31 OCTOBER 1908, Page 1

The sensation produced by the German Emperor's inter- view in

England has been veiy great, but it is as nothing compared with that caused in Germany. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say that no act in the Emperor's career has been more severely criticised. The attack has come from all sides. Many of the papers dwell very strongly upon the danger to German interests and German policy which must follow from such indiscretions. Others, again, are chiefly annoyed to find the Emperor stating that he actually used the expert knowledge of the German General Staff to supply a plan of campaign which was to be used against the Boers. Some newspapers consider the manifesto as peculiarly inopportune at the present moment, and likely to defeat its own end of increasing the good feeling between Germany and Britain. Others, according to an admirable telegram from Berlin in Friday's Times, are asking what becomes of the mutual confidence upon which all diplomacy is based if the secrecy of negotiations is exposed to such one- sided disclosures. There is a rule, we may note, in the House of Commons, that if a speaker refers to a secret or private paper in his possession or written by him, be is bound to produce it if called upon to do so. Whether a similar rule applies to the disclosures of Emperors we do not know, but if the German Emperor were obliged to produce a copy of his letter to Queen Victoria, and of his secret instructions to his Foreign Ministers while the question of intervention was under discussion, the results might be indeed surprising and disagreeable.