a determination to increase her armament. What was done in this respect, how Gladstone succeeded in diverting something of the zeal for universal service into the carrying out of his project for the purchase of the Army from its officers, is a matter of military history that we must not stop for. But public opinion on the war cannot be mirrored without mention of a little pamphlet that was written to increase this desire for armament. The Fall of England or The Battle of Dorking had appeared, at first, in the April number of Blackwood's. Published separately, at the time the Treaty 1 A. I. Shand, On the Trail of the War, pp. 199-203. The German Empire, Edinburgh Review, Apr., 1871, vol. cxxxiii, pp. 459 et seq. [404 was signed, it had a tremendous vogue. By the next December, its sale had totalled two hundred thousand copies. It was supposed to be the narrative of a British volunteer, who, some fifty years later, is telling his grandchildren the story of his country's great disaster. It is a very rambling narrative that is contained in the little pamphlet. Many repetitions have taken passion from the old gentleman's story, but his memory has retained all the vivid details of the days when England was invaded by the Germans. The trouble came, he says, from her failure to prepare for war. The Ministry had come in on a policy of retrenchment and hoped to keep the vote of those who decried military estimates because they were eager to reduce the power of the Crown and the aristocracy. With a precision of detail equal to Defoe, he tells why the greater part of the Army and Navy were absent from England at a time when Germany seized Denmark and Holland. How England ventured to oppose, and how she saw her fleet defeated and her territory invaded, is told in a style that is painfully realistic. Even at this late day, it is easy to understand how men could have shaken their heads over the story and been convinced that the fancied events might very easily have taken place. England believed that she was entering on a new era. She was fearful of what it might bring forth. She had no confidence in her power to stop events. She distrusted the influence of a militant Germany and a resentful France. If we may be permitted to change the perspective and look from the present to the past, it will be seen that modern hisorians find, unhappily, a justification for her forebodings. Charles Downer Hazen, in his recently published Fifty Years of Europe, discerns in the intervening period between the Franco-Prussian war and the world war, a certain tragic unity, born of the shadow of the past and the phantom of the future. "All the various streams of activity," he says, all the different movements, national and international, social and economic, intellectual and spiritual, all the complex and diverse phenomena of the life of Europe during that crowded half-century took their form and colour largely from the memory of war, the fear of war, the preparation for war.1 Carlton Hayes, in tracing the results of the struggle of 1870, has said, The war fanned, rather than banked, the fire of mutually vindictive patriotism on either side of the Franco-German frontier. And it was this war more than any other single event which throughout the next forty years gave complexion to international politics, saddled Europe with enormous crushing armaments, and constituted the first link in that causal chain of circumstances that led straight on to another and vaster European war.2 Guglielmo Ferrero, more recently, has stated an opinion almost coincident, save that he extends even further the scope of consequence: The war declared on July 18, 1870, really continued without intermission. . . From the Treaty of Frankfort sprang the unlimited rivalry in armaments, and the diplomatic contest for alliance which resulted in the world war; both were simply desperate. efforts to preserve by force a situation which force had created by imposing that treaty upon the vanquished. And the tragedy has not come to an end with the world warfar from it.3 'C. D. Hazen, Fifty Years of Europe, New York, 1919, p. 1. 'Carlton J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe (New York, 1916), vol. ii, p. 203. 'G. Ferrero, The Crisis of Western Civilization, Atlantic Monthly, May, 1920, vol. cxxv, pp. 705-706. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel, Karl. Letters on International Relations before and during the War of 1870. London, 1871. Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, first Lord. Historical Essays and Studies. London, 1907. Selections from the Correspondence of. Edited by J. N. Figgis, London, 1917. Adams, W. H. D. The Franco-Prussian War. Edited by H. M. Hozier. London, 1872. Arnold, Matthew, Letters of. Edited by W. E. Russell, London, 1896. Atkins, John Black. Life of Sir William Howard Russell. London, 1911. Benedetti, Count Vincent. Ma mission en Prusse. London, 1913. Bigelow, John. Retrospections of an Active Life. New York, 1909-13. Bismarck, in the Franco-German War. Authorized translation of the edition by Dr. Moritz Busch. New York, 1879. Bloomfield, Lady Georgiana. Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life. New York, 1883. Blount, Memoirs of Sir Edward. Edited by Stuart J. Reid. London, 1902. Blowitz, Memoirs of Henry Stephen de. Authorized translation. London, 1903. Blum, Ernest. Journal d'un vaudevilliste. Paris, 1894. Blumenthal, Journals of Field Marshal Count von. Edited by Count von Blumenthal and translated by Major H. D. Gillespie-Addison. London, 1903. Bolton, R. P. and W. War Telegrams, War Letters and General News of the War between France and Germany, 1870. A collection of newspaper clippings in the New York Public Library. British State Papers for 1870-1871, Foreign Office Series, London, vols. lxx, lxxi. Browning, Robert, Complete Poetical Works of. New York, 1917. 406 [406 |