d when the action of Austria-Hungary in annexing Bosnia and
Herzegovina, despite the wording of the Treaty of Berlin, had raised
an outcry in other countries, and in particular strained Austrian
relations with Russia. After thanking his audience for the personal
reception given him, he continued:

"On the other hand, it seems to me I read in your resolution
the agreement of the city of Vienna with the action of an
ally in taking his stand in shining armour at a grave moment
by the side of your most gracious sovereign."

The outcry caused in the world by Austria's high-handed annexation,
and especially in Russia, theoretically always Austria's most probable
enemy, owing to conflicting interests in the Balkans, subsided, we
know, as suddenly as it was raised. The reason, it is currently
believed, and the form in which the rays of the shining armour acted,
was an intimation from the Emperor to the Czar that, if necessary,
Germany was prepared to fight for Austria.

Peoples are said to have the institutions, and husbands the wives,
they deserve; but if German cities, and especially Berlin, have the
police they deserve, the fact speaks very uncomplimentarily for their
inhabitants. Foreigners in Germany, coming from countries where
manners are more natural and obliging, frequently use the adjectives
"brutal" and "stupid" when speaking of the Prussian constable. The
proceedings of the Berlin police during the Moabit riots in the
capital in September this year are often quoted as an example of their
brutality, while, as to stupidity, it is enough to say that a stranger
in Berlin, discussing its mounted police, naively remarked that what
most struck him about them was the look of intelligence on the faces
of the horses. Judgments of this kind are too sweeping. It should be
remembered that Germany is surrounded by countries of which the
riff-raff is at all times seeking refuge in it or passing through it,
that polyglot swindlers of every kind, the most refined as well as the
most commonplace, abound, and that Anarchists are not yet an extinct
species. For the Prussian police, moreover, there is a Social Democrat
behind every bush.

Possibly to this condition of things, and to the suspicion that Social
Democratic organizers were about, was due the gallant charge made by
half a dozen policemen, with drawn swords in their hands and revolvers
at their belts, on four inoffensive English and American journalists