March 1. The question of peace and arbitration came up yesterday for open debate in the German Reichstag. Bebel inquires whether the authorities are going to join with England and the United States in their endeavors to bring about a solution of international differences by a court of arbitration. Secretary of State von Marschall replies that the United States had, in their brief communication, made no tender in this direction. Nature makes no leaps; still less does official politics. The question came to debate without result, but it was not pushed aside with a smile. March 20. A man named Dowe is said to have invented a bullet-proof cloth. If the contest between resistance and penetration, as it is carried on between torpedo and armor plate at sea, is to involve the land forces also, there will probably ensue the accelerated ruin of the nations and a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all warfare. Just imagine! a new military bill for providing the millions of the army with bullet-proof wadding,—this voted and furnished at the same time in all countries; and this, if war should break out at this stage of the game, would afford a lovely campaign of unwoundable opponents! Then there would have to be a hasty majority demand for new offensive weapons with bullet-proof-wadding-pierceable bombshells (fired, wherever possible, from mines and balloons, from the frog’s- and bird’s-eye view), then the introduction of armored umbrellas and mine-proof overshoes,—and all this for “the maintenance of Peace.”... April 4. To-day the arbitrators meet in the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, to settle the Bering question. Such an event ought to give the editorial writers of the whole world subject matter for extended observations, and ought to be accompanied by magnificent pageantry. April 10. Our papers have published the news of the Bering arbitration without comment. On the other hand, the _Westminster Gazette_ writes: “If the intrinsic importance of events and the outward demonstrations were in proportion, the report of the Bering arbitration would ring throughout the world to-day.” And the _Daily Telegraph_: “The Bering arbitration, as well as that on the _Alabama_ question, affords mankind to-day a majestic spectacle.” An estimate of the importance of the event—typical of the daily press—is afforded by the Paris _Figaro_, which adds the observation that the seal question, if it is decided by the arbitration commission in a humanitarian manner, will involve a rise in the price of sealskins and persuade our fine ladies to have economical recourse to rabbit skins! September 8. King Alexander addressed his Servians on his _seventeenth_ birthday; “Heroes! For ten years I have belonged to the army, and as your general in chief (_oberster Kriegsherr_) I will live for the glory of the Servian arms!” Ah, how delightful to be still a child....