The Emperor of Germany was on Friday to unveil the
grand national monument of the War of 1870. It is erected on the edge of the Niederwald, overlooking the Rhine, and its main feature is a colossal bronze statue of Germania, forty feet high, as a beautiful woman resting on a drawn sword and holding out an imperial crown. The figure rests on masses of masonry fifty feet high, and crowning as it does the brow of the Nieder- wald, is visible for miles. The festival was to be of the grandest character, and has been made the occasion of an outburst of enthusiasm for Germany, which, as the Times points out, has assumed the headship of Europe, yet does not go to war. That is just praise ; but it should be added that, because of the ascendancy of Germany, two millions at least of Europeans live three years in barracks, and the Continent spends more than £100,000,000 a year in preparations for the war which does not come. Nor, as we have observed elsewhere, can politicians see that this Germany, though she keeps the peace by garrotting all the suspect, has as yet used her strength either to establish European freedom, or European law, or European ascendancy in the remainder of the world. Like her new statue, she only watches, guarding with naked blade her own property alone.
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