A SUPER-SENSITIVE PACHYDERM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9285, 12 February 1889, Page 3

A SUPER-SENSITIVE PACHYDERM.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —If your Prussian correspondents, Messrs. Fricke and Brown, were persons accustomed to weigh their expressions, courteous in speech and polished in phraseology' I could quite understand their resenting the sort of language I and others have had to use about their countrymen. As it is, however, I consider it at least cool, not to say a piece of consummate insolence, in the latter individual to insist on Fricke's Bole right to use a blunderbuss, bludgeon, or such lute coarse weapon in an unprovoked onslaught, while his adversary is to be restricted to the use of what Frenchmen term an arme blanche. Now, a keen, polished rapier is an admirable weapon in skilled hands and opposed to a similar arm, and it is that generally used in personal encounter between gentlemen in European countries which stand highest in point of civilisation, and of a refined and highly-organised social status, such, for instance, as France, Austria, Italy, &c. But a rapier would be useless against a blunderbuss, and a man's weapon must match that of his opponent. In dealing with a pachydermatous animal, with a moral hide as thick as that of a rhinoceros, "or as the carapace of a tortoise, the finer weapon would be worthless, and the brute muse be struck down with a heavy bullet or pounded with a sledge hammer. Mr. Fricke lays the flattering unction to his soul that he once routed me. I can only say that I was and am quite ignorant how and when this took place. But as Mr. Brown is pleased to assert my utter ignorance of history, I must ask your permission to cite a few contemporary authoritiesallow-i ing them to give evidence in their own words.; I cannot accept Carlyle as an authority ; admirable as he was as a writer in many departments of literature, as a historian he carries absolutely no weight, but 'I'can quite understand a German appealing to him as an infallible guide. He was manysided, and in one of his works, "Sartor Resartus," Mr. Brown may find many admirable reflections on Of Clo'. If I can show that in 1791 and thence to ISOS Prussia involved Austria and subsequently other Powers in war with France, merely to prevent them from interfering with her schemes on Poland, that she basely deserted her allies, accepting large subsidies from England which she expended on her own selfish designs, and being in secret understanding with the common enemy, I think my previous assertions will be fully borne out. One little incident I will mention and then merely quote. I refer to the most dramatic incident in modern history — the midnight meeting held by torchlight at the tomb of Frederic the Great, between the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, on the 6th November, 1805, when the two monarchs mutually engaged .themselves by the most solemn oaths to maintain the alliance against France. The oath was taken by both monarchs, after kissing the pall which covered the tomb.

Immediately after this the King of Prussia signed a formal treaty with Napoleon Bonaparte, agreeing to coalesce with him on condition of receiving the Hanoverian dominions of his ally the Kingtif England,

and after having just received a heavy subsidy from England, on the plea that it was to be expended in carrying on war with the allies against France ! Now for my authorities, or, at least, a few of them, for they might be extended to hundreds. Immediately the first subsidy was granted, Lord Lansdowne asserted in the House of Lords that Frederick William took our money, but found pretexts for evading performance of anything in return. Fancy such a letter as the following sent by the English Ministry In 1794 to the Prussian Government: "It is nob for nothing that we pay you our subsidies, nor in order that the subsidised power should employ the paid forces for its own purposes." Even Hardenberg, the one honest Prussian Minister, expresses hie disgust at the conduct of his country. Lord Malmesbury writes from Berlin, in 1794, in the Councils of Prussia he could find no qualities but "great and shabby art and cunning, ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion," a sentence nob inapplicable to the Court of Berlin at the present hour; and he adds: "Here I have to do with knavery and dot-' age. ... If we listened only to our feelings, it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. We must consider it an alliance with the Algerians, whom ib is no disgrace to pay, or any impeachment of good sense to be cheated by." In 1806, Fox, speaking in the Commons re the treaty of Basle, says:—" The conduct of Prussia in this transaction is the compound of everything that is contemptible in servility, with everything that is odious in rapacity. Other nations have yielded to the ascendancy of military power. Austria was forced, by the fortune of war, to cede many of her provinces; Prussia alone, without any external disaster, has descended to the lowest point of degradation —thac of becoming the minister of the injustice and rapacity of a master." I may finally add that as late as 1855, during the Crimean war, Bunsen wrote expressing his sense of the degradation involved in being a Prussian subject, and wondered how any Prussian with a sense of honour could hold his head up for shame.— lam, &c, C. D. Wuitcombe. Auckland, February 9, 1889.