The German festivities did not, it appears, pass off without
one fearful outbreak of the evil military spirit. On the night of Satur- day the 7th September, when the three Emperors dined together in private with their Ministers, there was a torchlight procession ordered for the soldiers, but the police had made no proper regu- lations for keeping the streets clear on the line of march. As the crowd was so great that the mounted police could not break through it, though they rode down men and women freely, the soldiers with the torches in their hands actually charged the crowd, setting many on fire, killing fourteen on the spot, and seriously injuring many hundreds, —some say thousands,—in the portentous rush from the torches which of course ensued. England would still be ringing with an event so horrible, but in Germany it is taken very quietly. Indeed, Germany has no notion how insolence and brutality grow on troops who are brought to consider themselves the first power in any empire. Theirs is the very antithesis of the spirit which in the days of the German resurrec- tion fostered the life of free patriotism under the very feet of the vain-glorious French invaders. The canker of military pride is a rapid and a fatal malady.
