Prussian officers.
We know not whether it is true that the
King of
Prussia has given two years leave of absence to sixty officers of the
Prussian Army for the purpose of offering their services to the
United States.
If so, it is an unfriendly act, and presents a marked contrast to the strictly neutral position taken by Greet Britain, which not only prohibits officers in her service from joining either side in this country, but forbids all her subjects, whether in military or civil life, from taking up arms in the
American contest.
We are not surprised; however, that a despetic military power like
Prussia should sympathize with a military despotism like that which
Lincoln is endeavoring to establish in
America, and it may be that the system of white slavery, which, under the name of free labor, is endeavoring to force
African slavery from every portion of this continent where Europeans can be substituted, has something to do with the course of the
Prussian Government, as it unquestionably has with the compact and enthusiastic support given by Germans in all the free States to the present war. Whatever the motive, we have no apprehensions of these military adventurers — these
Dugald Dalgetty's--whom
Lincoln is importing from
Europe to lead his Hessians against the
Southern States.
Prussia ought to know by her own history the power of a patriotic people to defend their own firesides against the greatest odds, and if she does not know it, her deputies will learn a lesson which she may be called upon to imitate, perhaps with indifferent success, before many years.
She has an eagle eye on her own continent that looks upon her with no peculiar love, and the day may come when the boundaries of
France must be rectified.
Louis Napoleon, who has already humbled
Russia and brought
Austria to her marrow-bones, has a small account yet to settle with another Kingdom of
Germany.
He bides his own time; but the time, though long deferred, always comes at last.
