We are told, on good authority, that the military preparations
going on in Germany are beginning to be viewed with great dis- trust. They may be intended only to perfect the military system, which can now be done without spending taxes, but cool observers hold that they are passing this point, and mean either war with a great Power, or war in which a great Power would have to be watched. The Emperor of Austria, it will be observed, has changed his War Minister suddenly enough to create a sort of consternation among the Constitutionalists, and has replaced him by a General known to lean away from Liberal ideas. Something is moving, too, on the Lower Danube, the German official papers taking trouble to deny that Germany is interested about Servia, or engaged in any arrangement with Roumania. There is no suffi- cient clue yet to the movement meditated, which, if Prince Bis- marck is concerned in it, is sure to be a large one ; but it may be taken as certain that Germany is, what Marshal Lebeeuf said France was, ready down to her soldiers' buttons. It may be all precaution. but it is very costly precaution,- and waste is not a -characteristic vice of Berlin.
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