Then, secondly, for the actual question of the war: it is a simple and testing struggle between pure Republicanism on the one side, expressed in the most exquisite, finished, and exemplary anarchy, yet achieved under--earth--and one of the truest Monarchies and schools of honor and obedience yet organized under heaven. And the secret of its strength, we have to note, is essentially pacific; for all the wars of the Great Friedrich would have passed away resultless--as great wars usually do--had it not been for this pregnant fact at the end of them: "All his artillery horses are parted into plough-teams, and given to those who otherwise can get none" (Carlyle, vol. vi., first edition, p. 350)--that 21st book on the repair of Prussia being of extant literature the most important piece for us to read and digest in these days of "raising the poor without gifts"--never asking who first let them fall--and of turning workmen out of dockyards, without any consciousness that, of all the stores in the yard, the men were exactly the most precious. You expressed, Sir, in your article on the loss of the Captain,[28] a feeling common, I suppose, for once, to all of us, that the principal loss was not the iron of the ship, but the five hundred men in her. Perhaps, had she been of gold instead of iron plate, public mourning might have inclined itself to the side of the metal. But how if the whole British public should be itself at this instant afloat in a captain-less Captain, built of somewhat dirty yet substantial gold, and in extremest peril of turning bottom upwards? Which will be the end, indeed, unless the said public quickly perceive that their hope must be, not in docks nor ships, but in men. They, and they only, are our guarantee for territory. Prussia herself seems as simple as the rest of us in her talk of "guarantees." Alsace and Lorraine, if dishonestly come by, may be honestly retaken; but if for "guarantee," why these only? Why not Burgundy and Anjou--Auvergne and the Limousin? Let France lose what she may, if she can but find a Charles and Roland among her children, she will recover her empire, though she had been beaten back to the Brêche; and if she find them not, Germany has all the guarantee she needs in her own name, and in her own right hand. Let her look to it, now, that her fame be not sullied. She is pressing her victory too far--dangerously far, as uselessly. The Nemesis of battle may indeed be near her; greater glory she cannot win by the taking of Paris, nor the overrunning of provinces--she only prolongs suffering, redoubles death, extends loss, incalculable and irremediable. But let her now give unconditional armistice, and offer terms that France can accept with honor, and she will bear such rank among the nations as never yet shone on Christian history.