War to the Knife
Ithin a few days I have seen Belglum, Switzerland, Prussia, and Germany marching to their frontiers, the two former for armed neutrality, the two latter for bitterest war, and before this paragraph reaches the United States, you will, by telegraph, have heard the first shock of battle. Last Sabbath, Brussels had the appearance of New York city just after the assault on Fort Sumter. The streets were a mass of excited people. Men were flocking in from the country as volunteers, and the soldiers in bright uniform were parading Rue de la Madeleine. As we passed up the Rhine we saw the fortifications swarming with busy men. Strange, that this most peaceful of all rivers
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should be the object of perpetual strife, and that at the sight of its pure, bright water, the kings of the earth should fall down in hydrophobia of ambition. Long before the vineyards that crowd to the lip of this stream shall have purpled into ripeness, war will have trodden out its vintage of blood. From Mayence to Carlsruhe, on either side the rail-track, are earthworks that must have demanded the shovels and pickaxes of the entire population. The rail- carriages are filled with Frenchmen flying the country, the police commanding their departure. The harvests of Prussia, which look like those of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for luxuriance, are lodging for lack of a sickle, the men having gone to the war. At Cologne, the flowers and curiosities of the city gardens are being brought into the city so as to be under the defence of the fortifications.
The Prussians are enthusiastic, and ready for anything. They are glad that the conflict has come. They havebeen for years hindered in their enterprise by the arrogant behavior of France, and they want the matter settled once and forever. Their officers and troops, so far as we have seen them, are a class of men that must excite the admiration of all who love nobility of character.
They are honest, Intelligent, bold; and though France, with her great discipline of military, may overcome them In the opening battles, Prussia mill never submit to France!
We called long enough to find that even lethargic Heidelberg had gone off in the excitement, leaving Its grand old castle and dirty streets for visitors to look at.
The city of Basle, Switzerland, In which we are now stopping, has very nearly suspended business, for the purpose of seeing off her soldier boys, who, this morning at daylight, marched under our windows through the narrow street, the trumpet sounding an air wild, brisk, and strange to our ears. The red torrent of patriotism rages down these hills and among these defiles. Though Belgium and Switzerland are armed for neutrality, they are as Indignant at France as Is Prussia; and it would not require a very grave provocation to call them Into the great struggle. Where the
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trouble will end, God only knows. Until the name of Napoleon comes down into the dust, the world cannot have quiet. The power of one bad man to tear the world’s heart to pieces, was never so mightily illustrated as at this hour.
A woman rushed out of the crowd when Robespierre died, crying, “Murderer of my children! descend to hell covered with the curses of every woman in France!” But that is a moderate execration compared with that which we fear will come from all the outraged nations of Europe when Napoleon goes — to his uncle.
There is no more glory in war. In the olden time, when Fitz - James and Roderick Dhu met at Coilantogle Ford, and threw their wrath into a combat that crimsoned Loch Vennachar, and made the crags of old Ben-an and Ben Venue echo with the sword-clang, there may have been romance and poetry in combat; but with such weapons as the new contrivance of death which France will bring into the battle, war is murder, compared with which that perpetrated by the hand of Antoine
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Probst and a Five -Points garroter is innocence undefiled.
Those who tell us that the millennium is about to begin, must have guessed wrong. We saw, a few days ago, in the Tower of London, an astonishing array of old armor, showing what a miff the world has been in for five hundred years. But we were pleased to see in one room how the swords and guns had, by some artistic hand, been arranged into representations of flowers; ramrods and sabres turned Into lilies and fuschais and Scottish bluebells. We offered a silent prayer that soon all the world’s implements of death might so blossom. But, alas! now the red dahlia of human blood shall paint the grass, and instead of the white-fleeced lamb, which Edwin Lanseer in exquisite picture represents as looking Into the mouth of the dismounted gun of war, destruction and woe shall belch out of it.
From the sight of this European tumult we turn away to the mountains of Switzerland, and hope to look upon Mont Blanc, that symbol of the Great White Throne on which
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all the world’s wrongs will be righted. The mountain gazes upon a few kingdoms, but the Throne will overlook France and Prussia and the world and the ages. Switzerland, July 21, 1870.