The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-21 00:00:00

EUROPEAN INTERVENTION.

If there is any power in Europe (the Standard says)
other than that of the sword, then it is the duty of
every civilised nation to join in repressing the inordi-
nate appetite of victorious Germany. We cannot
allow that we arc debarred from undertaking it be-
cause we did not prevent the war in the first instance.
It would have been better, perhaps, had we done so,
but it is surely a strange argument that we are never to
do right because we once did wrong. A man may, with-
out any great reproach to his humanity, permit two of his
neighbours who have long been thirsting to decide which
is the stronger to fight it out fairly; but it does not
follow that he is bound to let the quarrel proceed to mutual
annihilation. Without grudging Germany her victories,
it is surely the business of Europe to take care that they
are not pushed so far as to disturb the whole course
of civilisation. For the same reason which induced us to
regard favourably the cause of German unity we are
bound to protest against the disintegration of France.
The best excuse for Germany was that she took up arms
to resist a violent spoliation. But this is precisely
what she desires to inflict upon France. In
taking Alsace and Lorraine by violence she will be the
wrongdoer. She will have clothed herself in the very
garments which she found so obnoxious in her neighbour.
She will have reversed the positions of aggressor and
victim ; nor can she sanctify her act by the miserable
plea that her enemy would have done the same if she had
been able. In whatever cause the spoliations may be
made, and by whatever means secured, they will be spo-
liations still—offensive to the moral sense of mankind
injurious to the peace of the world, fraught with the
greatest danger to Germany herself, who has already
shewn how much she has been corrupted by military
glory, and how, from a peaceful, unambitious people, she
has already passed into the worst form of that intoxica-
tion which it is her pride to have checked in her
neighbour.

At the Devon quarter sessions at Exeter on Wed-
nesday, Richard Ford, a boy of twelve years of age, was
charged with stabbing Rebecca Morris, aged sixteen
The girl was returning from a shop with the
Police News, which contained a " horrible " illustration—
men forcing a living woman into a coffin. Ford, who
had a sharp knife in his hand, with which he had been
cutting a piece of wood, asked the girl to let him see
the pictures, and, as she did not immediately comply
with his request, he stabbed her in the arm,
inflicting a wound three inches deep. She
has been under medical treatment for a fortnight,
and has not yet recovered the use of her arm.
The defence was that it was an accident—that another
oy pushed Ford against the girl. The jury took this
view of the case and acquitted the prisoner, and Earl
Devon, the chairman of the bench, concurred in the
verdict

MR. G. 0. TREVELYAN ON ARMY REFORM.—On
Wednesday evening Mr. Trevelyau, M. P. , addressed a meet-
ing in Queen-street Hall, Edinburgh, on the subject of our
military system. He strongly condemned and denounced
the purchase in the army as corrupt, vicious, dangerous,
expensive, and in every respect bad. It had, amongst
other things, caused the half-pay list to .be diverted from
its proper purpose of providing for officers invalided or out
of employment for temporary reasons. It was now de-
voted to removing the difficulties created by the purchase
system, and had for that purpose been swelled to
£36,000 a year. lie complained that 1;73,000 a year was
paid to generals, employed or not ; £166,000 a year to the
holders of honorary sinecure colonelcies, and 1:10,000 a year
to army agents. He pointed out what he considered other
glaring defects in our military system, and then proceeded
to suggest the remedies. In conclusion, he dwelt upon the
disasters which an imperfect military system had brought
upon France, and strongly urged the necessity for army
reform.