It is stated by the Daily News and in other
quarters that a con- siderable agitation is getting up in Germany for the annexation of Heligoland to the German Empire, which it is assumed that Mr. Gladstone's Government will not be disposed to resist. We do not much believe in the reality of a German agitation for that barren rock, whose inhabitants, by the way, are as much Frisian as German,—the Frisians (mostly sailors) boasting of their English citizenship, of which they are very proud, and by no means aspiring to be united to "the Fatherland,"—a rock, too, which is far enough from the coast of Schleswig to be in no sense a geographical append- -age to any country. If we are to give it up to any State, let it be to Denmark, from whom we took it in 1807. But why give it sip at all ? Prince Bismarck is hardly the man to ask for what he -could not expect to get without war, and still less the man to play -at such a game as war with such an opponent as England, for six- penny stakes.
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