English Press on "the Situation."
the Situation in America.
[From the London Times, May 6.]
If we look with attention at the details of the recent engagements we shall be dispelled to conclude that the Federals have mode greater progress in military efficiency than their antagonists.
Both at Fort Donelson, and still more conspicuously at Pittsburg, the Confederates did as much as would have secured them the victory if the Federals had been no better soldiers than they were at Bull Run.
There cannot be a greater contrast than that between the invincible and unflinching endurance of the Unionists under the fierce onset of Beauregard and the panic and flight of a whole army before Johnston's division at Manassas.
The Federals--at any rate those of the Western army--have learned to stand, and the Confederates can no longer snatch a sudden victory by a rapid assault.
Whether the army of the East has been raised to the same standard of efficiency is what remains to be en, and the suspense in which the question is kept provokes natural but unpleasant comparisons, while it furnishes General McClellan's enemies with arguments to his prejudice.
For the rest, however, the Confederates still enjoy the one great advantage of having tire on their side.
If the check inflicted on the Federals in the West, and the resistance offered to their progress in the East, should have the effect of prolonging the war under its present aspect for a few weeks longer, the season for operations will be at an end, and the campaign will be closed — not indeed, without success on the part of the Northerners, but without any material progress toward their ultimate object. The hold of the South on the border States has been roughly shaken, and victory has shed its lustre on the arms of the North; but the proper territories of the seceders will remain untouched, except on the coast, and they will have the benefit of another year for the organization of their resources, the completion of their defences, and the possible chances of diversion or succor. The North, in the meantime, will be exhausting its means by a most prodigal expenditure, and trying the patience of the people by an unproductive and unpromising contest. Sooner or later, the taxes so indiscriminately imposed must be actually collected, and then with come the test of public feeling. So long, in short, as the Federals are not absolutely winners in this unnatural struggle, they are losers, and losers at a prodigious cost; whereas, so long as the Confederates are not actually sub they may regard themselves as winning.--These are conditions which leave heavy edits against the North, and fully counterbalance the superiority of its resources, the magnitude of its armies, and, let us add, the extraordinary energies of its citizens.
A Tory Diatribe.
[from the London Herald, May 3.]
Not more than four or five years ago yellow fever was as prevalent and deadly in the Virginia sea-board towns as at New Orleans, and why should it not be so again, when so many thousands of the Northern soldiery are exposed to the sun by day and the dews by night?
Even if the worst of modern scourges is escaped, the season now entered on in Virginia is, next to winter, the most unsuitable for the d ning work to which the Northerners, with grave distrust, look forward.
Further South than Virginia the Federal prospects are still less cheering.
Gen. Beauregard--a man not given to boasting — has, we are informed, telegraphed to Richmond that he is entrenched at Corinth, and prepared to defy the Federals, whatever numbers they may bring against him. In Mississippi, therefore, as in Virginia, the North has now to fight the sickly season.
General Beauregard, in a vast mountain region, where a mere handful of steady troops might hold in check an army, is to look down on the plain below, and leave the marshes of the Tennessee to do his work, unless the enemy retires to Paducah or Illinois, and fights his way back again with the black frost next October or November.
No important news at such a time, when the waning hours of spring have passed away in our own cooler latitude, can only mean that the war which the North is waging on the South is interminable.
It is a war of glints — a drawn battle between two sturdy pug --in which the numbers resources of the North count for nothing.--Science, untiring energy, and devotion, are the effect for the Parrott guns which Pennsylvania and the New England States supply.
The Southerners, to a man, will fight resolutely to the bitter and in a war forced on them; and it is not possible to divine how the North is to recede from its position. Without foreign intervention there is, perhaps, but one way in which the Goodian not can be out. Were Beauregard to successfully resist the attack at Grant, Buell, and leck, at Corinth, and these Generals to keep the field until sickness obliged them to retire; were McClellan to rem before Yorktown until his troops became and yielded to General Johnston on the Peninsula, without any really desperate effort, it is not improbable that the staunches? Northern Unionist would think seriously of giving way and advocating the adoption of a Secession plank in the next Republican party platform. Financial embarrassment would tend also in the same direction, although it would be less potent than unmistakable defeat; for already the financial state of the Federal Treasury is almost as bad as it well can be. Defeat in a fair trial of strength on the ground chosen by Mo would address itself to the understandings of the most obtuse; and it has been whispered months ago, that were the South to prove victorious on a great occasion, the North would accept the issue as conclusive. Still, it is unsafe to calculate on the tickle humor of an American mob. Defeat in anticipation may apparently prepare the public mind for concessions to the South; but defeat in experience may prepare the public mind for a new and still more desperate effort.
The French Intervention Scheme.
[from the Edinburgh Scotsman, May 2]
Private information from Paris, coinciding with certain signs and symptoms, leads to the conviction that a strong desire to make an effort toward some kind of interposition has long been entertained by the Emperor, and that, unless some settlement shall have been reached or brought within sight a few weeks hence, he will scarcely be restrained from the attempt.
If, when the advance of the season renders military movements impracticable in the Southern States, at least by Northern troops, the position of the belligerents shall be anything like what it was at the last advices, or if indeed the position is not much more entirely altered than it would now be rational to expect, the facts will be regarded as insuring, in the absence of any new element, another year's war. Against such are suit, it is understood that the French Emperor is now more than inclined not only to protest but to act. More than probable, he will first propose to move in concert with great Britain; but we may assume, at least, in passing, that any such proposal would be declined by our Government.
The Emperor would, in that case, go to work by himself.
He will, perhaps, begin by a mere friendly remonstrance, addressed to both parties, but practically meant or needed only for the North--a remonstrance which there is desperately little chance of producing any effect beyond, at b a civil expression or resentment at foreign intermeddling.
The course to which the Emperor would then resort is believed to be be would throw out something quite capable of being interpreted as a threat against whichever party should resume hostilities; and he would then formally propound an advice that the whole matter should be referred to his favorite tribunal ‘"universal suffrage."’--the vote not to be taken but each State to vote separately, declaring for itself whether it desire re-union under one Federal or Central Government, or reconstruction under two or more of such Governments.
Whether or not the visit of the French M at Washington to the Confederate Government at Richmond has any connection with these is matter only of unassisted conjecture; but there is more than conjecture as to something like what has been indicated being at present not only the desire but the design of the French Government.
The prospect is not a cheerful one.
Though the proposal of referring the matter to universal suffrage is one which, in itself, it neither is unfitting in France to make, nor would be unreasonable in the States to accept it is, after all, but a proposal to have done over again what the Confederate States did in the spring of last year.
They did then, as they would again do now, vote themselves out of the Union--and that is just the result against which the North has been fighting.
In a word, for the North to accede to the French proposal would just be certainly, though indirectly, to concede separation.
It is difficult to conclude that that which the North has refused and resisted at such cost, it would grant at the request or of France; and it is equally difficult to see what effective steps France could take were she denied and defied.
As to this country, there seems no course open to her but inaction and almost silence.--We have no right to venture beyond friendly advice; and the fact that our interests are deeply concerned in a speedy settlement of the American subjects to suspicion and aversion anything we say, even in the most friendly and respectful tone and form.
A of the recent accounts, public and private, regarding the war, tend to strengthen the conclusion that the war will not be ended this campaign, and, consequently, that the state of things for which the French Emperor is understood to wait, will soon arise The ning Hereld argues, from the reports of M. Mercier's visit to Richmond, that the beginning of the end is not distant. It says France and England suffer more than neutrals over suffered from any contest, and both begin to regard the war as interminable and atrocious.
