Wellington Independent WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3124, 15 February 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent WEDNESDA Y, FEBRUARY 15, 1871.

Gathehing up the tangled threads of news from the theatre of war as they come to us through the American press telegrams we cannot but think that the " beginning of' the cud" is at hand. As a whole, the news would indicate that the belligerents have by this .put out their last mighty effort. With the Rhine frontier occupied by the enemy, her fortresses dismantled, the army of the Loire again and again scattered to the winds, an army in the north beaten back, Paris famishing and on fire, and the death-dealing forces of the enemy hugging the doomed city closer and closer in their deadly embrace, there can be but one exclamation — France is prostrate— Vce metis ! Such items as " the French defeated 10,000 Germans at Junrize," or that" Bourbaki was driving the Germans," &c, can give but little hope to sympathisers with France, when they ulso read that the German North is still pouring forth her hordes on to the sunny plains of Gaul, where a million are already gathered — aod all converging on Paris. The very tactics of the Prusj sians, in abandoning the departments ! to strike at the heart of the empire, show that if France is all but exhausted, their own energies are well-nigh speni, and that one mighty effort is needed. They have gone so far that they must reach the goal. Little heed is paid to the misery and ominous mutterings all over the German empire, whioh are concealed as much as possible from the rest of the world; and even those among the Germans who would fain see the horrid work finished, and their own land relieved from the terrible pressure of the war, feel that they must smother the natural yearnings of humanity and go on to the bitter end. There is in this batch of telegram;: an absence of those items of information incidental to a great campaign that have io be taken into our calculations as much as the actual trials of strength in the field, in order to fairly estimate the relative positions of the belligerents. Not a word of sickness in the German army, nor of rinderpest amongst their horses, nor of the hardships of winter telling on their forces. Not a word of the FrancTireurs, of the peasantry who were expected to rise en masse, and strangely enough, although we are told that the garrison of Paris is clamoring for an immediate attempt, the telegrams omit to even mention General Trochu's name — the self possessed and reticent man, revolving some mysterious plan for tho discomfiture of the enemy, and who was regarded as the man of the hour. As every Frenchman is more or less imbued with Victor Hugo's blind adoration for Paris, thinking more of the capital than of his country, so this very vanity may yet spare the country much suffering, and with the fall of Paris terms of peace may be agreed on. We trust for the sake of shuddering humanity that the initiative taken by Austria may lead to a cessation of hostilities and succeed in establishing something like an enduring peace.