News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 16, 1871

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

The Crisis in France.

The dispatches from Paris and Berlin begin to be exciting. From Berlin we are told that Bismarck and Favre have finally concluded the treaty of peace between France and Germany, and that the money difficulties are all settled, so that the Germans will immediately deliver to the Versailles forces the forts near Paris, and will also release all the remaining French prisoners of war, and forward them to France as fast as the railroads can carry them. As these captive French are the very flower of the old French army, they will at once swell the ranks of the Versailles army to formidable proportions, and effectually stamp out the insurrection, if any of it is left when they arrive at the scene of operations. But what effect their release may have upon the fortunes of Napoleon, and the schemers for his restoration, remains to be seen. Evidently French government and political affairs are approaching a crisis.

From Paris we have exciting news. The Commune seems to be breaking up. Cluseret is still in arrest. Rossel, of whom so much was expected, has resigned and been placed under arrest; because he positively refuses to serve unless he is made supreme dictator. Other generals have been applied to, and have made the same answer; and several have resigned. Meanwhile, without the walls, and in plain view from the ramparts, heavy masses of the Versailles army have gathered, preparing to storm the walls, which have been much shattered by a heavy and continuous fire at short range. Fort d’Issy has fallen; and Fort Vanvres is expected to surrender at any moment.

While all is confusion within, and active and threatening preparation without, the Commune leaders are carrying out their barbarian threat, and destroying the column in the Place Vendome—the most magnificent work of art and monument of French glory in all Paris, which has long been the pride of the nation, and the inspiration of its soldiers. The vandals who destroy this monument are themselves not soldiers; for, if they had fought with half the valor and skill of the heroes in memory of whose triumphs it was erected, Paris would not now be under the guns of a foreign army holding the strongest of its forts, or given over to the mercy of a “red” mob.—Det. Post.