NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE latter part of the week has been marked by a period of grave anxiety owing to the revival of the Casablanca incident in an acute and menacing form. On Wednesday, though it was rumoured that there was some difficulty in connexion with the negotiations, no one believed that there would be more than diplomatic friction. On Thursday, however, Europe learnt with surprise that Germany had formulated a series of demands of a kind which it was obviously quite impossible for a self-respecting nation to accept. They were :—(1) That arbitration by the Hague Tribunal should be confined to the point of abstract right in regard to what took place at Casablanca; (2) that, quite apart from the finding of the Tribunal, France should offer an apology to Germany, and should censure the French officers concerned in the arrest of the Casablanca deserters; (3) that France should release the deserters. Provided the French did this, Germany, on her part, promised to censure her Consul. The extraordinary character of these demands may be seen front the fact that the sentence was, in fact, to precede the trial. France was assumed to be in the wrong, and must therefore apologise. Yet it was quite conceivable that the Tribunal would give a decision which would show her to have been in the right.
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