The German Emperor has found it necessary to give "an
authentic explanation" of his Lippe-Detmold telegram, which has apparently aroused great anger in all the minor States of the Empire. Count von Billow has accordingly published a letter to a correspondent in which he states that his Majesty had no intention of "violating the constitutional rights of the principality," and only wished to restrict the troops—who, it must be remembered, are not local troops, but Prussian troops lent under a special Treaty—from taking the oath until the Federal Council had cleared up the legal situation. Nor had he proposed to place any obstacle in the way of Count Leopold's exercise of the powers of the Regency for the time being. The explanation reads very much like an apology and withdrawal ; but the Germans ask why, if this were the Emperor's real meaning, and he is not trying to usurp powers over his German "allies," he did not word his telegram a little differently. The truth seems to be that the Emperor wished to intervene in favour of the head of the Schaumburg- Lippe house, who is his brother-in-law, and forgot that he . had personally no constitutional position in the matter. His impulsiveness has, we fancy, wrecked the chances of his candidate.
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