The Brunswick controversy became temporarily acute again earlier in the
week owing to the publication of a letter from the German Crown Prince to the Imperial Chancellor, in which he declared that Prince Ernest Augustus ought to have been required definitely to renounce the throne of Hanover. The letter delighted the Pan-Germans, whom it was probably intended to please, and infuriated the Guelph party. When the Crown Prince shortly afterwards visited the Emperor it was said that he had been specially summoned for a rebuke. However. that may be, a semi-official statement has been published that the Crown Prince has expressed keen regret that his private letter to the Imperial Chancellor should have been mentioned publicly. Although the whole statement is encased in the usual semi-official phraseology, the factremains that the Crown Prince does not think the Emperor and the Chancellor severe enough guardians of the Imperial rights. Yet the Crown Prince's brother-in-law has sworn loyalty to the throne, and accepted service as a Prussian officer. To ask him also to utter a formula which he was brought up to regard as disgraceful is really only to humiliate him.
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