Answer to an editorial of the Chicago Republican that demands the Germans should immediately march back to Paris to put down the "Commune" and reestablish peace and order.

A number of American papers - like the above quoted Republican - describe it as the duty of the Germans, to make order for the French in their own house, but this is only a new example of the impudent disregard of all German interests of which these same papers have given so many proofs since the day of Sedan.

Heinrich Heine remarks that consistency is the virtue of those stock-fishes who come year in and year out into the same bays and shallows where they are caught. The American journalists are no stock-fishes in this sense. They don't care the least bit if they say today the exact contrary to what they said eight days - not to speak of eight weeks - ago.

The ears of the Germans in America still ring with the infamous revilings which bastard papers (Schandblatter) like the New York World and the Chicago Times poured out over them, because they could not generate any enthusiasm for the French republic. But the same Times which could not heap enough curses and shame on the Germans, because they dared to fire on the noble, 2magnificent Paris, the "Seat of Civilization," has been proclaiming for about a week with the most naive self-consciousness, that Paris is a hellish swamp of iniquity; regrets that it has not been leveled to the ground and declares that the French are a completely worthless people.

We Germans are accustomed to believe that when somebody utters such uncompromising opinions about men and things as these American papers, that he really means what he says and means it because he has thought about it. But this supposition does not fit the average calibre of the American newspaper scribblers with their moods and fancies that take the place of thoughts and convictions and their real knowledge of things European is not more profound than the sediment in their inkwells. So they can hardly be expected to understand the holy ire that they arouse in the Germans with their insulting prattle. What they write does not come out of either their heads or hearts and so they cannot comprehend that it can touch somebody else so deeply.