blood the insult thus suffered by the ever-victorious banner
of Prussia. Are we, then, to see the Reichstag in its turn, like the
French and Italian Parliaments, wasting its millions and its men in
colonial adventures?

At Muenich, William II has declared that the wretched condition of the
artillery in the Austrian army, the lack of cohesion in its infantry, and
the inexperience, not to say incapacity, of its officers, render it unfit
for war in the near future, and that no hope of its improvement is to be
entertained, so long as it shall have as its head a man so completely
worn out as Francis Joseph. Germany's armament is to be completely
changed and renewed, and it is even said that William will go down in
person to the Reichstag during the autumn session to demand the enormous
credits which the situation requires. The _Neue Muenchen Tageblatt_ has
been seized at Muenich for having published an attack upon "the mania for
armaments and for military pomp which possesses William II, a mania which
is exhausting Germany and will leave her completely ruined after the next
war."

November 12, 1891. [15]

The unfortunate Constitution of the German Empire, like the Emperor
himself, doesn't know which way to turn. Legislation, administration,
the army; the universities, the Church and the administration of justice:
everything is being passed through a sieve, and transformed, first in
order that it may retransform itself and then become more readily
accessible to the rising generation. Anything that savours of a ripe age
is extremely displeasing to William II. Ripeness is a thing which he
disdains to acquire. All that is youthful finds favour in his eyes, with
the sole exception of a class of youth with which he is disposed to deal
severely, viz. the _souteneurs_. Against them the _summus episcopus_ is
extremely wroth. Here the virtue of chaste Germany is at stake, and he
proposes to cauterise the disease with a red-hot iron. For the future,
the scandalous discussion of these things will be forbidden to the Press,
and thus, even if private morals continue the same, public morality will
not be offended. Hypocrisy, at least, will be saved.

There is much talk at Vienna of a plan whispered at headquarters in
Berlin, which has to do with converting the capital of Austria into an
entrenched camp, so that an army driven back from the Austro-Russian
frontiers might there be re-formed. William means to throw Austria