The German Emperor is in front this week as usual.
He has recently set all Europe talking by visiting the French cruiser ' Iphigenie ' at Bergen, and telegraphing to President Lonbet his pleasure at his reception,—incidents accepted everywhere as proofs of his desire for an entente cordiale with France. On Wednesday he received a kind of check, the Supreme Court of Leipzig deciding in a case of rese-rriajeste that he was not Sovereign in Germany, "the sovereignty of the Empire "being vested in all the Federated Governments together," a judgment, however, of no benefit to the accused, a Socialist editor. He, it was held, had been guilty of lese- majesto, not because he had censured a Sovereign, but because he had criticised the "personal opinion" of a man who, though not Sovereign in Germany, is an Emperor ! Lastly, the Emperor, while presenting a statue of the great Elector to Bielefeld in Westphalia, writes a letter declaring that he offers the gift in order to show "that as in my ancestor so in me there lives the inflexible determination to proceed on the path that has once been recognised as the right one, and to do this in defiance of all opposition." The sentence is interpreted to mean that the Government will persist in its Bill inflicting penal servitude on strikers, but it may be only an instance of the Emperor's habit of self-analysis. He is always consider- ing his own qualities one by one, and finding them worthy of being mentioned to his subjects.
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