Hawke's Bay Herald FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1870. WAR INTELLIGENCE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 15, Issue 1198, 21 October 1870, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1870. WAR INTELLIGENCE.

The chief interest of the news via San Francisco does not consist in any fresh details about the campaign, though of these there are abundance, but in the entirely new and unexpected phase on which public opinion throughout Europe, with regard to the relative merits of the belligerents, has entered. When the war commenced, Prussia had some claim to the sympathy of all the lovers of freedom and enlightenment throughout the world. If she had not what we should have regarded as a constitutional government, if her sovereign exercised his prerogative in a manner and to a degree in which ours has never dared to do since Charles the First laid his head on the block, she had at least a government that was infinitely better suited to the progressive ideas of the age than that of France. As soon as the Emperor was deposed, aud France declared a republic, this was to a great extent changed, and when at last it was announced by the King of Prussia that he would not so much as recognise the existence of the Republican Government, that indeed he would iusist on the restoration of the Emperor, the previous position of the two powers was altogether inverted. The name of France was again, as in 1793 and 1848, whether rightly or wrongly, identified with the cause of liberty. Beyond the Pyrenees, at Madrid, the Spaniards soou proclaimed a sister republic, and their statesmen rushed incontinently into wild heroics about a universal European federation. Italy threatened to follow the example. The United States minister made all haste to be the first to recognise the young democracy. The English Government hung back, but earned, by doing so, the passionate hostility of a large number of its subjects. Even iv Berlin itself, the Left, so long lulled into quiescence by the unparalleled successes that have attended the Prussian army ever since 1864, began to stir itself. Indeed, however strange things may look at present, it is utterly impossible to believe that the great and enlightened German nation would ever lend itself to the preposterous project of re-esta-blishing the Empire in France. When once any disturbance is made in the delicate aud complicated mechanism of European politics, no one cun be far-seeing enough to tell how it will end. Napoleon's victorious campaign in 1859 led indirectly to his own downfall in 18*70, by weakening the power who was his natural ally, aud leaving him single-hauded to encounter his deadly foe. He was, indeed, himself keen-sighted enough to perceive this before the end of that campaign, and endeavored to undo at Villafranca

the effect of Solferino and Magenta. So we see that now the King of Prussia discovers that his victory over Napoleon has given such an impetus to democracy throughout Europe that the firmest thrones are shaking to their foundation. This,^ indeed, was far enough from his intention ; with republics starting up about him, convulsions such as those that drove his family and himself from the capital in 1848, could hardly fail to visit his kingdom again. It would, indeed, be an instance of the irony of fate, such as could hardly, be paralleled, if the greatest stickler for " diviue right " of our century — the man who would allow no one to crown him, saying that, as he got his crown direct from God, no one but himself should put it on his head, should prove to be the man from whom the system of monarchical Government should receive its most fatal blow. Strange to say, the democrats of Europe are not the only friends that France has lately found. Russia sees with jealousy the rising power of the Hohenzollerns, aud is beginning to fear for her own frontier provinces. From certain hints in Count Von Bisraark's organ, it seems possible that a wholesale dismemberment of France is meditated. We gather that Belgium should receive a great slice of Northern France ; Switzei'land should have Savoy, Italy " should get Nice and Corsica, and Germany should have Alsace and Lorraine. This would reduce France to a second-rate power, and make Prussia the arbiter of Europe. The Czar, it seems, sees some such consummation in the distance, and is determined that it shall not come to pass; accordingly, along with Austria, he has proposed an armistice with the view of adjusting terms of peace. One of these terms is to be, that French territory shall remain inviolate. What precisely it is that the English Government have done or neglected to do that they should have earned such seveie reprimands, not only from the hot-headed radicals of Hyde Park, but from the Times itself, we hardly know as yet. They seem to have delayed their recognition of the new Republic longer than was necessary, and the ambassador was perhaps over cautious in not committing himself to undertake any negotiations on the part of England. The reprimand, we confess, seems to us to be unreasonable.! With regard to the Queen, the irritation against her was caused in the first instance by her leaving for Balmoral about the middle of August, at the very crisis of the war, and taking the Prime Minister after her, aud was subsequently heightened by the impression that she used her influence with the ministers in favour of declining to press on Prussia the terms proposed by the other neutral powers.