JOHN MITCHEL AS THE SAME.—Marx, however, was not the only observer of the events of 1870 to be moved to prophecy by them. As a matter of fact, everything has been foreseen. John Mitchel, the Irish Nationalist, whose name is invoked by Sinn Feiners to-day, was in Paris before the 1870 war, and wrote of the events of the war in the _Irish Citizen_ and elsewhere during its progress. He, too, had no illusions concerning the nature of Prussian militarism, and though his sympathies were mainly with France, he had a word of warning for England. “Prussia,” he said, “cannot be England’s friend. Prussia has her own aspirations and ambitions; one of these is to be a great maritime power, or rather _the_ great maritime Power of Europe; and nothing in the future can be more sure than that Prussia, if successful in this struggle with France, will take Belgium, and threaten from Antwerp the mouth of the Thames.” Things have not worked out exactly as Mitchel prophesied, but they have worked out nearly enough to justify his political clairvoyance. Like Marx, he was not deceived by the events before him, and both saw in them the shadows of the events which have now befallen us. I remark with irony that just as the self-styled followers of the economist Marx ignore the political judgments of their master, the professed inheritors of the Nationalist opinions of Mitchel ignore his international opinions. It is in this way that the garments of the great are divided, and the seamless coat shredded to make partisan ribbons.