The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-05 00:00:00

A remarkable brochure illustrative of the war has
just now made its appearance. It is not a bluebook,
nor yet a livre jaune, nor yet a book at all—not even
a pamphlet. It is simply a war map—one of the
innumerable war maps issued since the commence-
ment of the campaign—the latest, not the least
interesting, among the most attractive of those yet
published. It is restricted to the frontier line be-
tween France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Rhenish
provinces, Baden, and Switzerland, with, of
course, the country lying .to the north-east
and south-west of that frontier line, It
indicates consequently precisely the localities
coveted before the war began, on the one side by
France, on the other by Germany. It displays at a
glance the two bones of contention. Looking at
the map is better, by far, in explanation of the
struggle still going on between the two infuriated
belligerents, than reading any number of explanatory
disquisitions. The cosus Belli is there—visibly and
appreciably. Between the Rhine and the Saare lies
the fair country that France had once and which, ever
since it was taken from her by the legions of Europe,
banded together in coalition, she has aspired to have
again as her's by right. Between the Saare and the
Meuse lies, on the other hand, what Germany,
expanding in her pretensions, has all along been
hankering 'after as the most desirable of Southern
acquisitions. There is the whole of Alsace. There
is the half, at least, of Lorraine. Take off that north-
east corner of France, and Germania would have
perfected the proportions, loould have secured
the symmetry, of the worshipped Fatherland.
At the glance of an eye, we repeat, thane is the
whole story told in its completeness. There is
visible the temptation hiring on, the one and the
other. The lines of demarcation are indicated
chromatically. A brilliant sinuous thread of scarlet
indicates where the Gallic and Teutonic races con-
fronting each other, foot to foot, have been
burning, this long while, to advance after a
preliminary tussle. It was for this that the
war was presaged at Paris by those cries a Berlin !
and at Berlin by those counter cries a Paris !
The meaning of the contending watchwords being
that the conqueror proposed dictating in the capital
of his antagonist, the terms according to which the
boundary line would be extended, as the case might
be, from or to the Rhine. Since then the war has gone,
once having been commenced, at a rush in the direction
of Paris. Away from Berlin at any rate, insomuch that
whereas all the earlier war maps, as a rule, included
Berlin as embraced within the probable scene of
hostilities, and did, mot include Paris as being a
quarter entirely out of the question, as in any way
likely to be reached by the combatants—the later
war maps drop Berlin out of sight altogether, and
include Paris, now, as a matter of course, nay, of the
direst necessity. Away from the Rhine even, wholely
and entirely, the terrible struggle has drifted—
until the fight came to lie, at last, for the
most part between the Belgian frontier
and Paris. Looking at the painfully sug-
gestive map we are here alluding to, not
only is the cause of the war vividly and glaringly
placed before us, but, far more lamentably, the im-
probability after all that has recently occurred of
there being any permanent settlement of these
frontier difficulties in a way that any one
can reasonably hope will prove of a really satisfac-
tory character. Whatever decision may be arrived
at—supposing the conqueror to be immediately
satisfied, he will only be so after receiving materia

guarantees, the extortion of which from the con-
quered will so perpetually rankle in the remembrance
of the latter that new and deadlier conflicts, it is to
be feared, will sooner or later be inevitable.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.