Tr there be any truth in the rumours about the approaching change of ownership in the Congo State and Heligoland, as announced in recent indirect, telegrams, it is at least odd that. the judicious Reuter should have thought it unnecessary to communicate the news at first hand. The Silver Bill is interesting of course, but it seems hard that its fascination should blind our tele; provider to other events of equal importance. Experience of Reuter's selections in the past does not indeed breed implicit faith in his discriminating intelligence; and yet his reticence in the present instance cannot fail to. tinge with suspicion the tidings to which we allude. Time, as usual, will show; and till the arrival of more definite information, we must perforce reserve judgment.
The question of parting with Heligoland is hardly one to convulse the British Empire to its foundations. That Lilliputian island in the North Sea possesses the purely academic interest of having been national property for something over eighty years. We took it from the Danes in 1807, but the formal cession dates from seven years later. The population contains an admixture of immigrant Hamburg merchants, but the original inhabitants, who still constitute the majority, are neither Danes nor Germans, but Frisians. These latter will probably' suffer more from the rumoured change than any one else; at least their personal pride will be sorely wounded, for they pride themselves on their title to the name of Englishman. We used at one time to keep four batteries as a British garrison in the island, but it does not appear that any Imperial artillery is now stationed there. In the old days when Britannia ruled the waves with fewer rivals than now, it was no doubt a point of considerable strategic importance, lying as it does off the mouths of the Elbe and Weser; but with the growth of the Gennan navy, its value as a basis of attack has greatly declined. With few natural advantages for defence and of no special use as a coaling station, being within so short a distance of our own shores, its retention might burt the national pride of Germany, but could hardly be regarded as a serious menace. Under our rule the insular revenue of late years has shown a slight deficit sibly under the thrifty and energetic outen a boom in canned lobsters, the only export of note, may result in financial equilibrium. At any rate the 15,000 visitors from Hamburg, who annually flock thither for sea-bathing, will be able to disport themselves in future on the sands of the German Fatherland, instead of an alien beach. If little Heligoland is indeed to go, itis not the brightest gem in the British crown we are about to lose, but only one of the smallest of seed pearls. We sacrifice with that patch of ground no heroic traditions such as surround Gibraltar. The ery of " Perish India!" when it was inconsiderately uttered, raised a yell of execration, "Perish Heligoland is an exclamation which, except among the Frisian aborigines, would, we expect, evoke nothing but a titter.
Our negotiators have, of course, been using no such language as this. "It is no business of theirs to cry " stinking fish," and, after all, the German diplomatists with whom they have to deal have doubtless reasons of their own for attaching an extrinsic importance to the shred of land we are preparing to give up. If there were still a king of Lundy, we should not like him to be a Frenchman; and slight as his powers of aggression might be, the inhabitants of Ilfracombe and Bideford would sleep the more peacefully for his absence. Germany's hankering after Heligoland is natural enough and is of long standing. The offer of a quid pro quo in north-east Africa sounds like the maturing of a deep laid scheme. As long ago as January, 1886, just when Germany began to be active in Africa, the North-China Daily News, with political prescience, hinted that something more than serious intention of colonizing was the bottom of Bismarck's energy. "'The real problem requiring solution is the significance of the sudden outbreak of colonisation on the part of Germany. What is the solution of this extraor-diary activity lately shown by Prince Bismarck What object can he have in view in hoisting his country's fag wherever possible at our very doors
zihar, New Guinea; in each of these places German colonies have been planted; and Bismarck does nothing without 2 purpose The conclusion is obvious. Bismarck is contemplating an extension of the Prussian blue; he is about to dip his brush in the watery paint, and wash the colour over Holland, Belgium He wishes to have one opponent the less to reckon with, and so is ready with a sop for Cerberus. All his colonies, as soon as they have developed into thorns for England's side, will be sacrificed with a courtly bow if we will let him have his way nearer howe." Biswarek, it is true, no longer has his hand ow the paint-brush, and there are no signs of a desire to encroach with arms on conterminous countries, but all the Germans are giving up at present is a shadowy right to include' Sowalilaut in their sphere of influence. We do not know what price they may ask for more important concessions, such as the clear road from Cairo to the Cape, as lately proposed to Lord Salisbury as essential by a plaintive member of Parliament. By the time the rumoured acquisition of the Congo Free State from King Leopold has become an accomplished fact, England will be more in a position to know exactly what she does want.
There wealth of detail, a graphic realism about this latter project, as it has been presented to us, which is of itself suspicious. The diplomatic hoodwinking of Mr. Stanley, the exact figures in dollars offered for the territory, represent precisely the plumage in which an American wildfowl of the canard species takes its walks abroad. The day may come when the Congo State will be coloured red, but it is too much to believe that negotiations could be as far advanced as is pretended and no inkling have reached us long ago. There is something difficult to understand, too, in the assertion that the only opposition to England's contemplated purchase comes from the United States, the country of all others which at first sight would seem to have little personal interest in the question. Had the French or Portuguese, whose territories border on the Congo State, or even the Germans, who take a general interest in Central Africa, raised their voices, the protest would be intelligible. Still, granted the project really exists. America's objections are probably not insuperable and, if England can reap the benefit of the Iabours and perils of the Congo pioneers by writing her name at the foot of a "little cheque," she may listen with complacency to the inevitable sneers at the "nation of shopkeepers," for she will have made a very excellent bargain Or tate YEARS, THE QvEES, by advice of Sir William Jenner, has usually taken Apollinaris water and Scotch whisky, and even when she drinks a glass of claret it is often mixed with Apollinaris,—World, flat May, 1890.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.