M. Louis Blanc wrote a letter to yesterday's Pall Mall
Gaulle, in which he tries to make out a case why English sympathy should be given to France. There is much in it with which we agree. We can hardly hold Count Bismarck guiltless of all intention of provoking the war, though in insisting on that point M. Louis Blanc makes a confusion between the people of Prussia and their rulers which he will not allow as between the people of France and their rulers. Whatever M. Bismarck's policy may have been, assuredly Germany did not approve of a war of aggression as France appeared to do. That the French Republicans disapproved the war we know, but what is there to show that they were a larger proportion of the people in this respect than they were at the time of the Plebiscite, when the Empire was endorsed afresh by the people ? That the war has now assumed positively the form of an invasion of France is hardly to the point, as the French have never shown the least disposition to condemn the proposed invasion of Germany, or offered the slightest guarantee that if the war ceased now they would not willingly renew it on German soil. Still we admit that the practical work now before France is self-defence, a national effort to prevent the certainly contemplated confiscation of at least one or more of her provinces ; and her success in such an effort, so limited, we believe the great majority of Englishmen will heartily desire. To call this, however, without qualification, sympathy with France, would be misleading. English sympathy was with Germany, and will only fall off in some degree from Germany on evidence (only too likely to be produced) that Germany desires to retaliate on. France what France would have inflicted upon her.
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