NEWS Or THE WEEK
THE King and Queen of Italy left Windsor on their return home on Saturday last amidst a most cordial scene, and under a bright sky which they can hardly have recognised as English. Many of the usual military precautions were neg- lected, and we fancy that during their visit our guests felt pretty safe ; but in crossing France they were aroused afresh to a sense of the permanent danger in which Kings now live. In the neighbourhood of Cherbourg it was found that a heap of stones had been laid across the line with the apparent object of derailing the train. The obstacle was removed before the train passed, but the risk it was intended to create was extreme, and had, it seems, been planned by a former soldier of the Colonial Army now employed as a patrol to guard the line. There must be hundreds of Anarchists, or possibly even more, in every conscript, army, as well as thousands of dis- affected men, and it is one of the many miracles accomplished by discipline that they are as little visible as they are. Not one of them ever seems to reflect that every attempt upon a King reduces sympathy with the masses in the Royal caste, and elicits approval for measures of repression that would otherwise be accounted cruel. At this moment it is hard for an Anarchist to obtain justice on the Continent, or even in America, and the reason is that he is believed to sanction, if not to instigate, the employment of assassins.
