Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/87

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DRAMATIC MOMENTS
67

tige which the world is beginning to recognize to be a thousand fold more potent than the selfish, grasping policy of the old chancellories, or the incessant rattling of the scabbard.

In milder form the dramas of the hectic days of Morris were played again in 1870. Washburne had a foretaste of the great task of protecting alien people in a war-ridden country which has since reflected such great credit upon our ambassadors abroad. At the outbreak of war he undertook the protection of the subjects of the North German Confederation, of Saxony, Darmstadt, and Hesse. His devotion and success not only won him the unstinted gratitude of Bismarck, and the German people—but in their behalf established a humane practice of handling enemy aliens on the part of the French Government that must bring a blush of shame to even the most callous Prussian contemplating the population of northern France which they have enslaved. The French readily agreed to send home all the Germans in Paris, except those capable of military duty.