NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ACRISIS has arisen in Germany owing to the attempt of the Government to support the traditional pretensions of the army to be a privileged class—a class authorized to treat with contempt the individual liberties of civilians and the civil law. For the first time in its history the Reichstag has carried a vote of censure on the Imperial Chancellor. Prince Billow, with all his difficulties and sorrows, never stood in the position in which Herr von Bethmann Hollweg finds himself. The crisis was reached by a series of extraordinary quarrels between soldiers and civilians in Alsace-Lorraine. It is said that no such dangerous state of feeling has existed in the Reichsland since the agitated days of .annexation. It will be remembered that recently there was serious rioting at Zabern owing to a young lieutenant having called native Alsatians by an odious name. This young officer when he goes shopping is escorted by soldiers with fixed bayonets. What a picture! On Friday week the rioting was renewed. Some officers were returning from the fencing school, when they were, or at least believed that they were, insulted by some pupils coming out of a continuation school. Immediately a colonel drew up sixty men in the public square and ordered them to load their rifles. These troops then proceeded to arrest civilians apparently without any method.
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