The Emperor of Germany has put forth a most cruel
order concerning the Alsatians and Lorrainers who volunteer for the French armies. Any one who volunteers for those armies will be punished by confiscation of all his present and future property, and exile for ten years. This sentence is to follow at once upon the order of the German General, which will have the effect of a legal decision within three days of its publication in the official gazette. Every payment or transfer thereafter made to the con- demned will be void. All his dispositions of his property will be void. Further, whoever is eight days absent from his resi- dence without leave will be consider( .1 to have joined the French armies, and be subject to all those penalties. All pro- duct of the confiscations is to go to the account of the general government. This proviso came into force on the day of its publication. Evidently the Emperor is beginning to stamp out disaffection with a will. Venetia, under the mildest of German oppressors, the Austrians, was nothing to what Alsace and Lor- raine, under the bitterest of German oppressors, the Prussians, are likely to be. Yet for this sort of iniquity, the only moral remedy worthy Englishmen can find, is the sacred principle of ' non-intervention.'
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