Count von Billow is clearly not a discreet man. Several
times his epigrammatic utterances on England, on America, and on the Triple Alliance have raised a storm, and he has recently given mortal offence to all Polish subjects of Germany. Speaking to a French interviewer on the subject of the Bill for buying out Polish landowners, he said German policy must he resolutely national. " If in this park I were to put ten bares and five rabbits, next year I should have fifteen hares and one hundred rabbits. It is against such a phenomenon that we intend to defend in Poland national unity." This is aquivalent to an assertion that the Poles are an inferior people who multiply rapidly, and must therefore be kept down ; and coming from the Chancellor, who ex hypothesi represents all his master's subjects, it is an elaborate insult which will be re- membered when oppressions are forgotten. It cannot have been ordered by the Emperor—though the latter has since alluded at Marienburg to the encroachments of "Polish arrogance "—and
as an independent utterance it is fatal to the Count's reputation for discretion. We are not sure that his utterance as regards Morocco in the same interview, though graver, is much more wise. He says Germany is pleased that France and Italy have come to an arrangement about Morocco, for she "has no personal policy " there, but only desires peace. In other words, Germany has no care for Spanish interests in Morocco, which seem to Spain absolutely vital. The words will one day, when the break-up comes; cost Germany an ally who might have been valuable ; and there was no necessity to utter them.
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