As far as we can judge of the drift of
the last French telegram from Washington, it appears to mean that the American Government is hedging on the subject of the intervention in Cuba. The American Government "has declared," so runs the telegram, "that it had never had any intention of offering to mediate in Cuba, and had
been actuated solely by humanitarian motives." In other words, we imagine, it did very much what Mr. Sumner did with regard to the Alabama question,—dropped out half-considered views with all the prestige of official authority, and then started back in sur- prise to see the gravity with which the thing was taken up. It has been the great defect of the Republican party since its accession to power that it has repeatedly shown the most inadequate sense of. the significance of diplomatic language. It forgets the vast difference between a political feeler at a party meeting, and the deliberate policy of a cabinet, and often puts forward the former with the official authority of the latter. If you fire off a rifle, though only loaded with the cork of a pop-gun, you must expect it to do mischief. All Europe regards a minister plenipotentiary's conversational hints as threats. The American Government is apt to be surprised, when its official spokesmen threaten, that their most elaborate menaces are regarded as anything more serious than conversational hints.
