AN ANALOGY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sm,—There are so many curious analogies between the war now going on on the Danube, and that which was waged fifteen years ago on the Potomac, both in the war itself, its origin and causes, and in the feeling it has excited in England, that I venture in a few lines to point them out for the consideration of your readers. The war is, to begin with, North against South,—the North aggressor, the South defensive, the South only asking to be let alone, and allowed to keep its old institutions and customs un- disturbed, the North refusing to allow or listen to any such request.
Again, the North is strong and fairly rich, the South weaker in numbers and very poor. The North is an honest Power that pays its way, the South, like the Southern States, an old repudiator, whose bonds at the close of the war are likely to be about as valuable as the Charleston cotton bonds.
Again, the war seems to begin with success to the South, just as it did on the other side of the Atlantic. The feeling in England is identical. All " society " and almost all the well-to-do middle- class is Turkish, and with them the Government ; the masses, with the sounder political instinct which in these days belongs to them, is Russian. Bright and the working-men kept us neutral and saved us from a vast political crime and still vaster blunder in 1862; Gladstone and the working-men are keeping us straight now. In 1862 it was supposed by society that the "interests" of England would be advanced by introducing the "balance of power" into America, and arguments in favour of this most deplorable result were generally clenched by the unanswerable statement,—" Suppose the North wins, she cannot dismiss her army,--she must do something with it ; of coarse she will try and annex Canada." The Ruasophobes use a similar sort of argument now about Constantinople, to which our answer should be,—,
"What may happen' to Constantinople is of little consequence to us; Germany and Austria will see to that. But the success of Islam against Russia will be the signal for troubles in India, which will be of great consequence and no little expense to this country."
I might carry this analogy of the war between free and indus- trious Russia and slave-owning and " chivalrous " Turkey much further, if I went into the moral and social aspects of the question, but I will not presume further to trespass upon your space."—
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