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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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REALITIES . Amidst the flood of rant and bluster which is pouring from the contemporary press , we are sure we cannot do a better , though we might do a more popular service to our readers , than by endeavouring to keep before them the practical objects of the war . A true sense of that object must sustain our efforts , measure our sacrifices , and , we must
add , regulate our conduct towards an enemy who , if things go well , may soon have to cry for quarter . Technical diplomacy is to us simply a mystery of folly and iniquity . To go to war , or to remain at war , for any of its objects , is a folly and a crime . The objects which it puts forward on this occasion are on the face of them
hypocritical and absurd . It is hypocritical to go to war for the integrity of an empire which we are ourselves morally dismembering . It is absurd to go to war for the purpose of binding Russia by a paper treaty to dismantle her fortresses or reduce her fleet in the Black Sea . To restrain by such treaties the natural expansion of a great power is an
attempt which , as history ought to have taught us , is perfectly chimerical . The restraining treaty will only lend increased energy and some justification to the intrigues of Russian diplomacy in the West . It will give the Czar the strongest interest in disturbing the peace of Europe for the future ; and directly he succeeds in doing so , all the direct fruits of this war will be lost in an
hour . But , as we have said before ( and proud we are to say it ) , the nation imagines itself to be fighting for nobler objects . The people forced their rulers into war , as they believed , to vindicate the liberty and civilisation of the world . They did not see that with Western despots for our allies and Turks for our
clients , civilisation and liberty were not to bo advanced . Lord Aberdeen , to do him justice , perceived this , and will got credit from history for having perceived it . Ho know that the war into which he was being driven was a diplomatic war . He discerned , and Blirunk from , the consequences of an exclusive alliance with Trench absolutism . But hv ha 4 not Strength to save himself from
plunging in . The Whig members of the Cabinet promised themselves a safe and popular Whig expedition . The Times ordered its sub-editor to prepare a plan for the campaign . The people shouted madly , and the Tories rejoiced with better reason . Had we gone to war in 1849 for Hungary and Italy , we should have been indeed fighting in a great cause , and a cause in which tlie greatest nation in the world need not have been ashamed to fall . It would have
been a great cause , and , like all great causes , a rational cause , too ; and its fruits , if we had won , would have endured for ever without any paper treaty to secure them . We do not know what to do with the Crimea when we have taken it . The thriving aud progressive Turkish Empire , as Lord Pai / merston holds it to be , with all its vigorous vitality , is not equal to tlie annexation ( or rather the reannexation ) and defence of a singularly defensible province within eighteen hours' sail of its capital . We shall reproduce for an instant the political vacuum which existed in the Crimea
and all the neighbouring regions till . Russian eaterprise flowed in . This vacuum will probably be guarded and guaranteed by the most elaborate efforts of diplomatic pens . Had Hungary and Italy risen from the grave not a line need have been written . Without protocol or guarantee there would have stood , as a rampart to freedom and a curb to despotism for ever , the unconventional barrier of two free nations . But it was not etiquette to fight for insurrectionary republics . Lord
PAiiMERSTON and his anti-Russian diplomatists wasted in paltry and aimless intriguing the hour of which every second was precious to humanity . The nation stood by in stupid inertness , while Russia did the last of all wrongs to liberty and civilisation . And journals which now find it convenient ta outbluster IFaIiStaff , slandered Italian and Hungarian patriotism , and triumphed at the entry of Paskiewitch into Pesth and of Radetzkt into Milan .
Lord Lindhubst may talk about our riveting the bonds of Germany if we fail ; but , if we succeed , how shall we loosen them ? The Emperor of Austria and the King or Prussia will be left masters of the situation ; and Russia will be as ready to assist them against their subjects as ever , and not much less able . Nay , her arms and her designs will be more concentrated on the West , if we succeed in closing against her for the future "what has hitherto been the great outlet for her ambition—her India—in the void places of the East . What was the attitude of Lord
JLyndhurst and his party towards German democracy when it did rise and endeavour to strike a blow which , in freeing Germany from despotism and aristocracy , would have also freed it from Russian influence for ever ? And now , out of our extreme zeal for German liberty we are pouring our blood and treasure on the Crimea , leaA r ing the subsidised despots and bureaucrats of Germany itself in peace . Surely the shortest way of putting down treason in your own camp is at oncoto strike "the traitor .
If the Czar can be made distinctly to feel that the blow ho is now receiving , though dealt at the wrong time and in the wrong place , is intended by the moral sense of the world as a punishment for his wickedness and insanity , in attempting to propagate or prolong in nations ripo for freedom tlio despotism which is still a real necessity to his own , something will be gained . But tho sooner wo give this turn to the war the better . At tlio present wo stand before liberal Europe and America as fighting , not in tho cause of nations , but for the fiction of Turkish
independence and the conventional differe nce between the two senses of the Vienna note . This at present is our profession to the world , and our bearing afc home corresponds to it . Never was there so much treason talked against liberty , such abject homage paid to usurping despotism and sabre sway so little public spirit shown by the parliamentary rulers of this country as in this war which people flatter themselves is being waged for the freedom of the world . The position assumed by the constitutional government of Sardinia is the only tangible gain which has yet resulted to the good cause .
There can be but one thought now Victory—hearty support to our heroic army honourable co-operation with our brave allies . But we are pouring out the blood of our best aud noblest ; it must not be poured out in vain j we must not drift on . without an object into an interminable war ; we shall never make Turkey young and strong ; we shall never make Austria heroic ; and if we could throw back the Russian people a century in
their social and commercial progress , we should simply inflict an unmixed evil on humanity . Let us look before us , then . England herself may be risked in a great cause , but she is not to be wasted in a petty one . If we are really going to struggle against the political and spiritual despotisms of the world , let us gird ourselves for that work . If we are only going to rectify the diplomatic status of the Black Sea , let us be satisfied with an early rectification .
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SURVEY OF THE WAR . Although the Allies received a serious check at the moment when , confident in their prowess , they dashed against the strongest bulwarks of Sebastopol ; although hundreds of the bravest soldiers of both armies , including two generals , fell under the murderous fire of the enemy an the
18 th of June ; although the fall of the southern side of Sebastopol was thereby deferred , yet , upon a calm survey of ' relative position of the enemy and the Allies after that fatal morning , we do not find that the prospects of the former are in any degree positively improved . The Allies desiredbut the
failed to take what they ; Russians recovei'ed nothing they had lost . Our reverse was positive , because it involved a loss of valuable lives ; their success was negative , because they simply frustrated an assault , and inflicted a wound from which we have rapidly recovered . Success was adjourned , not sine die , but until tlie next
opportunity . The reader is sufficiently informed of tUe position won on the 7 th . The lire that preceded that assault , which gave us the Mamelon , tho Quarries , and Mount Sapoune , proved our great superiority over the enemy in gunnery . Tho destructive efleet of the brief cannonade upon the Mamelon , which , strong as it proved , was rent , and smashed , and reduced to a shapeless mass , the embrasures crumbled into heaps , tho traverses dismounted
overthrown , the guns broken or , is to some extent an index of tho effect < H our firo on the other works . It is clear that we can beat the enemy in a cannonade , that his real superiority now alone consists in the cover afforded by tlio mighty mounds of earth which girdle his position . AWW superiority being fully established , on tne 7 th , it is difficult to conceive how tho assault could have failed on the 18 th , unless we suppose that unlooked-for obstacles wore intertlio Huniinb
posed between tho enemy and - » columns ; that , as at Badnjos and San boDastian , it was found , on reaching the point m attack , that unlookccl-ibr advantages re-
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to iceep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . — Dr . Arnold .
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V / ^ SATURDAY , JUNE 30 , 1855 .
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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . During the Session of Parliament it is often impossible to find room for correspondence , even the briefest . Communications should always be legibly written , and on one side of the paper only . If long , it increases the difficulty of finding space for them . . We cannot undertake to return rejected communications .
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TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION TO " ST&e &eaDer . " For a Half-Year * 0 13 0 To be remitted in advance , t&r Money Orders should be drawn upon the Strand Branch Office , and be made payable to Mr . Alfred h . GAliOVTAT , at No . 154 , Strand . . . No notice can be taken of anonymous communications Whatever is intendedforinsertionmust be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily fox publication , but as a guarantee of his good faith .
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620 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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*»* The Leader has been " registered" at the General Post-office , according to the provisions of the New Act relating to Newspapers , and it has , therefore , the privilege of transmission through the post beyond the United Kingdom , if tie proper postage in stamps be affixed on a conspicuous part of the wrapper enclosing it .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 30, 1855, page 620, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2097/page/8/
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