The Germans are greatly interested in a " scandal "
which rather amusingly recalls the old and false idea of the German intellect. The French scandal is real, if anything is real; and the Italian scandal would be, if the Italians would take trouble enough ; but the German scandal is in the air. It is apparently evolved from the self-consciousness of Herr Ahlwardt, the Jew-baiter, recently sentenced for libel. That person, whose precise character is still obscure—that is to say, there is doubt whether he is a fanatic who believes what he says, or a libeller anxious for notoriety—declared on Tuesday last that he had eleven documents proving the cor- ruption of Members of the Government, and especially of Baron von Maltzahn, Secretary to the Imperial Treasury. The Baron gave him the lie at once, and the House insisted on the evidence, which Ahlwardt on Wednesday was totally unable to produce. He offered instead a lot of papers which, according to a Committee of the House, proved nothing at all. Ahlwardt is therefore repudiated by all parties, but continues his libels outside the House, and is believed in by vast crowds, whose line of thought seems to be, that Jews get rich, that they could not get rich without permission, and that German authorities would not give it to Jews except from corrupt motives. The extraordinary virulence of the best-educated and least-believing race in Europe against Jews is a strange phenomenon. ----- -
