6 DECEMBER 1913, Page 17

Ridiculous scenes followed, as we learn from the Times correspondent.

A judge and barristers coming out of the law court were actually arrested. A fireman was arrested on his way to his duty. People were seized indiscriminately in cafes. About thirty citizens spent the night in the cells before they were released. The Town Council of Zabern has reminded the Government of the law that soldiers have no right to touch anyone till requested to do so by the police. On Tuesday there was a scuffle near Zabern, and it is reported that the young lieutenant, on whom a sinister limelight seems always to play, struck a lame cobbler on the head with his sword and dangerously wounded him. The Emperor interviewed his Ministers, and such was the pre- occupation of the Imperial Chancellor with these matters that on Tuesday he postponed making his annual statement on foreign affairs. On Wednesday there was an excited and angry debate in the Reichstag, during which the statements of the Chancellor and the Minister of War were greeted with a fusillade of ridicule from all the benches except those occupied by the Conservatives. We have written fully of that debate in a leading article, and shall pass over it here and come to the culminating events when the debate was continued on Thursday.