New Policy in Posen

** Cologne, June 20. Once again a new turn in the Posen af-
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
No. 21, June 21, 1848
fair! After the phase of sublime promises and enthusiastic
proclamations, after the Willisen phase came the Pfuel phase with shrapnel, branding and shaven heads, the phase of bloodbath and
Russian barbarism. After the Pfuel phase a new phase of
reconciliation is now coming!
Major Olberg, chief of the General Staff in Posen and principal participant in the massacres and brandings, is suddenly being transferred, involuntarily. General Colomb is being transferred from Posen to Königsberg, likewise involuntarily. General Pfuel (von Hellstone) is being recalled
to Berlin and Chief President Beurmann has already arrived there.
Thus Posen is completely abandoned by the knights who bore the hellstone in their coat of arms and wielded the razor, by the valiant heroes who,
from safe ambush, shot down the defenceless scythe-men with shrapnel at 1,000 and 1,200 paces. The German-Jewish Polish-eaters
are trembling; just as the Poles did earlier, they now see themselves betrayed by the
government.
A light has suddenly dawned on the Camphausen ministry.
The danger of a Russian invasion is now showing it what an enormous
mistake it made when it delivered the Poles to the fury of the bureaucracy
and the Pomeranian Landwehr. Now it would like to
win back the sympathies of the Poles at any price, now, when it is too
late!
So the whole bloody war of extermination against the Poles, with all
the cruelties and barbarities that will cling to the German
name as an eternal disgrace, the righteous, deadly hatred of the Poles against us,
the now necessary Russo-Polish alliance against Germany, an
alliance by which the enemies of the revolution are reinforced by a brave people of 20
million – all this has merely taken place and been brought about
so that Herr Camphausen might finally have the opportunity to stammer his
pater peccavi?
Does Herr Camphausen perhaps believe that now, when he needs the Poles,
he can win back their sympathies, which were stifled in blood, with gentle phrases and concessions? Does he believe that the branded hands would ever fight for him, that the shorn brows would ever expose themselves to
the Russian sabres for him? Does he really believe that he will ever be able to lead the remnant that the Prussian shrapnel left behind
against the Russian canister-shot?
And does Herr Camphausen believe that he can remain in the government after so unambiguously admitting
his own incapacity?