over his actions. At any rate, the luckiest | Combatants who fight because they hate man of France, and not the least brilliant, one another are naturally more vindictive chose to end his perplexities by a death than those who only hate one another bewhich, after all has been said by sentimen- cause they have on other grounds occasion tality, remains a death of cowardice. In to fight. If the disturbances continue, the moralizing on "la Maladie et la Mort," he insurgents may perhaps be driven to invite himself had once said, "Mourir pour ne the alliance of the slaves. To the volunteers rien devoir à César, mourir pour ne pas emancipation is so unpalatable that the respirer l'air souillé par Octave, c'est n'est Government thought it prudent to suppress point mourir, c'est échapper à ce qu'on dé- the earliest report of the project of law for teste, c'est s'élever au-dessus de ce qu'on gradual liberation which was lately preméprise;" but the lofty paganism of that sented to the Cortes; but a public meeting sentiment does not free his own end from a at Havanna has lately voted for the abotaint of ignominy. Not a great or power-lition of slavery, and Cuban philanthropists ful, but a brilliant and interesting man, his death will be memorable as a dark record in the history of letters, and not less memorable as the protest of suicide against a wicked war. From The Saturday Review. THE insurgents in Cuba will have derived little satisfaction from the Message addressed to Congress by the President of the United States, or from the debate in the House of Representatives. The rebellion, although it originated in local jealousies and grievances, could scarcely have been maintained for two years without the hope of American aid. It could not be doubted that the popular sympathy of the United States would be enlisted on the side of any colony against any European metropolis. The contest in Cuba, as far as it is intelligible, seems to lie between the Creoles, or native white colonists, and the Spanish residents who are the most thoroughgoing supporters of the Royal or national authority; yet some of the volunteers who appear to be m re zealous than the local Government itself must be native inhabitants of the island. Neither party has yet announced the abolition of slavery, although the negro soldiers on either side will probably be rewarded with freedom. The malcontents who attempted fifteen or twenty years ago, with the aid of adventurers from New Orleans, to overthrow the Spanish Government, were the ardent ad vocates of slavery. Cespedes and Jordan, even if they represent the same party, cannot openly avow opinions which would alienate their American patrons and allies. The cruelties which are denounced by the President are characteristic both of Spanish civil warfare and of a struggle in which reciprocal animosity is rather the cause than the consequence of the immediate quarrel. would not be allowed to express their opinions openly unless they were backed by some considerable body of supporters. Yet it is not to be expected that any sentiment in favour of abolition will largely prevail in Cuba. The Spaniards as a nation have never felt the horror of slavery which has grown up within two or three generations in England and in the Northern States of America. Few communities are willing from purely benevolent motives to expose themselves to one of the most painful kinds of social revolution; and in Cuba the relations between masters and slaves are probably less friendly than in the Southern States before the civil war. As it was found cheaper to import able-bodied slaves than to breed them, the majority of the negroes in the island are probably of African birth. The comparatively domesticated negroes of the continent and of the English West Indies were separated from absolute barbarism by two or three descents. Although it is sufficiently obvious that the separation of Cuba from Spain would be almost immediately followed by annexation to the United States, ignorant insurgents and their ill-taught leaders may probably imagine that they are fighting for independence. It is difficult to believe that they really desire the immigration and inevitable predominance of a more civilized and vigorous race; and perhaps they are not even aware that the immediate and total abolition of slavery would be a preliminary condition of admission into the Unicn. Differences of language, of religion, and of manners would furnish causes of quarrel at least as legitimate as the pretexts of the present insurrection; but rebellion against the Federal power would be summarily and sternly repressed. The possibility of an amalgamation between Spaniards and Americans of English blood has not yet been sufficiently tested by experience. The settlers of Florida, at the time of the transfer of the colony to the United States, were few and scattered; and both races had a common in From The Spectator. THE WAR. THE Armies are face to face in the Valley of Saar, and perhaps before these words are issued, Germany and France, each in perfect readiness, each in complete equipment, each burning with enthusiasm, will have commenced the struggle which is to decide for this century the leadership of the world. As yet the auguries are with the Teuton. The Emperor of the French, whether pressed by some unexplained necessity, or intent on some over-subtle combination, or as we believe, deceived by his hopes from some subterranean intrigue, has allowed his great adversary, whose fearful strength no one in his Empire but himself thoroughly comprehends, to secure the four terest in the maintenance of slavery. The Mexicans of Texas and California have retired like Indian tribes before the advance of the Americans, and in a few years all trace of their earlier possession of the soil will have disappeared. The colonists in Cuba are more thickly settled, and they have no unoccupied region to which they can retreat. It will be a strange proof of docility if they are ready to conform to the usages of their powerful neighbours. One of the first trials of their loyalty to the American Republic will be the compulsory recognition, under the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, of the political equality of their liberated slaves. Tens of thousands of kidnapped negroes will become independent citizens of the State and of the Union, with votes at the disposal of prac-teen days which was all he needed for prepatised election managers of the class which ration. War was declared on the 15th, no is already overrunning the Southern States. advance was made till the 29th, and within Prudent American politicians would, on the those fourteen days Germany, from Posen other part, regard the annexation of Cuba to the Lake of Constance, has rolled itself with serious anxiety. The constitution of together in arms to bar Napoleon's road. the United States provides for the posses- We would ask any of our readers who may sion of no dependency; and the concession still be fascinated by French traditions or of equal rights of sovereignty to inferiors French confidence, or are still influenced or aliens is a questionable experiment. The by the delusion that Germany is slow, unity of the Republic requires that all its or are still doubtful if she has been sections should possess an approximately united, to reflect on what has been accomhomogeneous character, and the advocates plished within those fourteen days. In of the extension of the suffrage to the ne-a silence like that of the grave, silence groes have been compelled to affirm the equality of their clients with the dominant race. Congress has recently rejected Mr. Sumner's proposal of admitting Chinese immigrants to the franchise. Nature driven violently out of even American institutions will always re assert itself in the end. The system has vigor enough to assimilate millions of Irishmen, of Germans, and of Norwegians, who entering the country separately are absorbed, either immediately or in the second generation, into the general community; but a province of Spanish Roman Catholics will with difficulty be transformed into an American State of the ordinary type. At some future time the Republic, if it continues to expand, will perhaps find itself compelled to adopt some form of Imperial organization. Athens, Sparta, the Commonwealth of Rome, and Carthage were during the height of their power Empires, or sovereign communities under a Republican Government, and there is no reason against a reproduction of the corresponding political relation in modern times; yet few patriotic Americans would at the present time willingly anticipate the establishment of a system which would conflict with all their theories and traditions. absolutely without precedent, and explicable only by a willing submission to an inexorable rule, Germany has been turned into a camp, her youth en masse into soldiers, her cities into fortified positions. More than a million of men, three-fourths of them on the 14th peaceful citizens, scattered over countries many times the size of England, have flung down their tools, stepped silently to places marked out for them for years, and on railways turned at an hour's notice into a branch of the transport service of the State, have been carried as fully equipped and organized soldiers to points selected for their rendezvous by Baron von Moltke four years ago. Through great provinces which but yesterday were independent, amidst tribes" divided or hostile for centuries, using Governments whose manifestoes against Prussia are hardly dry as trusted instruments, the iron Prussian organization has worked as smoothly as some magnificent machine. The sternness of that organization, which inflicts death for desertion or disobedience, is not needed, for all are willing; but the sternness makes men prompt, and from every division of the Empire, from disaffected Frankfort as from faithful Berlin, from Dresden as from Düsseldorf, from Hesse as from the Saxon Duchies, the accounts are always the same, - the announcement of war arrives at noon, at night comes the summons to all enrolled citizens, and next day the deserted streets show that all the youth, ready as veterans and as skilled, are on their way to the front. That front, as we intimated last week, faces the armaments accumulated by Napoleon in the north-east corner of France, in the triangle formed by a line drawn from Metz to Strasburg. An army which we estimate at 450,000 men, or 100.000 more than that of France, has gathered beyond Saarbrück, stretching back to Trèves and Mayence, and the Prussian chiefs have, as we predicted last week, announced that their policy is one of magnificent audacity. Germany will not wait to be invaded, still less will she, in obedience to a policy which has found friends in England, but which, had it been adopted, would have justified insurrection, abandon the faithful people of the Rhineland to the most exacting of invaders. Summoning the Russians to hold down Poland- the Imperial Guard is already on the frontier of Posen - sending General Falkenstein with a corps d'armée of 50,000 men to watch the Elbe and the coast, despatching the Crown Prince to hurry up the armies of the South towards Breisach, whence, should the great battle be won, they can enter France in unbroken strength, Baron von Moltke urges his main battle forward upon Paris. If he wins, the Empire we do not say France-will be overthrown, and he can move forward more leisurely to the next field of battle; if he loses, he can retreat upon the fortresses of the Rhine, there once more to arrest the enemy, while a second army, as numerous as the first, now forming along the Weser, comes up rapidly to his aid. Whether he will win or not, whether he has even the better chance of winning, scarcely any man in Europe is competent to say. The French army, though, as we believe, outnumbered, is large enough for its work, is well-placed, though on somewhat too small a surface, is splendidly equipped, and is full of that gay, boastful, but dare-devil self-confidence which irritates Englishmen and Germans, but which, being real and not affected, acts on Southerners like wine, and has carried the tricolour into every capital of the Continent. Marshall Leboeuf, its real head, has the confidence of the Army. The Chassepot, though it has been tried against the Needle-gun without shaking Prussian confidence, is a splendid weapon, and the mitrailleuse, though only formidable in certain positions, may in those positions demoralize a brigade. No one is ever safe under any circumstances who reckons on the repulse of a French Army. The special correspondents, bewildered by the organized flurry around them, hint at a failure in the Intendance, talk about meat without cooking-pots and cooking-pots without meat, about this that and the other which is deficient; but in French armies the sound of the cannon soon produces order, and France will not be defeated by any momentary muddle. The solitary circumstance against her other than her cause, and her deficiency as we believe in numbers, is that she is led by Napoleon,- that is, by a man who makes war as he makes coups d'état, like a conspirator; who fights in or der to obtain grand scenic effects; who if he finds a genius in his army must think before he uses him whether genius is compatible with implicit devotion to Cæsar; and who, unless we wholly misread his manifestoes in this war, deeply mistrusts his fate. There is dejection in his bearing, dejection as of a man who feels a self-imposed task too heavy for endurance. An idea is current in England that the Emperor has been waiting to prepare a splendid diversion in North Germany, and he may, of course, have in reserve some striking surprise, such, for example, as a repetition of his uncle's plan of compelling Denmark to place herself and her fleet at his disposal. With the whole Danish army at his back, the leader of the Northern Expedition might, no doubt, detach a strong Prussian force from the graver battle. We doubt, however, whether Denmark is prepared for a step which, if it failed, would lead to her extinction; whether, even if prepared, her army could advance beyond Schleswig; and whether it can be aided by an efficient French corps d'armée. The difficulty of transporting heavy bodies of troops on any long sea voyage is, as we have explained elsewhere, enormous, and without an army the fleet could accomplish little beyond annoying, or it might be destroying, a few coast towns. The possibility of such attacks would but deepen German rage, and we can hardly help believing that the Emperor, always wrong when popular feeling is the first datum of thought, has allowed himself to be deceived by hopes of an insurrection impossible unless he summons the Poles to arms, and so places the Russian fleet at the disposal of Berlin. In any case short of the landing of an impossible force at Hamburg or at Kiel, the diversion cannot seriously impede the movement of Germany to the front, or greatly affect the result of the supreme decision which, before we again address our readers, will have been now being effected. pronounced. From The Pall Mall Gazette. THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN BELGIUM. The classes of "miliciens" who were under instruction this year, and were on the point of returning to their homes, have been ordered to remain, and letters of recall have been issued to the classes not now in service, including the class of 1863. No difficulty is anticipated in getting back the men. Indeed, some of them are said to have presented themselves before the orders for their recall had been prepared. With the special army the service with the colours is longer four or five years, according to the arm; but the same arrangements for the establishment of a trained reserve prevail, and the same steps are being taken with these branches of the service as with the infantry to fill up the cadres. THE position of Belgium at this moment is anything but an enviable one. In no way interested in the quarrel between France and Prussia, deeply interested in maintaining her neutrality, she is yet liable at any moment to become, as she has so often been before, the battle-field of the contending nations. Any day the tide of war which is sweeping around her on all sides may roll over her frontiers. For these reasons, and especially because a The various fortresses of Belgium are breach of Belgium's neutrality could hardly being put into a state of defence. There fail to drag England into the strife, it is in- is one fortress, however, for which it may teresting to observe the steps which the be said no preparation is needed - the Belgian Government are taking at this fortress of Antwerp. This, as all the moment to secure the neutrality of the world knows, is the stronghold of Belgium. country, or to interpose an effectual bar to But all the world does not know how strong the progress of a French or Prussian invad- it is. It is probable that there is no such ing army. Except, perhaps, in France and fortress in Europe as that of Antwerp. Prussia themselves, nowhere on the Conti- There may be larger fortresses, fortresses nent has the outbreak of this unhappy war armed with heavier guns, or fortresses occasioned more excitement than in Bel- which, like Coblentz, have a more formidagium. The whole country rings with mili- ble appearance. But Antwerp has had a tary preparations. Already the troops double advantage. It was constructed by have been withdrawn from the advanced the most celebrated and probably the most positions, such as Arlon, and they are in skilful engineer in Europe - Colonel Brialcourse of withdrawal from positions which mont. Secondly, it has been made quite are deemed strategically weak, such as recently, and is no mere adoption of some Beverloo, where the camp, if not already intricate old-world bastioned system, but a actually raised, is daily awaiting marching bran-new application on a most magnificent orders. Engineers have been sent forward scale of all that modern science, directed to both frontiers to be ready to blow up by a master-mind, has been able to suggest the bridges and destroy the railway and in the art of defence. The fortifications other communications; and the unfortunate were constructed in four years, and have mistake of the over-zealous engineer who only recently been completed. They are lately blew up a fine railway bridge on the entirely adapted to cope with modern artilFrench frontier between Blandin and Be-lery; and any one looking at these massive zieux is already well known. The mistake nearly led to serious complications with the French Government, and the consequences to the officer concerned were not agreeable. The whole of the military establishments of the country are being put on a war footing, and at the Ministère de la Guerre the employés are at work night and day issuing orders and executing details. In the Belgian army the infantry soldiers only remain about two years with the colours; they then pass into a sort of militia battalion, and are liable any time within the next half-dozen years to be called out for a month annually for practice, and in time of war or national danger to be permanently mobilized. This mobilization is parapets, thirty-six feet thick, and these broad, bold ditches, full of water to the brim, and observing the chains of works one within the other, and the skilful disposition of the batteries, so as to obtain every where a cross-fire of terrible intensity, must admire the earnestness and ability as well as the national spirit and liberality which contributed to the production of a fortress almost if not quite impregnable. Colonel Brialmont has skilfully availed himself of the proximity of the Scheldt and the low level of the country to call in water to his aid. Over one side of the fortress the country could in a few hours be inundated for miles and miles, and an attack in this direction would, under these circum. stances, become absolutely impossible, un-lishman to behold. Surely this feeling will less, as Louis XIV. said of Dendermonde, not be disappointed. the enemy could bring an army of ducks to Into this fortress of Antwerp the Belgians take it. Nor is it possible for Antwerp to are pouring their treasure. The Bank has be deprived of this means of defence, as already removed thither its bullion and Dendermonde was when Marlborough took reserves; and, unfortunately, instead of it in 1706, by a drought, unless the Scheldt taking this, perhaps, judicious step in as itself should run dry. The passage into quiet a manner as possible, it availed itself Antwerp at the rear, by the Scheldt, is pro- of a busy time in the day to drive a sensatected by large forts and batteries of the tional procession of fourgons, with a bank most powerful modern rifled guns, with for- director driving the leading waggons, midable lines of torpedoes; and it is diffi- through several of the main streets and cult to imagine any hostile fleet forcing a past the front of the Bourse, already in the passage this way, especially when we recol- throes of a monetary crisis. The effect of lect, what the Belgians themselves never this has been most unfavourable upon the lose sight of, that the attacking ships must finances of the country, and has occasioned first in all probability engage and defeat something very like a run on the Bank. the English fleets at the mouth of the river. The circumstance itself, however, is one So that an enemy who should undertake the which hardly justifies such uneasiness. In siege of Antwerp would have his work cut addition to the Bank treasure, the archives out for him. In the one direction he would and public muniments have been conveyed find himself face to face with the most for- to Antwerp, while orders have been demidable network of fortification that proba-spatched to Liége to remove from that bly ever engaged the attention of an army.place, which is comparatively exposed, and In another direction he would have to fight where the citadel is comparatively weak, water as well as fire. In the third direction, the manufacturing plant and establishment he would have most likely to meet the English fleet, and when he had disposed of that to advance up a difficult river, alive with torpedoes and submarine obstructions, and in face of the fire of formidable batteries of the heaviest plate-piercing guns. This is the nut which whoever touches the Belgian neutrality will have to crack. It is difficult to believe that either the French or the Prussians will voluntarily court the dangers which the attack of Antwerp would impose, to say nothing of the opposition which they would meet with from the little Belgian army, some 100,000 strong, from a patriotic and independent people, and from some of the minor fortresses, before Antwerp was reached. - of the cannon foundry and the small arms factory, and to convey them to Antwerp. General Eenees has been appointed to the chief command of the fortress of Antwerp, with Colonel Brialmont as chief of his staff. In the field General Chazal will command. The equipment of Antwerp, and all the munitions of that place are always kept in such a state of readiness that in thirty-six hours the interior line, and in twelve hours the exterior line, or entrenched camp (a magnificent "line with intervals" of powerful redoubts), could open fire from every battery. At present the state of readiness is even more advanced. In respect of matériel of war the Belgians are well provided; their arms are good, if There are other potent reasons why no not the best in the world, and their breechbreach of Belgian neutrality should be at-loading field-guns are serviceable weapons. tempted now. There is, first, what we The infantry are armed mainly with the may call the strategical reason -the con- Albini rifle, and a capital metallic cartridge sideration that the neutrality of Belgium, so based upon our own. The spirit of the long as it remains intact, is a substantial army is no doubt excellent. The position protection to that frontier of each of the of Belgium at this moment - her spirited two contending countries which is covered and independent determination to spare by Belgium. There is also the political neither pains nor men nor money to mainreason, no less real and substantial, let us tain her neutrality her equally earnest hope, which rests upon the conviction that determination to avoid, as far as may in her whichever country first lays hand on Belgium lay, any action which can be construed does in fact commit also a breach of the offensively by either of the belligerents— neutrality of England, and ranges her from her ardent desire for peace, and her confithat moment among her active enemies. dent reliance upon English help if her This reliance upon England in the hour of dreaded trial should come- cannot fail to Belgian need is with the Belgians an article present points of interest to an Englishnan, of national faith believed in with an earn- especially today. estness which it is gratifying to an Eng |