29 OCTOBER 1870, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE HOHENZOLLERNS AND THE REVOLUTION.

CORRESPONDENTS from Versailles agree in declaring that the German chiefs, the six or seven men who are directing the movements and determining the policy of the new military power, feel a certain " uneasiness" at the arrival of Garibaldi in France. Of course they, as regular soldiers, despise the great partisan, and even question his right to fight for France—though he is by law a Frenchman of the depart. ment of Nice, and bears a regular French commission—and as Conservatives detest the most convinced of Republicans ; but still they confess an uneasiness, and they are right. Gari- baldi represents perfectly the two grand dangers to which the Hohenzollerns, by pushing their demands too far, are exposing both the dynasty and the future of Germany. They are bringing upon themselves a new and a grave evil, one which may yet undo all they have achieved for themselves,—the permanent, sleepless, unquenchable hostility of the cosmopo- litan Revolution ; the deadly enmity of a party which, in every country except England, has means to make itself felt and feared ; which is unable to swerve, though it sometimes sus- pends its ultimate object, and which, though feeble to accom- plish anything of itself, brings up masses of power to the support of every enemy of its foes. Hitherto the Revolution has not been bitter against the Hohenzollerns, has regarded them rather as persons useful to control or destroy the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs, the Bonapartes, and the Temporal Power. Once, at least, during recent years—during the war of 1866—Red feeling has been decidedly with Prussia, Sadowa being regarded as a terrible blow to their deadliest enemy of all, obscurantist, absolutist Austria. Even up to the fall of Sedan, that opinion was not hostile, for the Emperor Napoleon was felt to be the strongest and most immovable of all barriers to the supremacy of their ideas. From the day of the " de- cheance," however, all was changed. Austria is liberalized and " Darwinian," the Bonapartes in exile, the Temporal Power abolished, the Italian Government submissive, and the full volume of the Red hatred has begun to concentrate itself upon the aggrandized, self-willed, force-believing, aristocratic German monarchy. That hatred is deepened every day by the historic sympathy of all true Reds for France, the home of the Revolution, by the danger of the one capital which has been for two generations immovably Republican, and by the unwarrantable and unwise insults which the German chiefs, and more especially Count Bismarck, daily pour out upon the " gentlemen of the pavement," the " elect of the rabble," the " gang of lawyers," who are trying to save at once liberty and France ; and that hatred signifies much. It means that in every country of Europe, for years, perhaps for generations to come, a party fanatically brave and determined, with high popularity among the masses, sure of occasional glimpses of power, with more than half the Press of Europe in its hands, with an in- fluence which is almost predominant among the Latin races, will for years postpone all smaller ends to the destruction of the Prussian monarchy and system of rule ; that the never-ending hail of agitations and sarcasms, in- surrections and diatribes, intrigues and songs which has beaten down the Papacy, will henceforward rain upon the Hohenzollerns. It is not a lame Nizzard who has declared war upon the new Emperor, but every Red in France, Russia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, and even—though that matters little—in Great Britain. Germany is strong enough to defy all, if it pleases ; but in Germany itself the Reds will find, when the war is once over, powerful levers. There are points of weakness in that mighty structure in which the wedges can be inserted. The scheme of policy which almost forbids commissions to plebeians is enough when the nation is an army to breed an insurrection. The South Germans are Democrats at heart, and the South Germans are stepping to their places in the Federation. No Catholic out of the Rhenish provinces—where perpetual danger has erased reli- gious differences—loves or can love cordially the stern Pro- testant House, with its fixed dogma that the State is above all, even Heaven,—that, for example, to quote a recent fact, a Catholic officer who refuses a duel shall be broke, even though be pleads that he refused only for the sake of his salvation. Above all, the Reds have the lever of the tremendous question known variously as the Rights of labour, Lassallism, Schulze-Delitscherei, a dozen names, but

under them all implying revolt against the sternly regular Prussian support of individualism. A strike in North Germany is a crime, and therefore a workman is a potential insurgent. Safe from the external foe, with new millions of democratic and Catholic subjects, with a question to settle in which he is sure to arouse the fanaticism of whole classes, with his people armed and full of the pride of victory, the Emperor of Germany, were he wise, would do well to shrink from an internecine quarrel with the power which never loses an opportunity, and never rejects an ally, which, using now• one weapon and now another—now an assassin like Orsini, now a King like Victor Emanuel, now a partisan like Garibaldi, and again a trooper like Prim—has within twenty years helped, to batter down all the Bourbon thrones, the Holy Chair, the Austrian sway in Italy, and the Bonaparte dynasty in France,. and is even now lending new strength and spirit, and even means, to the nation which King William has struck down.

Again, the Revolution—and this is the second reason why there is such uneasiness in Versailles—is now trying whether it can, as in 1793, organize popular war ; whether, that is, the strongest reason for the Prussian system, with its rigidity and its royalism, namely, its invincibility in war, does or does not exist. The theory of the German chiefs is that no nation can be permanently safe unless organized on a far-seeing, rigid, and more or less oppressive but scientific military system, having for permanent pivot a King reigning by right other than popular election. If this theory is unsound, if France, after a terrific overthrow, with no king, no army, no leader of genius, no organization, and no time, can improvise by mere energy and patriotism a force sufficient to check the victors, the raison d'cltre of the Hohenzollerns and their system will have disappeared. A defeat of the German Army by the Army of Paris will be the most terrible blow the principle of monarchy ever received, and a successful rising in the provinces will be scarcely less disastrous. It will prove by the most conspicuous of instances, by an explosion which all men must hear, that monarchy is needless to military strength ; that popular leaders, elected and trusted by a patriotic people, can rapidly form efficient armies under the most unfavourable cir- cumstances ; that a popular army may be an effective army ; that a fortiori a Swiss organization would completely protect any country to which it is applied. In other words, it would prove past all doubt or quibble that Republicanism is not necessarily weak or monarchy necessarily strong. That lesson taught to Germany, explained, analyzed, and pondered on as it would be by German professors, orators, and soldiers, would in the end be fatal to the monarchy now holding its Belshazzar feast up there in Versailles, with all mankind save the Revolu- tion at its feet. This is the experiment which the General of the Revolution is trying, and in which, in spite of all hostile circumstances, he may yet succeed. We doubt if there is a Tory in Great Britain who, as he read Garibaldi's instruc- tions to the Francs-tireurs—published in the Daily News, did not perceive, as by a revelation, that this was not an "inspired idiot " or second Masaniello ; but a military genius of a new type, and of the most singularly original force. That those regulations will be obeyed we are scarcely able to believe. They require an educated population, and the French are not educated; a population careless of military executions, and the French dread them very much. But that, if obeyed, they would, at a hideous sacrifice of life and treasure, rid France of her invaders, we have no doubt whatever, and can well under- stand how angrily Count Bismarck glances at the possibility, how harshly German officers feel inclined to carry out the terrorist rules intended to prevent such war. Those terrorist rules may succeed, for human nature is weak ; but they may also fail, for of all threats, the one against which human nature rises up most courageously is war without quarter, and it is war without quarter which these executions of Francs- tireurs proclaim. " I am to die if taken ; then I will die fighting ;" even Hindoos are capable of that simple syllogism, and it is one which has at all times made in- surgents formidable. If they fail, the free war may give as severe a shake to the Hohenzollern system as the hostility of the Revolution is certain to do to the Hohenzollern dynasty, and it is both these chances, pregnant with possibilities of future overthrow, which the King and his Minister are deve- loping by continuing the war. Had Jules Favre's offer been accepted, Germany would have retired almost unwounded, arbitress of Europe, and by the consent of all men entirely in the right. Were she to accept them now, she would retire with her future assured, her power far beyond attack, her enemies in France alone. If she protracts the war by

-demanding terms which Paris untaken cannot grant, she may obtain a Poland in the West to join hands with the Poland in the East ; but she may also retire empty-handed and sorely wounded, while she must retire knowing that henceforward between the Revolution and the Hohenzollern dynasty it is war to the death.