THE .ARNIR CORRESPONDENCE.
NOTHING can be clearer now than that the German Government has been dealing in an unusual manner,— a manner betraying to the public undue excitement, anxiety, and suspicion,--with its late Ambassador at Paris. The cor- respondence between Count Arnim and Herr von Billow, Prince Bismarck's subordinate, which has been just published, makes it perfectly clear, first, that though the documents which Count Arnim refuses to deliver up were numbered by the German Government, and perhaps also by the recipient,—so at least Herr von Billow maintains,—Count Arnim did not place them in the Chancellerie at Paris, and then " abstract " them thence; but that, on the contrary, he did not con- ceive them to belong to the Chancellerie of the Paris Embassy at all, and wrongly or not, never registered them there. It is also pretty clear, that though the German Government denies his right to retain some of these documents, there are others of them his right to which is so far probable that, with regard to them, it has waived the question, and not made their retention a part of the criminal charge. This is important, as showing that the whole question of law is a thorny one, and not in the least a matter as to which it is ab- solutely certain, on the very face of things, that Count Arnim mug, knew himself to be in the wrong. In the third place, it has come out, we believe,—though the statement on this subject is a newspaper one —that the documents in dispute were so little official that the derman Foreign Office never kept copies of them and that when asked by the tribunal to produce copies for its information as to the character of the missing documents, it had to admit that no copies existed. If this be true, it would very powerfully support Count Arnim's contention that the documents were not of a kind which he was bound to place in the Chancellerie of the Paris Embassy, as no one ever heard of a document of that nature of which the office issuing it did not keep regular copies. Again, it appears to be admitted that the Commission sent from Berlin to Paris to obtain evidence as to Count Arnim's conduct in the Embassy,—especially, we suppose, his alleged "conspiracy," to use Prince Bismarck's own word, with a Royal personage, to undermine the influence of the Chancellor with the Emperor, —has discovered nothing at all against him,—so that he has at last been liberated on heavy bail, given by himself, for his reappearance,—the official statement being, however, that his liberation is solely due to the state of his health, Which was failing. Finally, this most important fact comes out most positively,—that Count Arnim is not refusing absolutely to give up even those documents which he holds to be his own property, but only that he desires the judgment of a Civil Court as to his right to retain them before giving them up, and declares that if the legal judgment is against him, he will give up the documents at once. Now, considering that the German Government is so uncertain as to its ground, that, in the case of the despatches referring to Count Arnim's official future, namely, his appointment to the Turkish Em- bassy, and his being placed on the retired list, it has waived its legal claims, there can be no doubt at all that Count Arnim's willingness to submit, in relation to the other documents, to the decision of a legal tribunal, should have saved him from anything like a -criminal pro- sedition. It may be very inconvenient to have great State officers claiming to reserve to themselves the letters in which their conduct has been sharply censured by their superiors, but it seems, at least, to be a claim not without official. precedent. In this very correspondence, Count Arnim remarks that one missing document, which he has not got, contains, he believes, a censure on the conduct of some subordinate of the Embassy, and that the despatch containing it has, no doubt, been kept by the person concerned, as exclu- sively affecting himself. Admitting, therefore, that Count Arnim is quite in the wrong in his claim to the possession of the documents in question, it is pretty clear that he is not starting a bran-new theory for his own especial behoof, but that he is acting in conformity with a lax habit which has been hitherto permitted without remark by his chiefs, though it has been convenient to punish it very severely when it came to be adopted by one who had quarrelled with Prince Bismarck. It is certain, then, that Count Arnim did not place the documents in the Chancellerie of the Paris Embassy ; that he did not believe himself to be doing what was contrary to either law or custom in keeping them ; and that he was -willing to bow at once to the decision of a legal tribunal that he had no right to retain them ; and it is also certain, we believe' that in the case of other documents not of a very different category, the Berlin authorities do not pretend that they have a clear legal case against him. If it be also true that the documents were such that the Foreign Office kept no copy of them, and that the Commission sent to inquire into his procedure in Paris has discovered nothing that is not honour- able to Count Arnim, the violent and humiliating treatment to which he has been subjected must be regarded as simply monstrous. Even if these two last assumptions be empty rumours there is no justification for a prosecution which treated him precisely as if he had embezzled money or other objects of value, from the motives of a thief ; indeed, Herr von Billow is most careful to insult Count Arnim, by pointing out that there was absolutely no distinction, in the eye of the law, between such a theft and the offence of which he had been guilty.
Now, what must be the inference from all this unwise and unmeaning display of violence towards a personal foe of Prince Bismarck's, except that that great man has really, as we sug- gested three weeks ago, begun to make mistakes, and lost some portion of that self-restraint by the help of which alone high ends can be achieved ? When the world heard that a 'great diplomatic official of the German Government had been arrested, thrown into prison along with ordinary offenders, and refused permission for a time to see his wife and family and even his legal adviser, on the plea that his com- munication with them might tend to obscure the facts of the case, everybody assumed, as a matter of course, that there was the best evidence, if not of positive treachery, still of some understanding with the enemies of Germany so formid- able as to abet conspiracy and threaten treason. When we were ostentatiously told that the whole matter was one of dis- cipline,—that Prussia has always enforced discipline in all her services, and that she is not going to allow her discipline to be relaxed now, when she has gained the summit of her am- bition, the world was incredulous. It knew perfectly well that breaches of discipline can be punished without all this publicity and scandal ; that a despatch censuring Count Arnim, and dismissing him from the service on the ground of a breach of discipline, would have more than met the exigencies of the situation ; and it was not to be credited that a great nobleman would be prosecuted like a thief for stealing bits of paper, only because he had a crotchet of his own,—not entirely without precedents in its favour,—as to
the right of custody over despatches containing little but personal censure. All the facts looked like a belief— or superstition—that something very dangerous indeed was hatching against the German Minister, under the aegis of Count Arnim's protection ; and that it was absolutely essential to bring the plot to light promptly, while he was paralysed by the arrest. And this is the belief or superstition which Europe will in all probability continue to attribute to Prince Bis- marck, though it will be added that it was the mere product of his own angry passion, not a suspicion raised by any presumptive evidence to which he had access. It is a dangerous moment in a great man's life, when he begins to think that every one who thwarts his purposes must be wickeder and more dangerous than ap- pears. From that moment you may be sure that he will no longer see with the clear and colourless vision requisite for im- partial judgment and great achievements, for he will always be confusing the shadow cast by his awn personality across the field of public affairs with the shadows of real events. The moment a statesman of Prince Bismarck's calibre is found to be indulging fanciful suspicions of his rivals; his power is on the wane. As far as we understand the evidence, that is the precise mistake he has committed in this ferocious and not very successful war upon Count Arnim.
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