NEWS OF THE W EEK.
THE chief event of the week on the Continent has been the Berlin riots. Serious street-fighting took place on the nights of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but on Thursday night comparative quiet seems to have been restored,---largely owing to the fact that the police had substituted carbines for their revolvers. The disturbance grew out of a strike of the employees of a large firm of coal merchants in the Moabit district. Conflicts between the strikers and the strike-breakers employed by the firm have been going on for some time, and the police were called in to escort the carts of the firm when going their rounds. The accounts of the fighting show that the police behaved with great brutality, slashing the crowds with their sabres and firing with revolvers. It must be remembered, how- ever, that the mob were very fierce, and that they used revolvers and threw stones and flower-pots from upper windows,—weapons of offence quite as deadly as sabres. On Wednesday night four British journalists who were motoring through the strike district were attacked by the police and very roughly handled, Reuter's correspondent being slashed with a sabre on both hands. This attack was, of course, quite unprovoked, and seems to show that the police had got out of hand. Of the number of injured various estimates have been made, but it must, counting both police and rioters, amount to many hundreds. Two men have already died of their wounds.
