NEWS OF THE WEEK.
nr HE Schnaebele incident, to which we briefly alluded last
week, has turned oat serious, but is believed to be at an end. According to the best accounts, the authorities of Alsace- Lorraine were anxious to catch on the frontier M. Schnaebele, a French Commissary of Police, whom they believed to be the brain .of an organisation for spying within their territory. A warrant was therefore issued for his arrest whenever found on German soil, and a German Commissary, Herr Glintsch, accidentally or designedly, invited him to inspect some boundary-posts. Once across the frontier, he was seized by detectives. It was at first feared that the act, which WRS clearly either one of kidnapping or a breach of safe-conduct, would be supported by the German Government; but, by the latest accounts, this is not the case. The French Government remonstrated at Berlin, and Prince Bismarck, after a conference with the Emperor, has admitted that the mode of arrest was too irregular to justify M. Schnaebele's detention. He is therefore to be released at once. If this is true, the incident is ended ; but the German claim to punish offences against Germany committed by foreigners within their own country will yet give rise to many conflicts. No other people claims this power, under which we might, if he visited Canada, seize a President of the United States who had bought in London a secret plan of Tilbury Fort, or done any act which in an Englishman oonld be considered treason.
