M. Thiers has signed a new Treaty, under which the
Germans receive the last instalment of their indemnity before September, and evacuate French territory in the first days of that month. Even in this transaction the Germans have deliberately avoided conciliation or compromise, or the expression of any sentiment except their own determined will. They agree to give up Belfort in July because M. Thiers would not have signed the treaty without that condition, but they have insisted up.m retaining Verdun instead, that is upon their right to march on Paris at discretion. They are driving a great and7,4e ..ay it with a full knowledge of the history of the past foul- rears—an equal race to despair, such despair that any man who could give the
French adequate vengeance would rule France. God help the people on whom he inflicts the vengeance for which the French in their secret hearts have not ceased to hope ! At present, as we have striven to show elsewhere, France is governed by the coolest and quietest class of thinkers within her dominion. She is ruled by her official class, who neither mean war—except under favourable conditions—nor " the social liquidation," but who mean to make her a very considerable and conservative State in Europe. But the chances are that she will be ultimately ruled, if history has any meaning at all, by an exceptional General, who will claim the throne and obtain the throne because he has gratified a silent passion for vengeance on the part of the people who have elected him.
